A line cut

Prince Aleine Gunder, age 20, crown prince of  Cenaria, was found dead due to multiple stab wounds in the back at the Jadwin estate. The time of death is currently unknown but has been narrowed down to sometime after the fight between one Lord Kylar Stern and the soon to be Duke Logan Gyre and Lady Jadwin calling that there was an assassin in the estate. The identity of the murderer is still unknown but the list of suspects is substantially lacking in members. The known suspects in this case are Lady Jadwin herself due to her being at the scene of the murder with a blood soaked dress, Logan Gyre due to allegations that his best friend the prince has been having illicit affairs with his fiance, finally the young lord who was engaged in the fight with Logan Gyre has been identified as the murderer by one of the servants, a girl named Elene Cromwell, she has been placed in the dungeon for accusation of a noble as the law dictates. The family wishes to keep this incident private, but word already seems to be getting out about the murder and rumors are growing quickly.

This title is a secret

Secrecy is a quiet lady but that is not a bad thing, the reason she is quiet is not because she is shy or has nothing to say, it is because she has everything to say but does not wish to. Secrecy loves to know that she knows things that others don’t know and the only time she is truely happy is when she learns a new secret. Secrecy has a teasing streak that is a mile long and she loves dropping small hints that she may know something important until others ask her directly, then she just giggles and places her fingers on her lips is a “shush” motion. The person who seems to always be teased by her is Curiosity, he is the only one who has not wised up to her ways because he always hopes that one of her hints may be something great and that desire to know if they are a useful is what keeps calling him back. Secrecy always pays attention to anything that Gossip says so that she can learn new secrets and so that she can mess up Foresight, her favorite victim, because it lets her lean Foresight’s plans and then with a few words she can let Gossip know what she wants him to know and he can spread the word from there, because the only time she is willing to reveal what she knows is so that she can learn even more.

A letter from a dead man to a soon to be dead one

Dear Kylar

If you are reading this it means one of two things, you killed me or I have not gotten around to killing you yet. I am writing this out of some odd feeling of… I don’t know, I think it’s called regret maybe, anyway this is where I am telling you as close to a goodbye as you're going to get from me that doesn't involve a piece of steel between your ribs. I hope out of these years of training if any one of my sayings has gotten stuck in your thick skull it is this, “Relationships are ropes. Love is a noose”. Well it looks like both of us are waiting for our execution I guess what I am trying to say is that you are the closest thing to family that I have had in a long time and I am sorry that you have to pay the price for this but well… I don’t expect to lose.

Any gear you may need for this night is on the walls including your “inheritance”, I don’t want you thinking for a second that you lost to me because I had better gear. Also as a bit of incentive so you don’t ditch town, your best friend will die tonight if you don’t intervene. This is my goodbye son, I’m sorry it has to go this way, but they have something that i can’t afford to lose so i am stuck helping them as for what it is, well if you live past tonight you’ll hear about what it is eventually, maybe even from me.  Besides I always said i would kill the king instead of work for him.

-A Thorne

A woman with quality

Foresight has a room that is full of calendars in her house, some that are for dates that are months away and some for years down the road. She has a house that she shares with Patience, who she is content to while away the hours until one of her plans are in need of her sometimes ally, sometimes enemy Action. Foresight’s favorite phrase is a simple “I Told you so” and she always seems to be saying it to her younger brother Hindsight, who refuses to admit that he was wrong. She understands that not everyone enjoys her company as much as they do Action’s but she also knows that without her Action has trouble being the life of the party.

Unlike Patience who is willing to calmly watch the time pass, Foresight has an almost obsession with time. She seems to always be looking so far ahead into the future that she forgets where she is in the present, which causes Patience to have to often stay near her so that she does not miss her own plans for the future.

The only person who spends more time with Foresight than Patience is her brother Hindsight. When the two hangout they always bicker about what happened and what is going to happen, never what is happening.

There seems to be only one person who can get under Foresight’s skin and that is Gossip, he seems to always catch wind of whatever foresight is planning and waiting for and his first response is always to tell anyone and everyone, which naturally ruins Foresight’s planning because suddenly all the things she was planning around are now changed.

No matter what happens to her plans she knows that either she will start a new plan or others will ask her for her input, because no matter the plan whether it is something as small as going to the park later or as grand as toppling empires, without her assistance they will always fail.

Way of Shadows #2

As I am reading The Way of Shadows by Brent Weeks, I am thinking about what I am going to research. I have decided that there are two things that i could research and write about that would be interesting to me and possibly to whoever reads my paper. The two research subjects that I am thinking about looking into are both older subject matter, The first thing that i have thought about researching is the process of apprenticeship. The way that I would use the information that i have found out about the apprenticeship process is that I would compare the way that Weeks writes about how the main character Kylar’s apprenticeship goes such as things that were learned at what point in his life and the jobs that he would have compared to what a student would normally have to do for their master. I would also outline how the apprenticeship would normally play out along with more of the facts about the process, so that it could also be a bit educational.

The other subject that I could explore further is what a coup is. The reason this could be a part of the paper is because later in the book a large cause of the problems is the coup that is being set in motion by a rival kingdom. My plan with the idea of a coup would be to first establish what a coup is just in case the audience does not know and  then i would start to elaborate on how the coup that is performed in the book would hold up in the real world. I would be able to then talk about the things that have to be taken care of for a coup to function which would allow me to talk about how lines of succession work in monarchies and other things along those lines. Later in the paper I would write about coups that have occurred in history and if they are well documented I could compare what happened in the book’s coup with what happened in the real world and other examples of what occurred that allowed it to happen. I will also be able to talk about failed attempts and be able to look at what may have gone wrong in them.

The Way of Shadows reading 1

I think that this post will be a bit all over the place. First of all I am loving this book, the characters, the setting, the way that the story is advancing, all of it. The characters are shown to change as the book goes on with the main character showing the most dramatic of the changes but that may be due to the book following him as he grows up as an apprentice of the best assassin, so a character would change as we follow his journey that starts as an eleven year old orphan on the street and currently is about 21 and an assassin.
The way that the story is presented is also a huge draw for me because it does not seem to be all that predictable, as in it follows the main character Kylar but then it seems to suddenly introduce a character who through connections to other characters shows that the worlds only prophet has sent him there to assist a duke who has actually left and named his son duke causing the problem of the new character not being sure and running through what he remember of what the prophet said. After a few chapters the perspective shifts to the prophet and one of his close friends and we learn a bit more of this proficiency that foretells the possible fall of a kingdom and how the main character is wrapped up in all of the coming events. The story then starts to make more sense as the prophecy shows itself in less cryptic terms and the story has this feeling of a mystery being uncovered with me saying "oh so that is what he meant" a lot over the course of this reading. The fact that the book involves magic is also a huge plus along with the humor that is present, which is surprising given the books subject matter. I would recommend this book to anyone because I feel like it would grow on them if it didn't catch their eye at first.

Don Quixote #4- the final one

     Alright readers last post about the book Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. The story has this constant idea that is show by Don Quixote. I mentioned the idea in my third blog post of departing from older outdated ideas of the time, with Marcela explaining how she did not wish to have a husband or be wooed by men. Don Quixote is a walking metaphor for the outdated concept of chivalry  in the world. This is shown by how people react to him in situations such as him being laughed at when her first arrives at an inn to be knighted and is throughly laughed at by the women there as he tries to great them as fair maidens...to be fair they were prostitutes. The story constantly shows how Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are getting into trouble because of how Don Quixote is trying to preform a chivalrous act that either horribly backfires, or is negatively received by who he is trying to do the act for. Whenever Don Quixote tries to do battle with people the chivalrous way, but usually he was beaten either when he was down or out numbered, not in honorable single combat.

     I started to at least recognize the idea because of how Don Quixote would always have a before and after statement, he would explain the situation to Sancho and then outline, more or less the way It should play out if it followed the rules of chivalry, and then  Don Quixote explaining why they are not honorable, after about three or four times this is kind of hard to not notice.

My method of reading was easily rereading, the language that is used by Don Quixote is closer to old english and personally I think that that can be a pain to read and his insane view of whatever situation he is trying to describe does not help the situation. I had to reread chapters so I could fully grasp what was happening in the story and at time I would have to stop and just start marking up the book because I would read, but not really understand what was happening, also I am extremely scatterbrained at times which causes rereading to be a necessity. 

     I personally would recommend this book to anyone and everyone. I really like this book because of how crazy the story is, and how crazy the main charter is, the way that I view the book is non-fiction but fiction because everything that is happening has the feel and style of a non-fiction book but the simple fact that the main character is a mad man and we see most of his misadventures from his point of view and that turns some simple windmills into four armed giants that must be fought. I also really like this book because of how the story progresses by not really having an overarching goal, the book basically keeps telling stories of the misadventures that the duo keeps getting into and how they either come out of the situation in a more or less okay fashion, or they completely mess up and receive a sound beating for their trouble. The book also has very good banter between the mad Don Quixote and the very sane yet trusting Sancho Panza, I think that the people that I would recommend this book to because of the banter would be just as happy or even happier than me with the banter because of how silly it is sometimes because it is just Don Quixote being crazy and other times it seems that Don Quixote could pass as being sane. Anyway I know that the people that I would recommend this book to would enjoy the banter and mixture of stupid and funny adventures because, that is how the people that I would recommend this to, and that would be family and friends, would act around each other and how they do act around each other. The book is very readable and actually engaging not because of some over arching plot but because the reader can see that Don Quixote has the best intentions in any situation he is presented with and this makes him a likable character because at the heart of the matter he is just a man, although a crazy man, who is just trying to follow a dream and be the big hero of the day on his adventure and that is what I like enough to recommend, and I know the people that I would recommend  this book well enough that they would also get the character’s ambitions and start to care for him.