Review: The Rithmatist

The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Sometimes I wonder why I even bother reading adult fantasy when YA fantasy is just so much better? You get 100% more amazing worlds and magic systems and 100% less rape. All good things.

This book has A MATHEMATICAL MAGIC SYSTEM BASED ON GEOMETRY. For some people, people who wants to do magic based on emotions or just draw pretty unicorns (such as Melody, the "love interest"-ish character from the book), it seems like hell, and for others, like myself or Joel (the protagonist), it seems awesome.

So here we have epic battles being drawn out on the ground in chalk, and our poor protagonist can't be part of it because the mysterious "Master" didn't pick him to be a Rithmatist when he was eight. Instead, Joel reads everything he can about rithmatism, and knows more about it than a lot of the children practicing the magic. He definitely knows more than Melody, who is great at drawing unicorns and terrible at drawing lines.

The magic really happens when they work together, both off and on page. I was kinda hesitating between four and five stars, because as awesome as it is, the plot seems a little too much like Harry Potter to me, but the way Joel and Melody learns to work together and create actual magic had me pick the higher grade in the end. It was beautiful.

I hear there's gonna be a sequel, and I fucking hope so. This was a great read, but I need to know what happens next!

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True story.