M. Weald

First off, I’m a big fan of Brandon Sanderson. When I was young, so pretty much from grade school through early high school, I read incessantly. From the time I first picked up the likes of Deltora Quest, Ranger’s Apprentice, Harry Potter, Eragon, or any book with Drizzt Do’Urden in it, all the way to borrowing my older brother’s copies of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series, it was hard to find me without a book in hand. But then I kind of … stopped for a bit. Or at least lessened the pace during the latter half of high school and the beginning of college. Part of this was because I finally started coming out of my shell. I was a nerdy kid emerging into an equally nerdy, but moderately more confident in himself, young man. And I started taking soccer more seriously, playing on different teams in high school year round and realizing I had at least a modicum of athletic ability. I didn’t play much soccer in college though. Early college has enough distractions without sports in the mix and I was a bit burnt out on it. I was an engineering student, so studies took up most of my time. But then of course there are the new and exciting social opportunities miles away from any parental guard rails. Granted, I mostly studied. I was and always will be a proud nerd. However, it’s also true I made lifelong friends and, in the … ahem … laudable quest of learning about myself and my place in the world around me, made my fair share of poor decisions. This included forever tarnishing the stench of Jägermeister after buying a handle and, well, I don’t remember much after that. All this to say, I was distracted from the safe haven books had provided me for years by a world I found myself wanting to explore in a more real way. I came back to books of course. Like hearing scraps of a forgotten lullaby and knowing only it made me feel safe, I would hear mention of fantasy or sci-fi stories and feel an urge to pause and listen. So I came back to fiction after a brief reprieve, and came back to an absolute banger: Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson. I love the first trilogy in that series in particular, Mistborn Era 1 as it’s also known. It sucked me in immediately, brought me back to earlier days where my form of rebellion was staying up too late reading. I tore through those books. I don’t think I got a good night’s sleep all through the back half of The Hero of Ages because I couldn’t put the thing down. Probably scored a bit lower on a few engineering exams as a result. It’s no exaggeration to say I wouldn’t have gotten a creative writing minor, and wouldn’t have written my science fiction novel, without that trilogy reminding me just how much I loved stories and the art of storytelling. So, that was a long winded way of saying I’m a big fan of Brando Sando’s. I’ve read every Cosmere book available to date and immediately supported his record breaking Year of Sanderson Kickstarter when it was announced. I’m working on a YouTube video summarizing my thoughts on those 4 Year of Sanderson books, and I definitely want to put up blog posts or something about The Stormlight Archive or the Cosmere at large at some point. But for now, I’m settling for a few words on the surprise ending to the Year of Sanderson Kickstarter, the short story by Brandon Sanderson titled On Long Chills and Case Dough.

This was an interesting one to me. First off, it’s short. I know that’s obvious given it’s a short story, but it bears repeating because Brandon Sanderson doesn’t really do short. He has novellas, there is one in particular titled The Emperor’s Soul that I really enjoyed, yet there is a large difference between a novella and a short story, a difference of about 20k words on average. Most of his novellas are in service of the Cosmere, shining a light on characters who didn’t have their stories told in the mainline novels for one reason or another. This short story isn’t like that. It’s truly standalone, one he wrote in an attempt to polish his short story writing skills not long before getting his big break with Elantris and thereafter writing Mistborn. It’s a snapshot from his early days as a writer, published as a “Sanderson Curiosity.” I’m sure he’d be the first to say short stories aren’t his strong suit. In fact he says as much in his lecture series on YouTube shortly before bringing in guest lecturer Mary Robinette Kowal. Even so, I enjoyed this story. It’s an odd one, to be sure, but one that gave me more joy reading it than I’d anticipated going in. It’s a take on the hard boiled detective novels, black and white noir filled with femme fatales and bad days to quit the hooch. It has its own unique flair though, lending vulnerability to an otherwise parody of a voice. It takes place in a sci-fi future, from the perspective of a detective romanticizing the past. He’s an odd duck, this detective named Jack, calling women dames while smoking cigarettes (or “burners,” as he would say) with no real nicotine and drawing many a valid critique while doing it. But he has his reasons. And while I wouldn’t call his reasons unanticipated, that didn’t lessen the impact of hearing him let the cat out of the bag. If you haven’t read any of Sanderson’s other works, I don’t know if I’d recommend starting here. But if you’re interested in his quirky take on short fiction and hard boiled detectives, this is something I’d surely recommend.

M. Weald