Salvaged from the Signal: My Review of Shadows of Self

More relics from the secret vaults of SF Signal (gone, but not forgotten): this time, my review of Brandon Sanderson's Shadows of Self.

SHADOWS OF SELF by Brandon Sanderson Will Appeal to Fans of Mystery, Steampunk and Superhero Fiction

Posted on October 6, 2015 by Robin Shantz in Book Review // 0 Comments

REVIEW SUMMARY: A fast-paced mystery that shines with superheroic action and a steampunk feel, but is tarnished a little by choppiness and predictability.

MY RATING:  [5 stars]

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: In the teeming industrial city of Elendel, where a some people have superpowers thanks to their control of metals, someone is trying to ignite a revolution. Former frontier lawman and steel-pushing metahuman Waxillium Ladrian steps in with his sidekicks to investigate a series of murders that seem tied to the approaching chaos, only to find that all of it may have a deeply personal connection to his past.

MY REVIEW

PROS: Rip-roaring action in a Victorian-esque urban setting with nods to the Old West — and superheroes!

CONS: The story’s transitions frequently feel choppy while the plot is somewhat predictable.

BOTTOM LINE: A fast-reading rainy-day-at-the-cottage novel that fans of mystery, superhero, and steampunk fiction might enjoy.

Somebody is going to love this novel.

Shadows of Self, Brandon Sanderson’s newest Mistborn novel, explodes out of the gate with an Old West-style firefight that’s reminiscent of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. In short order, it settles into chases through a steampunky Victorian London-esque metropolis. And then things really pick up, with a murder mystery, political thriller, and race to prevent total societal collapse. If that wasn’t enough, there are also superheroes powered by metal-based magic.

The cast of characters includes troubled hero Waxillium Ladrian, a legendary lawman of the frontier, now leading the genteel life of a rich urban lord in the city of Elendel. Possessing superpowers rooted in a control of steel, Wax still gets involved in crimefighting when he’s not overseeing his business interests or preparing for his upcoming wedding. From time to time, he also talks to the god who’s currently ruling over the world of Scadrial, and that god, Harmony, occasionally talks back — or worse, sends him on a mission. There’s Wax’s sidekick, Wayne, who’s come with him to the big city, and whose abilities to blend in anywhere and gather intelligence are matched only by his talent for banter, a deft hand at mixing cocktails, and skill at rationalizing petty theft. And there’s Marasi Colms, an up-and-coming cop who’s smarter than most of her colleagues, and who uncovers crucial details of the plot while Wax is soaring over the rooftops in frequently fruitless pursuits of bad guys. The trio is also joined by MeLaan (one of the kandra: a race of angelic servants of Harmony — if angels were shapeshifters whose ability to transmogrify involved eating the bones of the dead), and sometimes by Wax’s quietly observant bride-to-be, Steris.

Shadows of Self is a book that grabs elements from different types of stories and throws them into a blender to produce something weird and new (a sort of broad, novel-wide magnification of a scene where Wayne saunters into a bar and decides everyone needs a change). There’s the above-mentioned Western homage, murder investigations that are straight out of a police procedural, and aspects of steampunk and fantasy. There’s also a flashback to Wax’s childhood that’s reminiscent of the Banks children’s visit to the Dawes, Tomes, Mousely, Grubbs Fidelity Fiduciary Bank in Disney’s Mary Poppins, with all of the looming cruelty and menace, but none of the singing. Its presentation of super-powered individuals as somewhat commonplace in this society — and specifically its depiction of most of these metahumans having to do everyday jobs to get by, rather than live the ideal as superheroes or super villains — owes a lot to the Wildcards shared world novels. In general, the book does a very good job of paying tribute to these disparate influences.

Sanderson also effectively ratchets up the tension in the story, with the ugly mood in the streets reflecting the increasing chaos in the halls of power as more of the elite are murdered. As the secretive killer taunts Wax, the characters become more on edge, feeling themselves accelerated towards the destruction of their city.

Yes, someone is going to love this book.

But not me.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t hate Shadows of Self. I just didn’t particularly care about it.

Maybe it’s not fair to be introduced to a writer’s world through a book that’s the middle instalment of its series. Shadows of Self is not only the sequel to The Alloy of Law, it’s also part of a sequel series to the original Mistborn trilogy. That comes with a lot of plot- and character-related baggage. Sanderson doesn’t always assume that the reader knows everything — there are some brief explanations of various aspects of Scadrial and its history. But there are, nonetheless, plenty of points where those explanations are thin, or where the story takes it as a given that the reader will know what certain things are, such as ethnicities or bloodlines that are casually mentioned, or creatures like the koloss, or the relevance of the nightly mists. And even if one takes it for granted that a little extra work is required to make sense of it all when coming fresh into the middle of a series, it’s not unreasonable to expect that a novel should be able to hold its own as a self-contained story. Shadows of Self was a little too short on detail in too many places to accomplish that, in my estimation.

Additionally, in its quest to be fast-paced, the novel often felt choppy as it transitioned from scene to scene. There were times when it seemed as though the story was laid out more as a screenplay for a movie or TV show than as a novel, which has the luxury of more room to get into details of culture, explain the world a little better, or let an interaction between characters play out or a protagonist have a more full experience of a situation.

I also didn’t find the primary characters engaging. Sanderson includes plenty of scenes and internal monologues that show us different aspects of their personalities, but for some reason that I can’t quite put my finger on, there was nothing about any of these people that really grabbed me at an emotional level. In many respects, they seem like the types of characters you’d find in standard network TV cop shows, and since that’s well-covered ground, and because I don’t find that genre entertaining, I was indifferent to them.

I wasn’t even terribly interested in just watching the protagonists go through the motions to see how the story played out because I found the plot to be predictable. There isn’t much of a surprise to the end of the story, or to the emotional burden that Wax has to deal with, or to the fates of the other characters.

And so I find myself on the fence. While I didn’t particularly enjoy Shadows of Self, I can appreciate that it has enough of the right elements that others will enjoy it. Maybe this book deserves a steel medal, rather than gold.

Saturday Morning Cartoons - Shows that Jumped from Saturdays to Weekdays After School

Sometimes, after launching a new cartoon on Saturday mornings, a network would, at some later point, drop it into a weekday after school position. Once in a while, a show would keep running in both slots at the same time, but usually it was a hand-off from one to the other for good.

Why? I don't know. I don't think it had anything to do with the quality of the show, because some that were moved rocked, while others were utterly forgettable. Maybe it had to do with jockeying for ratings, though I don't know how much kid viewership outside of the coveted Saturday morning lineup really mattered. Maybe it had something to do with ideal times to promote shows which acted as marketing vehicles for toys. Or it could have been for some other reason.

In any case, here are a couple of good Saturday morning shows that made the jump to weekday afternoons:

First up, Robotix, the story of a group of humans stranded on an alien planet, who fall-in with giant robots controlled by AIs based on the personalities of that world's original inhabitants, who remain in stasis deep beneath the surface. While the robots were supposed to be rebuilding the infrastructure of their destroyed civilization, they ended up fighting with each other, and the newly-arrived humans split into two factions who take sides, with their help greatly augmenting the abilities of the robots. Aside from being a thoroughly kick-ass show, Robotix was also a marketing vehicle for the toy line of the same name, which was also pretty cool (you could use the large, Lego-esque pieces and electric motors in each set to build robots with a wide range of configurations). I got the Argus set (based on the character who lead the good guys in the series) for Christmas one year, and aside from having to replace it on boxing day due to a faulty part, it was one of my favourites for a while. (full pilot episode)

Released as part of the same mega line-up promotion as Robotix (along with the forgettable Big Foot and the Muscle Machines and Jem and the Holograms) is our next series: Inhumanoids. This show was about a team of scientists in league with various races of secretive monsters (a race of plant people, a race of rock people, and a couple of magnetic dudes at the Earth's core) battling a trio of demonic creatures called, you guessed it, the Inhumanoids. The show was also about marketing toys. In the show, vicious-Muppet-looking Metlar, who likes to hork-up fireballs and throw them at people, is backed by the viney, brainless titan Tendril (imagine the bastard child of Cthulhu and Swamp Thing), and D'Compose — think a hairless yellow gorilla for the body, with an exposed rib cage, and rat's skull for the head — who stashes prisoners in his chest cavity like coats in a wardrobe and turns people into zombies by biting them. After ages trapped in custom magical prisons, the Inhumanoids escape and then try various schemes to alternately conquer and destroy the world — everything from stealing nuclear weapons to unleashing stumpy cyclopses with appetites that would put the starting lineup of an American football team to shame. Episodes would occasionally take a turn for the disturbing (and of questionable appropriateness for a Saturday morning audience) when D'Compose got front and centre, temporarily turning characters into mutant-zombie things, unleashing huge zombie armies, and once raising a mad scientist from the dead in a manner that even the yellow demon himself found unsettling. But the good guys always won and there were toys to be bought. So, you know, there's that to keep in mind when you're a kid and trying to get to sleep later that night staring across the room at D'Compose and his open sternum prison. (opening intro)

And taking things back into space, in an Old West-superhero mashup kinda way, there's BraveStarr. It's the story of Space Martial BraveStarr, a man of First Nations ancestry with super powers (eyes of a hawk, ears of a wolf, strength of a bear, and speed of a puma) who keeps the peace on a mining planet in the future. Assisted by his trigger-happy, cybernetically-enhanced, intelligent, talking horse, Mr Ed, er, no, that wasn't it... uh, Francis?...no... 30-30, yeah, that's it! — along with a couple of other deputies — BraveStarr arrests run-of-the-mill criminals when he's not battling the evil entity known as Stampede. If you take out the super powers and universe-threatening-evil-entity angle, the show's kind of like a kid-friendly precursor to Firefly — as told from the cop's point of view (now wouldn't that be a cool crossover to see?). (full episode)