Paperback, 175 pages
English language
Published Nov. 7, 2012 by Tachyon.
When Shai is caught replacing the Moon Scepter with her nearly flawless forgery, she must bargain for her life and create--to Forge--a new soul for the emperor in less than one hundred days.
This, is, just, marvelous. I LOVED this short novel, I LOVED the magic system, I LOVED the characters, and of course I feel sad because its only like 300 pages. If I hadnt readed The Stormlight Archive already, I would say that this is my Favourite book of all time.
Good for a novella but lacks meat. I do appreciate how much heart for the main two characters Sanderson can squeeze into such a short story.
I bought this on a lark recently when it went on sale at Amazon for 2.99. It's a novella, so a very short read, but I enjoyed it tremendously. It's set in the same world as Elantris, but if Jindo hadn't been mentioned at one point, you wouldn't have been able to tell.
Shai is a Forger in the Rose Empire, and she has been caught by the arbiters, the rulers of the Empire, for forging one of the arbiter's paintings. Forgers can't just forge paintings in this setting, they use a magic with soulstamps that can completely reshape objects and even souls around them. The arbiters force Shai to work for them, to do one thing: to forge the Emperor's soul as he has been mute and deaf since an assassination attempt. They set Shai a limit of 100 days to achieve this goal.
90% of the novella plays …
I bought this on a lark recently when it went on sale at Amazon for 2.99. It's a novella, so a very short read, but I enjoyed it tremendously. It's set in the same world as Elantris, but if Jindo hadn't been mentioned at one point, you wouldn't have been able to tell.
Shai is a Forger in the Rose Empire, and she has been caught by the arbiters, the rulers of the Empire, for forging one of the arbiter's paintings. Forgers can't just forge paintings in this setting, they use a magic with soulstamps that can completely reshape objects and even souls around them. The arbiters force Shai to work for them, to do one thing: to forge the Emperor's soul as he has been mute and deaf since an assassination attempt. They set Shai a limit of 100 days to achieve this goal.
90% of the novella plays out in Shai's prison chamber, as she tries to figure out how she can accomplish this nearly impossible task. As is normal for a Sanderson novel, Forging is one of his fascinating magic systems that he is so good at creating. A good deal of detail is spent on building and understanding it. There's little worldbuilding going on, it's a character study. An interesting one. I'd be more than happy to return to the Rose Empire and learn more about Shai.
I enjoyed the afterword, to find out that Sanderson was inspired by stamps he saw during a recent visit in Taiwan.
TLDR: if you have enjoyed Sanderson so far, you will likely enjoy this one, and I am hoping we'll see more of Forging and the world of Sel in a full-length novel.
