As I write this, it’s the evening of day 6 of our trip. It’s not all “vacation” because, along with dual Thanksgiving celebrations and birthdays and taking our nephew to visit an aquarium, part of it was to be here to support my dad during his surgery.
And we’re through that. The surgery went very well. He had to spend a couple of nights at the hospital for observation — which is really frustrating for him. I love my dad a lot but he’s very stubborn and very good at spreading that frustration to others. The last three days have been stressful, but hopefully, once he’s had a few days to heal and a follow-up doctor visit, this particular saga of health issues is done with.
The final Mistborn Era 2 novel, The Lost Metal, was released Monday so I’ve had that to fill time spent in waiting rooms and such. It was a humdinger. Actually a little bit overwhelming with how much it’s connected to the rest of the Cosmere. For maximum impact I would recommend that potential readers first read:
- The first 3 Wax & Wayne (Mistborn Era 2) books, so you know the main characters, several side characters of varying importance, and a major villain.
- The three Mistborn Era 1 books, and then Mistborn: Secret History, so you know all about the events that spawned two of the religions which are extremely important here, as well as the Metallic Arts.
- At least the first three Stormlight Archive novels, to get to know one of the factions involved and some Cosmere mechanics. Also alongside that story arc itself, there’s correspondence between some of the entities involved.
- Perhaps Elantris and The Emperor’s Soul to recognize some of the “not magic.”
That said, you could probably get away with just the previous Era 2 books, but you’d be missing out on a lot of “oh shit it’s So-And-So!” moments. But not to fear — even if you’ve read everything Brando Sando published you’d still be shown some unfamiliar new things here. It’s not all in-jokes and sly nods to dedicated fans.
I’ve literally just come through a reread of Stormlight Archive and all the previous Mistborn novels, and yet… I kind of want to re-reread them already to tie some of the new reveals back to those previous books. But I think I will hold off and just peruse the fan forums and wikis a bit. No doubt Stormlight 5 and other books to be released next year will also have me wanting to reread…
Some gear demos, and announcements of a couple of new things have hit.
Steady State Gate: I’m sure it’s good, but none of the audio demos I’ve heard have convinced me I need it when I already have Natural Gate and Blades. So I’ll just skip this one.
Endless Processor: the latest demo of this one has it reproducing the textures of resynthesized sounds with a startling depth and texture in ways that only a meticulously looped sample might accomplish — it doesn’t blend together into kind of a static motionless sound or a fuzzy/blurry slurry as some other techniques do, and yet it’s not a loop and some elements are indeed kind of averaged over time. I don’t really understand what it’s doing. I’m still trying to decide whether it’s just surprising and cool, or especially useful beyond other tools I have. I may have to indulge my curiosity and go for it, though.
Molten Modular/Befaco Motion MTR: newly announced, this is a bit like Mutable Instruments Shades but with LED rings indicating the level. I think at least for now, I’m going to pass, because I still prefer O’Tool+ for closer monitoring of levels. But it’s a good concept, and I’d probably recommend it to anyone who doesn’t already have Shades.
Bela Gliss: like a classier and enhanced version of Soundmachines’ Lightstrip, it’s a touch-sensitive controller with backlighting. It’s got various kinds of CV recording/playback, a dual channel mode, a 5-key pressure keyboard mode, etc. I’ll be following its progress updates with interest. However, the Lightstrip didn’t get as much use from me as I had expected, and I’m also selling the BeetTweek, so probably I don’t need it. There’s a saturation point with controllers that I think I’ve reached.