Author: Robert Jordan

Title: The Eye Of The World - Book One of The Wheel Of Time

Published: 1990

Available in Finnish as "Ajan Pyörä". (aika = time, pyörä = wheel)

 

In Finnish, this series has almost 30 parts. I've read most of them, but I never got my hands on the first (called Vaarojen taival, could be translated as the journey of dangers). This series is what lit the desire in me to write my own book. Jordan's books are... epic. There's no other word for it.

The book is set in a world where Light and Darkness confront each other in an eternal fight. The Wheel of Time is very significant in the world Jordan created, and I'll quote from the glossary: "Time is a wheel with seven spokes, each spoke an Age. As the Wheel turns, the Ages come and go,..." Another important terms are Great Pattern ("The Wheel of Time weaves the Patterns of the Ages into the Great Pattern, which is the whole of existence and reality, past, present and future."), the Creator and Shai'tan, the antithesis of the Creator and the source of all evil.

...Actually, by quoting most of the glossary, one would probably get a hang of this series without even reading the book. The terms are many, and they're all connected, so by explaining only a few, I'll only leave you all confused. So, let's forget about it, right? It's a battle between good and evil, and three boys, sheepherders, from a remote town are drawn into that battle. One of them especially is to become something important, something the world has been waiting and fearing for... They all deny it more or less till the end of Book One, but eventually... well. READ YOURSELF.

I really love Jordan's style. He's descriptive without being overly so, the plot is intriguing and the relationships between the characters... oh my, they're--- My favourite (possible) couple ever is Lan and Nynaeve. ...But that won't happen until... later. And the names of the places and characters and and things. They're all well-made, well-thought; not too ordinary and not too difficult either. 

One thing about the glossary. In this English version, it has pronunciation instructions, which I found hard to follow. I've read these books in my native, and there were no instructions, so I pronounce them in my head like I would pronounce Finnish. Which is the very wrong way, apparently. Anyway, it was a fun addition, and once again it was shoved on my face that Finnish pronunciation is very much different than English. Thank you for reminding me.

The font of the book is rather small, and there are 782 pages, and this count does not include the glossary and the prologue preview thing of Book Two. But if you have the time and interest, READ THIS.

 

Started: Feb 21, 2011

Finished: Mar 8, 2011

Recommended for: friends of fantasy. <3

Author: Stephen R. Lawhead

Title: Hood

Published: 2006 (in FIN 2010)

Translated by: Mika Renvall

Translation title: Kuningas Korppi - Robin Hood 1 (Kuningas = King, korppi = crow)

 

Another Robin Hood tale, this time located in Wales.

Bran ap Brychan (son of Brychan?) is the prince of Elfael, up until his father King Brychan is killed by Falkes de Braose, a French lord, and Elfael falls into Falkes's hands. Bran travels to Lundein (London?) in order to get his lands back, but he's told that he needs 600 marks, which seems like a mission impossible. As Bran and his two companions, Iwan and Ffreol, get back to Elfael, they are attacked y Falkes's men, and Ffreol is killed. Iwan managed to escape, but Bran is captured.

Eventually he too manages to escape, but he's followed by French soldiers, who wound him severely and leave him to die in the forest, telling everyone Bran ap Brycahn has died. But Bran is saved by an old wisewoman, Angharad, who heals him and tells and sings him stories that - apparently - change the way he thinks about himself and his people and his land. In the end, the selfish young man decides to try and save his people from the French conquerors. He and his people live in the woods, stealing from the French as much as they can without getting caught. They scare the French with stories of a big, human-like crow-creature, and the "ghost" is seen by several people, and the rumours spread rather quick....

Interesting setting, I think. The pace of the story is good, rather quick with little details on environment and how the characters look like and so on, but what slowed me down were the footnotes made by the translator. Some of them are good and give much relevant information about foreign words and so on, but sometimes I wished he had left  out some of the footnotes... 

Nothing much to say. Good book.

 

Started: Feb 11, 2011

Finished: Feb 20, 2011

Recommended for: Wales- fans, Robin Hood- fans, those interested in history.

Author: J. R. Ward (Jessica Bird)

Title: Black Dagger Brotherhood - Lover Eternal

Published: 2006 (in FIN, 2010)

Translated into Finnish by: Marke Ahonen

Translation title: Ikuinen rakastaja

 

Oh my goodness.... I started this book today and yes, I have finished it now.

So it's a sequel to Black Dagger Brotherhood - Dark Lover, which concentrated on the King of the vampires, Wrath, and his wife (or shellan), Beth. This book, however, circles around Wrath's ''brother'', Rhage. He meets a human woman called Mary, and is instantly attracted to her voice. But Mary has hard time believing he's interested in her: she's been through leukemia, the blood cancer, and thinks her body is not attractive enough. But yeah, they fall in love - surprise? Not really.

But the story was... absorbing, even though I still think there's too much Hey-we-just-met-let's-have-sex-and-THEN-fall-in-love- going on, but anyway. It was thrilling, it almost made me cry at some points, and also we get to peek inside the thoughts of another brother, Zsadist, who--- but I won't spoil you that, because I believe it will all be told in the next sequel, or something like that! I wouldn't be too surprised, and I must say I can't wait....

Nothing much to say, really. It took me less than 10 hours to read, and the Finnish version has 447 pages... Reading in Finnish from time to time is quite relaxing, to be honest. But then again, it's my native. I've had translations lessons at school, and we watched this program about translators who translate from a foreign language into Finnish, and I must raise my invisible hat to them. Translating is tough job, man. Anyway, off to bed!

 

Started: Feb 10, 2011

Finished: Feb 10, 2011

Recommended for: vampire and sex addicts, and to those who have read Dark Lover but not this sequel one yet.

Author: Megan Lindholm (also knowns as Robin Hobb)

Title: The Reindeer People - Part One of a two-book sequence

Published: 1988

Not available in Finnish.

 

A friend recommended me this series after she heard I've read The Farseer Trilogy, and she lent me both books of this series. She praised these books a lot, and since I also loved the The Farseer Trilogy, my expectations on this book are pretty high!

The story is about a healer called Tillu, and her son, Kerlew. They are staying with a hunter-gatherer- like group, and the shaman of that group, Carp, wants Kerlew to be his apprentice, and Tillu his wife. Tillu doesn't like such ideas, and makes up a plan to leave the group and Carp. She's worried over her strange son, who is greatly affected by Carp and his words and ideas. Kerlew is often judged as a half-witted, clumsy boy, but as my friend said, he seems more authistic than anything else. The symptoms seem to fit, but of course, no character in the book has knowledge of something like authisism. So Kerlew is teased, mocked, and beaten for forgetting things and in general "doing things wrong". Tillu wants to protect him from such behaviour, and even though Carp is friendly with her son, she still dislikes him, thinking the shaman is only stealing her son from the world he should live in. What is scary about Kerlew is that he sometimes pronounces things that eventually will happen, prophecies.

Eventually Tillu leaves, heading north. They face much trouble, scarce food and much cold, but finally they camp - and without knowing it, they are really close to a village of reindeer herders. Tillu meets two of them while hunting for food. One of the men is injured by an arrow, and Tillu heals him. The men are Lasse (the injured one) and Heckram, a man who feels sympathy towards Kerlew and tries to teach him things like carving and hunting.

The reindeer people are without a healer, and so when the villagers hear of her, many seek for her help. Tillu fails only once, when Heckram's wife Elsa has been mutilated, and Tillu tries to heal her but in vain. 

Elsa's death angers Heckram, because he thinks he knows who caused her condition, but there's nothing he can do. He has no proof....

Okay, I think that's enough of the plot, without spoiling too much. Now. The narrative was absorbing, the language is used beautifully (and there were words from language that could be Sami, perhaps), and the suspension of the plot made me want to skip some pages just to know what is going to happen - that tense was the suspension. I have nothing bad to say about the book or its characters, only that I share Tillu's thoughts about Carp and a reindeer herder called Joboam, and Kerlew kind of a scares me with his powers.

I have nothing more to say. Can't wait for the second part!

 

Started: Feb 7, 2011

Finished: Feb 9, 2011

Recommended for: all Robin Hobb- fans, all those interested in history of this period.

Author: J. V. Jones

Title: The Book of Words I - The Baker's Boy

Published: 1996

I think I've read Jones before in Finnish, but I don't think this particular book is available in my native. I just finished the book, and the only thing that bothered me were some character names, but more of that later.

The story starts with a prologue, in which a man called Baralis kills his servant, Lusk. Quite a start for a book, eh. Baralis is, obviously, the villain of the book: he's up to something nasty. He has knowledge of sorcery as well as knows how to use it, and he uses these powers, after raping the queen of his king, to make sure the queen is to carry a child. Why? - well, it's not revealed in this part of the series at any point. 

Anyway, soon after we're introduced to bunch of other characters. Bevlin, a wiseman who's worrying about a prophecy made long time ago; Tawl, a knight of Valdis who yearns to reach his third circle (the circles are the symbol and the marking of the knights, the third being the final stage) and seeks out Bevlin, who sets Tawl on a journey to find a boy mentioned in the prophecies. Then we meet Melliandra, Lord Maybor's daughter, who finds out she's to marry Prince Kylock - or so her father plans. We also meet two guards, Grift and Bodger, who sit somewhere, drinking ale and discussing as important matters as how to 'rollick' with a girl and how to avoid the ghones. And then we of course meet our Baker's Boy, Jack, an orphan boy bullied by the Baker of the castle, Master Frallit.

At this point I need to ask you to read through the list of the characters I mentioned, then look again at the name of the main character. See something... funny? What I thought at one stage was that Jack is from our world, and that's why his mother couldn't tell him where she's from.... But who knows, really, because Jack's mother's identity or where she came from are not stated in this book. Also, there are other names in the story that are, at least for me, rather unusual in fantasy stories that do not happen in our world: Sara, Anna (Tawl's sisters, these two), Megan (a prostitute Tawl meets in a city called Rorn), Lilly (a chambermaid who wishes to get a higher position as a lady's maid by sleeping with Lord Maybor)... so Jack probably is from the world of this book. It's kind of a relief, kind of a pity. Oh well.

I was also sure that this Jack will do something great, or become something great, and I was right.

It also should be noted - remembering the means how Baralis ensured the queen would carry his child, that is, sorcery - that sorcery, at least in the Four Kingdoms (the location where all but the knight Tawl are from), is not allowed. It's considered a devil's weapon, it's greatly feared (probably because people don't understand how it works) and users of sorcery... well, they don't live long, usually.

I must say I loved this book. It flows so well, it's captivating, there are so many events but all are, after a while, clearly linked to each other. It makes me a bit envious, looking at my own scraps of a novel haha. And the end, it was hilarious! The other thing I must complain about is the long chapters. I'm not a fan of those, because I love reading a chapter at a time, and so if I need to stop in the middle of a chapter... it's annoying, I tell ya. Otherwise, I can't wait to get my hands on the second part of the series, A Man Betrayed!

Also, I was  surprised to find the writer is a female. All along I thought it was a man..... Oh well, live and learn!

 

Started: Jan 5, 2011

Finished: Jan 26, 2011

Recommended for: all the friends of fantasy; my goodness, Robert Jordan praises this book on the cover!