No More Than Pen and Ink

Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Set in a world dominated by ash-falls from volcanic eruptions Mistborn: the Final Empire takes place a thousand years after the evil emperor established his oppressive dictatorial regime. In this heavy-handed feudal society a band of thieves and con-men come together and arrange a heist to steal the treasury of the immortal Lord Ruler and take down the empire.

Staged as heist story the premise is delightful by itself and could be entertaining on its own with solid execution, a suitable plan and entertaining characters, which this book has. But Mistborn doesn’t content itself to leave the story there; it goes farther, wrapping mysteries of world, religion and cosmology around the clever magic mechanics, con-artistry, political manipulations, and clever sleight-of-hand heist planning. The execution of the plan sets off a cascade of events that leads to an escalating sense of urgency and raised stakes that builds throughout the novel culminating in a carefully balanced explosion of success and failure and satisfyingly inevitable plot-turns.

This novel shows Sanderson growing in his ability to develop characters. The characters are larger than life, with extreme manifestations of loyalty, courage and ego, but they are personally motivated in ways that the characters in Elantris were not. Kelsier is one of my favorite Sanderson characters, motivated by past trauma and proceeding to action with his particular mix of suicidally ambitious planning, determination and a rock hard core of anger. Vin’s character progression is grounded by her change in situation and while the transition is probably too easy we want to believe that she can overcome her deep-seated distrust of neglect and betrayal because she is made of heroic stuff. Her scars are never ignored throughout, nor are Kelsier’s, they motivate tension with others and the world around them that they react and respond to with varying levels of heroic success and failure. They are not the deepest or most realistic characters, but they are heroic, grounded in their personal stories and motivated to action.

Sanderson is not a flowery writer. I enjoy the works of a masterful prose-crafter from time to time, but I generally prefer an unobtrusive style that gets out of the way. In this book Sanderson does that well: the writing is simple; the language is clear. It doesn’t dazzle, but it certainly doesn’t get in the way.

What this novel does particularly well is set up an imaginative and detailed world with deeply thought out magic with ecological, sociological, political and religious consequences and excellently pacing the introduction to the world and to the magic system. Everything hangs together and in the end the history of the world, the character motivation and action, the mechanics of the magic system and the cosmology all come together for a very satisfying conclusion.

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The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Heart Goes Last is a dystopian science fiction novel set after the financial system has crashed and left the whole of the east coast of the United States in a deep economic depression. The main characters Charmine and Stan were average middle Americans with decent lives that seemed to be going somewhere before the collapse. Now they are living in their car and trying to make ends meet with one bartending job between them. They are vulnerable and adrift, so it is no surprise that they seek any way to gain a semblance of order. When offered they take an offer from a company called Positron, a pilot facility for a proposed re-structuring of the prison system: a closed city and prison complex where the inhabitants spend half their times in nice middle class suburban life and half their time as inmates in the prison, sharing home and cell with other individuals turn in and out on an alternating schedule.

The premise of the proposed corrective system that works this way is ridiculous, but the framework serves to criticize the misaligned incentives and power dynamic between corporations, government and individuals in need of assistance. In this structure everyone is presumed to be guilty and freedom is sacrificed in the name of ‘safety’. And as the story progresses the experiment falls into all the corruption and problems that you would expect. It serves its purpose and I feel like it is answered sufficiently by the text. It thematically ties to the rest of the story and amplifies the disaffected personal lives of the main characters, but otherwise the action could have taken place without the necessity of this setup.

Something I thought the novel did particularly well is showing us a marriage from both sides. It is one of the better fictional representations I have seen of a marriage as a collaboration of two individuals with different needs and goals that do not line up completely. In this case it is a broken marriage, but aren’t all marriages in some form or another.

After the somewhat slow setup of the world and the initial situation the novel makes a sudden descent into a rapidly unfurling sequence of surreal psychological thriller. The initial setup collapses into a bed of infidelity, betrayal, intrigue and blackmail as the structure of capitalism and the prison start devouring their respective populations. Biotechnology and neurotechnology are introduced, and identity becomes a central point of question as the plot deepens. Margaret Atwood is as always excellent at weaving a complex web of different narratives and voices together with characters that feel real in their vibrant brokenness and tying everything together around a philosophical exploration of difficult questions.

In some ways the conclusion leaves these questions unanswered, it asks the reader to make their own choice about the nobility or despicability of the characters actions, desires and intentions at the end. Are we culpable for our actions if we are coerced or overcome with passion? Is our love valuable if it is routine or without passion? Where in a relationship (between lovers, between employer and employee, between citizen and government) is manipulation and force okay? Is marriage a prison? Where is the line between give and take?

There are no heroes in this story. Most of the characters end up doing despicable things because of their circumstances, some to manipulate others and some because they are themselves being manipulated. The novel is brutal in its depiction, and tore at my heart in its portrayal of brokenness. It does not shy away from depicting broken sex and is woven throughout with adult themes. It is a surreal and dark comedy that cuts to close to home to laugh at. Even dressed up as it is with gay Elviss, knitted blue teddy-bears and over-the-top corporate greed.

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Elantris by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Elantris was Brandon Sanderson’s debut novel. It sets the tone that the rest of his works follow but shows a rougher hand at characterization and storytelling. Elantris takes the concept of zombies and translates it to a high fantasy setting and tells a story about living with an imperfect situation and attempting to make the best of it. The characters are wooden and two-dimensional and not in a satisfyingly heroic or archetypal way, they lack hooks to motivate them outside of the immediate puzzles they are faced with and the narrative suffers from the theme of working inside your situation as the characters are caught up and tumbled about by the plot without having much by way of personal goals other than surviving. All in all it is a carefully constructed puzzle but a dissatisfying story.

It is told from three different viewpoints and centers around Elantris, a city once ruled by powerful magicians blessed by a random occurrence that transformed some of the inhabitants of the country into deified wonder-workers. But ten years ago something changed and now those chosen by Elantris are cursed to an undead state where they cannot heal from any injuries but also do not die. Raoden, the prince of the kingdom that rose to fill the power vacuum after Elantris’s fall is suddenly affected by the curse and thrown into the quarantined city where he has to figure out how to survive. Meanwhile Sarene, the daughter of a distant king sent to marry Raoden to cement an alliance in the face of a threatening religious totalitarian neighbor, finds her husband ‘dead’ before she arrives but stays to try to make the alliance work. And Hrathen the warrior priest from the neighboring empire sent to convert the people to avoid the need for a bloody invasion. The story alternates between these three different viewpoints as the story builds towards the big reveal The alternating structure is interesting and carried out with workmanlike craft; it’s not particularly finessed, but it gets the job done.

Raoden is a generic good-guy scholastic prince with a goal to improve the lives of the people and is magically endowed with the will and motivation to be the only person in the 10 years since the fall of Elantris to attempt to make sense of the situation or to try making a livable situation in the city of Elantris. His character arc isn’t one of growth or change, but of knowledge. He doesn’t have to change, just to learn the truth. But his interactions with Galladon make him generally enjoyable.

Sarene is an awkward collection of supposed competences and conflicts: we are told she is too strong, too willful and too politically skilled to by an attractive mate in her home country, but what we are shown is a socially awkward and forceful woman who plays games trying to keep from giving the people around her what they ask of her. Her feminism is awkward and unsubtle, like much about her, including her supposed skill in politics. Worse, she never shows any signs of change or growth throughout.

Hrathen is possibly the most interesting character with his staunch religious zeal and unwavering commitment to converting the people of the country to avoid a bloody invasion even as he is faced with a situation that is more complicated than he expects and is shown truths that shake his reasoned approach to religion, but his perspective is often accompanied by info dumps and his character change at the end is sudden and works against his previous character direction.

The magic is interesting and the trickle of details culminating in the final revelation of how the magic systems work together with the curse of Elantris is satisfying. The religious implications of the Elantrian gods and their fall and the political situation with the neighboring countries and how the magic, including the Seons, are used is well detailed. But everything else is drawn in the broadest stroke with little nuance or vitality. Characters are wooden and sketchy, the society is blocky and the plot of political machination is drawn in wire-frame with the broad strokes put in place but the deeper motivations generally lacking. The novel tells its story but it is obvious that story is the revelation of the magic system not the development of the characters. It succeeds in telling the story of the magic system and it launched Brandon Sanderson’s writing career and I give it high marks for that.

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The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Three-Body Problem is an alien first contact conspiracy thriller and the first book in a best-selling Chinese science fiction trilogy. The book was originally written in Chinese for a Chinese audience and offers a fascinating cultural perspective that is refreshingly different from western science fiction. The novel uses the Mao’s Cultural Revolution as a backdrop to the near-future setting of the primary action. It is strongly culturally grounded, the political party dynamics of the revolution and the oppression of scientists and dissenters that ensued are an integral part of the lens that informs the actions of the characters and the questions that narrative raises.

I really enjoyed the way the narrative weaves past events from the era of the Cultural Revolution into the current-day mysteries while promising interesting conflicts into the future. It is very much an establishing work, setting up a premise and doing the heavy-lifting of worldbuilding, and it does this in a remarkable way: pacing the revelations and exposition of scientific concepts with an action-thriller sensibility that keeps you engaged. The use of the ‘Three-Body Problem’ virtual game-world in the story was particularly clever in the way that it metaphorically interpreted the history of the alien world and allowed the thoroughly alien beings to be represented and explored in a way that trickled the information to the characters and the reader while making the alien concepts relatable.

It is the science part of the novel that really shines as something different. The novel could be classified as ‘fantastic hard science fiction’. It has great attention to scientific details and moderately lengthy passages of lovingly rendered technical description on orbital and quantum mechanics, particle physics and artificial intelligence. The scientific revelations are paced well and delivered in the context of the larger sequence of mysteries and new elements of the puzzle are introduced carefully. But it then takes those known scientific principles and pushes them to the extreme into the realm of fantasy, breaking down the preconceptions of the characters in how the world works and forcing the question: how do you deal with science when it can’t give you the answer? How does humanity, both individually and collectively deal with facing an unsolvable problem?

With that said about what the novel does well, the characters were generally flat and lifeless, I’m not sure if this is in part due to the translation, different cultural expectations for fictional character representation, or just the fact that the characters were mostly theoretical physicists and bureaucrats. The most engaging character was an intuitive and irascible policeman who was not versed in science, which could indicate that it is the later.

All in all this book does a really good job of setting up the possibility for a stunning conflict in book two, I am really looking forward to seeing if it pays off.

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Calamity by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The culmination of Brandon Sanderson’s Reckoners, young adult post-apocalyptic supervillain series, Calamity immediately follows the aftermath of Firefight and takes the Reckoners on an suitably ambitious quest as they seek to execute their most daring plan yet to redeem the fallen Epics and destroy the Epic known as Calamity who is the source of the power that makes superheroes evil. But the plan is never more than an idea and the plot suffers from a split focus as the team tries to accomplish a secondary goal and get stuck on step one without coming up with an actual plan on how they were going to pull it off.

In what is apparently a tradition for this series Sanderson takes us to a new set piece city influenced by an Epic super-power. In this case it is a travelling Atlanta, now known as Ildithia, somehow turned to salt and wandering across the continent growing on one end and collapsing on the other. How this occurred is never really explained, it is just the backdrop for the action. The logistical puzzle is interesting, but it seems difficult to imagine that anyone would actually take the trouble to bother living there if they have to move every week.

It was good to see Abraham and Cody back with David and Megan, and throwing in Mizzy from the Babylon Restored Reckoner cell made for an entertaining if somewhat less competent team than in the previous books. The characters were fun and the fights and revelations were exciting, flashy and enjoyable. However, the sense of urgency and danger dissipated as the main characters dodged bullet after bullet without really trying as they were dragged through the plot rather than driving the plot with anything more than intention. The usual cascade of revelations and plot turns was in force as it always is for a Sanderson novel, but for once it felt rushed and disconnected.

“I feel, like a barrel of green ducks at a Fourth of July parade.” David says at one point in the book. The simile doesn’t make any sense at the time and his attempted explanation is humorous. It seems a fitting description for the novel, it leaves you feeling contrived, nonsensical and trapped in the middle of something that should be climactic and exciting, but really just leaves you scratching your head. Worst of all, after working through a tangle of complications and setbacks to the first step of the plan we get most of the way through the novel and come to the final battle that should cap everything off and instead of a satisfying struggle we are basically just told that everything is resolved “Just like that”. And we aren’t just talking about tieing the plot threads together and resolving character goals. No, Calamity takes the defining aspects of the setting and entirely negates it. The world has no interesting problems to resolve.

*Spoilers*

The premise of a world where some people are have super-human abilities but the superpowers inherently make them into selfish arrogant villains incapable of considering the people around them was an excellent concept, showcasing the idea that power corrupts and how easy it is to be selfish and do abhorrent things if you value yourself over others. The absolute nature, that all Epics become evil as they use their powers was part of the fascination of the stories. As the setting was explained in more detail and the origin of the powers (and evil) was revealed to be the bratty terrified god-child Calamity the interesting part was cheapened. Putting the blame on an outside power that was corrupting the ‘inherent good’ in humanity without also having an outside good as well causes the premise to fall apart. Ultimately this means that since David and Megan can stand up to Calamity and own their powers and fears then any of those selfish Epic’s controlled by Calamity’s corruption could have thrown off their corruption if they had only been willing to do the same. David does it so effortlessly. There was amazing possibilities here, but Sanderson blinked and decided to go with the tidy feel-good option that falls apart and fails to satisfy anything.

There are also problems raised by Megan’s power to bridge to alternate realities, however powerful and interesting alternate realities might seem to be, they tend to cheapen the history and narrative structure of the world they are being brought into. Usually Brandon does a very good job of explaining the limitations of a power and the fun comes from working within the limitations to achieve maximum effect or showcasing interactions with other power sets. When you introduce something like being able to travel to alternate realities, logic and limitations start to break down, and trying to add more explanation of how it works and what is possible ends up confusing things even more. It seemed an odd thing to introduce in the third novel in a series, but it made sense why Brandon Sanderson started exploring it more in depth when I saw the announcement about a new series that he is working on set in a reality tangential to the Reckoners series The Apocalypse Guard. Hopefully he can make it work in that series, but I have my doubts based on the very nature of alternate realities.

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Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

There are some heartfelt reflections and character moments that come out of this novel, and the theme of humanity becoming something else by interacting with different places and having more time to live is interesting. But the story is, like the lives of its characters, too long, too passive and self-absorbed with introspection.

The conclusion of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy is sprawling and slow: giving us multiple character vignettes across a full century of Martian development. It starts immediately after Green Mars and shows us the aftermath of the successful second revolution that gives Mars its independence from Earth. The Martians build a government, a cooperative communist economy springs up and the terraforming concludes with blue oceans, breathable air and terran wildlife across the face of the planet.

After the unifying force of corporate oppression is lifted by (mostly) non-violent resistance, cooperative effort, democratic decision, and a very timely natural disaster on earth Mars is now the leader of the two-planet system and their technology and aid provide the momentum for humanity to accelerate their expansion to the asteroids and other planatiods in the Sol system. The viewpoint characters in this chapter of the trilogy don’t change much. We only have one memorable addition (Zo Boone) but she doesn’t do anything other than model a hedonistic nihilistic response to the world and then disappears, but we continue to have removals as the older first colonists start to die. After the needs of living underground and resisting the corporations are gone the characters go their separate ways, with their goals accomplished and the corporations defeated, the characters we have come to be interested in all fade into the background. Instead of being given viewpoint characters who take action we are see the world through the eyes of those who acted in the past as they watch other characters take action to change the world. As such the narrative is slow, meandering and directionless.

The story seems to be about the different characters trying to figure out what ‘Mars’ means for them as they disperse and no longer have to fight for their identity against Earth. But as they do this all the characters lose their personalities and take on a melancholic air at the loss of identity as they blend together in a vague mess of sorrow and people around them die, for the most part they don’t attempt to take action and they just wait to die.

The most interesting parts were the glimpses we were given of other worlds, but this is made less enjoyable by the way these encounters are used to deepen the angst and dissatisfaction of the viewpoint characters. Maya, Michel and Nirgal take a trip to earth where Michel descends into sorrowful nostalgia, Maya (not a viewpoint at this point) talks to the UN and arranges diplomatic stuff off stage, and Nirgal tries to find the Martian mother-figure and cult-leader Hiroko who disappeared during the revolution. Ann and Zo travel to the Jovian Moons and Uranus where Ann laments the terraforming efforts that ‘destroy’ the natural effects of the past and Zo does what her mother wants her to do and manipulates the colonists to back Jackie’s plans to unify the system against Earth. We also get to see Mercury through Zo’s eyes and are given a flyby of Venus. This expansion of what we are looking at is interesting and the glimpses we get at how people are solving the different problems of their different surroundings are very interesting, but it still feels like a loss of scope from a narrative direction.

I can appreciate that the characters are all looking for something, losing their connection to their past and trying to come to terms with their existance now that their primary goal is accomplished, and the novel conveys that feeling to the reader. But at the same time we lose our connection to their past which is the story that we were interested in and are forced to sit through chapters of existential malaise and tedium as we wait for someone to try to do something about it.

The culmination of this story isn’t a major political event, or change in Earth-Mars relations, though there is one of those building in the background that is resolved tangentially. Fittingly for the existential enemy that the characters are facing, the climax for the trilogy is when Saxifrage Russell, the great terraforming genius who started the process of turning Mars into a physically livable place when he arrived with the first hundred, expands his polymath scientific abilities into the realm of brain function and tries to come up with a drug that will help the recipients of the longevity treatments revisit their past memories which have been lost through the centuries and re-gain their connection to who they used to be, making Mars into a mentally livable place.

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Firefight by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

“Well, trust me,” I said. “I’m more intense than I look. I’m intense like a lion is orange.” – David Charleston ‘Firefight’

Firefight is the second book in Brandon Sanderson’s dystopian YA Reckoners trilogy. The series is set in a post-apocalyptic fractured America in which superheroes have come but the source that grants them their powers also causes them to be arrogant, selfish and destructive with no regard for anyone around them. The Reckoners are a group of humans fighting back against the tyranny and oppression of the Epics mostly by trying to assassinate the ones they can. This book continues after Steelheart, but does not stand as well on its own. It suffers from second book syndrome. It’s not a bad book, but lacks context without the first book and does most of its heavy lifting to set up the conclusion to the trilogy. It still manages to be a fun adventure with a comic-book sensibility, interesting worldbuilding and well thought out super-power action.

Following Steelheart, Firefight continues the story of David Charleston after he falls in with the Reckoners to help him fulfill his personal life-long goal of getting revenge by killing Steelheart (the supposedly invincible Epic who rules Dystopian Chicago (Newcago) and casually murdered David’s father in the prologue to Steelheart.) In the first book the premise was new and exciting and David’s awkward humor, social incompetence and fanboyish knowledge of epics was endearing, but this book has trouble moving past that. David’s obsession with Megan and the lack of an immediately visible personal connection with the mission that takes the Newcago Reckoners to Babilar puts a wrench in the focused direction and structure of the first book and we end up in a slower paced almost teen-melodrama for a while.

The writing works well enough, though David’s propensity for bad similes continues and Sanderson’s attempts at injecting overt humor comes across forced and a little awkward, but I couldn’t help snorting anyway. The character development is minimal, the characters are very much black and white with not much in the way of nuance. A handful of new characters are introduced which end up feeling a little lackluster compared the supporting cast in Steelheart. The new city that we visit (New York City, known after the Calamity as Babylon Restored or Babilar) is interesting but we don’t have the same personal connection with it that we did Newcago in Steelheart and it just ends up being a set piece for the puzzles and action that are presented. .

The plot with its mysteries, twists, turns and reveals and the logic behind the ‘magic’ of the superpowers and weaknesses of the Epics is, as always with Sanderson, the best part of the novel, though it fell a little flatter than usual. The largest problem with the story is that the attempts at balancing the idea that Epics are inherently driven to be evil with the need to have interesting villain characters and also having the possibility that some might be saved undermines the entire premise of the setting.

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Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

After the initial colonization of Mars and the failed revolution against the meta-national Earth based corporations in Red Mars, the first book in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy, Green Mars picks up with the survivors of the revolution living a hidden life in the southern regions of the planet where the hungry corporate resource exploiters have yet to descend in numbers. The early colonists hide, fractured by philosophical and political differences, divided from each other, from their children, and from the “occupying” corporate workers who run the planetary infrastructure. This book is about finding agreement in differences and how a morally superior minority might overthrow a massively powerful and wealthy controlling influence.

Since the first book, the terraforming project that is the most interesting part of the series has progressed, the atmosphere is growing, though CO2 levels are a significant problem. Plants and animals are being introduced to the landscape and the frozen water pumped to the surface of the red planet is melting. This terraforming happens too quickly for plausibility, but it is interesting to see the logic behind the different steps that are taken as they try to balance the different needs of humanity.

The debate surrounding terraforming started in the first book continues, the radical wing of the separatist rebels engages in escalating acts of eco-terrorism destroying terraforming equipment and providing multiple incentives for the meta-national corporations to respond in force, which they surprisingly, as fundamentally evil capitalist oppressors don’t do for a very long time. .

My inherent biases are at play here, I can understand environmentalism and trying to protect native habitats when those habitats include life, but fighting to keep a cold dead rock uninhabitable while living on it strikes me as an ultimately untenable and spiteful action. Regardless, this book is not strictly about these conflicts, they only set the backdrop for the resolution of differences in a brokered convention among the different parties.

The best part of the novel was again the scope and the structure that made it feel like the reader is watching a historical event unfold. The most interesting aspect was when a underground planetary congress comes together to draft their declaration of independence and hammering out the ideals that they can agree on and what structures they might be able to build on top of that.

The biggest flaw with the novel was that the rotating cast of viewpoint characters and the scope of the different debates that were happening perspectives frequently disappeared at points where it would be inconvenient to address, or difficult to reconcile. The entire meta-national corporation conflict with the insurrectionists is conducted through hearsay and never given voice outside of the character of William Fort, the president of the lone progressive corporation Praxis who says he values freedom and spends his time surfing and concocts a plan to acquire the Martian rebellion. This plan starts out like it might be the most interesting part of the novel, and the new character that it introduces Arthur Randolph starts off seeming like he is going to provide a very interesting capitalist ambassador perspective as he infiltrates the rebellion with the intention of turning them to Praxis’s needs, but instead once he meets up with the Martian colonists his viewpoint is replaced and when we next see through his eyes he is happily working away at Martian goals and Praxis turns out to be a benevolent ally always willing to do whatever they need that requires outside resources to accomplish. In a particularly interesting case when the rebellion turns to an armed assault on a security installation to rescue a captured friend immediately after he meets the rebels, Art disappears from a rover with no mention while other characters have conversations around him that would be awkward if he were part of.

The same kind of silencing happens to the Reds, the radical environmentalist group that engages in armed terrorism against terraforming efforts. They continually engage in their violent attacks in the background. But they peacefully attend the meeting where the global revolution agenda is ironed out, they are given radical concessions as the Green party itself is a radical environmentalist party and they grudgingly sign off on the terms but then continue doing what they always did, just without any hope of accomplishing it after they have capitulated. Ann, their figurehead leader from among the first colonists even has a defining moment where she decides to change how she does things and determining to take action after which she fades from the foreground and sits on her hands doing nothing for the rest of the book.

All in all I found the book interesting, and it made me think about important questions, though it was narratively flawed and unconvincing as an environmental socialist manifesto, it did make me think more deeply about how human actions and their environmental consequences should be considered in a larger scale to best protect the world and humanity, even if I think coming to a consensus as to how will be significantly different that this story presents.

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