As always, after reading something by Sanderson, I find myself irritated at how good he is.

So let’s take it as a given that the book has all the essential ingredients: character, plot, dialogue, mystery, and action. All of these things are there, some of them merely great, most of them included to exceptional degree.

What truly impresses me though, is that Sanderson has done something extraordinarily unique with this book. Something that just isn’t done in fantasy.

First, Sanderson wrote the Mistborn trilogy, an amazingly good fantasy trilogy set it in a unique, carefully-constructed world with a well defined magic system.

Then he moved that world forward 300 years. He evolved it away from the low-industrial/dark-ages culture into a much more modern setting.

This simply isn’t done.

You see, here’s the way things work:

1. You either write secondary world fantasy which is pretty medievally, or Renaissance-y, or occationally dark-ages-ish. Maybe you go crazy and make it kinda Asian. Or you make it bronze age. That’s rare though. Pretty fringe.

2. Your other option is to set something in THIS world. Most of the time when you do this, the setting is modern, which gets you urban fantasy. If you’re not quite so modern, you get steampunk. If you go back further than that, it’s alternate history. But again, that’s kinda rare.

These are the rules. They’re not written down anywhere, but generally speaking, that’s how things work. This is just the way things are done.

But Sanderson has done something different here. Two somethings, actually.

1. He evolved his world through time, changing the society significantly while staying true to the world he established in the earlier Mistborn books.

(Yeah yeah. There have been a few other authors that have done this. Frank Herbert, for example. But it’s so rare as to be practically unique. And in my opinion Sanderson has done it better than Herbert did for the simple fact that I want to read Sanderson’s future books in this world, while I just couldn’t make it through the second Dune sequel.)

2. Sanderson has written urban fantasy THAT ISN’T SET IN THIS WORLD. Call it what you want, urban fantasy, qua-western, steampunk, whatever. That’s what he did.

I read this book and found myself thinking, “What? You can do that? How come nobody’s done this before?”

This is what happens with all truly clever innovation. Once someone does it, it seems obvious. It seems like anyone could do it.

But everyone didn’t do it. Sanderson did. That’s a very special sort of clever.

What’s my point?

My point is that this book is good, and you should give it a try.

My other point is that this book does something different, and pulls it off very smoothly, so you should give it a try.

My last point is that Sanderson has now been added to a very short list of authors. Specifically, the list authors whom I wish to kill so that I might eat their livers and thereby gain their power.

So yeah. My hat’s off to you, Brandon. Watch your back.

Anyways, if you like fantasy and haven’t read any of Brandon Sanderson’s work I would recommend the mistborn series.

Somebody I Used to Know – Goyte ft. Kimbra

Also here is the 5 people on 1 guitar version:
Somebody That I Used to Know – Walk off the Earth (Gotye – Cover)

And last but not least another video that I thought was cool by The Shins:
The Rifle’s Spiral – The Shins

Busan famously has a horse race track that I have never been to before, despite always wanting to go. Anyways we dragged our hungover asses out to the track, dressed up in our Sunday finest looking to place bets and drink some mint jouleps. Sadly we couldn’t bet because the system was way too complicated and we couldn’t drink mint jouleps because alcohol is banned at the horse races (not to mention there is a serious premium on mint in Korea). Luckily, we had ways to rectify these situations; first we snuck booze in and second we just placed bets among ourselves. Not the ideal situations, but we worked it out to our advantage. Here are some pics…

Cherry Blossoms

I think Spring has finally come to the peninsula! The cherry blossoms are in full bloom and they are absolutely beautiful! Yeye and I spent the afternoon walking around Dalmaji hill enjoying all the flowers. Absolutely gorgeous!

Stuff about Korea’s ridiculous internet security and being stuck on Internet Explorer
History of Active X’s Misapplication in South Korea – A Protectionism Case Study
the cost of monoculture

Some stuff on vanity in Korea:
The Modern Korean: Looks

This is pretty bad ass. Lee-Yeong from the kpop band After School busts out an awesome rendition of Far Beyond the Sun by Yngwie Malmsteen. I don’t know really anything about this kpop band, but that doesn’t matter…I’m just stoked to see a hot, young kpop star busting out some awesome riffs. By the way, here is a pic of the band, although I have no idea which one Lee-Yeong is.

Afterschool

Busan Bandits

Later on in the evening we had a beer olympics at Beached bar in Gwangan. It was a shit show. So many people showed up to the bar that it was beyond capacity. The bar had to start restricting access to only people participating in the beer olympics. Luckily, Megan was awesome enough to organize our team, the Folsom Prison Shankers, composed of Jake, Sian, Megan, Tyler, and myself. We were undefeated for the entire beer olympics until we finally lost a game of flip cup in the finals. It was a great St. Paddy’s…

Oh and Jordan just informed me today that St. Patty’s is not correct, it should be St. Paddy’s. Here is a link to explain.