|
road potato posted:That last line genuinely tugged on my heartstrings, and there's so much to unpack there. And that's just a nothing bit in the middle that seems like another thing to point out like how this boring weirdo also adds salt to his food at restaurants. I hate to delve into amateur psychoanalysis but the revelation that Sanderson doesn't experience physical pain or sadness is too profound to ignore. So much of the Stormlight Archive in particular seems to be thematically structured as a modern morality play where the greatest heroes are those who suffer the greatest psychological sorrow (Kaladin Dalinar and Shallan), while the villain purposefully written to channel the greatest hatred from the audience (Moash) is one who desires and seeks to minimize his suffering and sadness at the expense of others. In contrast Dalinar certifies his heroic nature by refusing to surrender up his emotional pain ("You cannot have my pain"). How do we interpret this knowing that the the temptation (no more pain) which proves Moash's evil and the rejection of which proves Dalinar's heroism is...the exact same circumstance that Sanderson describes himself as having? Does Sanderson see his unusual no-pain state as a blessing from God that all men would desire?
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2023 05:43
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 16, 2024 05:28 |
|
|
Subvisual Haze posted:Does Sanderson see his unusual no-pain state as a blessing from God that all men would desire? Uh, yes? Isn’t eternal freedom from suffering and pain literally the reward in most religions for a virtuous life?
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2023 06:03
|
|
|
he just wrote an article about it https://www.brandonsanderson.com/outside/
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2023 08:43
|
|
|
Nah he’s just a middle class white Mormon boy who’s never had any real trauma in his life.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2023 15:44
|
|
|
Megazver posted:he just wrote an article about it
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2023 19:55
|
|
|
I'm really enjoying Sanderson's body of work. He is like and inverse Feist. Sanderson started weak, but each of his books is better than the last. I can't wait for the new books this year. I need to find another grand fantasy epic like Sanderson's or Erickson's after I finish rhythm of war.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2023 21:14
|
|
|
Mr Hootington posted:I'm really enjoying Sanderson's body of work. He is like and inverse Feist. Sanderson started weak, but each of his books is better than the last. I can't wait for the new books this year. It’s entertaining to interact with people in different subforums. I may disagree with you elsewhere on SA, but completely agree here.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2023 00:33
|
|
|
Mr Hootington posted:I need to find another grand fantasy epic like Sanderson's or Erickson's after I finish rhythm of war. They're not 1000 pagers like stormlight but Brian McClellan's powdermage pair of trilogies is fantastic and very similar in feel to Sanderson.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2023 01:28
|
|
|
Brutor Fartknocker posted:They're not 1000 pagers like stormlight but Brian McClellan's powdermage pair of trilogies is fantastic and very similar in feel to Sanderson. Thanks I'll take a look.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2023 01:32
|
|
|
Powdermage is pretty great!
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2023 01:33
|
|
|
Just finished Secret Project 2. Wasn't sure what to think of it at first, but it won me over by the end. I will agree that the whole thing with Ryan did seem like it kind of fizzled, but John having to piece together his own catharsis kinda worked for me. Ryan was only a foil for John in John's head, with the reveal breaking the facade for John. I think if the book would have done more with the idea of self-image besides John and Serafynn being self-deprecating and John wanting her to see him as he is, I think it would have landed better. Everyone, including his shockingly lovely 'best friend', having him all wrong is an idea that was worth exploring more, I think. Coulda done without the phrase "couldn't stand up to wight power", though. Hoo boy. As for other fantasy, I'm partial to Will Wight's stuff. Traveler's Gate's a little shaky (still enjoyable), but I really like Cradle. Hope you light fight scenes, though. I think the last book of that is dropping this year and he just started a sci-fi series. Echophonic fucked around with this message at 03:29 on Apr 11, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2023 03:26
|
|
|
Mr Hootington posted:I'm really enjoying Sanderson's body of work. He is like and inverse Feist. Sanderson started weak, but each of his books is better than the last. I can't wait for the new books this year. It took me about 400 pages into book 1 to get into it but you can’t go wrong with The First Law trilogy.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2023 03:27
|
|
|
Echophonic posted:Just finished Secret Project 2. Wasn't sure what to think of it at first, but it won me over by the end. I will agree that the whole thing with Ryan did seem like it kind of fizzled, but John having to piece together his own catharsis kinda worked for me. Ryan was only a foil for John in John's head, with the reveal breaking the facade for John. I think if the book would have done more with the idea of self-image besides John and Serafynn being self-deprecating and John wanting her to see him as he is, I think it would have landed better. Everyone, including his shockingly lovely 'best friend', having him all wrong is an idea that was worth exploring more, I think. Last week
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2023 03:35
|
|
|
rafikki posted:Last week I could have phrased that more clearly. The last Cradle book is June and yeah, The Captain came out last week.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2023 04:14
|
|
|
Louisgod posted:It took me about 400 pages into book 1 to get into it but you can’t go wrong with The First Law trilogy. I bounced off The First Law once and then just happened to give it another chance years later and read everything he's written after that. Definitely a different vibe than Sanderson, but great books
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2023 04:33
|
|
|
Finally got around to listening to The Way of Kings after bouncing off the prologue back when it first came out. A few thoughts so far a bit under halfway. Kaladin does seem pretty cool, he just preformed the sideways bridge maneuver, so I imagine he's about to get strung up in a high storm since they've hammered that punishment but we haven't seen anyone suffer it yet. Dalinar also pretty interesting, last we saw him he'd just decided to abdicate to his playboy(but still also pretty cool) son. Shallan has been OK, the "wit" that I've seen talked about hasn't been too annoying so far, I think it's mostly that I'm not a fan of Readings.. uh, reading style.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2023 15:40
|
|
|
immoral_ posted:Finally got around to listening to The Way of Kings after bouncing off the prologue back when it first came out. you should try Reading the book yourself instead
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2023 16:19
|
|
|
I work in construction, generally by my self for the better part of the day, I think I'll continue listening to books.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2023 23:01
|
|
|
scary ghost dog posted:you should try Reading the book yourself instead Also the audio books rules I declaim this lost as a bad opinion or a bad pun or both.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2023 06:11
|
|
|
M_Gargantua posted:Also the audio books rules I declaim this lost as a bad opinion or a bad pun or both. I listened to the audiobooks years ago and was offput by the over-the-top stereotype accents.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2023 14:57
|
|
|
"That sword is worth fortunes!" Gotta admit, that was a pretty boss move.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 15:35
|
|
|
I am all aboard the Kaladin/Adolin snipe train.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2023 14:33
|
|
|
RC Cola posted:I liked it. The handbook reminded me of Aperture Science stuff. What was up with Logna and Woden? are they higher dimensional beings? maybe I missed something while listening high I'm a bit late to the (not well attended) party to discuss secret project 2, but it sounds like they are (extremely powerful?) beings from an even lower dimension who came as far upstream as they could, then were blocked from getting to "our" dimension. at the very end Logna was trying to read up on how the portals worked on the laptop, presumably to consider traveling upstream even more. All in all, I thought secret project 2 was serviceable, but I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone. It was too YA or YA adjacent for my tastes and I feel like almost all the humor is stuff Sanderson himself thinks is funny, but no one else does. There were some interesting things, and some that fell flat. I feel like its length was its saving grace, which I'm not sure is a great compliment.
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2023 20:28
|
|
|
I don't think YA is a bad thing, but I thought Tress felt a lot more like a YA novel than this one.
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2023 04:28
|
|
|
Oasx posted:I don't think YA is a bad thing, but I thought Tress felt a lot more like a YA novel than this one. Tress felt like an actual children's book. Of course, so does Coraline and that (as well as the movie adaption) was still scary and disturbing as gently caress. The buttons... Yeesh.
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2023 06:37
|
|
|
Tress was a fairy tale adventure. It is adorable and fun. Wizard's Guide is a YA adventure romp. It is ridiculous and fun. But I'm glad it was as short as it was, it left me wanting more but I don't think it could ever deliver that more without disappointment.
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2023 10:14
|
|
|
Invalid Validation posted:Nah he’s just a middle class white Mormon boy who’s never had any real trauma in his life. What do you think "middle class" means? Because people worth tens of millions of dollars are not it. Mr Hootington posted:I'm really enjoying Sanderson's body of work. He is like and inverse Feist. After reading the Firemane Saga and the 3rd book feeling like a really bad Sanderlanche this is painfully accurate. I deeply regret my "it'd be interesting if Riftwar is referenced in this series" thoughts when it first came out, considering the majority/entirety of the 3rd book's plot beats and especially the ending. If you haven't read firemane yet you aren't missing much. I don't think Sanderson ever recycled character arcs as much as Feist has though. Or just flat out forgot/ignored a character's previous beats and contradicted it in the next book.
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2023 17:01
|
|
|
Evil Fluffy posted:What do you think "middle class" means? Because people worth tens of millions of dollars are not it. You can have a something-class background independent of your current financial situation.
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2023 17:06
|
|
|
I can't believe Steve Jobs died of Xenix posted:Logna
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2023 15:06
|
|
|
I finally got to read Tress. I think it’s my new introduction book to the Cosmere. It was a pleasure to read from start to finish, and while it left me wanting more the book ended exactly where it needed to. The only drawback I can think of for using Tress rather than Mistborn/Warbreaker/TWoK as the Cosmere intro is that the book throws it right in your face that this world is one of many, and that there are lots of different settings for stories to take place. So you don’t get the wonderment of “Wait a second, that’s two different Sanderson books with a character named Hoid. What’s up with that?” Given that the Cosmere is one of the biggest selling points to Sanderson’s work, though, I don’t know how many people really go in blind on that front these days. And even though the book throws a bunch of names and ideas at you, if this is your point of entry into the series it’s essentially background noise. Like the TWoK prologue, or the WoT prologue, you can figure out what’s happening even if you don’t fully understand all the references; and rereading the book later will give you a whole new appreciation for all the things you missed the first time around. As for the writing, there were a few things that took me out of the book. The narrator makes several references to technology that are, to my knowledge, the first times we’ve ever seen those things mentioned in the Cosmere: the laptop line, in particular, caught me off guard. I’m not sure if that was lack of attention to points of view and limited knowledge, if the narrator does in fact know what those items are, or if I’ve missed similar references to such things in previous books. And now a question about the book: what did Hoid get in exchange for accepting the curse? The ability to use Aons? I thought he already had access to pretty much every magic system we’ve seen to date in the Cosmere.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2023 15:53
|
|
|
Grundulum posted:And now a question about the book: what did Hoid get in exchange for accepting the curse? The ability to use Aons? I thought he already had access to pretty much every magic system we’ve seen to date in the Cosmere. Yes, similar to Shai, its one of the more difficult power sets to gain externally.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2023 15:57
|
|
|
Grundulum posted:As for the writing, there were a few things that took me out of the book. The narrator makes several references to technology that are, to my knowledge, the first times we’ve ever seen those things mentioned in the Cosmere: the laptop line, in particular, caught me off guard. I’m not sure if that was lack of attention to points of view and limited knowledge, if the narrator does in fact know what those items are, or if I’ve missed similar references to such things in previous books. Tress is set in the distant future in the Cosmere timeline compared to Mistborn or Stormlight, we know there is a plan for Mistborn era 3 which is modern, and era 4 which is in the future with space travel, Tress happens somewhere after era 3
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2023 16:14
|
|
|
I've just started reading the Cosmere stuff after finishing WoT, is this the only Brando Sando thread? There's not a split between spoilers/no spoilers? Anyway I'm starting with Elantris because I heard it's a bit rough and I'm gonna get it out of the way first. I'm only six chapters in but fuckin lmao at Serene thinking she's over the hill at 25. Great job Sanderson, no wonder you got picked to finish WoT.
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2023 01:47
|
|
|
pik_d posted:I've just started reading the Cosmere stuff after finishing WoT, is this the only Brando Sando thread? There's not a split between spoilers/no spoilers? If you can make it through Elantris, then it's all uphill from there. Serene's chapters are the loving pits.
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2023 01:53
|
|
|
pik_d posted:I've just started reading the Cosmere stuff after finishing WoT, is this the only Brando Sando thread? There's not a split between spoilers/no spoilers? We have no spoiler/non-spoiler split, because we are usually pretty good with spoilers. I have to warn you, Elantris was the first Sanderson book I've read, and it made me disinclined to try his other books. This only changed when he was picked to finish WoT, at which point I read Mistborn and became a Sanderson fan. Elantris does have some bright spots, but it's clearly one of his weakest works. Imho the weakest.
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2023 02:22
|
|
|
Torrannor posted:Elantris does have some bright spots, but it's clearly one of his weakest works. Imho the weakest.  Elantris is Sanderson's first published work and it shows in parts. Mistborn may have only been released a year or so later, but it's a pretty sizable step up - enough so that it's my go-to recommendation for people on where to start reading his stuff.
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2023 02:37
|
|
|
Yeah, I got recommended to start with Mistborn Era 1 and that was probably a good call. I didn't mind Elantris so much, though, the world is cool and Aons are a neat magic system. I could see recommending Tress as an entry point. It's light, it introduces the variety of magics in the Cosmere and the concept of the multiverse in a way that earlier books don't. Misborn is so bogged down with three kinds of magic based on metals and I cannot and will not ever remember what does what. Echophonic fucked around with this message at 03:28 on May 2, 2023 |
|
#
?
May 2, 2023 03:17
|
|
|
On the other hand if you read them in publication order you get the full breath of the buildup and interlinks, without any future spoilers. And each book will generally be better than the last, so you just have to overcome Elantris and you're set.
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2023 03:35
|
|
|
M_Gargantua posted:On the other hand if you read them in publication order you get the full breath of the buildup and interlinks, without any future spoilers. Publication order would be my advice for anyone planning to read all the books but.. it makes sense to me to recommend Emperor’s Soul to someone who doesn’t necessarily like fantasy but would like to see what Sanderson is about
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2023 03:41
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 16, 2024 05:28 |
|
|
Echophonic posted:I could see recommending Tress as an entry point. It's light, it introduces the variety of magics in the Cosmere and the concept of the multiverse in a way that earlier books don't. Misborn is so bogged down with three kinds of magic based on metals and I cannot and will not ever remember what does what. It’s tough because if you read Tress first you’ll miss so many cosmere lore references, including Hoid’s overall origin, which I suppose could have the reverse effect where if you were to read anything after Tress, you could tie it back to Tress. I’m usually torn between recommending Mistborn or Warbreaker as a first Sanderson book.
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2023 03:55
|
|