My loving family knows just what I like–books and more books.  Some highlights were the book about China which is stuffed full of photographs and the collection of Traditional Chinese Stories.  The giant book of world maps from throughout history will be a long-time favorite.  Then there were a couple of fantasy novels, a historical book called The Antelope, and Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King.  All great books!

One of the novels was Elantris, by Brandon Sanderson.  I finished it in the early morning hours of the 27th, so it obviously wasn’t any easy book to put down.  I thoroughly enjoyed the magic system, and the characters of Prince Raoden and Prencess Sarene were compelling and likable.  The pov sections given to Hrathen were often the points where I took a break, but that’s not really surprising.  He was just likable enough that he failed to be an extraordinarily compelling bad guy, but in the end that payed off.

My only gripe with the book were that once in awhile I had little sense of an over-arching plot drive, an immediate threat which I didn’t feel the characters could handle.  This was due, I believe, to the slow shifting of who was our antagonist.  Somewhere in the middle the obvious antagonist just wasn’t that scary, and the unseen antagonist hadn’t begun to give me chills just yet.

Still, as my two-day marathon read indicates, the story still had a firm grip on my interest.  My strongest desire when I came to the end was to go get the next one, but while the book leaves an opening for a sequel, it works as a stand-alone.  I guess instead I’ll just have to go get Mistborn.