Vastralaya

Evan Shively (Perseus271)

Edgar Colt

Vitor Miguel

Prisma Soulstorm

Serena

Jordan

Bruna Guedes

Husain Kothari

FRNK

Uendi Prifti

Abdul Hasib

Vin, the street urchin who has grown into the most powerful Mistborn in the land, and Elend Venture, the idealistic young nobleman who loves her, must build a healthy new society in the ashes of an empire. Three separate armies attack. As the siege tightens, an ancient legend seems to offer a glimmer of hope. But even if it really exists, no one knows where to find the Well of Ascension or what manner of power it bestows.

I can't remember being this violently conflicted about a book in quite some time. There are some areas where it's just so well done, with the author absolutely nailing it, and then others where I found myself grinding my teeth in frustration. I'm going to abandon my usual practice of writing short, pithy reviews and just drunkenly ramble on a few things here. (Still no spoilers, though.) That OK with y'all?Language. About two and a half chapters into this book, I found myself asking, "Why does this feel like a kids' fantasy book?" It wasn't the subject material or the plot, both of which are much more sophisticated than Harry Potter and his ilk. While I would feel perfectly comfortable having a 12-year old read this PG13-violent and utterly asexual book, I don't feel as though it's necessarily written for tweens. Finally it occurred to me: it's the language. This book is one of the most simply written books I've ever read, using only the most basic vocabulary. That isn't a bad thing, as I'd rather read something direct and simple than something flowery and overwritten, but Sanderson's language is so simple here that it's almost as if he's drawing with the Crayola 16-set when other authors have the big 64. (One notable exception: having apparently become recently enamored of the word, he uses maladroitly at least three times. Maybe he was jamming some Weezer while he wrote.) I haven't read any of his other works (yet; Mistborn #2 is on deck), but I have to assume this simplicity is by conscious choice, and it's an interesting choice at that. I'm just not sure yet how I feel about it.One language choice that I am sure how I feel about is Sanderson's decision to have his characters speak good old American English. The narration is similarly plainspoken, with a fair amount of American slang thrown in, rather than the twee, faux-Elizabethan style of a lot of fantasy authors. I like the approach. One of the most time-honored fantasy tropes is having all the characters thee and thou each other, with a few ne'er did yon stars of Yomama glimmer so resplendently, my suzerain for good measure. And I can handle that stuff, having been weaned on Tolkien and everything that came after, but I found Sanderson's decision to move away from that convention refreshing. I interpreted it as Sanderson saying, "The unspoken assumption here is that this book has been translated from whatever languages they speak on this made-up world, so why translate it to anything other than what is most understandable and comfortable for you to read? To couch this story in funky language is to insult your imagination by implying that you need that in order to realize you're reading a fantasy novel."Setting and Plot. The setting is a typical high fantasy world - feudal-style nobility and peasantry; shadowy, powerful priesthood; mysterious evil lord, etc. - with some odd, almost steampunk flourishes thrown in. There are wristwatches. Men's formal wear is described as something more like Victorian coat and tails than medieval garb. Magic in this world is fueled by elemental and alloyed metals, which are described rather exactly, using percentages. It's a unique and interesting blend.The basic plot is about as stock as it gets. If you're familiar with the Star Wars films, the Harry Potter or Percy Jackson books, Eragon, the Dragonriders of Pern trilogy, Dune, Ender's Game, or any one of about a million other works, please play Mad Libs with me:Dear [kid with weird name], I know you are only a [farmer / orphan / urchin / child of a minor noble], and this will be hard for you to accept, but you [have Great Powers / are the Chosen One / insert name of funky power here]. You are the only one who can [save the world / save the universe / defeat the Empire / restore order to the Force / kill the Big Boss]. Luckily, even though you just learned your destiny fifteen minutes ago, you will make up for lost time by quickly becoming better than anyone in the history of ever at [Quidditch / dragon riding / sandworm riding / Allomancy]. Any questions?Needless to say, the book's plot could have been a ticket to Hack City, but it really isn't. Vin's growth and development are handled well.Exposition. This is a fantasy book for the video game generation. By that, I mean that the book follows the general path of a first person RPG:1) Introduction to the world and the main characters2) A few early levels whose only apparent purpose is to teach the player how to use the buttons3) Quests of increasing difficulty, with progressive reveals of the Big Plot4) Fight with the Main Boss, including the inevitable twist5) Denouement and teaser for the next installment.Not that that's a bad thing! But I was really surprised at the way Allomancy (the main "magic" in this world) was laid out. In the two towering fantasy/sci-fi works of the 20th century, The Lord of the Rings and Dune, the supernatural elements of the story operated behind a sort of curtain or screen. The One Ring in LotR and the spice Melange in Dune both held great, mysterious powers, but the specific effects and extent of those powers were seen only in fits and flashes, and never understood completely by the characters or the reader. In contrast, fairly early in this book, Kelsier takes Vin on a practice run where he explains how her powers work and what their advantages and limitations are, using plain language and real-world physics, and lets her fly and mess around and just generally exult in her magic. It left me, the reader, as well as Vin the character, feeling that even if we didn't understand this magic perfectly right now, we might at some point in the future, which was a very different feel.OK, after enough rambling about things I feel ambivalently about, let's wrap up with one big win and one big fail:WIN: Brandon Sanderson can write the hell out of an action scene. (And since the final quarter of this book is pretty much all action, playing directly into Sanderson's strengths, it kicks all kinds of ass.) The fights in this book are gut-wrenching without being overly gory, and the chases and sneaks are heart-stopping as well. Perfect combination of pace and detail. Amazing. Possibly the best I've ever read from an author in this genre, and if he's able to do that so effortlessly, so early in his career, it gives me hope that he can fix...FAIL: ...the dialogue. In spite of being favorably disposed due to the use of informal American English, I eventually found the dialogue here really clunky. Everyone is too wordy. Everyone says one sentence too many. Over and over again, I found myself going, "Real people don't talk like this" and especially, "Real people who are supposed to be close friends don't talk anything like this to each other." Seriously, think of how you talk to your best friends in private, then compare it to this book. In addition, there was always that odd feeling of unneeded exposition, as if the characters were talking half to each other and half to the reader. It was unfortunate, especially in contrast to how slick and fast-moving and just plain awesome a lot of the other writing was.All in all, this was a fun, kinetic read...with a few holes in it. It builds, it explodes, and the ending is really good. If half-stars were allowed, this would have been a 3 1/2. Good stuff.Also, here are my (spoiler-free, suitable as previews) reviews of the second and third books in the series, if you enjoyed this one!

The city of Canluum lies close to the scarred and desolate wastes of the Blight, a walled haven from the dangers away to the north, and a refuge from the ill works of those who serve the Dark One. Or so it is said.The city that greets Al’Lan Mandragoran, exiled king of Malkier and the finest swordsman of his generation, is instead one that is rife with rumour and the whisperings of Shadowspawn. Proof, should he have required it, that the Dark One grows powerful once more and that his minions are at work throughout the lands.And yet it is within Canluum’s walls that Lan will meet a woman who will shape his destiny. Moiraine is a young and powerful Aes Sedai who has journeyed to the city in search of a bondsman. She requires aid in a desperate quest to prove the truth of a vague and largely discredited prophecy—one that speaks of a means to turn back the shadow, and of a child who may be the dragon reborn.

The first series that showed it was possible to do an uninspired rewrite of Tolkien and make a mint was Shannara. After that the doors were flung wide, and the next to profit off the scheme was was Robert Jordan. Of course, I'm not suggesting it's bad to take inspiration from older authors--all authors do this, as Virgil did from Homer, and Milton from Virgil, and Byron from Milton. Tolkien himself drew on the Norse Eddas, Welsh myths, English fairy tales, and Blake's myth-making.But when a skilled author takes inspiration, they expand and change what came before, combining many influences to produce their own unique voice and vision. Jordan didn't have the knowledge of language, history, or culture to truly copy Tolkien's style, nor was he able to add a unique spin.The Eye of The World is a more accessible version of Tolkien, but Tolkien is already a simplified version of the Norse Sagas, meaning that Jordan felt a need to dumb-down the accessible, which doesn't leave his book with much personality.Jordan also takes influence from the Sword &amp; Sorcery tradition, particularly R.E. Howard (Jordan even wrote and published some of his own Conan stories). However, unlike other authors of rollicking adventure Fantasy, like Leiber or Charles Saunders, Jordan kept Tolkien's plodding length. It is difficult to comprehend how an author could take such a simple, familiar story and stretch it out over so many pages.The hero is an orphan who looks different, he gets his father's magic sword, he goes on a quest with an old, wily mentor, gets attacked by evil (dark-skinned) mongoloids from the mysterious East, meets the princess by accident, becomes embroiled in an ancient prophecy, discovers a magic 'force' which controls fate (and the plot), &amp;c., &amp;c. Stop me if you've heard this one before. Like a lot of modern fantasy, the plot and characters are nothing new. If you've seen Star Wars, then you know it by heart. Every fantasy fan has read this same story again and again from countless authors--some, apparently on purpose. Of course, when this old story is told well, with slick pacing and vivid characters, we can forgive the cliches, or even enjoy them freshly, recognizing their universal appeal. But when an author is simply trotting out an old, tired story and doing nothing to make it shine anew, then the only appeal it can lay claim to is bland nostalgia.There's no reason for this sort of repetition: a new book should be more than just fanfic of an older, financially successful book. There are countless different influences out there, long before Tolkien or Howard ever touched pen to paper (many of which can be found in the link at the end of this review), so it's disappointing to see authors continually rehashing the same tedious cliches completely unchanged half a century later.Jordan's long-winded style can't even boast the wealth of meticulous details with which Tolkien filled his pages (often to the detriment of his story). It's clear that Jordan's trying to build a one of those massively detailed worlds so prevalent in pop fantasy, but it's not an interesting, original world--it's just another generic, pseudo-Medieval Europe without any of the genuinely interesting bits that made that time period unique. It's just modern characters with modern psychology swinging around magic swords in a Disneyland version of history.It might not be so bad if the lengthy asides were actually interesting, in and of themselves. If each little piece was amusing in its own right, we might forgive. If they gave us some odd bit of defamiliarization that caused us to look at our own, modern world in a new way, that would be something. Instead, we get dry, lengthy explanations of extraneous facts that we had no reason to be curious about in the first place.Some readers have pointed out that these facts show up in later books of the series, which is probably true, but then, what are they doing in this book? If Mary doesn't appear until book three, it is not useful or interesting to stop in the middle of book one and tell us she has blonde hair. Facts should not be evenly distributed throughout a series, they should be placed in close proximity to scenes that relate to them. That way they make sense to the reader and we have a reason to care about them. That's the difference between foreshadowing and a word search puzzle.If an author has to stop the story every few paragraphs to explain what's going on, then his writing is simply not working. The world should be revealed to us through characters, through their interactions, through small details of verisimilitude that are lovely or interesting on their own, and through scenes designed specifically to illustrate a point without losing focus and falling into lengthy digressions.But Jordan's characters are dull and shallow, his dialogue bland, and his plot (though it possesses many parts) lacks twists or turns. We are given an unending parade of new characters and lengthy asides, which masterfully suck all the drive, purpose, and life from an otherwise simplistic story. At half this length, the book would have been merely another two-star fantasy rehash. At a third the length, it might have started to show some pep--but Jordan had to stretch out his all-to-familiar story to doorstop proportions.In Tolkien, the first hundred pages takes place in quaint Hobbiton. This prelude prepares us for the rest of the book, allowing us to understand the strange world and characters and setting a mood. When the action takes us away, we find we have formed a certain attachment to the bucolic charm of Hobbiton (sickly-sweet as it may be). Finally, when we do depart, the world we meet is much grander in comparison. In Eye of the World, you spend the first hundred and fifty pages in a drab farming community, so that when the characters finally leave, it will seem like something is happening. This is only an illusion.Some of Jordan's fans have pointed to the 'Wheel of Time' aspect as his unique contribution to the genre--mixing Eastern philosophy and the idea of eternal recurrence in with his mock-feudal world, but it's the same thing that E.R. Eddison was doing in the 1920s, and which Michael Moorcock has been exploring and expanding on since the sixties. As such, I don't see it as some new twist that Jordan has added to fantasy, but as another bland rehash of an interesting idea some other author had decades before.Also, like most fantasy authors, Jordan seems to have a problem writing female characters. They are either whiny and snotty, or emasculating ice queens. They all speak in the exact same voice--and the joke in the writing community is that anyone who has met his wife know exactly where every one of his female characters comes from. I couldn't count on both hands the fantasy authors who seem to think 'strong woman' means 'insufferable, unapologetic shrew'. Then again, it isn't as if his male characters aren't any more interesting or fleshed-out, even if they do get a more flattering depiction.I've also been led to understand that later on in the series, we get a magical band of lipstick lesbians who 'go straight' when they grow up (and meet 'real men', like our heroes), plus a bunch of sex-fetish weirdness about punishment by naked public spanking. But I suppose that if Jordan resembles other genre writers in terms of plot, length, setting, and character, he might as well go all the way and throw in some of his own unprocessed sexual hangups.And as the series goes on, the many problems with pacing, plotting, and unfocused asides only grow worse. If Jordan can't keep everything straight in his opening book, how will he possibly deal when the story starts branching out (as stories inevitably do)? It is hardly surprising that such a tenuous grasp will inevitably slip away--as it has for so many other authors in pop fantasy, from Martin to Goodkind, who start off intending to write a trilogy and end up with ten books, each of which takes five years to write, and none of which even manage to finish the plot started in book I.So, take the plot of Star Wars, add the long-windedness of Tolkien, the piecemeal structure of Howard, the cosmology of Moorcock, add in a pinch of awkward sexual hangups, and you have yet another crap pop fantasy, ready to sell a million copies to folks who want nothing more than to read the same story over and over as written by a succession of chubby, bearded, awkward dudes. I'm sure a violent, breast-baring miniseries is already in preproduction.UPDATE: one might point to the endless repetition in modern literature as a sure sign that there is no God, no grand plan, and no purpose to the universe. A benevolent power would surely spare us the pain of such unending mediocrity.However, if there were some deity, and he had a sense of humor, then he would allow the uncreative authors to publish, to gain fame, win awards, and rake in the cash, until their series piled self-indulgently to the length of a minor encyclopedia. Then our clownish deity would let the author announce that he is finally approaching The End (for real this time!), only to perish on the cusp. Since this is precisely what happened to Jordan, I will have to keep an eye out for other signs of this humorous demiurge, possibly in the form of leper-curing banana peels and hagiographic fright wigs.My Fantasy Book Suggestions

The Dragon Reborn—the leader long prophesied who will save the world, but in the saving destroy it; the savior who will run mad and kill all those dearest to him—is on the run from his destiny.Able to touch the One Power, but unable to control it, and with no one to teach him how—for no man has done it in three thousand years—Rand al'Thor knows only that he must face the Dark One. But how?Winter has stopped the war—almost—yet men are dying, calling out for the Dragon. But where is he?Perrin Aybara is in pursuit with Moiraine Sedai, her Warder Lan, and Loial the Ogier. Bedeviled by dreams, Perrin is grappling with another deadly problem—how is he to escape the loss of his own humanity?Egwene, Elayne and Nynaeve are approaching Tar Valon, where Mat will be healed—if he lives until they arrive. But who will tell the Amyrlin their news—that the Black Ajah, long thought only a hideous rumor, is all too real? They cannot know that in Tar Valon far worse awaits...Ahead, for all of them, in the Heart of the Stone, lies the next great test of the Dragon reborn....

The end draws near....The Last Battle has started. The seals on the Dark One’s prison are crumbling. The Pattern itself is unraveling, and the armies of the Shadow have begun to boil out of the Blight.The sun has begun to set upon the Third Age.Perrin Aybara is now hunted by specters from his past: Whitecloaks, a slayer of wolves, and the responsibilities of leadership. All the while, an unseen foe is slowly pulling a noose tight around his neck. To prevail, he must seek answers in Tel’aran’rhiod and find a way--at long last--to master the wolf within him or lose himself to it foreverMeanwhile, Matrim Cauthon prepares for the most difficult challenge of his life. The creatures beyond the stone gateways--the Aelfinn and the Eelfinn--have confused him, taunted him, and left him hanged, his memory stuffed with bits and pieces of other men’s lives. He had hoped that his last confrontation with them would be the end of it, but the Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills. The time is coming when he will again have to dance with the Snakes and the Foxes, playing a game that cannot be won. The Tower of Ghenjei awaits, and its secrets will reveal the fate of a friend long lost.This penultimate novel of Robert Jordan’s #1 New York Times bestselling series--the second of three based on materials he left behind when he died in 2007--brings dramatic and compelling developments to many threads in the Pattern. The end draws near.Dovie’andi se tovya sagain. It’s time to toss the dice.

2010 novel by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

When I read the prologue I thought this would be better than it's predecessor, after all it had such a great start but how wrong I was. What started as an amazing start soon turned into a slow bullock cart, picking speed only at occasions. I think I have made peace with the women in this story. Nothing can change them (hoping against hope Sanderson did a better job when he wrote the final books). They will always make me angry, cringe, exasperated, and irritated with their antics, and I have to accept them as they are if I want to keep on reading this story. This book introduces a lot of new characters, of which Cadsuane Melaidhrine impressed me the most. She had this aura of mystery around her. Almost everyone was so eager to please her or at least not to be on her wrong side. I am eager to know more of her powers and role she's going to play in Rand's campaign against the Dark Lord. In so many ways this book belongs to Matrim Cauthon. First he was always there to rescue me when the girls became unbearable with their cat fights or too high opinion of themselves lend them into trouble. He was always there to play the hero and gave us some much needed light moments. His character developed a lot in this book and him forgiving Nynaeve and Elyane; and then helping and protecting them on their mission, was a big step on his part. Even if he was following Rand's orders, there were times when he volunteered for some dangerous tasks. Even after being slow events of this book surely moved the story forward and it will be interesting to what happens in the next book. 

In this sequel to the phenomenal New York Times bestseller The Fires of Heaven, we plunge again into Robert Jordan's extraordinarily rich, totally unforgettable world:On the slopes of Shayol Ghul, the Myrddraal swords are forged, and the sky is not the sky of this world ...In Salidar the White Tower in exile prepares an embassy to Caemlyn, where Rand Al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn, holds the throne -- and where an unexpected visitor may change the world ...In Emond's Field, Perrin Goldeneyes, Lord of the Two Rivers, feels the pull of ta'veren to ta'veren and prepares to march ...Morgase of Caemlyn finds a most unexpected, and quite unwelcome, ally ...And south lies Illian, where Sammael holds sway ...

The fifth book in Robert Jordan's internationally bestselling epic fantasy series, THE WHEEL OF TIME, now reissued with a stunning new cover design. The bonds and wards that hold the Great Lord of the Dark are slowly failing, but still his fragile prison holds. The Forsaken, immortal servants of the shadow, weave their snares and tighten their grip upon the realms of men, sure in the knowledge that their master will soon break free...Rand al' Thor, the Dragon Reborn, knows that he must strike at the Enemy, but his forces are divided by treachery and by ambition. Even the Aes Sedai, ancient guardians of the Light, are riven by civil war. Betrayed by his allies, pursued by his enemies and beset by the madness that comes to the male wielders of the One Power, Rand rides out to meet the foe.

I say this all of the time, but reading old school fantasy books is like reading with a friend. And they remind me of when I was young. I don't know why. Maybe because I'm old school. Happy Reading! Mel ❤️

The seals of Shayol Ghul are weak now, and the Dark One reaches out. The Shadow is rising to cover humankind.In Tar Valon, Min sees portents of hideous doom. Will the White Tower itself be broken?In the Two Rivers, the Whitecloaks ride in pursuit of a man with golden eyes, and in pursuit of the Dragon Reborn.In Cantorin, among the Sea Folk, High Lady Suroth plans the return of the Seanchan armies to the mainland.In the Stone of Tear, the Lord Dragon considers his next move. It will be something no one expects, not the Black Ajah, not Tairen nobles, not Aes Sedai, not Egwene or Elayne or Nynaeve.Against the Shadow rising stands the Dragon Reborn.....

In the tenth book of The Wheel of Time from the New York Times #1 bestselling author Robert Jordan, the world and the characters stand at a crossroads, and the world approaches twilight, when the power of the Shadow grows stronger.Fleeing from Ebou Dar with the kidnapped Daughter of the Nine Moons, whom he is fated to marry, Mat Cauthon learns that he can neither keep her nor let her go, not in safety for either of them, for both the Shadow and the might of the Seanchan Empire are in deadly pursuit.Perrin Aybara seeks to free his wife, Faile, a captive of the Shaido, but his only hope may be an alliance with the enemy. Can he remain true to his friend Rand and to himself? For his love of Faile, Perrin is willing to sell his soul.At Tar Valon, Egwene al'Vere, the young Amyrlin of the rebel Aes Sedai, lays siege to the heart of Aes Sedai power, but she must win quickly, with as little bloodshed as possible, for unless the Aes Sedai are reunited, only the male Asha'man will remain to defend the world against the Dark One, and nothing can hold the Asha'man themselves back from total power except the Aes Sedai and a unified White Tower.In Andor, Elayne Trakland fights for the Lion Throne that is hers by right, but enemies and Darkfriends surround her, plotting her destruction. If she fails, Andor may fall to the Shadow, and the Dragon Reborn with it.Rand al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn himself, has cleansed the Dark One's taint from the male half of the True Source, and everything has changed. Yet nothing has, for only men who can channel believe that saidin is clean again, and a man who can channel is still hated and feared-even one prophesied to save the world. Now, Rand must gamble again, with himself at stake, and he cannot be sure which of his allies are really enemies. 

The Wheel of Time turns and Ages come and go, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth returns again. In the Third Age, an Age of Prophecy, the World and Time themselves hang in the balance. What was, what will be, and what is, may yet fall under the Shadow.Tarmon Gai'don, the Last Battle, looms. And mankind is not ready.The final volume of the Wheel of Time, A Memory of Light,  was partially written by Robert Jordan before his untimely passing in 2007. Brandon Sanderson, New York Times bestselling author of the Mistborn books, and now Stormlight Archive, among others, was chosen by Jordan's editor--his wife, Harriet McDougal--to complete the final volume, later expanded to three books.In this epic novel, Robert Jordan's international bestselling series begins its dramatic conclusion. Rand al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn, struggles to unite a fractured network of kingdoms and alliances in preparation for the Last Battle. As he attempts to halt the Seanchan encroachment northward--wishing he could form at least a temporary truce with the invaders--his allies watch in terror the shadow that seems to be growing within the heart of the Dragon Reborn himself.Egwene al'Vere, the Amyrlin Seat of the rebel Aes Sedai, is a captive of the White Tower and subject to the whims of their tyrannical leader. As days tick toward the Seanchan attack she knows is imminent, Egwene works to hold together the disparate factions of Aes Sedai while providing leadership in the face of increasing uncertainty and despair. Her fight will prove the mettle of the Aes Sedai, and her conflict will decide the future of the White Tower--and possibly the world itself.

The dead are walking, men die impossible deaths, and it seems as though reality itself has become unstable: All are signs of the imminence of Tarmon Gai'don, the Last Battle, when Rand al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn, must confront the Dark One as humanity's only hope. But Rand dares not fight until he possesses all the surviving seals on the Dark One's prison and has dealt with the Seanchan, who threaten to overrun all nations this side of the Aryth Ocean and increasingly seem too entrenched to be fought off. But his attempt to make a truce with the Seanchan is shadowed by treachery that may cost him everything. Whatever the price, though, he must have that truce. And he faces other dangers.The winds of time have become a storm, and things that everyone believes are fixed in place forever are changing before their eyes. Even the White Tower itself is no longer a place of safety. Now Rand, Perrin and Mat, Egwene and Elayne, Nynaeve and Lan, and even Loial, must ride those storm winds, or the Dark One will triumph.

The Seanchan invasion force is in possession of Ebou Dar. Nynaeve, Elayne, and Aviendha head for Caemlyn and Elayne's rightful throne, but on the way they discover an enemy much worse than the Seanchan.In Illian, Rand vows to throw the Seanchan back as he did once before. But signs of madness are appearing among the Asha'man.In Ghealdan, Perrin faces the intrigues of Whitecloaks, Seanchan invaders, the scattered Shaido Aiel, and the Prophet himself. Perrin's beloved wife, Faile, may pay with her life, and Perrin himself may have to destroy his soul to save her.Meanwhile the rebel Aes Sedai under their young Amyrlin, Egwene al'Vere, face an army that intends to keep them away from the White Tower. But Egwene is determined to unseat the usurper Elaida and reunite the Aes Sedai. She does not yet understand the price that others—and she herself—will pay.

Rand is on the run with Min, and in Cairhein, Cadsuane is trying to figure out where he is headed. Rand's destination is, in fact, one she has never considered.Mazrim Taim, leader of the Black Tower, is revealed to be a liar. But what is he up to?Faile, with the Aiel Maidens, Bain and Chiad, and her companions, Queen Alliandre and Morgase, is prisoner of Savanna's sept.Perrin is desperately searching for Faile. With Elyas Machera, Berelain, the Prophet and a very mixed "army" of disparate forces, he is moving through country rife with bandits and roving Seanchan. The Forsaken are ever more present, and united, and the man called Slayer stalks Tel'aran'rhiod and the wolfdream.In Ebou Dar, the Seanchan princess known as Daughter of the Nine Moons arrives--and Mat, who had been recuperating in the Tarasin Palace, is introduced to her. Will the marriage that has been foretold come about?There are neither beginnings or endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it is a beginning....

Tony Stark creates the Ultron Program to protect the world, but when the peacekeeping program becomes hostile, The Avengers go into action to try and defeat a virtually impossible enemy together. Earth's mightiest heroes must come together once again to protect the world from global extinction.

After the earth-shattering revelations of INSURGENT, Tris must escape with Four and go beyond the wall enclosing Chicago. For the first time ever, they will leave the only city and family they have ever known. Once outside, old discoveries are quickly rendered meaningless with the revelation of shocking new truths. Tris and Four must quickly decide who they can trust as a ruthless battle ignites beyond the walls of Chicago which threatens all of humanity. In order to survive, Tris will be forced to make impossible choices about courage, allegiance, sacrifice and love.

Jedi Master-in-hiding Luke Skywalker unwillingly attempts to guide young hopeful Rey in the ways of the force, while Leia, former princess turned general, attempts to lead what is left of the Resistance away from the ruthless tyrannical grip of the First Order.

2017 American epic space opera film directed by Rian Johnson

Christian Wolff is a math savant with more affinity for numbers than people. Behind the cover of a small-town CPA office, he works as a freelance accountant for some of the world's most dangerous criminal organizations. With the Treasury Department's Crime Enforcement Division, run by Ray King, starting to close in, Christian takes on a legitimate client: a state-of-the-art robotics company where an accounting clerk has discovered a discrepancy involving millions of dollars. But as Christian uncooks the books and gets closer to the truth, it is the body count that starts to rise.

Jason Bourne is again being hunted by the CIA. It begins when Nicky Parsons a former CIA operative who helped Bourne, who went under and now works with a man who's a whistle blower and is out to expose the CIA's black ops. Nicky hacks into the CIA and downloads everything on all their Black Ops, including Treadstone which Bourne was a part of. And Heather Lee, a CIA agent, discovers the hack and brings it to the attention of CIA Director Dewey, the man behind the Black Ops. He orders Parsons be found and, hopefully, Bourne, too.

Marvel's "Doctor Strange" follows the story of the talented neurosurgeon Doctor Stephen Strange who, after a tragic car accident, must put ego aside and learn the secrets of a hidden world of mysticism and alternate dimensions. Based in New York City's Greenwich Village, Doctor Strange must act as an intermediary between the real world and what lies beyond, utilising a vast array of metaphysical abilities and artifacts to protect the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Alice returns to the magical world of Underland, only to find the Hatter in a horrible state. With the help of her friends, Alice must travel through time to save the Mad Hatter and Underland's fate from the evil clutches of the Red Queen and a clock like creature, known as Time.

Armed with the astonishing ability to shrink in scale but increase in strength, con-man Scott Lang must embrace his inner-hero and help his mentor, Dr. Hank Pym, protect the secret behind his spectacular Ant-Man suit from a new generation of towering threats. Against seemingly insurmountable obstacles, Pym and Lang must plan and pull off a heist that will save the world.

There are big changes brewing in Gotham City, and if he wants to save the city from The Joker's hostile takeover, Batman may have to drop the lone vigilante thing, try to work with others and maybe, just maybe, learn to lighten up.

In the epic finale to The Maze Runner Saga, Thomas leads his group of escaped Gladers on their final and most dangerous mission yet. To save their friends, they must break into the legendary last city, a WCKD controlled labyrinth that may turn out to be the deadliest maze of all. Anyone who makes it out alive will get the answers to the questions the Gladers have been asking since they first arrived in the maze. Will Thomas and the crew make it out alive? Or will Ava Paige get her way?

All looks lost for the Rebellion against the Empire as they learn of the existence of a new super weapon, the Death Star. Once a possible weakness in its construction is uncovered, the Rebel Alliance must set out on a desperate mission to steal the plans for the Death Star. The future of the entire galaxy now rests upon its success.

2016 American epic space opera film in the Star Wars franchise directed by Gareth Edwards

Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) finds the winds of ill-fortune blowing even more strongly when deadly ghost pirates led by his old nemesis, the terrifying Captain Salazar (Javier Bardem), escape from the Devil's Triangle, determined to kill every pirate at sea...including him. Captain Jack's only hope of survival lies in seeking out the legendary Trident of Poseidon, a powerful artifact that bestows upon its possessor total control over the seas.

2017 film directed by Espen Sandberg and Joachim Rønning

After stopping off at Starbase Yorktown, a remote outpost on the fringes of Federation space, the USS Enterprise, halfway into their five-year mission, is destroyed by an unstoppable wave of unknown aliens. With the crew stranded on an unknown planet and with no apparent means of rescue, they find themselves fighting against a ruthless enemy with a well-earned hatred of the Federation and everything it stands for. Only a rebellious alien warrior can help them reunite and leave the planet to stop this deadly menace from beginning a possible galactic war.

After the Kingsman headquarters are blown up by a psychotic criminal named Poppy Adams (Julianne Moore), the surviving agents find their way to an allied secret organization based in Kentucky, named "Statesman". The two agencies must now work together in order to save the world and take down the so called "Golden Circle".

After the events of Captain America: Civil War, Prince T'Challa returns home to the reclusive, technologically advanced African nation of Wakanda to serve as his country's new king. However, T'Challa soon finds that he is challenged for the throne from factions within his own country. When two foes conspire to destroy Wakanda, the hero known as Black Panther must team up with C.I.A. agent Everett K. Ross and members of the Dora Milaje, Wakandan special forces, to prevent Wakanda from being dragged into a world war.

In the twenty-eighth century, space station Alpha is a city where beings from different planets live together exchanging their knowledge and culture. Peace is granted by a human force, including Major Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and his partner Sergeant Laureline (Cara Delevingne). They are assigned by the Defense Minister (Herbie Hancock) to retrieve the last species of converter in a dangerous mission. They succeed and back to Alpha, unknown humanoids abduct Commander Arun Filitt (Clive Owen) expecting to steal the converter. They head to a forbidden area that is infected, but Valerian and Laureline follow them and disclose a hidden secret about the race and the infected area.

Thirty years after the events of Blade Runner (1982), a new Blade Runner, L.A.P.D. Officer "K" (Ryan Gosling), unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what's left of society into chaos. K's discovery leads him on a quest to find Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a former L.A.P.D. Blade Runner, who has been missing for thirty years.

In the near future, human organs are enhanced by the cybernetics technology developed by the powerful Hanka Robotics Corporation owned by Cutter. Dr. Ouelet is responsible for the development of the secret project 2571 of a full mechanical body to be connected to a human brain. She uses the brain of a young woman that lost her parents in a cyber attack as subject of a prototype. One year later, the woman is ranked Major and has joined Section 9, an anti-terrorist division commanded by Chief Daisuke Aramaki, working with agents Batou and Togusa. She needs to use a medicine to help the integration of her brain with the mechanical body and has no recollections of her previous life. When Section 9 hunts down the terrorist Kuze, Major learns the secrets about Hanka Robotics and the experiment she was subjected. Now she faces her ultimate enemy: Kuze, a criminal who has managed to hack into the brains of androids and control them.

The Solaris mission has established a base on a planet that appears to host some kind of intelligence, but the details are hazy and very secret. After the mysterious demise of one of the three scientists on the base, the main character is sent out to replace him. He finds the station run-down and the two remaining scientists cold and secretive. When he also encounters his wife who has been dead for ten years, he begins to appreciate the baffling nature of the alien intelligence.

Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) is a harried technocrat in a futuristic society that is needlessly convoluted and inefficient. He dreams of a life where he can fly away from technology and overpowering bureaucracy, and spend eternity with the woman of his dreams. While trying to rectify the wrongful arrest of one Harry Buttle (Brian Miller), Lowry meets the woman he is always chasing in his dreams, Jill Layton (Kim Greist). Meanwhile, the bureaucracy has fingered him responsible for a rash of terrorist bombings, and Sam and Jill's lives are put in danger.

Killjoys is a fast-paced space adventure about a trio of hard-living, party-loving bounty hunters working for the R.A.C., (Reclamation Apprehension Coalition), an Independent interplanetary organization of assassins and retrieval experts who are known across the J cluster as Killjoys. The show centers on their lives and activities in the Quad--a heavily populated planetary system--ruled by a tyrannical class-based corporation known as the company. With the whole system verging on revolutionary war and their own bloody pasts finally catching up with them, the three struggle daily to maintain their R.A.C neutrality by focusing on the only law a Killjoy won't break "The Warrant is all".

2015 Canadian space adventure drama series

Two hundred years from now, the solar system's been colonized, and police detective, Josephus Miller's given the assignment of finding a missing woman. Meanwhile, an officer of an ice freighter sees what appears to be an unprovoked attack upon the ship, by a craft from Mars. As news of the attack spreads, the incident's repercussions threaten to destabilize an already tenuous relations between Earth, Mars and the asteroid belt.

American science fiction television series

Jess, a bubbly, off-beat teacher, who is known to burst into song, catches her boyfriend with another woman. Newly homeless, she moves into a loft with three single guys she's never met before. Nick, a jaded, law-school dropout isn't the best of company. Schmidt is a flashy, eccentric businessman who believes he is Yahweh's gift to women. Winston is a former athlete who doesn't know what to do, but really needs a win. Can this dysfunctional group handle the adorkable new girl?

ALTERED CARBON is set in a future where consciousness is digitized and stored in cortical stacks implanted in the spine, allowing humans to survive physical death by having their memories and consciousness "re-sleeved" into new bodies. The story follows specially trained "Envoy" soldier Takeshi Kovacs, who is downloaded from an off-world prison and into a combat ready sleeve at the behest of Laurens Bancroft, a highly influential aristocrat. Bancroft was killed, and the last automatic backup of his stack was made hours before his death, leaving him with no memory of who killed him and why. While police ruled it a suicide, Bancroft is convinced he was murdered and wants Kovacs to find out the truth.

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