 How about literally chill his comfort food? Yes, my friends, welcome, welcome, welcome, I'm Philip Magnus and this is the third time I'm recording this video review of Unsold, the first book in the Cradle series by Will Wright. The first two recordings went the way of the dodo and were extinct by a variety of technical or other issues, some of them eldritch, some of them threatening much. Anyway, how about literature as comfort food? As I first asked, sometimes you need to unwind in between series demanding reads to lose yourself in a world whose stakes, while not low by any means, don't hit right here and maybe right here, quite as deep. Yes, that's where my heart is. It's not here. It's here for me. I'm special That's how Unsold hit for me anyway. That was the case. Unsold, the first book in Will Wright's much celebrated Cradle series, is the epitome of a comfort food book. I experienced it as an audiobook, which has the other benefit of featuring the voice of Travis Baldry, whose debut novel, Legends and Latte's, stole mine and every other reader's, at least fantasy, reader's heart last year. It was a truly delightful slice of life, for which you can find my review, probably somewhere around here. Baldry is a celebrated audiobook narrator, not only a writer, he actually made his name as an audiobook narrator to begin with, and I can definitely see why. He imbues the characters he voices with personality, which is no difficult task as Wright's characters have plenty of that, even if some of it is a little one note. That's something I don't mind one bit. People often equate one-dimensional characters with bad characters, but that doesn't measure up in my experiences. In fact, it couldn't be further away from the truth. The better part of the characters you'll come across in Unsold are one-dimensional. That doesn't mean they're no fun to read about. As for Will Wright himself, I'll permit to hypothesize that he spends at least as much time watching anime as I do. Unsold has more than a few familiar tropes that made me feel like I was sitting down to enjoy a good Shonen show on a lazy weekend. Haven't had one of those in a while. The Cradle series is also one of the best-known Western examples of cultivation or progression fantasy, a genre known as Jianxia in China from where I originates, and my apologies if I messed up the pronunciation. The genre follows the growth in power of one character from a humble human being into an entity that the gods themselves fear and tremble before. It's slow bloody business becoming a god toe or whatever it is that gods tremble before, and that's why there are 12 of these bad boys to follow main character Lindon's exploits true. I don't believe the 12th one has been published yet but the other 11 are out there for your reading pleasure or listening pleasure if you are like me and don't have enough time to read as main books as you want. This first 12th is a fairly lean fantasy novel and just under 300 pages. Some of the latter entries are beefed up to more than 450. So yeah definitely lean. It does a really good job setting up the world, hinting at there being so much more to see than what this first book introduces and reveals. A lot of sneak peeks and teasers as to entities, monstrous heroes, villains and whole systems of power beyond our ken. It's good. It's excellent to have that in a world that you hope your readers will spend anywhere from dozens to a few hundreds of hours in over the course of what can be a year long odyssey, years, years long odyssey of reading. I speak of course of the perspective that Wright must have had when he first started writing this book. What works in, wait is it Wright? It's white. God damn it. I've messed it up now. I'm not starting over. It's real white. I'm probably going to keep saying Wright though. You know what it is now, so don't worry about it. Anyway, what works in Wright's favor is that Lyndon, the protagonist, is a genuinely likeable main character. In the vein of much of the shown in anime I grew up with, bland in some nondescript way which allows you to project yourself onto him but also driven by very relatable goals. He is powerless in a world full of powerful people. He sees power abused in egregious ways and he wishes to do better. He knows he can do better. So why shouldn't he? That's what motivates him to go through a number of trials and make the best of his circumstances as he makes a friend slash mentor along the way and comes out of the other end stronger and entering into a far bigger messier world than the one he leaves behind. While reading Unsold I was put in mind of the starting zone of an RPG game, a 5-10 hour tutorial experience that teaches you the rules of the world before stepping back and plunging you down its depth. I'm not sure there's much of a practical difference in those terms but then I read the book months ago. What stuck with me after those few months have gone by? Good question. Thanks, past me for asking it. For one, the idea of using your souls is the source of your energies is intuitive, unoriginal but made entertaining through imaginative displays of power. The class-based system in such worlds, defined by power as it is, must be a nightmare to live in from the perspective of our contemporary world but the communal elements White introduces to smooth out its most violent aspects, make a tribal life in this world a more attractive proposition. It's fun to see a family calculating how to advance themselves in the tribe they've just been born in, even knowing that it'll soon look like the pettiest thing in the world. This book is fun and I enjoyed it in between my studies and works of literature that I consider have more value than this in terms of a purely academic interest to me. Well, I'll listen to the next few books. I think so. When exactly there'll be, I can't tell you but it will happen eventually and I suspect I'll have an even better time with it. Perhaps I'll even find something words of truly getting excited about. That's how this genre works though. The more you read, the more invested you get, the higher the stakes, the more impressive the spectacle. There really isn't that much more to say, well, except that if you see an old monk looking like a kid, punch him. They're most likely an asshole. As a matter of fact, that's my score for this one. One out of one punched child monks. It's a very high score indeed, probably the highest I've ever given in one of those videos. If you enjoyed this video, if you would like to see more of my takes on books and what have you, there are plenty more coming so be sure to let me know in the comments, press that like button and subscribe, share the video with your friends or enemies if you're doing it particularly bad. If you disliked this video, cool, cool, cool, cool. Anyway, I'll see you next time. Bye!