Rocky Reads No Choice at All

In No Choice at All, Logen heads south and finds a purpose! Think you're ready? Then join Rocky as she reads The Blade Itself.


We're back to Logen! And I'm kinda excited, he's doing things! Or at least, he's starting to do things!

Let me back up and summarize the chapter really quick.

Logen battles the mountainous environment up somewhere called the High Places. We get a little background information on him-- his family has died due to a Shanka attack. All of them. Wife, kids, parents, many of his friends. Only him and the boys he was hunting with were left alive-- and now he has to decide what to do. Go north and die or go south and live to fight another day... He goes south. There really isn't any choice in dying.

So down south, in a much more forest-y  environment, Logen feasts on deer, has a fire, and calls on the spirits, who he says don't give good advice, but at least they're company. Now, I wasn't expecting what came next. Haha. It was fantastic. The spirits are like, actual bodies! They come up-- only 3 of them-- out of the shadows and sit there around the fire talking to Logen for a little while, telling him about what all is going on in the rest of the world. They tell him the Magus of the Old Time is looking for him. And they also tell him that their numbers are dying and after a year or two there will probably be no spirits to come to him if he calls on them.

And the chapter ends with Logen being sad about not having his friends with him and deciding to go find the Magus to see what's up and why he's looking for him. Yay!

Oh-- quick side note-- I thought it was hilarious that Logen in the beginning is really thirsty, so he decides to eat some snow. Which works. The reason I find this hilarious is because I've considered doing the exact same thing :) Only problem for me is that I was down in Denver and none of that snow really looks acceptable to put in my mouth. It's all super dirty. That, and I'm not actually dying of thirst.

So, I'm really excited that Logen is going somewhere where he'll be meeting up with more people. It's not that his story has been boring or anything. It's not that it's been lacking conflict. It's not even really that Logen's not been taking action. In fact, because of all this, Abercromie's kept my attention with Logen's story line up to this point.

There's a little list of types of conflicts your character can experience. I don't know them all. Man vs Man, Man vs Nature, Man vs Society, Man vs God, Man vs Self, etc. One of my favorites is Man vs Man. In my opinion, it's the most exciting. Logen dealing with the High Places is definitely a Man vs Nature, and he started with a Man vs Man. So he's had conflict (which is what drives a plot), and I've been with him up to this point. But I'm glad that the story is going to go forward faster here and I'm excited to see where Logen goes.

You carry on. That's what he'd always done. That's the task that comes with surviving, whether you deserved to live or not.