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Guns, gods, and governors
Jan. 5th, 2023 03:14 pmUsually around this time of year I manage to read about 1,000 pages between Christmas and New Year’s, but this year I spent a bunch of that time playing games, so the first book of 2023 is Brandon Sanderson’s Shadows of Self, the second book in the Wax and Wayne series, which seems to be his only series where the books are regularly around 300-400 pages instead of 1,000.
In this one, the short version of the problem is that a mysterious killer named Bleeder is stoking the entirely justifiable grievances of the industrializing populace to foment the most destructively disruptive forms of civil unrest she can think of–and our intrepid heroes have to stretch their imaginations to match hers, because she’s got grievances that wouldn’t even occur to normal people. The cops keep trending toward defaulting toward mass repression despite everyone being aware that the rioting masses are, politically, entirely correct. Marasi has officially become a constable right now–basically the EA to the new head of her octant’s division–and is dealing with office politics. Wax mostly shoots things magnificently, sasses God, and has existential breakdowns. Wayne continues to be very funny. Steris is still my favorite character. This is a very plot-driven crime thriller type of book so it’s hard to talk much about anything without major spoilers, but let’s just say that, for all the obvious similarities to early industrial America, a world where religious stuff is unambiguously real and the cops are not the immediate descendants of runaway slave patrols means that some things go down a little differently than they would in real life. (Also, you know, magic.) However it is still quite fun and twisty and sets up the next book very effectively.
In this one, the short version of the problem is that a mysterious killer named Bleeder is stoking the entirely justifiable grievances of the industrializing populace to foment the most destructively disruptive forms of civil unrest she can think of–and our intrepid heroes have to stretch their imaginations to match hers, because she’s got grievances that wouldn’t even occur to normal people. The cops keep trending toward defaulting toward mass repression despite everyone being aware that the rioting masses are, politically, entirely correct. Marasi has officially become a constable right now–basically the EA to the new head of her octant’s division–and is dealing with office politics. Wax mostly shoots things magnificently, sasses God, and has existential breakdowns. Wayne continues to be very funny. Steris is still my favorite character. This is a very plot-driven crime thriller type of book so it’s hard to talk much about anything without major spoilers, but let’s just say that, for all the obvious similarities to early industrial America, a world where religious stuff is unambiguously real and the cops are not the immediate descendants of runaway slave patrols means that some things go down a little differently than they would in real life. (Also, you know, magic.) However it is still quite fun and twisty and sets up the next book very effectively.