{"id":2228,"date":"2020-08-12T15:00:04","date_gmt":"2020-08-12T21:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=2228"},"modified":"2020-06-12T18:45:14","modified_gmt":"2020-06-13T00:45:14","slug":"book-the-dark-talent-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2020\/08\/12\/book-the-dark-talent-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"BOOK: The Dark Talent (2016)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"TheThe Dark Talent
\n<\/u><\/strong>Year: 2016
\nAuthor: Brandon Sanderson
\nLength: 348 minutes \/ 5.80 hours<\/p>\n

There\u2019s foreshadowing; then there are five books of foreshadowing. In The Dark Talent<\/em>, Brandon Sanderson starts wrapping up this amusing middle-grade series by finally reaching the part of the story that was alluded to so many books ago. While this could easily be the final book in the series, I believe there\u2019s enough left unconcluded that another volume should be written to wrap these remaining subplots up into satisfying conclusions. By this point in the series, the Alcatraz<\/em> formula has been thoroughly explored, and it almost seems to be running on autopilot*. Granted, this was after four books of character and plot development, but there\u2019s still an amount of \u201cbeen there seen that\u201d here.<\/p>\n

I am always in awe of Brandon Sanderson\u2019s world-building, and the Alcatraz<\/em> series is no exception. Breaking into the Library of Congress was such a natural extension of the \u201cLibrarian\u201d motif that I\u2019m a little surprised it took this long to get here. The magic system with lenses and glass is also well thought out and makes sense with each ridiculous use of its numerous lenses (embarrassment = explosions? Why not!).<\/p>\n

Once again, I have to remind myself that books like The Dark Talent<\/em> are geared toward younger minds. Sure, the plot twist\/reveal helped drive the story forward, but it was so telegraphed that I had it all figured out as soon as this individual character was introduced. Still, for younger readers, this revelation may come as a surprise. And while the main character\u2019s writing style is constantly on the caricature side of the spectrum, we do get to see some brief moments of vulnerability in the main players. Even if the main character can get a little grating at times, the first person narrative device works well for this middle-grade fantasy.<\/p>\n

A fulfillment of four books of foreshadowing, I give The Dark Talent<\/em> 4.0 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n

\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" \"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" \"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" \"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"<\/strong><\/h2>\n

*Footnote: I did like the amusing use of footnotes.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Dark Talent Year: 2016 Author: Brandon Sanderson Length: 348 minutes \/ 5.80 hours There\u2019s foreshadowing; then there are five books of foreshadowing. In The Dark Talent, Brandon Sanderson starts wrapping up this amusing middle-grade series by finally reaching the part of the story that was alluded to so many books ago. While this could […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,54],"tags":[9,1297,55,792,789,2463,1403,8,2462],"class_list":["post-2228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4-0-stars","category-book","tag-9","tag-alcatraz","tag-book","tag-brandon-sanderson","tag-fantasy","tag-footnotes","tag-middle-grade","tag-review","tag-the-dark-talent"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2228"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2234,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2228\/revisions\/2234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}