{"id":732,"date":"2012-09-23T06:50:52","date_gmt":"2012-09-23T14:50:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevenrbrandt.com\/wordpress\/?p=732"},"modified":"2012-09-23T06:50:52","modified_gmt":"2012-09-23T14:50:52","slug":"book-review-curse-of-chalion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stevenrbrandt.com\/?p=732","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Curse of Chalion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Curse of Chalion is beautifully written, funny (though it&#8217;s not a comedy), and deeply interesting book. The religions in the book were interesting and believable enough that I found myself identifying with one of them over the other, feeling that it was more &#8220;right.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In fact, the story is largely the tale of a spiritual journey with some interesting observations along the way. A saint (in the Chalion religion) is not a person who is pious or good, but one who is &#8220;empty.&#8221; One who makes himself or herself a vessel to be used by the gods (in this world there are either 4 or 5, depending on which faith you follow).<\/p>\n<p>Apart from a slow section around the 3\/4 mark, this was really an excellent book.<\/p>\n<div class=\"sharedaddy sd-sharing-enabled\"><div class=\"robots-nocontent sd-block sd-social sd-social-icon-text sd-sharing\"><h3 class=\"sd-title\">Share this:<\/h3><div class=\"sd-content\"><ul><li class=\"share-twitter\"><a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" data-shared=\"sharing-twitter-732\" class=\"share-twitter sd-button share-icon\" href=\"http:\/\/stevenrbrandt.com\/?p=732&amp;share=twitter\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click to share on Twitter\" ><span>Twitter<\/span><\/a><\/li><li class=\"share-facebook\"><a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" data-shared=\"sharing-facebook-732\" class=\"share-facebook sd-button share-icon\" href=\"http:\/\/stevenrbrandt.com\/?p=732&amp;share=facebook\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click to share on Facebook\" ><span>Facebook<\/span><\/a><\/li><li class=\"share-end\"><\/li><\/ul><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Curse of Chalion is beautifully written, funny (though it&#8217;s not a comedy), and deeply interesting book. The religions in the book were interesting and believable enough that I found myself identifying with one of them over the other, feeling that &hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/stevenrbrandt.com\/?p=732\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"sharedaddy sd-sharing-enabled\"><div class=\"robots-nocontent sd-block sd-social sd-social-icon-text sd-sharing\"><h3 class=\"sd-title\">Share this:<\/h3><div class=\"sd-content\"><ul><li class=\"share-twitter\"><a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" data-shared=\"sharing-twitter-732\" class=\"share-twitter sd-button share-icon\" href=\"http:\/\/stevenrbrandt.com\/?p=732&amp;share=twitter\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click to share on Twitter\" ><span>Twitter<\/span><\/a><\/li><li class=\"share-facebook\"><a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" data-shared=\"sharing-facebook-732\" class=\"share-facebook sd-button share-icon\" href=\"http:\/\/stevenrbrandt.com\/?p=732&amp;share=facebook\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click to share on Facebook\" ><span>Facebook<\/span><\/a><\/li><li class=\"share-end\"><\/li><\/ul><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgWoS-bO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stevenrbrandt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/stevenrbrandt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/stevenrbrandt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stevenrbrandt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stevenrbrandt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=732"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/stevenrbrandt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":733,"href":"http:\/\/stevenrbrandt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732\/revisions\/733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stevenrbrandt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stevenrbrandt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stevenrbrandt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}