This book has been sitting on my shelf for almost a year, silently rebuking me. I finally pulled it out two weeks ago, in anticipation of our spring break-go-look-at-socal-colleges road trip. I'm not very deep in (only ~120 pages), but I'm pretty impressed.

R. Scott Bakker is a canuckian and (gasp!) earned both a B.A. and an M.A. in Literature from Western Ontario. He also spent some time in a Ph.D. program in philosophy at Vandy. But apparently all that learnin' hasn't prevented him from creating something weird and wonderful. This is the first in an extensive, and lauded, series of swords-and-sorcery fantasy, but with a high degree of inventiveness and "literate"-ness. The first trilogy goes by the Prince of Nothing moniker (originally planned as a single book, then expanded and expanded as so often seems to happen).

I'm not far enough in to really know whether there are any compelling female characters; I've only "met" one named female so far in the narrative (teh Repository tells me that she will become prominent). So I'm a little nervous that things will decay into cliche, but hopeful that the hype will bear up. Certainly, the sophistication of the writing and storycraft is far ahead of anything that Robert Jordan achieved in The Wheel of Time, although it maybe lacks the swashbuckle of that epic series. This doesn't (yet) have the grit and realism of George R.R.R.R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones. I might put it in a class with Dune, actually, for the scope, vision, and pacing. I'm looking forward to getting in deep.

What are you reading?