Planet Sillicon

Reading the Mistborn series

By blog on Apr. 26, 2010.

I’ve just started, and it’s going very well!

I’m feeling a little over-cooked in terms of Malazan books, so I decided to give the Mistborn series a go and I’m really, really liking it so far. I’m over the first one hundred pages, and the remarkable difference between this and nearly every book I’ve read in the past two years is that it wasn’t an arduous struggle. I know that’s a backhanded compliment, but seriously, with many of the Malazan books – which I think are excellent – I’ve had to push myself to get past those first one hundred pages.

I’ve found the same issue with the Wheel of Time books, too. Robert Jordan – may the good man rest in peace – wrote the most protracted prologues you’ve ever seen, with many of the books seeing the one hundred page mark pass whilst you’re still reading the prologue. Okay that might be a little bit of an exaggeration, but it’s not far off the truth, either.

Another thing that I like about the Mistborn books so far, are it’s almost cinematic action sequences. One can practically see and feel the panorama of Luthadel as Kelsier goes flying through the night, using Allomancy to stir up trouble for the Dark Lord. That’s right, the story is set in a world where the Dark Lord has already won, turning the traditional fantasy narrative on it’s head. It’s an interesting premise, and I’m looking forward to finding out more as I plough further into the series.

In other news, hilarious news in my opinion, my SO’s father has been taken to court – that’s not the funny bit, this bit coming up next is the funny bit – over their fence line… Can you believe it!? Their neighbour decided he wanted to put up high security fences, in colour-bond steel, which is all well and good, but of course that means my SO’s parents, along with the neighbours on the other side of this lack-wit, will have to pay for half of the cost of the fence that borders their property. They’re okay with this, but that does mean they feel they’ll have to get the same sort of colour-bond fence for the rest of their yard lest it look odd, though they are going with a lower, more open fence for the front.

So, my SO’s father’s neighbour had the lines drawn for the fence-line last weekend, and what do you know? They’re about half a meter further onto their land than the previous fence. My SO’s father went and had a talk with this neighbour trying to see what the mix up was, and the neighbour gets out a copy of the city-planning layout for the area, which was nearly a century old, and tells him that the fence was in the wrong spot and should be moved over. My SO’s dad is having none of this, and told the guy he’d need better proof than that. Anyway, there’s been a great amount of talking back and forth, some of it very loud, and now they’ve both gotten no win no fee solicitors and they’re suing and counter suing each other. So far as I can see, and looking up the properties with online documents, the original fence line is right where it was up until the neighbour had it ripped out, the new drawn line is encroaching half a meter onto my SO’s parent’s property. The dead give away, though, was the fact that this neighbour tried to pull the same stunt with his neighbour on the other side, too.