The Emperor's Soul by Brandon Sanderson

The Emperor's Soul is a novella that takes place in the same world as Brandon Sanderson's debut novel, Elantris. It focuses on a master criminal named Wan ShaiLu who's found herself on death row unless she can fulfill a forbidden task appointed to her.

Book Description:

When Shai is caught replacing the Moon Scepter with her nearly flawless forgery, she must bargain for her life. An assassin has left the Emperor Ashravan without consciousness, a circumstance concealed only by the death of his wife. If the emperor does not emerge after his hundred-day mourning period, the rule of the Heritage Faction will be forfeit and the empire will fall into chaos. 

Shai is given an impossible task: to create—to Forge—a new soul for the emperor in less than one hundred days. But her soul-Forgery is considered an abomination by her captors. She is confined to a tiny, dirty chamber, guarded by a man who hates her, spied upon by politicians, and trapped behind a door sealed in her own blood. Shai's only possible ally is the emperor's most loyal councillor, Gaotona, who struggles to understand her true talent. 

Time is running out for Shai. Forging, while deducing the motivations of her captors, she needs a perfect plan to escape…

Sanderson introduces a new magic system in this story, called Forging. It has to do with the carving of "soulstamps," which can rewrite an object's history. The entire process is very hard to explain, and in the novella itself Sanderson explains it over a decent amount of time. While Forging is very hard to do successfully, if someone with the right skill works for enough time—usually over years—they can Forge something as ridiculous as a human soul.

Shai is forced to Forge the soul of the most well-known man in the entire Rose Empire in only one hundred days, which is virtually impossible. Thankfully, her captors don't know the slightest thing about Forging, so over this amount of time she can plan her escape without the others knowing what she's up to. The Emperor's Soul is about what transpires during those one hundred days.

The narrative of the book is almost entirely from the point of view of Shai, allowing the reader to get to know her and sympathize with who she is. Though the world may not approve, there's a reason she does what she does. As always, Sanderson delivers with his amazingly well-crafted world and characters. During Shai's captivity, she begins to develop a fondness of the arbiter Gaotona, some of her guards, and even the emperor himself. An emotional aspect of the story is that even if Shai truly can Forge the emperor's soul in such a short time, he won't actually be the emperor that once was. He'd just be a copy, no matter how real that copy was.

In the end, The Emperor's Soul by Brandon Sanderson is a fantastic read. For a short tale, it's very well-developed and makes the reader feel at home in the fictional world. If you can spare a few dollars, I very highly recommend it.

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

The Old Man and the Sea is a novella by classic writer Ernest Hemingway. It tells the story of an old man and his attempt to catch a giant fish. The old man's name is Santiago, but that's not important.

An elderly fisherman is unlucky—he hasn't caught a good fish in a great long time. The townsfolk know he's unlucky, and so do the parents of the boy who used to be his assistant. Hence the words "used to." Now, old Santiago struggles to get by, though he goes out to sea every single day to hope against hope that a fish will bite.

One day, a fish bites his bait. He's finally caught something, eh? But this fish is so large that he can't haul it in. Instead, the great fish swims off with the bait in its mouth, dragging the boat and the old man with it. Hour after hour goes by, and the old man can do nothing but wait for the opportune moment to kill the great fish and haul it back, strapped to the side of the boat if necessary. But the question is... will that ever-so-persistent fish give in and die, or will the old man die first, from lack of supplies and no way to escape the vast sea?

The Old Man and the Sea is a fairly good book. It's not a masterpiece, but it's definitely worth a read. The story is sad, but few good stories aren't at some point. I probably wouldn't have ever read this in my own time (it was a school assignment), but it's definitely worth a shot. A reader might get bored from how much time Hemingway spends describing the process of fishing in Cuba, but at least this novella's got nothing on Moby Dick in that matter.

If you need something to read, check it out. It's not worthy of cutting the line on your reading list, but it's good nonetheless.

Amelia's Last Secret by Eric Wilson

Amelia's Last Secret is a novella by bestselling author Eric Wilson about the fate of Amelia Earhart—one of the most prominent and well-respected women in the history of the world. It is available on Amazon for $2.99 exclusively as an ebook.

Everyone knows Amelia Earhart, and everyone has at least speculated about her mysterious disappearance in history. Leave it to somebody like Eric Wilson to take the facts as we know them and write a brilliant story from it. He took real people, events, and information, and put them all together in an intriguing and believable manner full of mystery and suspense.

The novella is split into four parts, taking place over the past seventy-five years:
Part One - July 1, 1937
Part Two - June 8, 1944
Part Three - May 17, 2012
Part Four - July 2, 1937

The first part begins from the point of view of Amelia Earhart, and ends with a cliffhanger, which is concluded in the final part. The two middle parts continue the story of how Ms. Earhart's fate was discovered. All four parts were extremely well-written and make you want to continue reading. The amount of research put into the story is astounding and truly adds life to the tale.

Eric Wilson is an amazing writer, and Amelia's Last Secret helps to prove it. The ending is a little sad—but you can't deny that the inevitable would happen. The novella could make a great movie, or at least a short film. Kudos to Mr. Wilson for writing such a masterpiece. It is well worth your reading time.