Why I read it: Had seen good reviews for it and was able to get the trilogy for a little more than a single paperback.
Azoth is a street urchin who sees becoming the assassin Durzo Blint’s apprentice as his only chance of a better life.
I’m a tad conflicted about how much I like this novel. It was fast-paced, engaging, and very entertaining. I really liked and cared for Azoth/Kylar and Blint but I didn’t really care all that much for a number of the other main characters. As an avid fantasy reader I’m used to scores of characters with odd names and twisting plot lines but occasionally with this novel I felt lost and I wondered what the point of including certain scenes was. This occurred most with the Solon/Dorian/ Feir group. I’m sure their purpose will become clearer in the following books.
There was some exploration into the human condition when Weeks examined the depths of depravity people will dive to in order to survive and the potentiality to redeem oneself afterward.
There were a couple things I was a little incredulous about and some plot points that seemed like they were supposed to have a bigger impact and just fell flat. Overall it’s an entertaining and relatively quick read (for its 645 pages). I’d recommend it for fans of gritty fantasy and assassins. If you enjoyed this book I suggest reading The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch.
Quotes:
"Assassination is an art, milord. And I am the city's most accomplished artist."
"Do you know what punishments I've endured for my crimes, my sins? None. I am proof of the absurdity of men's most treasured abstractions. A just universe wouldn't tolerate my existence."
That was the sole line of a recent email from my mom. It was in response to something to do with an upcoming election that dealt with politics and also with the fact that I’m pro-choice.She also knows my outspokenness about atheism. You may guess that I’m of the diametrically opposite opinion. Most of the most interesting, engaging, and awesome discussions contain one or both of those subjects. Last week I had an amazing conversation with a group of friends/ acquaintances, a couple were various forms of Christian and a couple were unknown. We discussed things like abortion, teen pregnancy, the upcoming election, religion (specifically the upcoming day of reckoning on May 21st- mark your calendars!), and a couple other things. It was great- there were a couple things we disagreed on but in most we had common ground or a funny experience to share. I don’t know if this has something to do with university life but this kind of in-depth conversation was not really unusual for me. I just got into a conversation in a facebook thread about Richard Dawkins on my professor’s wall whom I know is religious (Mormon I believe) and I know one of the commenters is Jewish. Another one of the commenters is atheist and I actually disagreed with his comment the most. I regularly post religious-themed links on my facebook and get a varied response and I love it. I think the world would be much duller if people didn’t talk about religion or politics at all or only with people they know have the same thoughts.
I also think there’s an element of danger in the ‘keep your opinions to yourself’ mentality. That is simply because there are people that want to spread their religion and if you don’t discuss and explore your own opinions about these issues, how are you ever going to learn how to critically examine your own and others’ beliefs. This critical thinking is crucial to an informed life though it seems like so many are content to continue ignorant and blindfolded. The proponents of radical Islam would love for people not to discuss or criticize their religion but it is the discussion that needs to happen most of all. When I mentioned my plan to participate in “Everybody draw Mohammed day” to my mom she urged me not to because she didn’t want to me to become a target for extremists and referenced Ayaan Hirsi Ali whose book I made her read. But she and others like Theo Van Gogh and Salman Rushdie make it clear to me how crucial this conversation is. Things like the draw Mohammed day stem from the idea that if enough people do it it’s impossible for the extremists to target everyone and more and more people will realize that nothing should be excluded from the critical gaze; that freedom of speech is more important than anything else.
This book is one of my favourites and I had to reread it for my class and essay. I read it first a couple years ago while I was going through a major dystopia fling that started with the iconic 1984. So I read it alongside Huxley’s Brave New World, Zamyatin’s We (another book I had to reread for the same class), Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, and maybe a couple others. I don’t like rereading books very often because it feels like I’m taking time away from new books that I haven’t yet explored but I did enjoy the very quick reread of this book in an afternoon and I just fell in love with it some more. What I found interesting however is hearing how vehemently some people hate this book. Perhaps it’s the genre of dystopia or that is focuses on women’s issues but a number of people said they absolutely did not like a single thing about this book.
I am a fan of dystopia yet it also terrifies me because I can see how these types of regimes would really not be that hard to implement. Atwood is clear in interviews and in the author’s note that other than the synthesis nothing in her book is entirely original. Absolutely every one of these policies or situations has been used at some point in history and that is what terrifies me. My mother would probably dislike this book because she sees it as unrealistic yet I think the power of this sort of books is their realism. You just have to look back to the United States after 9/11 to see a society that is willing to give up a number of their freedoms in exchange for the (false) feeling of being secure. People were willing to allow a police state to take over and for civil liberties to be suspended for an unknown amount of time because they were told it was for their own protection. How hard would it be to install a totalitarian regime in the wake of the suspension of civil liberties? The graphic novel and film V for Vendetta, explores the possibility of a nation’s own government causing the initial panic in order to create a complacent society that would gladly accept a protective overarching regime.
Atwood criticizes many of the right-wing American religious centred lobbies that are undoubtedly misogynistic. The pro-life ( more appropriately anti-choice) lobby is criticized in this novel because the forced birth type society is their ideals taken to the very extreme and they don’t like what they see. I think one of the most important secondary characters in the novel is Serena Joy. She was a religious evangelist who preached that the position of women was in the home and that the new feminist movements were actually anti-women, she hypocritically wasn’t confined to the home but she said that was a sacrifice she had to make to serve god and help people. But when her preached ideal society based on the morals she previously avowed came into being she was then relegated to the home and it is clear she is not happy with her new passive and powerless position.
Another important aspect of dystopias that cannot be dismissed is that this type of society is not completely unrealistic. Atwood’s writing of the novel was influenced by what she was hearing about monotheocracies in the Middle East, especially Iran. One of my goals in life is to write a dystopian novel but instead of a Christian basing, mine would have its foundations in the teachings of Islam though I have a hard time thinking about how one could write a fictional novel where the oppression of women is more extreme than what currently happening in the Middle East and parts of Africa. The only hope I’d have for it would be that if the oppression was relocated to a familiar setting of North America or Europe, some people might finally open their eyes to the true horridness of Shar’ia Law and its clear foundations in the Qu’ran and the Hadith.
Anyways, that’s enough of a ramble, if you haven’t read The Handmaid’s tale yet go and do it because it is fantastic. If you’re not frightened - you’re not paying attention.
So this past Friday (March 25th) I headed to London Ontario to see the American folk/black/doom/whatever metal band Agalloch.
Summary: Fucking Great Show
concert 1/20 from 1001 days project.
Openers: Musk Ox:
Acoustic neofolk musician from somewhere in Ontario (can't remember where he said). His music was beautiful and haunting. Reminded me a lot of Empyrium or some of Ulver's acoustic stuff. I thought it was a great way to start off the night. Great to have Don Anderson from Agalloch to come out and do a song with him. Kinda wish I had bought a cd from him now.
Worm Ouroborus
I'm not exactly sure what genre these guys were, I think they said psychedelic doom metal or something like that. They were interesting, the type of band I didn't exactly like but I didn't dislike them either. It would probably be nice music to have on in the background while reading or studying or trying to fall asleep but not exactly something I want at a live show. I was focusing more on how much I wanted to sit down because my back was hurting than focusing on the band. The heavier parts of their music sounded better. I might check out their stuff for background music.
The Main Event: Agalloch
Fantastic. As my friend Brad said: they played a couple songs live better than on the album. When do you ever hear that? They played super tight and everything from them were awesome. They were super nice and hung around with the fans for ages after the show, signing stuff and chatting. A lot of bands run right off the stage and it's a matter of luck and chance whether you get to meet them but these guys made it a priority to hang around until most people had left.
The Crowd:
They made the crowd go crazy- actually the audience was the only bad part of the show. I really don't know what was up with people and I'm pretty sure a couple of the guys in the pit were high as fuck on something. I personally didn't even expect a mosh pit. I expected a lot of headbanging and cheering and all that carry-on but not an actual mosh pit.
A couple of the main characters of the pit:
1) blue shirt guy: One of two guys who I'm not even sure likes metal, he certainly did not look like a metalhead nor look like he knew how to act in a mosh pit. He also must have been very fucked up on some sort of drug because he was not natural. It got to the point where whenever he was near me I has punching/elbowing/pushing him as hard as possible- and I was not the only one, and he seemed impervious to it all. He also seemed to be doing something close to a hardcore dance type thing too. He was just fucked up and pissing off most of the people around who noticed him.
2) Leather jacket guy: another guy I'm pretty sure was fucked on something. He definitely was a metalhead and he knew the general rules of the pit. Other than the fact I don't think Agalloch is much of a moshpit show, his behaviour in the pit was fine. Any other heavier more crazy show he would have fit right the fuck in. The thing about him that was most annoying was he and his friends kept trying to get him up to crowd surf. Major problems there fucktard. Firstly there was no where near enough people. As the name 'crowd surfing' might suggest you need there to be a crowd to surf upon, not 2 rows of people in front of you. Also there wasn't a barricade, there was people against the stage. The problem there is that even if you get someone up onto the crowd there's no where to go other than on to the stage. This is highly annoying for the band as it often causes people to knock over important equipment, get in their way, or generally piss of the band by making stupid faces and poses beside them on stage. Over than lying on the stage between the crowd and the monitor this guy didn't actually get up there- why? because two of the band members pushed him off the stage with their feet. Yes you were literally kicked off stage by the band and verbally told by them to not do that so DON'T DO IT AGAIN. Oh, not to mention the 2+ failed attempts where his friends dropped him....HA.
I eventually got to the front of the stage where it's actually much safer than a row back because while you have people crashing into your band you are a lot less likely to go flying. He was behind me for most of the time I was up there and every time I turned around his eyes were closed and he was swaying around/ leaning on me. That's the main reason I thought he was fucked up. His friend wearing a Drudkh shirt was kinda hot but a bit of a douchenozzle in terms of behaviour but again he would have been fine at a bigger/crazier show.
3) greek guy? This was a short fat balding middle aged potentially Greek man. Maybe Italian? I dunno, he just looked like the stereotypical little fat balding Greek man wearing a white wife beater and a sweater zipped super low exposing nasty chest hair. This was the other guy that I'm not sure was a metalhead.He was an angry mosher and had the bad habit of pulling people into the pit with him. He dragged me back and through the pit once which I was not happy about but meh, I wouldn't be at the front if couldn't handle a little bit of pushing.
Rules of the Metal mosh pit
It's really hard to explain what appropriate mosh pit behaviour is because to an outsider it looks like violent chaos anyways, but actually it's not.
Don't be a douchebag. You don't actually punch and kick anyone. You are not in a fight. It's more like the concentrated act of letting go and running into other people who are running into you. If you do elbow or hit someone, expect to be hit back. Regardless if it is a circle pit or a moshing pit you flow with the energy of the people around you and that coming from the stage. If someone falls in the pit you immediately try and get them up as soon as possible.You don't just take a running start and jump into people that are not in the pit. You don't actually start fights with people who are not in the moshpit. You don't drag unsuspecting people into the mosh pit. Don't go into the pit or pit area unless you don't mind being pushed around. People along the rim of the pit should push the people who fly out of the pit back in. Try to avoid wearing overly spiky bracelets of shoulder spikes that can gouge eyes out. Men: don't grope girls. Women: don't expect guys to go easy on you (though I find they sometimes do).
So I did one of these lists a couple years ago and I was actually able to accomplish a lot of the goals in the time. The project is from http://dayzeroproject.com/about/
1001 days is approx 2.75 years so it's a more realistic goal than a one year list or a general bucket list.
Coming up with 101 things is actually pretty hard but here's mine to be completed before December 15th 2013:
School
Finish Undergrad degree Walking across the stage June 8
Get Master's degree
Get PhD
Get published
Get a job in the medieval field (in a university, library, archive, museum etc)
Pay off student loans
Make at least one person realize the relevance and value of metal in academia
Apply to all my top grad schools Applied and was accepted to.
Fitness
Become more muscle than fat- fuck the scales
Work out regularly= 4+ times a week, every week
Start running.
Swim once a week
Increase flexibility
Do yoga regularly again
Life
Travel to at least 5 new countries (1/5 Denmark)
Travel to 10 new countries
Travel to 20 new countries
Teach English overseas
See the Northern Lights
Do a castle tour of England
Castle tour of Ireland
Go dogsledding
Bungee jump
Skydive
Try couchsurfing
Hitchhike
Write a fantasy novel (with Vikings)
Get that book published
Read 50 books every year
Read 10 books set in Scandinavia (1/10)
Read a book by someone I disagree with (the following two don't count)
Read the entire Bible
Read the Qur'an and the Hadith
Write up critiques of the three
Become fluent in Norwegian
Learn Old Norse - in progress
Read the Eddas in original- Never going to happen.
Go to Svalbard
Swim in a fjord
Learn Finnish
Live in Finland
Learn how to properly sword fight
Complete my chainmail hauberk
Get my Viking ship tattoo
Live 'off the grid'
Get a vertical labret piercing
Go on a cruise- kinda, I've been on two single night cruises.
Try 10 new beers (10/10: Kozel, Faxe Premium, DAB Original, Victory Pils, plus several ales and meads at Kalamazoo)
Learn to really like wine
Drink mead Completed May 15, 2011 at Kalamazoo
Bake a homemade apple pie
Get my driver's license
Get my motorcycle license
Ride on a motorcycle
Eat reindeer
Get over my fear of new foods
Go to a Viking festival
Learn how to properly scream (as in metal screaming)
Attend Wacken Open Air
Attend 20 000 tons of metal
Attend a metal festival I think I'm going to combine 61-62 by saying I went to a Black metal festival. Hole in the Sky 2011.
Go to a black metal show
Touch a rare manuscript (with gloves on of course)
Pet a wolf
Don’t speak a single word all day
Meet Mathias Nygard and nerd out with him
See Turisas live
See Satyricon live Hole in the Sky 2011
See Marilyn Manson live
Learn how to do tablet weaving
Make an authentic Viking woman outfit
Not go online for a whole week
Go kayaking
Camp 5 times
Go winter camping
Buy a proper backpacking backpack complete August 9th 2011.
Hike up a taller mountain than Mount Bitihorn (1607 metres)
Go to 20 concerts (9/20)
Drink only water for a week
Get a Kindle July 18th 2011, Mom got me one for my birthday
Do something different with my hair
Watch 20 new movies- I haven't been keeping track but I've must have seen 20 movies by now.
Watch all LOTR movies in one day (preferably with wolfpack)
Try snowboarding again
Make Irish soda bread (Feb 2012)
Volunteer for a secular organization
No Coke for a month
Whiten teeth
Buy new pants
Donate to a rat rescue
If not in a position to own another rat then foster one
Watch every episode of Dr. Who
Eliminate 'like' from vocabulary
Cook someone else a meal
Avoid getting a defibrillator for as long as possible
Have a real relationship (hah!)
Private
Private
Private
Get someone else to do a 101 things in 1001 days list
Be awesome! -complete
Things I want to accomplish eventually in life:
Adopt a cat
Get 2 Rottweilers and name them Xena and Ares
Buy a house
Buy a cottage in the Norwegian or Finnish countryside
Laser eye surgery
Get a tubal ligation
So I'll make a post here if I complete any of these goals.
Rating: 4.5 stars.
Length: 994 pages
Why I read: Because I loved The Name of the Wind and Pat's blog.
Quotes: “There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.”
“No man is brave that has never walked a hundred miles. If you want to know the truth of who you are, walk until not a person knows your name. Travel is the great leveler, the great teacher, bitter as medicine, crueler than mirror-glass. A long stretch of road will teach you more about yourself than a hundred years of quiet introspection”
This book was the much awaited sequel to The Name of the Wind and it was worth the very long wait. The book follows Kvothe through more of his problems at the University with studying, financial issues, troubles with a rich asshole bully, and his heart’s desire. Much of the book is spent away from the University as he waits on important nobles and learns new languages and fighting skills abroad. One thing I love about Kvothe is his love of learning for learning’s sake. He very much believes that knowledge is power but wants to gain as much knowledge as possible regardless of the power it bestows upon him. He just wants to learn- something I relate with very closely considering I never really want to leave school. Regularly I found myself forgetting that he was only 17 years old but I guess it makes sense due to his forced early maturation because of harsh circumstances and since like most fantasy it was set in a medieval-esque setting 17 isn’t that young. It was occasionally jarring to me though in parts where his age seemed unrealistic. But then he’d reveal his innocent side and be bashful around females. Speaking of females one part I thought dragged on wayyyyyy too long as the Felurian scenes- yes so he got to frolic with a faerie and learn a bunch of sex techniques but eventually I got tired of hearing about them romping in the woods or the river or among the butterflies.
Overall it was a great fantasy novel and did not feel as long as the nearly 1000 pages looked. Very much worth the wait. I am a little disappointed that it didn’t have as much music in it as Name of the Wind. You know how a lot of people attempt to verbally describe music and it just falls flat? Pat Rothfuss is not like that. He is a master at describing music; in fact there was a scene in Name that almost made me cry because the description of the music was so beautiful and powerful.
Is it really that odd to go to a bar alone? I just got back from a little bar about 5 minutes from my house (Maxwell’s for Waterloo people). I went because a band I liked was going to be playing a show. I know a couple of the band members and they’re good guys and make some awesome music. A couple other people I know said they might drop by but they didn’t but that didn’t matter. I just sat myself at a table and got some beer. Supposedly this is strange? Yeah I know going out and partying are group activities but if none of my friends are interested I’m not going to stop that from me enjoying my night.
I kinda understand; I used to be terrified to go into a pub or restaurant alone. I would often even wait for my friends outside rather than go in and claim a table and sit there alone. I don’t know if I thought people would judge me for not being with people or something. Now I don’t care. I’ve been to huge concerts alone (it really doesn’t make a difference when you’re front row at a giant metal show anyway), to bars alone, and gotten a table for one at restaurants. It’s freeing in a way, you don’t need to rely on other people to entertain you. For restaurants or bars where I’m not there for music I’ll bring a book and just read while I’m there and it can be a nice change of atmosphere from my basement room. I think some of the fear is of being judged by others, and then I realized that when I go out with friends I don’t see a person alone and pity them, I probably wouldn’t even notice them, so why would people notice you? Even if you are noticed and judged why would it matter? I’ve stopped giving a damn what people think of me and turns out that most people think I’m pretty awesome and I just have to concur (others quite possibly think I’m a bitch but either way is fine with me). I think a lot of this has to do with a rise in self-confidence. I have to credit a lot of this attitude and confidence to my trip to Norway when I had no choice other than to go alone and I realized it’s not all that bad. Often some random person will start a conversation with you simply because you’re an anomaly. I’ve had a couple interesting conversations with people who I never would have talked to if I were in a group setting (was just told by some random guy that I looked very ‘will of the wind’ as if I were just wandering through a park. He probably mean ‘will’o the wisp’ or something but he was genuinely surprised I was there alone).
So I challenge you, whoever you are, to go out and party by yourself for a night or go into a sit down restaurant and get a table for one. Bring a book or a laptop or sit around and people watch. It is a little nerve wracking at first but you’ll eventually realize that it really doesn’t matter. You are not the object of everyone’s attention, derision, or pity. If other people notice you they may even admire your confidence for not needing or relying on other people to be there for you. I think of the girls are clubs who can’t even go to the washroom alone and I pity them because they need to be lead around/ followed every moment of their day or else they feel lonely. Embrace being alone and you’ll find that you can be the source of your own happiness.
