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Before I started reading the book I had heard that it was a sort of an adult version of Harry Potter. The parallels between the two stories are very clear, but comparing them like that also seems like a disservice to The Magicians since the books are different in all the important areas.

The Magicians is a story about a young boy, tired of ordinary life, who learns that magic is real and then goes to a school where he learns more about it. This is the part that is similar to Harry Potter, but that is also where the similarities end. Instead of the happy feeling of endless possibilities that the Harry Potter books have, The Magicians focuses on what happens when dreams come true and they're not really what you had hoped for.

This is one of the first books I read with this focus, on dreams not being all that good once they become reality, and I found it very refreshing and interesting. There is no doubt that the book at times is a bit depressive and nihilistic, but it was still very enjoyable to read.

I never really liked the main character, since he is too depressive and self destructive for that, but he worked great as a main character since he used his self destructive tendencies to drag the plot forward in a very convincing fashion. This use of the main character's temper and destructive tendencies was very apparent after reading the Hunger Games, where the main character has the same tendencies, but there those characteristics are never used to advance the plot.

The biggest problem in the book that I find is that at times the lore seems underdeveloped, and there are a few characters which we are given very little information about even though they fill important roles in the story. There is a sequel to this book though, The Magician King, which might solve a few of those problems.

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If you've seen the movie trailer for the Hunger Games you have a pretty good idea what to expect from the book as well. A young girl, Katniss Everdeen, is drafted into a game that does not end until there is only one person left standing. This bloody game, called the Hunger games, is where the book draws its title from.

The book is very fast paced. Little time is spent on exploring the setting where the Hunger Games take place, and most of the characters are given just enough background and development to make them fit into the action. The fast paced, action driven parts is also were Suzanne Collins's writing is at its' best. Her language at times get a bit tedious when the story dwells on the inner problems of Katniss, but that is all forgotten when her sparse and direct prose makes us tear through the action sequences that make up most of the book.

Katniss is a perfect protagonist for this story. Headstrong and skilled she fits perfectly into the Hunger Games, but she has enough small flaws to make her interactions with the other participants (and indirectly with the audience) interesting. Other than Katniss the only other character that I really liked in the book was Rue. The resemblances that Katniss draws between the little Rue and her younger sister are very touching, and the parts of the book where Rue is included are some of the few where I enjoyed the non-action writing as much as the action driven writing.

Something that stuck with me from the beginning though was that the world around the Hunger Games was given very little attention, and the few characters Katniss meets that could develop it further are quickly left behind in the story. In some ways this fits with Katniss's view of the world, in the beginning of the book she has never been outside of her home town and only been fed the propaganda information distributed from the Capital. But even it if might fit I want to know more, since the strange setup with a small elite district living by abusing surrounding areas seems like a society that would quickly fall apart. It would not take a lot of extra background information to leave me more comfortable with the setting, but unfortunately that information is never given.

The downside of the lacking world information was not very noticeable though, and for the larger part of the book I totally forgot about it as the action kept me turning the pages.

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The Master of Go is a book about a single game of Go. In the book Yasunari Kawabata chronicles the long retirement game between Honinbo Shūsai and Minoru Kitani. The game was played in 1938 and it went on for almost six months. During this time Yasunari Kawabata reported on the game as a newspaper journalist, and parts of the book are rewritten columns from the original newspaper articles.

The atmosphere of the game, the players and those watching is the focus of the book. The reverence you feel for the old master as he contemplates the Go board, and the sympathy you feel for him when he grows sick and you hear about all the burdens resting upon his old shoulders.

The book starts at the end of the game, and after that jumps back and forth between various stages of the game. I think Yasunari Kawabata avoided a fixed time progression to keep the reader's focus on the atmosphere, and not on the actual events. Since I tried to follow the game this became a bit distracting as it was hard to know what moves had been played and which had not. But the jumps in time helped to emphasize the parts that Yasunari Kawabata wanted to. At times he used this masterfully to show the stark contrast between two situations that happened at very different times in the game. If we had followed the ordinary time line the contrast could easily have been lost, since too much would have happened between the events.

In the book Honinbo Shūsai is a clear representative of the old traditions. He is the last holder of the hereditary Honinbo title (the title became a tournament title after his death) and he was used to all the privileges usually given to the better and older player. Minoru Kitani is on the other hand the representative of the new, more pragmatic, approach to Go. This struggle between old and new is very important throughout the book, and it keeps cropping up in various forms as the game progresses.

After having finished the book I'm left with mixed feelings about it. I think it is a great book if you want a a peek at the Japanese mindset, and how their old traditions clashed with something new during the middle of the 20th century. But the strange timeline made it at times difficult to enjoy the book properly. Too often I was left wondering where I was in time, but that might have been because I set out to read about the game. I think I would enjoy the book more a second time through, when I know what to expect from it.

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I've had a special interest in East Asian culture for quite a while, so when Haiku Soru started to translate Japanese fiction I instantly picked up a few of their books. So far the books I've bought from them have ranged between good and amazing. Yukikaze is the latest book I've read from them, and it is leaning closer to the amazing end of the scale.

From the cover, and the short blurb at the back, I thought Yukikaze would be a pretty straight forward, fast paced action book. That turned out to be completely wrong.

The book is divided into a series of short stories. Each story focuses on Rei Fukai and his fighter plane, a Super Sylph named Yukikaze. They are part of a special air force fighting against an alien race on their home world, Faery. Faery is an inhospitable place where ground travel is impossible, so everything there is focused around the various fighter squadrons they have deployed. Among these the Super Sylphs, which of Yukikaze is one, are the most advanced machinery created by humans.

We never learn much about the aliens they are fighting. The war has lasted for thirty years, but humans have never had direct contact with them. The closest they have come are the dog fights above the skies of Faery.

To learn more about the aliens the Super Sylphs role in combat is to observe what is happening, and then return home at any cost. Even if that means leaving the other pilots behind to die. The effect this has on the psyche of Rei is one the main themes of the book. He starts to care more about Yukikaze than his comrades, while the advances done to Yukikaze slowly makes Rei's role on flights less important.

The big turning point in the story, when the story went from a fun action book to a book that got me thinking, was when Rei was asked why humans were needed to fight the JAMs and he could not come up with a good answer. Yukikaze could do everything without Rei, but still he wanted to sit in the cockpit when the plane was out flying.

From that point on I realized how the question of how humans and machine were different was relevant throughout the whole book. What makes us human? Is a man with a robotic heart human? If he is, how much more of the body must be replaced before he becomes a machine? Or the other way around, would an AI count as human if it lived in an human body?

None of those questions are ever answered throughout the book, but it was the thoughts they left me with that ensured that this book moved from being a good book into being a very good and interesting reading experience.

The lack of answers is probably the main drawback in the book as well. Leaving the big questions open for more thought is a great thing, but I prefer it when more of the plot questions are answered. Luckily there is a sequel out, Good Luck, Yukikaze, that might answer those questions.

Over the last couple of months I've read the 11 first books in the Dresden Files. Now I'm dreading finishing the two I have left and having to wait for the 14th book.

The Dresden Files are crime novels set in urban fantasy setting. The main character in the books is Harry Dresden, a private investigator and wizard. We follow him as he works to protect Chicago's inhabitants from the world of magic that surrounds them.

Throughout the books all kinds of magic and fairy tales are drawn into the plot. Vampires and werewolves stalk the night. The Summer and Winter courts of Fae wage their continuous war in the Nevernever, while holy knights battle fallen angles.

Listed like that it all seems a bit too much, but taken over the course of the series each element fits perfectly into the setting when it is introduced. None of the magical beings seems forced into the setting, and each of the factions have their own goals that bring new depth and complexity to the world.

Even with a setting like that it was the characters that drew me into the story. Jim Butcher once said the Dresden files was started when he set out to write a formulaic, genre novel. I think that approach to the beginning of the series had a great impact on how he created his characters. Harry Dresden is the stereotype of an private investigator, but as the story progresses Jim Butcher adds enough depth and details to his background to make the stereotype seem natural on him. This adherence to the stereotype is seen in other characters as well, but again the stereotype feels natural once you learn more about the characters.

The story arc of each book is never very complex, something I think is another remnant from the genre novel approach that Jim Butcher had when he started the series. Each book has a very defined story that everything circles around, usually around a supernatural crime that needs to be solved. The complex story of the characters and the power struggles of the supernatural world are never the main plot in a book, but as the story progresses you can see the simple story arcs from each book form a greater, and much more complex, arc that spans the whole series.

Black to move.

I really enjoy the book so far and I feel like I learn something new in each chapter. But the chapter that really struck home with me was the chapter about proper and improper moves.

One of the big problems with my games recently has been that groups there were once strong suddenly grow weak without me noticing until it is too late, so I either have to scramble for a small life or let them die. While reading through the chapter about proper and improper moves I realized that getting a better grasp of that concept might help me immensely.

Take the example in the image on the right, taken straight from the book. Black answered a corner probe from white, and then white tenukied so black gets another move there.

If I were to play in the corner I would probably play B, thinking that the extra influence gained by a move further from my own stones would be good and the move would still be close enough to reduce the aji of the white stone. In a game I think I would have looked at A, and discarded as being too slow.

But the book says that the move at A is the correct answer. Solidly capturing the white stone and giving black a solid base to attack from when fighting starts on the right hand side.

Playing the solid move to capture a stone(s) is something that I all too often feel is too slow. I often read out longer sequences to see if I can capture the stone on a larger scale. And this is what comes back to bite me later on in the game. Without me noticing the long sequence that once captured the stone no longer works and the group that had it captured suddenly finds itself with one eye less.

Now I'm looking forward to rereading the chapter a few more times to let the knowledge sink in, and then see if I can use this new knowledge to keep my groups alive throughout the whole game.

Brandon Sanderson's focus on how the cost is an important part in making magic interesting reminded me of the problems I had with that. The most recent occurrence was with the magic system I was going to use in my nanowrimo novel last year. I had a magic system where people could focus their aura into various parts of their bodies to become strong/faster/better (inspired by the magic used in Hunter x Hunter for those of you that read manga or watch anime). The usage part of the system was working out fine. I felt like I had a good system were the limits on what they could do was easy for the reader to see and the visual aspect of the magic made it fun to write about. The only problem left was how to make the magic users not omnipotent compared to a non-magic user. If they could go around and enhance their own abilities the whole time it would create a strange power balance in the world.

In the story I wrote for nanowrimo I ended up using the simplest solution; they get very tired after prolonged use. That restriction turned out not to be enough. The nanowrimo story spiraled out of control as I wrote it. As soon as the main character learned how to use his own power I realized that any interesting challenge would require the antagonist, or his minions, to have the same magical power as well. This in turn created a world were too many had magical powers, while I had created the setting based upon the thought that the magical power was a rare attribute. Thus the whole world, and all the challenges that the protagonist met, started to feel very contrived.

I realized that the abundance of magic was the source of the problem, but until I read the post on Sanderson's Second Law of Magic I had not been able to pin point the exact cause. It had to be harder to use the magic.

Now that I know the cause of the problem I'm looking forward to reworking the setting, and seeing what will happen to it when I add a better cost to the magic system. Not sure what the cost is going to be, but now that I know where to look I should be able to find something fitting.

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The Great Gatsby is one of the classical novels that I have been meaning to read for a long time. Last year I got a copy for Christmas, and this month I finally found the right time to dig into it.

The story follows the life of Nick Carraway as he settles into life in New York during the summer of 1922. His neighbour is the elusive Gatsby, a man that throws great parties where no one really knows the host and very few people are ever invited. We see how Nick gets drawn into the social circles around Gatsby, and how he ends up dealing with the fleeting experiences they seem to live for.

This is my first time reading a book set America during the 1920's. I enjoyed getting a small glimpse into the excessive life style that the well off people indulged in during these years. In many ways it reminded me a of what I usually find in books set in the high society of late 19th century England.

I think the book did a very good job on portraying how a life can be fashioned around a dream and how it all can come tumbling down in the end. Knowing the history of the 1920's it is almost impossible not to see the correlation between the shattering of the dreams in the book and the shattering of the American Dream when the Wall Street crashed in 1929.

The protagonists somewhat passive role worked nicely in this novel. He gets a bit too sappy at times, but it never got to the point were it really annoyed me. His role was to observe how the other people shaped their lives and to give us an idea of how society viewed the splendour he found himself in. If he had been too active I think a bit of the magic that surrounded the setting and the other characters would have disappeared.

Once I got started the book was a very fast read, both due to its' short length and the easy language used. The easy language was especially noticeable in the dialogues, were the naivety and the main characters' strange view of life really shone forth.

After having finished the book I was left with mixed feelings. It was a very good book, but it did not quite live up to all the praise that I have been hearing about it.

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If you haven't read anything about the Elemental Assassin series by Jennifer Estep you should take a look at my review of Spider's Bite (the first book in the series) instead of this review which covers the second, third and fourth book.

Even though I read these books in quick succession after the first Elemental Assassin book, vacation and general procrastination has stopped me from getting this review written earlier.

These books are very similar to the first one - as one would expect of books in a series. They are quick paced, with lots of action and just enough plot twists to keep everything interesting.

As the books progressed the voice of Gin, and the personality of the characters around her, grew stronger. I think this is both a case of Jennifer Estep getting a better hold of who Gin is, and us learning more about the history that lies beneath everything.

Even though the characters' personalities grew strong and more defined in these books they all remained more or less the same. Gin is probably the only character that goes through any significant change, and even that change is barely visible over the four books I've read in this series. But that is not always a bad thing. These are supposed to be quick and action packed books, and you don't always need deep character development to achieve that.

There are a few things that started to annoy me as I read the books though. The first of these is the healing of Jo-Jo. Giving her the ability to bring heal everything, using only a few hours, seems very cheap. It makes all the sacrifices the characters make seem a bit hollow. Who cares about getting their ass kicked and their faces beaten to a pulp, when you can get everything fixed by the time you wake up the next day? Even after reading all four books I don't really understand what Jennifer achieves by giving Jo-Jo this ability. I think it would have been better to enforce a long recuperation time to allow her healing to take effect, or at least add something to make an injury affect the main characters for more than a few hours.

The second thing that started to bug me was the amount of repetition in the books. A lot of lore is repeated again, and again, and again. Often using almost identical phrases. The prime example of this is the explanation about how the elemental magic of Gin works. Almost every single time it is used you are given an explanation of it, even when it is an application of it that we have seen before. There is also a lot of repeated descriptions throughout the books. The sexy characters are described with the same words almost every time Gin lays eyes upon them, and her routine when coming home is explained with the same amount of details each time.

I think the repetition parts would have been less noticeable if I had not read the four books is such a quick succession. Luckily for me I now have to wait a little while for the next book to arrive, so I am looking forward to seeing if the break from Gin's world will make the repetition less apparent.

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I first heard of Jennifer Estep and her Elemental Assassin books when she wrote a guest post in John Scalzi's Big Idea "column". Reading about her reasons for starting the Elemental Assassin series was enough to make me want to get hold of the first book.

Spider's Bite is the first book in the Elemental Assassin series. The story unfolds in a strange version of the American city of Ashland. Dwarves, giants, vampires and humans coexist in the city, and to make everything a bit more extraordinary some people also have elemental magic - hence the name of the series.

The main character, Gin, is an assassin that has a bit of both Stone and Ice magic. Gin enjoys her job and she is good at it, but her life takes an upleasant turn when her handler is killed.

The book delivers on its promise to be fun read. Something is happening all the time, and even though the story is a bit predictable it has enough twists and turns to be entertaining to the very end. Just what I had hoped to get out of the book.

Ashland's place in the larger world is rarely talked about, and the deeper consequences of adding magic to our society is never explored more than necessary. Even with the magic and all the strange races everything seems just like a twisted version of our own world.

The characters in the book are all well made. Each of them have their own small quirks, and each of them has a back story that that you want to learn a bit more about. Most of them seem a bit one sided, either good or bad, but given the quick pace of the story the easy separation feels just right. Few of the people in the story undergo any real change, but this being a fun and easy read I had not expected that either.

In her quest for revenge Gin is joined by two other characters. One is a long time friend who has plenty of reason to tag along, and he plays an important role in the story. Both as a person that contrasts well with Gin, and as a character that has skills that Gin needs. The other character does not fit that well into the story. Without spoiling anything he felt like a strange add on to the story that never served any real purpose. It got a bit better as the book progressed, but he never felt like the same natural fit as most other characters.

One of the things that really impressed me with Jennifer Estep's writing was her description food. One of Gin's hobbies is cooking, and it has to be a passion of Jennifer Estep as well. Every once it a while she would give a detailed description of the food. It was rarely the fancy food that got described, but instead the sandwiches Gin made at home or the salad she prepared at the restaurant she worked. Each time the descriptions left my mouth watering.

Jennifer Estep's description of the sex scenes was also very detailed, at times a bit too much. I feel that sex scenes in book rarely add anything special so they can usually be boiled down to "and then they had hot and passionate sex" without loosing anything. Unfortunately I felt the same way when I read through this book. Luckily it did not happen too often, and it was easy to skim through until the story got going again.

In the end the book left me wanting to know more about Gin and the world around her. It was a very entertaining read, and I can recommend it to anyone looking for a fast and easy book with a bad-ass main character.