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bloodygranuaileI finished up Brandon Sanderson’s Wax and Wayne series by borrowing my girlfriend’s friend’s copy of The Lost Metal, a title that really doesn’t sound exciting at all unless you’re already familiar with the series. Which is fine, because the book would also make no sense if you hadn’t read the first three. There’s a lot going on! There is in fact enough new stuff introduced in this book that it’d probably be unreadably complicated if you didn’t already know all the stuff introduced in the first three books.
This book takes place a few years after the end of The Bands of Mourning and our heroes are approaching middle age. Wax has two children and spends most of his time doing senator stuff; Marasi and Wayne are now partners as constables. Marasi is dating the Malwish guy we met halfway through Book 3; he is apparently really into baking. Things seem to be in a pretty good groove except for the looming threat of war with the rest of the Basin, especially Bilming. The plot really gets cracking when MeLaan breaks up with Wayne because Harmony needs her to go do something off on another planet.
I do have to say I have sort of split feelings on where the plot goes in this book. The stuff that is related to our previous plots and characters about things that happen on this planet (apparently named Scadrial) were cool, and I feel like everyone’s arcs wrapped up fairly satisfyingly, although Marasi’s is teasing me with a desire for a future short story or novella about her later career. But the expansion into the rest of the Cosmere I was a little less excited about. Like the content itself was pretty cool but it hit upon my current exhaustion with the constant franchising of everything. I think me-ten-years-ago would still have thought the crossover stuff was cool but right now it just felt a little too “subscribe to Brandon Sanderson’s newsletter” and I will not be subscribing to any author’s newsletters unless I know them personally, and sometimes not even then, thanks. I might check out some of Sanderson’s other works at some point but I don’t think this made me want to read them more.
The two are not really separable, though, since the whole answer to the Set and its terrible behavior involves the other gods that exist throughout this universe–and the magic theology of Harmony as being one of several gods each made out of parts of a different, older dead god is extremely cool. It is actually cool that this results in different planets that all have different functioning, real religions and ways that magic works. I just apparently have no sense of fun anymore when it comes to crossovers and Easter eggs and shit.
Anyway, back on Scadrial, we have all the steampunk Wild West gunslinger shenanigans you could ask for, a lot of extremely goofy dialogue from Wayne, increasingly explodey weapons, and a truly D&D-like number of underground bunkers. I recommend searching Spotify for “Steampunk Instrumentals” before reading even though–or perhaps because–this isn’t a real genre of music and the main stuff you will find are the soundtracks to Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes movies. They pair excellently.
This book takes place a few years after the end of The Bands of Mourning and our heroes are approaching middle age. Wax has two children and spends most of his time doing senator stuff; Marasi and Wayne are now partners as constables. Marasi is dating the Malwish guy we met halfway through Book 3; he is apparently really into baking. Things seem to be in a pretty good groove except for the looming threat of war with the rest of the Basin, especially Bilming. The plot really gets cracking when MeLaan breaks up with Wayne because Harmony needs her to go do something off on another planet.
I do have to say I have sort of split feelings on where the plot goes in this book. The stuff that is related to our previous plots and characters about things that happen on this planet (apparently named Scadrial) were cool, and I feel like everyone’s arcs wrapped up fairly satisfyingly, although Marasi’s is teasing me with a desire for a future short story or novella about her later career. But the expansion into the rest of the Cosmere I was a little less excited about. Like the content itself was pretty cool but it hit upon my current exhaustion with the constant franchising of everything. I think me-ten-years-ago would still have thought the crossover stuff was cool but right now it just felt a little too “subscribe to Brandon Sanderson’s newsletter” and I will not be subscribing to any author’s newsletters unless I know them personally, and sometimes not even then, thanks. I might check out some of Sanderson’s other works at some point but I don’t think this made me want to read them more.
The two are not really separable, though, since the whole answer to the Set and its terrible behavior involves the other gods that exist throughout this universe–and the magic theology of Harmony as being one of several gods each made out of parts of a different, older dead god is extremely cool. It is actually cool that this results in different planets that all have different functioning, real religions and ways that magic works. I just apparently have no sense of fun anymore when it comes to crossovers and Easter eggs and shit.
Anyway, back on Scadrial, we have all the steampunk Wild West gunslinger shenanigans you could ask for, a lot of extremely goofy dialogue from Wayne, increasingly explodey weapons, and a truly D&D-like number of underground bunkers. I recommend searching Spotify for “Steampunk Instrumentals” before reading even though–or perhaps because–this isn’t a real genre of music and the main stuff you will find are the soundtracks to Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes movies. They pair excellently.