The Godling Chronicles: The Sword of Truth

Title: The Godling Chronicles: Book One (The Sword of Truth)

Author: Brian D. Anderson

Genre: YA Epic Fantasy

Length: 344 pages

Read: February 2-15, 2013

Summary: Fun teen epic fantasy

Recently, I’ve noticed a lot of epic fantasy novels in the Kindle top sellers, and taking a look at the epic fantasy category list many are Indie publications. This being my favorite genre, I figured I’d give some a try.

The Godling Chronicles: The Sword of Truth (don’t confuse with Terry Goodkind’s series of that name) adheres to many of the classic tropes: a sort of Indie The Book of Three meets The Eye of the World. Plotwise, we have a kind of Dark Lord, and we have a young guy from the country with a destiny. He has a mentor, he goes on a journey. There are girls (but no sex – boo!). The (relatively) unique element is that he’s really a god — albeit a reduced in-human-form god who doesn’t know it.

I liked this book, and if I were 13-14 again, I’d have loved it. The plot is straightforward but fine and it’s actually a bit refreshing harkening back to those classic “Shanara type” fantasies of the 80s. With the exception of the brief prologue, the narrative sticks tightly to a single protagonist and that keeps the pace up. As an added bonus, the story was co-written by the author’s 9-10 year-old son, which is very cool.

It’s not a long novel, 344 pages, and represents an opening salvo, more of a “first part” than a traditional ”giant chunk” like a Wheel of Time book. This is fine, as it’s inexpensive and you can just download part 2 when you get there. I actually like that changes in publishing are allowing for more flexibility of form.

But I do have a few problems with the mechanics. The sentence work itself is fine. Workman like, but never awkward. However, the novel is simultaneously both over and underwritten. Let’s start with the under part. The book is written in 3rd person omni with no strong narrative voice and a focus on a few of the characters. Fine. But, the author mainly uses two tricks from his narrative toolbox to advance the plot: dialog and inner dialog. There is some action, but it’s fairly thinly painted. There is almost no narrative description, or description at all for that matter. This keeps the story lean and moving, but leaves us with a very thin sense of place and world. We pass through several cities and various countryside, but I was left with no particular sense of any of them. Most of the words are devoted to conversation and almost all plot points are revealed (and re-revealed) this way.

Which comes to the overwriting part, which isn’t so much at the sentence or fragment level (this, as I said, was decent) but occurred as (often) characters felt the urge to repeat news and revelations to new parties. Of course this happens in real life, but as a reader, once we know something we don’t usually need to hear it again. This is a first novel, and probably not HEAVILY edited, so I expect this kind of thing has improved by book 2, but in general fictional dialog (in books, movies, TV, etc) is like a facsimile of real dialog. It gets the point across in an ideally witty way (probably with more arguing than in real life) and stripped of a lot of the glue that real conversations contain. Those mechanics like “hello” “how are you?” and “Meet me at the fountain.” “You mean the one past the statue around the corner from the butcher shop?” “No the other one, um, um, past the Inn with the greenish turtle sign and the tree that got hit by lightning the other year.” I.e. Stuff we don’t really care about.

The whitespace style in this book is very horizontal (i.e. few line feeds) and I think actually having more can make this sort of thing clearer to author and reader alike. Each line must strive to say something new — ideally even several new things. These things can be plot points, details about the world, revelations of character, or general nuance. If a line can’t defend its right to exist, several ways, well as Faulkner said, “In writing, you must kill all your darlings.”

But that being said, if you’re a young fantasy fan, The Sword of Truth is still a fun little romp. It’s straightforward, and unapologetic about the genre. That’s fine with me. I’ve got nothing against some good Dark Lord action.

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The Chronicles of Community: The Skull, the Fansite and the Loot Closet

2012 was a busy year for the community team. There were many exciting challenges to overcome and evolving projects to wrench by the horns, and in these final days we’re preparing ourselves for the road that lay ahead (assuming the road still exists after tomorrow). As we began to calculate the initiatives we have lined up for next year and assess the environmental confines of our department here at Blizzard headquarters, a single concept became illuminated with a blinding simplicity: We need more meeting rooms!

Bashiok put it plainly: “Zarhym, we have to ‘meet.’ See, meetings are where we discuss ‘info,’ and info is what gives players a reason to post on the forums. If there's no info, they can't post. If they can't post, they can't forums. If they can't forums, they can't fall in love, and then I'm history.”

It wasn’t quite clear what he was getting at, but then, upon a soothing voice from beyond [the cube wall], a brilliant question floated: “What about raiding the Closet space?”

   

Lylirra titled the right one: "Zarhym Shrugged."

The Closet, or There and Back Again

With a door that lets people in and out, but never seems to open, the community team’s Closet inhabits a space beyond our plane of existence. Only through the recitation of recently discovered incantations etched on Excel spreadsheets, and oaths forged in black Sharpie, have we, at last, managed to attune ourselves to this dungeon. And lo, the artifacts we found were plentiful, entombed in a series of cardboard coffins on musty shelves that stretched far and wide. These items of yore, we realized, were the perfect possessions to part with in the spirit of giving for the holidays!

We’ve catalogued the spoils of our intractable war with the dust mites dwelling in our mystical Closet, and, at the expense of a few hundred carrier pigeons, we tossed the riches to a number of worthy allies in the community. Many of these treasures are of a most rare quality and cannot be found anywhere anymore. (When was the last time you saw a signed standard edition copy of Wrath of the Lich King?)

Pop Quiz: From what year is that BlizzCon bag Lylirra's grasping?

This sweet loot has now been divvied up amongst many different sites, and we’re letting them set the terms for how and when it’s all given away. Below we reveal the sites that received packages from us, as well as what loot we sent out . . . but you’ll have to be sedulous in your pursuit if you want to find out when and where which items will appear! We have full faith in your sedulity.

Loot List (Checked it Twice)

Mists of Pandaria standard copies* (pretty much over 50!)Mists of Pandaria Collector’s Edition copies*, autographed by the development team (we’re pretty sure over 50!)Warcraft III Action FiguresTaverncraft World of Warcraft SteinsSoundBlaster World of Warcraft HeadsetsSteelSeries World of Warcraft keyboards, mice, and mousepadsWorld of Warcraft MegaBloksDiablo III stuff, and more still!

*These copies can only be claimed with North American game licenses.

   

Bashiok decides The Daily Blink gets to take the perky pug home.

Gift Givers

And other things happened.

Good luck to everyone who participates in the quest for giveaways. We now have a room ready for retrofitting with meeting materials, and for that we thank you.

P.S. Here’s a picture of my cat and me. BFFs for nearly fifteen years.

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