Independent Reading #3 - Letter to the Author : Brisingr

Dear Christopher Paolini,

I loved Brisingr, the third book in your series. It is superior to your first two books in the sense that it shows your growing maturity as an author. Although it does leave the readers wishing for more closure, I'm sure the fourth book will fill in those holes. I was just hoping I could share my favorite passages/quotes from your book with you.

The first passage is this:

"Because, I have thought of something you have not Vermûnd. You wish us to leave you and your clan alone? Then I propose to the clanmeet that we do as Vermûnd wishes. If Vermûnd had acted opon his own and not as a grimstborith(clan leader), he would be banished for his offenses upon pain of death. Therefore, let us treat the clan as we would treat the person; let us banish Az Sweldn rak Anhûin from our hearts and minds..." - Orik (p. 500)

This passage was great in demonstrating how quickly Orik formulates a plan to counter an opponent's move. In the passage Orik turns Vermûnd's words against him, and Vermûnd who was smug in his promises of war in the case of retaliation, started to go pale with nervousness. The significance is great, as the "Az Sweldn rak Anhûin" were a problem unsolved from the second book. In a few sentences used as punishment for an assasination attempt Orik has solved that problem.

The second quote was:

"Does it matter Shadeslayer? A god is a god, regardless where he comes from." - Wounded Man (P.352).

A god is a god, regardless where he comes from. I don't know if you intended the line to interpreted this way, but this makes me think of all the wars in the world. Many of them have to do with the differences in cultures between the warring nations. If these countries respected each others respective god(s), what would be the need for these wars? A good example of this scenario would be the Crusades (First to Ninth), starting in 1095 ending in 1272. These all occurred because the Christians could not stand Muslims in their "Holy Land" of Jerusalem. Now if this thought of a god being a god no matter who believes in him, maybe these wars would not even be necessary. They could have simply come to an agreement of some sort, as the land has the same sort of significance for both religions.

The final passage is:

"...called the Eldunarí, which means the 'heart of hearts'...Also a dragon can disgorge their Eldunarí while they are still alive. By this means, a dragon's body and conscious can exist separately and yet still be linked." - Glaedr (P. 628)

This passage was great, as this "Eldunarí" is like a soul. The fact that the dragons can pass their conscious into this "heart of hearts" and live after their physical body has decayed. This was a well written and well veiled reference to the belief that people have souls that live on long after they have died. Otherwise it would be extremely difficult to lose a loved one, if you believed that there was nothing for them after this life. This concept is also cool when you look at it through the perspective of the book. A dragon releases its Eldunarí, and this results in it being alive after death. It does not perform any organic activities, but is able to interact with others and share its vast knowledge.

Those three passages/quotes are ones that I definitely enjoyed, and stood out amongst the others in your novel. Brisingr was an excellent book, and I am looking forward greatly to the final book in your series.

Sincerely,

Rudro Chakrabarti

Independent Reading #2 - Crime Fiction Novel: Void Moon

For this assignment, I read "Void Moon" by Michael Connelly. It was a thrilling crime novel, with a large body count. Skillfully written, the book will entrap the reader until the very end. The novel is about a casino heist that goes wrong for Cassie Black. Cassie is out of jail on parole after serving six years. The owner of the casino Cleopatra, Vincent Demaldi has now set a ruthless Vegas private investigator called Jack Karch on her trail. Karch is merciless, killing all who knew about the operation after extorting information from them. The book is great in that it has many major plot twists, and is an exciting read.

Identifying the distinction between the criminal and the detective is tricky in this novel. It could be argued that Karch is also a criminal, as he commits far more felonies in his investigation then Cassie has in her entire life. Karch is described as a man with pale skin, jet black hair and grey eyes. He is the son of a magician and performs many gags, which is perhaps the lightest part of his personality. He is also completely cold blooded, killing without mercy and practiced ease. Jack is nicknamed "Jack of Spades", not just because of his inclusion in a magic trick that his father performed involving the playing card. It is also because he keeps a shovel in his trunk to bury bodies in the desert. Karch is very perceptive and cunning, making him very good at his job. Not only that, but he has a constantly calculating mind. He is able to improvise quickly, and retains information easily. It is said in the novel that the people that he kills in the duration of the novel are not the first. Karch is clearly psychotic, as at one point Vincent mentions that he helped his father bury his murdered mother's body at a young age. Karch is a perfect antagonist for this thrilling and fast paced crime novel.

Karch tracks down Cassie through many steps. The first was finding the cameras in the victims room, and then searching room 2015 to find the discarded Ace of Hearts. The next key part was determining the inside-man in the case, by watching the surveillance tapes. Also, he gained knowledge of Cassie's movements. Then he traced Paltz through the bumper sticker on the van that Cassie left in. After extracting her name and related information from Jersey Paltz, he killed him and started tracking Leo. He finds some things at Leo's house after killing him, such as a cellphone with Cassie's number on the recently dialed list and two fabricated passports. Using this number he tracks her to the Porsche dealership where she works. He pretends to be a customer interested in purchasing a Carrera. Karch then reveals himself during the test drive, pulling a gun on Cassie and taking the car into a secluded area. Here he drills her about the money, to no success. Cassie evades him, but he obtains her drivers license and finds out where she lives. Before stopping by her home, he goes back to the dealership and kills the owner Ray and a woman from the finance department. When Karch breaks into Cassie's house, he discovers that Max Freeling and her had a child. This is further proven to him when he interrogates Cassie's parole officer Thelma Kibble. He then abducts this child, which then leads to the final confrontation. At this point, there is no longer a hunt for Cassie as she is going to appear at the Cleopatra.

One passage which I found interesting was this one: "Oh, I'm here. I'm just thinking to myself how ironic this is. I mean, I think it's irony–I never was very good in English class. Is it ironic when somebody whose plan it was to abduct a child complains about that very same child being snatched by somebody else first? Is that irony?" - P. 368 Here Karch is playing on Cassie's own plan to take her daughter back and go to Tahiti. It really strikes a chord with her when he says this to her, and causes her to realize what she has been planning is wrong. The next passage is: "'Hey we got a void moon rising tonight,' he said out loud. 'Ten-ten till midnight.' He thought maybe there was something valid to all of this. After all, he knew the night was going to be bad luck for somebody. " - P. 383 + 384. This was interesting as it conveyed a sense of foreshadowing, telling the reader that someone was going to have bad luck. Although the catch is it does not specify who. The final interesting passage is: "As they went through the bedroom Cassie glanced back into the room. In the bullet-fractured mirror she caught a disjointed image from the television. It was Porky Pig doffing his hat. He said, 'Th-th-th-that's all, folks.'" - P.433 The passage tells the reader that the climax of the novel has ended, and that the tension that was building up from the start has finally been released. It is also funny how Connelly uses a cartoon to signify this.

All in all, Void Moon is a thrilling novel. It is fast-paced, and the bodies pile up quickly. Also the plot twists will keep the reader on their toes. I would highly reccomend the novel to older teens and adults (because of many swears and adult elements).

Independent Reading #1: All-in

For this assignment I read "All-in" by Pete Hautman, an excellent book for  those who like poker. All-in is a novel about a seventeen year-old poker genius named Denn Doyle, who is ridiculously lucky. He is technically not legally allowed to gamble, but with immense talent to read people's tells he makes himself alot of money. At one point he won a nightclub off a texas hold em player called Artie Kingston. Unfortunately Denn's magic seems to be running out and he's starting to go broke. Eventually, some players with a personal grudge bring Denn down all the way taking his last sixteen thousand dollars. They do so with the help of Denn's ex-girlfriend, an poker dealer called Cattie. Now with only a few dollars to his name Denn needs a miracle to come back on top. At this point the story sort of splits, following both Denn and Cattie intertwining their paths every now and then. Denn's only chance now is to rake together ten thousand dollars to enter in a high-stakes million dollar tournament at Artie's new casino. His fortunes resting upon this single game, Denn finds himself facing off against Artie in the finals.

I find that the novel is very fast paced and Pete Hautman certainly researched the subject rather well. The entire novel is narrated by Jimbo, a friend of Denn. Otherwise, the story is third person like when the story switches over to Cattie or Denn. The dialect in the novel is convincing, just as I'd expect of Las Vegas poker sharks. The vocabulary was spectacular, ranging from poker terminology to excellent synonyms for most generic words. The characters were intriguing and well written. The back stabbing Cattie was particularly interesting as when she was asked by Denn for her motivation for ruining him she simply replies that she enjoys destroying people around her. Jimbo himself is a strange one, as he is a friend of Denn yet he does not back Denn for the game at Artie's casino when asked for a loan.

Finally, I would say that this part of the novel seems significant to me. When Denn is in a really bad place, and at the bottom he considers killing himself by jumping off the Hoover Dam. After losing his earnings going towards the ten thousand dollar buy in later in the book in a game of black jack, he is finally broke. This excerpt from the book from right after he becomes fully broke, I find interesting in relation to that: "He got in his car and started it and looked at the gas gauge. He didn't even have enough gas to make it to the Hoover Dam." - (P.127). As suicide by jumping of the Hoover Dam was mentioned earlier in the novel, I found this rather funny. Denn does not even have enough gas to take himself to the dam and kill himself. This is significant because he ends up getting the money from Cattie, shortly after getting out of his car and walking to her apartment.

All-In is an excellent book, which might not be for everyone but is still interesting and a great read.