Colors and Magic

Wow, I have to say I was impressed by the way Warbreaker handled magic. I never thought of it being portrayed that way and I loved it. It made me imagine a world resembling a painting. Where, when magic is used, the colors close by change, either getting brighter and dimmer. The importance of color in this world is extremely interesting to me. I really like that they have to think about the color clothes they wear or the color of the architecture so that the Awakeners, people who use the color to bring objects to life couldn't use it. It makes me wonder what this world would look like if it were real and tangible. Color is only additive in this multi layered magic, which is even cooler! They use Breath, which is almost like a life essence that everyone is born with, as their source of magic. This is what causes the disagreement between the two cities and to the inevitable war. I love fantasy realms and war games. I used to play Warhammer fantasy which is a table top war game. I've slightly grown out of it, but when I'm in the mood I can still get pretty excited about it. So, the genre of fantasy and wars is all too familiar to me and I do enjoy it.
My favorite character is most likely Vasher. He reminds me of other wizard type characters I've read about in recent books like The Dresden Files. He seems laid back a lot of the time but can also be badass when he wants to be. The other characters were more interesting than I expected, but I'm never really that partial to the princesses in the story. I'm a Zelda fanboy... Princesses are to be rescued. Not that they can't help every once and a while. What really surprised me is that Vasher had barely any time in the story at all. He was such a cool character yet he really only appeared near the end and in the prologue. I WANT MORE VASHER!

Spiders!!!

I'm not sure why I didn't catch it for the longest time, but I didn't even realize that I knew the story of Anansi until I started reading. I had completely forgotten about it. I remember watching a crappy animation in grade school in my library class. It was interesting to me how Neil Gaimen could turn that simple little story that felt like a bed time story or something into The Anansi Boys. It made the magical elements make more sense knowing that it was almost a modern mythology type book. I guess something akin to Percy Jackson and the Olympians, only with an African folk tale.
I liked Spider's character and I found it really interesting that he turned out to be Charlie. It was almost like the dark side of him. I can think of so many nerdy references that have a “dark character” like Scott Pilgrim, which is itself a reference to other stories that have one.
I also liked the type of story it was. Of course it was a fantasy and they had the fantasy-like plot points, such as Tiger wanting to seek revenge on Spider for what his father did, but it also had realistic plot points that dealt with fraud in Charilie's business and even murder. It's a nice mesh of the fantasy world and the real world.
Another interesting note is that I'm not very used to all the main characters being black. Not as a prejudice, I'm just not used to the idea of assuming every character introduced in the story is a black person, not a white person. But, I soon got used to it. The Anansi story is an African tale after all, so it's not random or anything.

Fantasy Worlds, Go!

I was born and raised Catholic Christian. During my high school years in or around freshman year, I distinctly remember my private catholic school religion teacher getting upset and speaking against the Golden Compass and the film when it came out. I always wanted to know why. I knew the church was against the Da Vinci code because it claims things that, if true, would destroy the church's doctrines and teachings. I was always so curious what the Golden Compass had in it that was freaking out the church so much. All I knew was that God was “portrayed” in the last book of the series as a crippled old man that is killed by the main characters. As interesting as that is, I was still in the dark about what was in the Golden Compass that was so bad that Catholics basically boycotted the film.
The story was very interesting to me. I liked the idea of having your spirit be represented by an animal or, what the book calls, a deamon that follows you around and I really liked that Lyra's deamon didn't have a specific form yet because of her spiritual immaturity. I did notice that the Magisterium named in the book is supposed to be the Catholic Church and they're portrayed as the villains. But for me, it was a fantasy world where your spirit had a physical manifestation. It is obviously a work of fiction. Regardless of it's stabs at the church I couldn't let myself get hung up on it. Instead, I was more interested in the story about Lyra finding her friend and the importance of the Dust. I did also and watch the film The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe based on C. S. Lewis's book of the same name, which I read when in grade school. I can definitely see the parallels and differences between the two. The film was definitely an allegory to christianity (though I later found out Lewis didn't intend for it). This story was about forgiveness and finding yourself and has a happy ending. Compass, on the other hand, is kind of brutal. The friend Lyra was fighting for the entire time dies at the end! Children are being ripped from their souls and dying for a source of power to do experiments. I think it was a good story, although it was thematically dark at times. Even as a somewhat Catholic Christian, I still enjoyed the story for what it is.

Adventure with a Hobbit LOTS of Dwarves.

I saw the Lord of the Rings films way before I read the Hobbit, so my idea of what Middle Earth looked like was basically set in stone before I even picked up the book and started reading the description of the hobbits. Everything I read looked like the movies in my mind. I saw Ian McKellen every time Gandalf spoke. Or I saw Iam Holm as Biblo. This didn't really hinder the reading at all. It was almost like reading a prequel to the movies, (though, it won't be long before Hobbit gets the hollywood treatment) which I guess is sad because it makes me feel like I should read the Lord of the Rings trilogy so that I read a prequel to the books. But, from what I've heard from friends that have read Lord of the Rings, it's extremely long winded. It goes on to explain everything in a massive amount of detail even when it doesn't seem important to the plot. This is what I found with the Hobbit, though I'm told it's not as excruciating. I actually enjoyed the detailing put into the book. I enjoy Tolkien's mythos and like to be taken there. That being said, there were definitely parts of the book I feel asleep on. I distinctly remember having to reread the barrel scene because I read it while trying my damnedest to stay conscious.

Not that it was all boring though. I especially enjoyed the scene with Gollum. Mostly because of the movies and because I could see Gollum the way the movie's represented him. The descriptions match almost perfectly. I also loved seeing the ring in the story. How it seems almost insignificant compared to it's importance in The Lord of the Rings. I also really liked the dragon scene. It was interesting to me that the main character wasn't the one to defeat the dragon as expected.

Probably my biggest complaint about the Hobbit compared to my experience watching the Lord of the Rings moves is the fact that the group that comes with Bilbo is about 90% dwarves. I'm rather partial to the elves, so I was hoping that they had more time in the story as main characters.  

Scary in Japanese

Before I begin, I have say that I don't have a strong opinion or predefined idea of what a ghost has to be. Ghosts never had rules and they never appeared the same way twice. To me, this makes any ghost story fair game as to how they treat ghosts. The Japanese idea of a ghost is an interesting one. So I won't spend any time complaining that the ghost wasn't handled right.

I enjoyed the story of A Wild Sheep Chase. 

First weird thing I noticed was that none of the character's really had a name. They were all labeled by nicknames. I found this to be extremely interesting. The women in the story were interesting as well. They all seemed so wise, as though they knew more than they should have. Like women were some mystical creature that could predict the future, like when his ex girlfriend predicts when she's going to die, or just know things without any real reason for knowing them. The ending felt a little anticlimactic. I understand this is a style choice and it wasn't meant to be for the character to accomplish something, but I think that is coupled with the idea of no one having a name.

Another thing I found interesting was that the way the ghost was portrayed was different than I imagined it would be, but I'm really only used to the Americanized ghosts that go to extreme lengths to kill you and that's it. In our ghost movies, most of which are Japanese stories “translated” into American ones, there's usually little to no purpose to the ghost. It's almost like they randomly pick the dumb teenagers of the story to harass and pick off one by one. I do like that the Japanese ghosts aren't hellbent on your absolute destruction. It makes them more realistic. Not to say that there weren't casualties along with the ghost's possessions.