I’ll come right out and say it: this graphic novel isn’t good. The art is excellent. The worldbuilding is good. Some of the characters are good. But overall the plot REALLY pulls this down. This is a Brandon Sanderson Cosmere novel, and it feels as though the people who published this were not given the wiggle room needed to make a good adaptation. It feels like they took the original text and made a point-for-point adaptation of it, and as a result the adaptation didn’t work.
I can’t say where the point of failure was is in this story. I don’t know how much creative meddling there was. I don’t know if the flaw was in the seed of Brandon Sanderson’s original story (which is very possible, given that this is an unpublished work of his, written early in his career before he matured as an author). All I can say is that this felt bloated. I feel like this could have been told in two volumes and not three- or maybe even one volume.
Here are my review for volumes 1 and 2.
This is a short nonfiction book on Buddhism. I listened to the audiobook version, which was narrated by Ben Kingsley. This is part of the same series as this Hinduism nonfiction work.
This is a good overview of Buddhism. Where other books/lectures I’ve read focused on Buddhism for a convert/religiously curious, this was more targeted to someone who wants to learn the basics of the religion, such as a student learning for a class, especially a student from the West. This discussed all the major branches of the religion in moderate detail, discussing the major philosophical/theological differences therein.
This was good, accomplishing what it set out to accomplish. Just bare in mind it’s only a 3 hours long audiobook, so it’s in no way comprehensive.
This is a re-re-re-re-read for me. I didn’t start this month intending on reading it, but as the author died, I decided to read this one again out of nostalgia. I recently did a memorial post for the author Patricia McKillip where I discussed this book; read that if you want my opinion.
John Mendez- Book Reviews and More 