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Damo posted:After reading all other Sanderson cosmere books in order of publication, I've finally started Way of Kings. Only about 70 pages in but I already have to say wow has his prose improved dramatically this book. I mean, he almost reads like a different author. It's fantastic. I don't even think a single eyebrow has been raised yet! The prologue with Szeth is pretty bleh, to be honest. The entire first half of the book doesn't hold a candle to the second half, so if you're enjoying it already, you're in for a wild ride.
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Jul 11, 2014 13:32
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In fact the entire prologue is just Sanderson setting down rules for one of the magic systems on Roshar so he doesn't have to keep explaining it later on. I found it quite jarring when i re-read the book.
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Jul 11, 2014 13:49
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The worst part is that he managed to ruin a "supernatural assassin kills a king" scene by filling it with loving Player's Handbook magic-system-rules bullshit and that bullshit isn't even important to the story. It would be awful even if those details were important to the story, but it doesn't even have that excuse. It's completely loving unnecessary and it does nothing but make the prologue a particularly awful piece of prose even by the standards of an author who's notably bad at that to begin with. It is probably the single worst Sanderson's ever written, which is saying something.
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Jul 11, 2014 14:11
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Khizan posted:The worst part is that he managed to ruin a "supernatural assassin kills a king" scene by filling it with loving Player's Handbook magic-system-rules bullshit and that bullshit isn't even important to the story. I don't think he got that deep into the details there. At worst we're talking like, LARPer's Guide to Sorcery.
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Jul 11, 2014 14:15
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I think it should have been left unexplained maybe the term 'lashing' could have been used here and there but none of the more dry stuff. It should have been left till the future (book 2) when Kaladin was learning about his powers and that. More mystery is good I think!
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Jul 11, 2014 14:21
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Strumpy posted:I think it should have been left unexplained maybe the term 'lashing' could have been used here and there but none of the more dry stuff. It should have been left till the future (book 2) when Kaladin was learning about his powers and that. More mystery is good I think! I kind of like my idea that the POV in that chapter should've been Sadeas. It would have taken a little away from Dalinar's revelation to Adolin that Sadeas was pretending to be King Gavilar to provide a diversion, but it would've been a huger shock when Sadeas turns on Dalinar.
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Jul 11, 2014 14:24
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Sanderson has been ruining every climactic moment for me by having a character say the same frigging line in every book: I cringe, waiting for it to happen. Hoping and praying it won't happen. Then it does. At the moment when a character reveals his/her big plot changing discovery, they say, "Don't you see?" And they they go on to explain their discovery. I crumble. It happens in literally every book of his. Even the short stories. I was 90% done with his latest, Sixth of the Dusk, and I thought I was safe. Nope.
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Jul 11, 2014 14:51
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api call girl posted:I don't think he got that deep into the details there. At worst we're talking like, LARPer's Guide to Sorcery. "This was a Basic Lashing, first of his three kinds of Lashings. It gave him the ability to manipulate whatever force, spren, or god it was that held men to the ground. With this Lashing, he could bind people or objects to different surfaces or in different directions." Yeah, it doesn't give loving weight or volume limits or Stormlight Points like you'd see in a PHB, true. Those things aside, though, this is basically interrupting the action to give us the PHB description of how that spell he just did works, and he does this poo poo every time something new happens in that prologue. It's basically like "The guards threw spears at the assassin and he cast Reverse Lashing on the door. It is a spell with the following stats. Target: One person or object. Range: Touch. Duration: Until Released or contact broken. Effect: Increases gravitational pull of target. Objects thrown at the wizard will instead strike the target of this spell. The spears veered in the air and hit the door." It's awful and clumsy even by Sanderson's standards, and those are pretty loving low to begin with. Khizan fucked around with this message at 15:09 on Jul 11, 2014 |
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Jul 11, 2014 15:00
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I confess the Prologue really put me off The Way of Kings initially, I bought the book, read Szeth's prologue, and only a recommendation from my Dad about a month later that the rest of the book was really good got me to pick it back up again.
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Jul 11, 2014 15:07
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That's one of my problems with Sanderson's writing. His magic systems are cool, but he's a bit too into copiously explaining them. For every passage in one of his books where he's reiterating or revealing more about the intricacies of the magic system is what another writer like GRRM would be using to reveal more about the character's mental state/feelings and forge a better emotional connection. That's why I care more about some minor characters in Song of Ice and Fire more than I do about a lot of major characters in The Stormlight Archive.
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Jul 11, 2014 16:09
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api call girl posted:I kind of like my idea that the POV in that chapter should've been Sadeas. It would have taken a little away from Dalinar's revelation to Adolin that Sadeas was pretending to be King Gavilar to provide a diversion, but it would've been a huger shock when Sadeas turns on Dalinar. api call girl posted:I kind of like my idea that the POV in that chapter should've been Sadeas. It would have taken a little away from Dalinar's revelation to Adolin that Sadeas was pretending to be King Gavilar to provide a diversion, but it would've been a huger shock when Sadeas turns on Dalinar. you might just get your wish eventually. i'd bet that the first 5 books at least are going to start with a different perspective on that night just like 1 and 2
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Jul 11, 2014 16:15
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The way Sanderson set up Way of Kings, the prologue was necessary so the reader could figure out before Kaladin did that Kaladin is Surgebinding, and what that means. Sanderson is a fantasy writer who uses scifi conventions (wherein everything has to make logical sense by the end of the story) so his magic systems tend to be rigid and thoroughly explained. Eric the Mauve fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Jul 11, 2014 |
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Jul 11, 2014 19:33
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Eric the Mauve posted:The way Sanderson set up Way of Kings, the prologue was necessary so the reader could figure out before Kaladin did that Kaladin is Surgebinding, and what that means. A more elegant way to do that would be to make szeth explain a different binding each intermission, but that would probably be a bit straightforward for Sanderson
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Jul 11, 2014 20:03
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senae posted:A more elegant way to do that would be to make szeth explain a different binding each intermission, but that would probably be a bit straightforward for Sanderson To be fair he basically did that in Words of Radiance with the Parshendi forms.
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Jul 11, 2014 21:31
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He also could have had Dalinar have visions of surgebinding teaching via the stormfather, or show some surgebinding going on (+explanation) during the final battle of the last Desolation.
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Jul 11, 2014 22:51
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Eric the Mauve posted:The way Sanderson set up Way of Kings, the prologue was necessary so the reader could figure out before Kaladin did that Kaladin is Surgebinding, and what that means. There are really only a few things that you need to be told for this.
Numbers 1 and 3 can be easily handled in the Prologue without the horrible "Reverse Lashing is a touch range spell with a low yet constant mana drain" type of infodumping that he uses and he has hundreds and hundreds of pages to handle #2 before it becomes relevant to the Kaladin situation.
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Jul 12, 2014 00:16
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Well the prologue is poo poo but I knew that going in from the hundreds of people who have commented on it, made fun of the whole "lashing" tutorial poo poo. It's super short so I just ignored it's shittiness. I'm more referring to the stuff after that when I say his writing has improved. Also consider I'm not saying his writing is great, it's more that it's not the utter poo poo I experienced in Elantris/Mistborn/Warbreaker. Like, it's become passably decent now is what I meant. Especially now that people aren't raising their eyebrows as much as Teal'c from Stargate SG-1. Damo fucked around with this message at 02:25 on Jul 12, 2014 |
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Jul 12, 2014 02:21
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Was it the 2nd chapter in Words of Radiance where Jasnah and.. Shallan? basically have a tutorial guide about their powers and how to work them? That was boring as poo poo. He's way too much of a "Okay you do this, then you do this, then this, and this, and here's the explanations." writer.
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Jul 12, 2014 05:18
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So here's a theory I have about the Diagram, maybe I'm an idiot though Taravangian asked for the capacity to save mankind. I think that capacity is related to his empathy, rather than his intelligence. Since when he is incredibly clever he basically becomes a sociopath, I don't think the Diagram is a guide to saving the world at all. I think at one point when he is "dumb" he is going to rebel against the grand plan and let someone live who was supposed to die or something (or destroy the diagram?) which will allow for the day to actually be saved, as he was before he never would have been empathic enough to give up that amount of power.
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Jul 12, 2014 07:08
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Pwnstar posted:So here's a theory I have about the Diagram, maybe I'm an idiot though Taravangian asked for the capacity to save mankind. I think that capacity is related to his empathy, rather than his intelligence. Since when he is incredibly clever he basically becomes a sociopath, I don't think the Diagram is a guide to saving the world at all. I think at one point when he is "dumb" he is going to rebel against the grand plan and let someone live who was supposed to die or something (or destroy the diagram?) which will allow for the day to actually be saved, as he was before he never would have been empathic enough to give up that amount of power. Yeah I like that a lot.
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Jul 12, 2014 10:03
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Isn't that basically what slightly dumb Taravangian figured out when he was 'visiting' Vedanar
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Jul 12, 2014 10:32
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Ccs posted:That's one of my problems with Sanderson's writing. His magic systems are cool, but he's a bit too into copiously explaining them. For every passage in one of his books where he's reiterating or revealing more about the intricacies of the magic system is what another writer like GRRM would be using to reveal more about the character's mental state/feelings and forge a better emotional connection. That's why I care more about some minor characters in Song of Ice and Fire more than I do about a lot of major characters in The Stormlight Archive. Yeah, it was weird to go from the Malazan series where nobody explains what a Warren is until something like book 5 (and you never get a real explanation, everyone that tries to describe it is coming from imperfect knowledge) to WoK where he literally lays out the magic system at the beginning.
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Jul 12, 2014 15:23
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It's just two different styles. I like both, some people dislike the over-explaining. Some people dislike the under-explaining. It's weird how this is a constant derail. If you hated the first chapter or two, then skim them and keep reading the rest. If you just really hated it, don't keep reading? I dunno it seems simple to me.
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Jul 12, 2014 15:53
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NovemberMike posted:he literally lays out the magic system at the beginning. He lays out the tiniest of tiny parts of the magic system at the beginning. Surgebinding is literally one of the two major abilities of one of the ten groups of magic users using one of the two (possibly three) magic systems on Roshar, which is itself a world in the Cosmere with a dozen or so other worlds, each of which has at least one, sometimes two, three or more different magics systems, many of which are often mis- or incompletely-understood. It was by no means elegantly done, but it's not like it strips the mystery out of the books.
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Jul 12, 2014 15:54
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Pwnstar posted:So here's a theory I have about the Diagram, maybe I'm an idiot though Taravangian asked for the capacity to save mankind. I think that capacity is related to his empathy, rather than his intelligence. Since when he is incredibly clever he basically becomes a sociopath, I don't think the Diagram is a guide to saving the world at all. I think at one point when he is "dumb" he is going to rebel against the grand plan and let someone live who was supposed to die or something (or destroy the diagram?) which will allow for the day to actually be saved, as he was before he never would have been empathic enough to give up that amount of power. I want this to be a thing.
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Jul 12, 2014 16:51
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nucleicmaxid posted:It's just two different styles. I like both, some people dislike the over-explaining. Some people dislike the under-explaining. It's weird how this is a constant derail. If you hated the first chapter or two, then skim them and keep reading the rest. If you just really hated it, don't keep reading? I dunno it seems simple to me. Gotta agree with this guy. It's exhausting the amount of times the opposing topics are brought up in both threads. Sanderson's magic system is over-explained and formulaic, yep, yep, been brought up every other page for 145 pages over the last 4 years (and in the Mistborn thread before for a few hundred pages). Yep, Erikson's books under-explain and seem to start halfway through the story and it can be confusing. Both of these things are true... So? If you don't like Sanderson's books try out Erikson's, if you don't like Erikson's try out Sanderson's, if you don't like either try out some other books. 
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Jul 12, 2014 17:58
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Xachariah posted:Gotta agree with this guy. It's exhausting the amount of times the opposing topics are brought up in both threads. This is a discussion forum and no one cares if you find it exhausting.
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Jul 12, 2014 18:19
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Fair to Midland posted:This is a discussion forum and no one cares if you find it exhausting. No one cares that no one cares if I find it exhausting either.
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Jul 12, 2014 18:52
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Fair to Midland posted:This is a discussion forum and no one cares if you find it exhausting. Discussions usually build upon the past discussion. In fact, in some forums, constantly rehashing already covered territory can lead to a probation or ban! If you want to discuss the books, please add something to the conversation. I look forward to it. Don't sit there and whine that you may not like these books because he does a thing. Just don't read them so we can actually DISCUSS the books! Edit: also the people who whine a lot don't seem to find any redeeming qualities and they just pop up every few pages to bitch. It would be like if gun control goons posted on every topic in TFR about how we should ban all guns using the exact same arguments each and every time forever. It's completely pointless and adds nothing especially since it's been covered before. Yngwie Mangosteen fucked around with this message at 18:55 on Jul 12, 2014 |
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Jul 12, 2014 18:52
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Maybe some other people whined about same thing before but they probably did it differently.. If someone just found about Sanderson they can't really use time machine to go post in 2007, can they? Isn't it enough to keep up with like 10 past pages or something? Whining is discussion too (when it's not spam), and room full of us Sanderfans could get boring quickly..
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Jul 12, 2014 21:09
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I demand anyone who offers criticism of thing I like to immediately leave this thread.
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Jul 12, 2014 23:02
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keiran_helcyan posted:I demand anyone who offers criticism of thing I like to immediately leave this thread.* *citation needed
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Jul 12, 2014 23:10
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mallamp posted:Maybe some other people whined about same thing before but they probably did it differently.. If someone just found about Sanderson they can't really use time machine to go post in 2007, can they? Isn't it enough to keep up with like 10 past pages or something? Whining is discussion too (when it's not spam), and room full of us Sanderfans could get boring quickly.. I think by now I've seen every possible different way to phrase the concept that Sanderson's books all start with a tutorial on his magic system, positive, negative, indifferent and insanity. But you know, I'm just a complainer complaining about complainers, feel free to complain about me complaining about complainers. keiran_helcyan posted:I demand anyone who offers criticism of thing I like to immediately leave this thread. 
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Jul 13, 2014 00:10
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Just finished the 4th Alcatraz book thinking it was the last one. I realized about halfway through that there was no way it was going to wrap up that quickly and found out he doesn't even have plans to write it until they figure out what's going on with the movie adaptation. Goddamnit I need to know what happens! All in all, for a series written for kids it's pretty entertaining. I actually laughed out loud when he made a reference to the whole "who killed Asmodean (from Wheel of Time)" thing. I'm totally picking these up for my little brother.
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Jul 13, 2014 02:06
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Yarrbossa posted:Just finished the 4th Alcatraz book thinking it was the last one. I realized about halfway through that there was no way it was going to wrap up that quickly and found out he doesn't even have plans to write it until they figure out what's going on with the movie adaptation. Goddamnit I need to know what happens! Can you elaborate? In spoilers if you need to, I always loved the who killed Asmodean theories and debates that went on forrrreeeverrrr.
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Jul 13, 2014 02:32
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Fair to Midland posted:Can you elaborate? In spoilers if you need to, I always loved the who killed Asmodean theories and debates that went on forrrreeeverrrr. Sure. The spoilers are the big reveal of book 1 and a minor bit from book 3. In Alcatraz vs the Shattered Lens (book 4), he's discussing his mother and talking about how evil she is, and at one point he mentions that she was the person who killed Asmodean. The actual quote is "I hadn't forgotten how my mother'd given Himalaya up to be executed, nor how she'd sold me her own son to Blackburn, the one-eyed Oculator. Or how she killed Asmodean". It wasn't even funny on it's own, but I really enjoyed all the shout-outs Brandon has been giving his other books/other authors books.
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Jul 13, 2014 02:40
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thespaceinvader posted:He lays out the tiniest of tiny parts of the magic system at the beginning. Surgebinding is literally one of the two major abilities of one of the ten groups of magic users using one of the two (possibly three) magic systems on Roshar, which is itself a world in the Cosmere with a dozen or so other worlds, each of which has at least one, sometimes two, three or more different magics systems, many of which are often mis- or incompletely-understood. There's this too. Outside of the prologue and climax of Book 1 you find out jack poo poo about surgebinding and it's only into book 2 that you find even a sliver of understanding (and then Sanderson turns it on its head with the revelation that Szeth didn't need a Spren to surgebind because of his sword).
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Jul 13, 2014 03:25
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Yarrbossa posted:Sure. The spoilers are the big reveal of book 1 and a minor bit from book 3. In Alcatraz vs the Shattered Lens (book 4), he's discussing his mother and talking about how evil she is, and at one point he mentions that she was the person who killed Asmodean. The actual quote is "I hadn't forgotten how my mother'd given Himalaya up to be executed, nor how she'd sold me her own son to Blackburn, the one-eyed Oculator. Or how she killed Asmodean". Haha so he literally said his name and everything? That's great. I love Sanderson and I'll be forever grateful for him finishing Wheel of Time.
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Jul 13, 2014 04:41
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Arkeus posted:Truly magical. You're a loving crazy person, a main pov character for five books dies in book five.
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Jul 13, 2014 09:46
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pile of brown posted:You're a loving crazy person, a main pov character for five books dies in book five. It's very unclear that they're dead (and very unlikely that they don't come back). In any case, stuff like the Red Wedding was foreshadowed a lot more heavily than (e.g.) Kelsier getting stabbed. Actually the whole Kelsier thing is very equivalent to Ned Stark in a lot of ways.
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Jul 13, 2014 16:29
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