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Kchama posted:You know, a conversation with a friend actually made me question something. It's popular by book standards. Wildly popular by fantasy genre sales standards. But since the adaption hasn't come out yet it doesn't have much recognition.
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Nov 17, 2018 01:17
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Benson Cunningham posted:Compared to Gormenghast? Sure. Sanderson is better than Abercrombie in every way unless you want an edge lord who loves to swear and write a racist caricature evil empire. And there is gently caress all in terms of complexity for most of the First Law characters. Dalinar has more complexity than pretty much anyone in that series.
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Nov 17, 2018 02:20
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Ccs posted:It's popular by book standards. Wildly popular by fantasy genre sales standards. But since the adaption hasn't come out yet it doesn't have much recognition. How well does fantasy sell, as a whole? Or rather, just how popular can all that non-genre trash, or airport fiction genre, whatever, actually be?
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Nov 17, 2018 02:57
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BananaNutkins posted:If I'm just looking for a good time, I'd rather read a new Abercrombie or Sanderson than something "literary" like Ursula Le Guin or whatever.
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Nov 17, 2018 04:55
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that wasn't a good emptyquote btw
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Nov 17, 2018 04:57
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The soda/wine analogy really breaks down when the Sanderson book is 1200 pages long and the Le Guin 200 pages. Also love the idea of Le Guin perched in the top of her literary ivory tower. Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 05:04 on Nov 17, 2018 |
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Nov 17, 2018 05:02
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Wheeee posted:How well does fantasy sell, as a whole? Or rather, just how popular can all that non-genre trash, or airport fiction genre, whatever, actually be? The stats I can find say Sci-Fi/Fantasy is 8% of the market. It's risen above the Mystery genre, which is around 7%, but is dwarfed by Romance at 21%. The Kingkiller books sold 10 million copies so far. A lot of other series have beaten it in sales, but a lot of those series have a LOT more books. For comparison, the Sword of Truth series (20 volumes) has sold 25 million in total. So way more people have read Rothfuss' work. Anyway you can really tell how much Rothfuss drew on his interminable time in undergrad to write this book, a series which is about : -How hard it was to pay his student loans in college -That one guy in school he hated who was an rear end in a top hat for no reason -How much it sucked that the girl he liked dated other guys, even though he never asked her out -His work-study job making lamps -The cultures he appropriated during his gap year It's no wonder this book is a hit with college students and why I enjoyed reading it in freshman year. Ccs fucked around with this message at 05:16 on Nov 17, 2018 |
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Nov 17, 2018 05:02
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I was trying to be nice earlier and not really get into the issue, but I genuinely do not understand how someone can be so averse to thought that friggin' A Wizard of Earthsea is a more intimidating undertaking than a doorstop like Oathbringer. Le Guin is hardly a demanding author, but 1,248 pages of Sanderson is apparently a safer bet for "a good time" because there isn't even the threat of having to engage with any ideas of substance.
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Nov 17, 2018 05:15
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Evil Fluffy posted:Sanderson is better than Abercrombie in every way unless you want an edge lord who loves to swear and write a racist caricature evil empire. Dalinar is not complex. A character is not automatically complex because a bunch of random poo poo happens to them. Shallan is not complex because she has three personalities crammed into a bad pun machine body. In the same way that Rothfuss has these naive views about women- attempting to champion feminism while constantly putting his foot in his mouth- Sanderson's characters reveal that he is naive about all kinds of poo poo and just beginning to work through it. Watching his character's stumble through awkward conversations about it being okay to be gay or transgendered or whatever social issue he most recently figured out Mormons were wrong about is loving painful. When it comes to emotional development, Sanderson/Rothfuss are doing a lot of algebra. They are great at alegbra, don't get me wrong. But, I was really looking for some calculus. In this stupid math metaphor, Abercrombie is obvious doing Trig.
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Nov 17, 2018 05:32
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Every reason you just used for major stormlight characters are the same sort of surface level criticism that can be leveled at Ged in earthsea? Its another good book, but Le Guin isn't some height of literary genius for it.
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Nov 17, 2018 06:33
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I can't tell what you think people are talking about.
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Nov 17, 2018 06:38
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Benson Cunningham posted:Dalinar is not complex. A character is not automatically complex because a bunch of random poo poo happens to them. Shallan is not complex because she has three personalities crammed into a bad pun machine body. In the same way that Rothfuss has these naive views about women- attempting to champion feminism while constantly putting his foot in his mouth- Sanderson's characters reveal that he is naive about all kinds of poo poo and just beginning to work through it. Watching his character's stumble through awkward conversations about it being okay to be gay or transgendered or whatever social issue he most recently figured out Mormons were wrong about is loving painful. How would you rate Hrathen?
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Nov 17, 2018 06:52
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Torrannor posted:How would you rate Hrathen? I would rate Elantris one of the most boring books I've ever read.
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Nov 17, 2018 15:01
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Sham bam bamina! posted:I was trying to be nice earlier and not really get into the issue, but I genuinely do not understand how someone can be so averse to thought that friggin' A Wizard of Earthsea is a more intimidating undertaking than a doorstop like Oathbringer. Le Guin is hardly a demanding author, but 1,248 pages of Sanderson is apparently a safer bet for "a good time" because there isn't even the threat of having to engage with any ideas of substance. I personally like longer books and having to invest more time to read them. Why? I don’t quite know the answer to that. If Le Guin is ~200 pages, it wouldn’t hold my interest long enough to be worth it, regardless of the quality.
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Nov 17, 2018 15:40
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latinotwink1997 posted:I personally like longer books and having to invest more time to read them. Why? I don’t quite know the answer to that. If Le Guin is ~200 pages, it wouldn’t hold my interest long enough to be worth it, regardless of the quality. Do the first two hundred pages of a long book not hold your interest? You could just read it six times in a row and probably get the same experience.
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Nov 17, 2018 15:58
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There's a bit of masochism in most readers who love epic fantasy. No one sane will admit to loving every part of the Wheel of Time. It's a journey full of memorable suffering, like the Camino de Santigo.
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Nov 17, 2018 16:31
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ah yes the suffering of walking through spain
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Nov 17, 2018 17:32
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I mostly like Abercrombie because his writing is a lot funnier than Rothfuss or Sanderson, whose characters are so self important.
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Nov 17, 2018 19:31
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latinotwink1997 posted:I personally like longer books and having to invest more time to read them. Why? I don’t quite know the answer to that. If Le Guin is ~200 pages, it wouldn’t hold my interest long enough to be worth it, regardless of the quality. God why are fantasy readers such size queens? An 8-inch monster cock isn’t better than a 5 inch dick if the 8-incher thinks a clitoris is a kind of Pokémon and the 5-inch guy gives awesome head. Doctor Faustine fucked around with this message at 19:52 on Nov 17, 2018 |
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Nov 17, 2018 19:48
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CestMoi posted:ah yes the suffering of walking through spain The true believers do it in stilletos like the saints of old.
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Nov 17, 2018 22:41
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Doctor Faustine posted:An 8-inch monster cock isn’t better than a 5 inch dick if the 8-incher thinks a clitoris is a kind of Pokémon and the 5-inch guy gives awesome head.
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Nov 18, 2018 02:58
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latinotwink1997 posted:I personally like longer books and having to invest more time to read them. Why? I don’t quite know the answer to that. If Le Guin is ~200 pages, it wouldn’t hold my interest long enough to be worth it, regardless of the quality. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Nov 18, 2018 03:53
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that wasn't a good emptyquote either btw
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Nov 18, 2018 03:53
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Doctor Faustine posted:God why are fantasy readers such size queens?
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Nov 18, 2018 03:55
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oh i'm just dismayed by the whole lot of you
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Nov 18, 2018 03:56
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who even raised you people
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Nov 18, 2018 03:56
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FactsAreUseless posted:She's still not coming back. That would be funnier if I was actually a dude.
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Nov 18, 2018 04:30
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Self-quoting because I can't be bothered to rewrite the exact same idea here.Doctor Faustine posted:God why are fantasy readers such size queens? Sham bam bamina! posted:The difference between science fiction and fantasy is that science fiction (ideally) asks a big ol' what-if question and tries to answer it, while fantasy is (or has come to be) about immersing the reader in a "realm". One's about getting to the point; the other's about dragging its feet while taking the most scenic route possible. This is why SF novels are all 200-300 pages long while fantasy novels are thousand-page installments in a trilogy at minimum.
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Nov 18, 2018 04:43
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Benson Cunningham posted:Do the first two hundred pages of a long book not hold your interest? You could just read it six times in a row and probably get the same experience. To me, if a story can be told in only two hundred pages, there isn’t enough build up and engaging elements to be of interest. BananaNutkins posted:There's a bit of masochism in most readers who love epic fantasy. No one sane will admit to loving every part of the Wheel of Time. It's a journey full of memorable suffering, like the Camino de Santigo. Also this.
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Nov 18, 2018 06:34
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latinotwink1997 posted:To me, if a story can be told in only two hundred pages, there isn’t enough build up and engaging elements to be of interest. Well that's certainly something.
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Nov 18, 2018 07:40
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what th gently caress
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Nov 18, 2018 08:29
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More really isn't better though. Half the poo poo in an epic fantasy novel is just pointless padding for crap like character descriptions, elven culture that goes into detail about how they worship trees, defining bullshit made-up words (because Tolkien did it), and thesaurus abuse. Ok, fine, don't believe me? Let's open up some Robert Jordan, specifically, the prologue of The Eye of the World. There's a LOT of repetitive cruft, unnecessary character description, and generally not great prose that could probably be made shorter - and I would consider this some of Jordan's more concise writing. Robert Jordan posted:The palace still shook occasionally as the earth rumbled in memory, groaned as if it would deny what had happened. Bars of sunlight cast through rents in the walls made motes of dust glitter where they yet hung in the air. Scorch-marks marred the walls, the floors, the ceilings. Broad black smears crossed the blistered paints and gild of once-bright murals, soot overlaying crumbling friezes of men and animals which seemed to have attempted to walk before the madness grew quiet. The dead lay everywhere, men and women and children, struck down in attempted flight by the lightnings that had flashed down every corridor, or seized by the fires that had stalked them, or sunken into stone of the palace, the stones that had flowed and sought, almost alive, before stillness came again. In odd counterpoint, colorful tapestries and paintings, masterworks all, hung undisturbed except where bulging walls had pushed them awry. Finely carved furnishings, inlaid with ivory and gold, stood untouched except where rippling floors had toppled them. The mind-twisting had struck at the core, ignoring peripheral things. Look at all the redundancy and unnecessary detail. We need to convey that this is a wrecked palace covered in corpses slain by a mad wizard who left his expensive bling untouched, fine. We dedicate two sentences to everything being covered in scorch marks when one would have sufficed. It's not enough to have colorful paintings and tapestries, they must be "masterworks all" which conveys literally nothing to the reader except a vague sense of goodness. We know they're presumably valuable because they're in a goddamn palace, We also have a few instances of Jordan literally beating the obvious contrast into the reader, "in odd counterpoint" and "The mind-twisting had struck at the core, ignoring peripheral things" add literally nothing to the message being conveyed. Now, people are going to rightly point out that prose isn't just a technical manual to convey information, but the prose here doesn't really build to anything or convey any sort of emotion or color. Are we supposed to be horrified at the field of corpses? They get a sentence. Are we going for a clinical detachment? I don't think so, because of that opening shaking, denial, and madness, nor the visceral struck. Let's look at another passage from the intro, shall we? Here Jordan introduces an evil dark wizard. Robert Jordan posted:Behind him the air rippled, shimmered, solidified into a man who looked around, his mouth twisting briefly with distaste. Not so tall as Lews Therin, [the insane wizard who caused the prior scene], he was clothed in all black, save for the snow-white lace at his throat and the silverwork on the turned-down tops of his thigh-high boots. He stepped carefully, handling his cloak fastidiously to avoid brushing the dead. The floor trembled with aftershocks, but his attention was fixed on the man staring into the mirror and laughing. Look at this. "Rippled, shimmered, solidified" is just awful, it doesn't flow at all. The description of the clothing adds literally nothing - he's clad in black, ok, we know that's bad, but why focus on the lace and silverwork? I'm going to spoil it for you readers and straight up reveal this character is pure evil. Heck, he's referred to as "the black-clad man" throughout the remainder of the introduction. Contrast this with the act of keeping his cloak clean - this tells us more about the character than the descriptions of his height and his odd boot selection. It's also telling that this man literally appears out of thin air, and the narrative chooses not to comment on that but to focus on his drat clothes. I skipped a similar description of Lews Therin earlier, and the next character we're introduced to gets a similar bullshit description slotted in. This isn't done to show that this guy is a fop, but is SOP for introducing characters in fantasy word piles. Again, the problem isn't that the author is using too many words per se, it's that so much of this is wasted words that accomplish nothing. Fantasy paperweights being so drat long is not because their stories are so long and intricate that they demand hundreds of thousands of words, but because their authors are padding out books with extra garbage that doesn't add anything.
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Nov 18, 2018 08:51
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The corollary to that is that Le Guin didn't need seven hundred pages because she could tell the same story much more pithily in 200. If you handed the plot of The Left Hand of Darkness to Sanderson or Jordan or (ugh) Rothfuss you'd end up with an unreadable trilogy of eight hundred pages per book. And the story, even if the key points were intact, would frankly lose something in the conversion. The density is part of the telling. That said...sometimes the empty, verbose bullshit hits the spot because you'll slide off something more dense that day. So I do see the appeal of the sparse, meandering bullshit that takes ten pages to say what a good author could in one.
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Nov 18, 2018 09:07
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:More really isn't better though.
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Nov 18, 2018 09:12
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Sham bam bamina! posted:Not sure why you typed all those words instead of just linking to this. Did not know that was a thing, but I feel like I found something missing in my life.
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Nov 18, 2018 09:16
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Reene posted:The corollary to that is that Le Guin didn't need seven hundred pages because she could tell the same story much more pithily in 200. If you handed the plot of The Left Hand of Darkness to Sanderson or Jordan or (ugh) Rothfuss you'd end up with an unreadable trilogy of eight hundred pages per book. And the story, even if the key points were intact, would frankly lose something in the conversion. The density is part of the telling. I like sparse, meandering bullshit because I can listen to it at work without it affecting my work
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Nov 18, 2018 09:19
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Strom Cuzewon posted:The way Stone-Splitter suddenly hurls his mask off and starts shouting makes me picture a 6 year old having a tantrum, not a big burly warrior. Late to the party but a bit of catch up: I feel like this is contextually reasonable. The Northmen, like any cultural have societal traditions, rituals and taboos. Many of them are stupid or silly, but that's because they're largely a bunch of rednecks. In this case, we know a couple things going in. This blustery pre-fight talk is essentially a ritual - we see it almost every time two named men square off. The talk a bunch of poo poo and then we get down it - it's like the stupid pre-weigh in stare-downs you see clips of in boxing or MMA or the redneck version of "may your blade chip and shatter" in Dune. This is coupled with what we get as an implicit taboo - lying about being a named man. Names are a big deal in the North, and you don't give them to yourself. Insofar as their is an honor component to Northern culture, it's that names mean something - Forley "the weakest's" big moment is rising above a demeaning name and the rest of the crew really respect that, even Dow, who is a piece of poo poo. So Stone-splitter strolls in and makes the traditional insult opening to a duel, and in his mind Logan essentially shits on the floor by claiming to be the most famous named man in the North. The wrestling analogizes people were making in jest were actually apt - there's a set of norms and expectations and they're being violated - the fact that outsiders think they're stupid norms doesn't mean that the adherents don't take them seriously. Evil Fluffy posted:Sanderson is better than Abercrombie in every way unless you want an edge lord who loves to swear and write a racist caricature evil empire. This is the worst of takes. Sanderson can't write complexity for poo poo. His characters are all one note with super simplistic morality. Dalinar isn't complex because he used to be a piece of poo poo and now isn't. Moreover, it's lazy writing because we're introduced to Dalinar as a good dude who we're told was a piece of poo poo before the books started. It's not even an earned transformation that happens over the course of our reading. By the time we actually see Dalinar's past it's like 3000 pages later. And even then, Sanderson can't conscious an actual transformation because we just roll a back to when he was an even younger man who is a totally likable good guy -he wins over enemies doesn't kill Tanalan's son, etc. His real arc is just reverting back to his original state. It's pretty much the same arc of all 3 main characters. Shalan is a smart and energetic child, then she breaks down but that happens prior to the story starting. Then she reverts back to that. Kaladin is a caring impetuous leader, who we're introduced to as a brooding nihilist- but again, we're told he used to be different, and then he just reverts back to who he was before. All of these characters essentially had destinies about who they were "Supposed to be" but they were derailed and the books are just them course correcting -except we're introduced to all of them after their fall. Sanderson is a serviceable writer whose main notable characteristic is that he cranks stuff out at an absurd pace - but he's not writing anything better than the junk R. A. Salvatore was when he was the gateway for nerds into the genre. If you're figuring out that gay people aren't bad or maybe that women are treated unfairly at the same time as Sanderson, than I guess that could be exciting for you. Beyond that, his main appeal is to people who love "world building" in that, re-reading D&D manuals cover-to-cover for the fifth time is their idea of fun. That's what most of his poo poo reads like -like what he really wanted to do was design an RPG, but he's settling for writing a book in that setting instead. His fans love his "Well-thought out" magic systems, but it's all a bunch of needlessly meticulous poo poo that doesn't matter. Le Guin's naming is worth being sketched out because the magic system has a purpose beyond create rules for an anime fight. Naming is about truly understanding things and people, getting to their essence. It's about the relationship of language and power. What is drinking a bunch of metals telling us that needs the level of detail it gets in Mistborn? Sanderson spends tons of pages outlining all of these rules and stuff, but none of it means anything. Just have your magic people do magic unless there's a real story reason for going into the nitty-gritty of how it works. Again, it feels like he's writing out all of these detailed rules so that you can use them to play an RPG. Which is pretty much just Salvatore being sure to describe all the loot Drizzit and crew grab so you can match it up PHB. EDIT: Does Sanderson even have any grey characters? Off the top of my head, anyone who seems that way is later revealed to have always been a good/evil person and the appearance of ambiguity is just authorial omission in service of a reveal. latinotwink1997 posted:To me, if a story can be told in only two hundred pages, there isn't enough build up and engaging elements to be of interest. Do you read anything other than genre fiction? If not, maybe put genre fiction aside for a bit and go read some literature because this is not a healthy position to take. It's like saying that a film can't hold your interest, but what you really need is a 12-season CW run. Karnegal fucked around with this message at 12:29 on Nov 18, 2018 |
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Nov 18, 2018 12:22
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Karnegal posted:Do you read anything other than genre fiction? If not, maybe put genre fiction aside for a bit and go read some literature because this is not a healthy position to take. It's like saying that a film can't hold your interest, but what you really need is a 12-season CW run. I do enjoy Supernatural even if the writing sucks 😆 I’ll go back to lurking now, since I’m obviously upsetting you.
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Nov 18, 2018 15:09
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Andrast posted:I like sparse, meandering bullshit because I can listen to it at work without it affecting my work Yeah, Sanderson is the kind of poo poo I read when I'm going to sleep. I just prop up my kindle and drift off. I wrote a big shpiel about Sanderson after finishing Stormlight which boiled down to: his books are incredibly interchangeable to the point that if you've read one Sanderson book you have really read them all, he clearly wants to be writing screenplays based on how tightly he cleaves to setup-reminder-payoff, and he's writing a story/setting, not characters. That's why the characters are such flat archetypes (Kaladin is Dude What Has Depression, Renarin is Nice Kid With Autism, Shallan is the Strong Abuse Survivor, etc) because they're just set pieces that do the bare minimum of whatever they need to be doing to move the story he wants to tell along. This is actually pretty forgiveable if not extremely entertaining if you're really into character-driven stuff (like me) until you get to characters like Hoid, who both fails to exist within the confines of the story as it's being laid out and serves as the author's surrogate to explain the plot to readers he clearly doesn't think are smart enough to pick up on what's going on. Reene fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Nov 18, 2018 |
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Nov 18, 2018 18:15
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Reene posted:I wrote a big shpiel about Sanderson after finishing Stormlight
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Nov 18, 2018 19:58
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