Month: May 2016

The Well Of Ascension

9kayden 2 Comments

*CAUTION – SMALL SPOILER ALERT*
And now, back to our regularly scheduled program of Mistborn book reviews.
Alright, so since the trilogy is so intertwined, this review won’t be in depth. I can’t talk about the plot much without spoiling the first book, but I may have to spoil some things. The Well Of Ascension begins 1 year after the ending of the first book. Vin is now an extremely experienced allomancer with over 2 years of training. She is dating the new ruler of Luthadel, Elend Venture. He was heir to one of the mode powerful houses in Luthadel and Vin liked him since she first attended the balls that the nobility hosted when she was part of Kelsier’s group. Elend is a philosopher who was convinced in a government with a voting system at the start of his rule. But, as it turned out, the people of that time weren’t ready for a system like that.

After overthrowing the lord ruler (sorry for the spoiler) Elend and Vin desperately try to find the Lord Ruler’s hidden stash of Atium – the rarest and most powerful allomantic metal ever. They want to either sell it or let Vin use it to protect Elend from assassins. With no luck finding the stash, they stop searching for it.

Soon after, Elend’s father camps on the outskirts of Luthadel with a massive army. Elend’s father is convinced that Elend is hiding the Atium and wants it for himself, he is prepared to kill his own son if he has to. A second army arrives a few days later with the same goals as Elend’s father. The two present armies are of equal size. A siege arises from the new situation. A siege is a sort of tie between the three parties. If Elend’s father attacks the city, he will take it but after the battle has finished, the other army would attack Elend’s father’s weakened army and Luthadel’s walls would have been destroyed at that point. With neither armies attacking first, they wait out Luthadel and hope to starve them or make them agree to hand the city over.

After several months of the siege, an army of mutant men called Koloss attack the city. All hope seemed lost until Vin used an allomantic metal near a Koloss and took it under her control. With this new found knowledge, they subdue the Koloss and discover the Well Of Ascension. The Well Of Ascension is a pool of water which gives a chosen hero unfathomable powers. Vin takes the power and releases it, which is what the old prophecies say to do but when she does a voice yells “I’M FREE!!!”. She had just released a God of destruction called Ruin. Ruin was able to change the words on the prophecy to make it fit his needs. Elend is stabbed by a mist figure, a desperate Vin feeds him a magical metal found at the Well. I won’t say anything else otherwise I’ll spoil a plot twist and no one would want that.

Well, with that out of the way, I’ll see you next week a review of the last book in the trilogy.

Best Spearfishing Session Ever!!!

9kayden 7 Comments

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Alright, so you guys might have been waiting for a book review of the second book in the Mistborn Trilogy, but this story is so much better. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I went spearfishing a few days back and it was spectacular! My best day yet! So I just had to write about it.

It was Monday the 9th of April after school. I went to a Bushrangers meeting with my mates Lochie and Harry. We are keen spearfishos and we were talking about the low swell that afternoon. Since bushrangers ended pretty early – around 3:30 – we all decided to meet at a great spearfishing beach called Blue Holes at 4:15. I know that Blue Holes is a sanctuary zone but we went on the north side of the border. We ended up delaying our meet up time to 4:30 since I needed to give Lochie a lift there.

So my mum gives us the ‘drop and run’ and we walk to the sandy inlet where we often spearfish from. After a 15 minute wait Harry and his mum arrive. Harry quickly slides on his wetsuit and starts getting his gear on ASAP. He’s in the water before Lochie and I had our flippers and masks on!
“Every man for himself!” Lochie exclaimed as he waded into the water frozen with winter’s cold touch. And with him swimming off into the fish infested ocean, I launch myself after him, speargun in hand. *Once I swim out I spot a 50cm morwong and I follow it around for a bit. After a few minutes I dive down and practise clicking off the safety and aiming at the fish. Once I’m aimed at the top of it’s gill plate, I spot a 40cm goatfish just visible, with it’s red body with black lateral stripes, above and to the right of the morwong’s dorsal fin. After I check it’s back for the goatfish’s distinct spot, I make a small adjustment to my aim and pull the trigger. The spear flies straight over the dorsal fin of the morwong and hits the unsuspecting goatfish at the top of it’s gills. I surface for air and as I place my snorkel back into my mouth, I can feel the goatfish thrashing around on the end of my line. I pull gently on the line and make sure the flap of the spear flips up – to make sure the spear doesn’t slip out – and when I’m sure it has flipped, I yank the goat fish to the surface, red stripes shining in the sunlight’s reflection through the water. I grab it underneath the gills to make sure the fish doesn’t go anywhere and I really notice it’s two distinct ‘whiskers’ on the bottom of it’s jaw. I remember only the larger goatfish have these and I measure it against my hand.

The fish I had just speared was massive for a goatfish. Usually I only see them 15-20cm long if I’m lucky, so this one’s a ripper! I unclip the float line from my speargun handle and I pass it through the fish’s gills and out it’s mouth. I stab it in the head to kill it humanely and proceed to cut the gills with my dive knife to bleed the fish for the whitest possible flesh. With the spear pulled out of the fish, I load my gun again and continue on my way.

After fluffing around in the shallower water with the other boys, I watch the colourful blur of a parrotfish shoot past me and take off. It moved like it was speared but there was no line coming from it so I assumed the spear pulled out of the fish. I try to raise my gun quickly under water but instead swim as fast as I can after it. It swam out of my vision almost a split second after I saw it and I never found it again. Harry swims next to me and asks me if I saw the fish he speared. I point him in the direction it went but I was later told that he never found it again. With that fish gone, I headed out more north to an area we hadn’t checked out yet.

Here I saw a few small parrotfish that would have been about 20cm long. Nothing spectacular but I would have taken the shot if one was still for long enough. After seeing a small school swim a bit deeper I turn in that direction and spot a small golden trevally. With a quick dive and a hurried aim, I shoot the fish. The trevally wriggles off the spear before I even begin to swim to the surface and stops so suddenly that I doubted I even hit it! When I was almost at the surface, he swam near me slowly, then turned around and swam away hurriedly. It was almost like he was saying “Ha ha! You didn’t get me!” So with a quick reload, I was set to go get a big one.

By now it was nearing sunset and I was thinking of just swimming another 20m north then swimming back in to call it a day. On my 20m swim north, a small rocky outcrop looms near. I see a large, fish shaped, colourful creature and I instantly recognise a massive parrotfish. In my panic to shoot the thing, I hurriedly try to flick the safety off a few times and shoot at the fish without spending time aiming. The fish erupts into a series of spasm-like movements and flays around in a small shady patch. With a quick resurface and the snorkel back in my mouth, I look down at the massive fish thrashing around on the end of my spear. I see that I speared it in the guts and that the fish‘s guts are hanging out. I then notice the small flap of skin that would have been it’s belly, with my spear through it. Not knowing if the spear was going to stay in I dived down and pulled the fish up at the same time. I reach for the struggling fish’s gills and wrap my fingers firmly around the inside of it’s gills. The water around it becomes greener and hazier than before and I know I don’t need to be bleeding it, the spear did that for me! I take my remaining hand and wrap it around the side of the spear that isn’t pointed and I keep pressure in it so that the fish doesn’t slip off. I leave my gun trailing behind attached to my spear as I take off to the beach. As I approach the beach I lift the fish out of the water for a second to show my mum. The setting sun and the beautiful colours of the fish make for a truly memorable moment that will stay in my mind forever. Only now I witness it’s true size.  I pass Harry and he gives me a double thumbs up! Woo hoo! And with motivation from that, I speed swim my way in and dump the fish on a rock.

Lochie and mum are on the beach waiting, mum with her phone in hand. Lochie puts his arm in the air and waves a crayfish around for me to see. I congratulate him on the first crayfish caught diving by any of us. With a quick stab to the head and a slice to the gills, the fish bleeds it’s last drop of blood as my heart pumps my own around at an alarming rate. After a couple of pics with me holding the fish at the shore line (see above image), I spot Harry out the corner of my eye walking along the rocks. I find this quite unusual since getting out of the ocean there is quite tough. The first thing he says to us is:
“Does anyone have another pair of shorts!?”
“Why?” I ask, chuckling.
“A shark the size of you swam next to me!” He exclaims and says nothing else on the matter, for now.

Harry brings out his fishing ‘brag mat’ to measure the parrotfish I speared. It turned out being a thumping 75cm!!! With a few pictures of all the fish and many high fives, we make our way back to the car, with a great range of experiences in our memories to stay with us for a life time. This was definitely my best spearfishing session ever.

The Final Empire

9kayden 1 Comment

*CAUTION – SMALL SPOILER ALERT*

I have recently finished a series of books called the ‘Mistborn Trilogy’ by Brandon Sanderson. The trilogy is a best seller in the U.S and the U.K with the first book being called ‘The Final Empire’. The story is based around this book‘s version of a girl from the lowest class of the hierarchy (the Skaa) with the rare power of Allomancy in a medieval fantasy world. In this world the sun is red, ash falls constantly from the sky and strange fog (named The Mist) appears out of nowhere at dusk and disappears at dawn.
In the first book the main character (Vin) is rescued from her life of hiding in a thief gang by a legendary man (Kelsier) looking for recruits to help him overthrow the Lord Ruler who has ruled the world for a thousand years. Kelsier is the only man to have escaped The Pits of Hathsin. If you are sent to the Pits then you have one week to find a geode of a precious metal called Atium through the cracks at the Pits (sort of like a mine) or else you are killed. If you succeed then you have another week to find another geode or be killed. The process is repeated until you die. Kelsier gained the power of Allomancy in the Pits of Hathsin and used his newfound powers to help him escape. He reveals to Vin that she has the power of Allomancy and asks her to help him overthrow the Lord Ruler. She joins his small crew of ex-thiefs and thugs (most of which have an allomantic power) and she gets to experience one thing she has never gotten to do in her life. Trust.
The whole book is riddled with twists and turns that keep you guessing. It is a heist story with bits of romance, magic and self confliction thrown in. The book seems to follow one of Kelsiers sayings, “There is always another secret”.
This is my favourite book series with a close second by The Percy Jackson Series. It is perfect for anyone looking for a great read.