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cheese posted:A friend of mine who likes a lot of the same books just finished and said he had mixed feelings. The action and word building was good, but he said it read sort of like a humorless Malazan Book of the Fallen. I love me an epic fantasy series but is it really that devoid of light hearted scenes? One of the best things about Malazan is that while some of the humor was a little on the corny 'he talks funny' side, it was amusing and timely enough to break up otherwise heavy storylines. Is that not the case here and if so, how do you see that impacting the series? Even Joel Ambercrombies First Law series, some of the darkest fantasy I've read, had the odd humorous exchange written in. I don't think I can do 8k pages devoid of comic relief. I'm a little over half way and it's not that depressing. Three of the four distinct storylines have a decent bit of comic relief so far, only the Dalinar chapters usually go by without any, and that's not a rule. The "safehand" talk really isn't as bad as some people were complaining about. It's not like Robert Jordan's dress-smoothing fetish, it actually serves a purpose. It's brought up in the first part to ensure that the reader understands what the hell a safe hand, and a safe pouch, is. My suggestion: Read the mistborn trilogy, and if the third one is too bleak for you to enjoy you probably won't like The Way Of Kings.
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Nov 16, 2010 04:47
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^^^^^^^^^ This is a Brandon Sanderson thread, I'd hope we all are. BananaNutkins posted:My theory is that they are basically a heroic, lightside version of the Wheel of Time's Forsaken, mixed with the heroes who are bound to the Horn of Valere. There are lots of things in The Way of Kings that are very reminiscent of some WoT concepts, like the chapter in the place where grass grows and magic doesn't work. It reminded me a lot of WoT's Steddings. Also, every time someone says "The Light send it will be so" or a similar phrase it drives me crazy, because that was a really obvious WoT thing. That was actually completely different then Steddings. In a Stedding there's magic making magic not work, whereas in Shinovar there are no highstorms, so the magic can't get there. It's not not that they can't use magic, but there aren't any spren, and you couldn't recharge gems there. Given the talk about the everstorm, I assume that that'll all change, though 
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Nov 25, 2010 00:38
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Kalas posted:Sazed's intro mentioned (from his perspective) that Shardplate would interfere with his Surgebinding. I'm pretty sure the reason he gave is that it would just slow him down.
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Dec 11, 2010 03:11
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Eh! Frank posted:Looking on wikipedia, seems like the last two metals have already been revealed, not in the books but on a Table of Allomantic Metals poster that Sanderson is/was selling on his site. I can understand why the Lord Ruler kept those super secret he was almost constantly burning a poo poo-ton of metal, and a burst of Nicrosil would have probably blinded and deafened him for hours. Combined with the fact that ideally no one would need to fight an allomancer if he died (since allomancy was of preservation) they'd be useless in a Lord Rulerless world.
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Dec 15, 2010 23:24
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arioch posted:You'd have to define good because even at their worst (the slump) they were well above-average. Not every book can be in the same category as The Shadow Rising. Counterpoint:Crossroads of Twilight "Brandon Sanderson's twitter posted:Teaching my class on writing Science Fiction and Fantasy at BYU tonight. Last year, forty people showed up on day one wanting to add.... He's a teacher too. In his time off from writing books he writes books, and on the side he also teaches other people how to write books. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Brandon Sanderson is a goddamn beast. egg tats fucked around with this message at 20:51 on Jan 6, 2011 |
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Jan 6, 2011 20:46
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Jorenko posted:Can we mark which book we're spoiling? I'm halfway through my first trek through Sanderson's collected works. Everything after Velius' post is about Mistborn. Maybe from now on leave the name of the book/series you're talking about unspoiled?
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Feb 5, 2011 00:09
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Jorenko posted:That seems mostly the case for now, yeah. Read his essay on the gays, though. He says that while he intellectually respects their rights, he can't square that very well with the fact that he knows 100%, because of his religion, that it's in their best interest for him to vote against their right to equality. That seems a slippery slope to me. It really doesn't to me. Sanderson mentions that he doesn't know much about the issue several times, and projects the opinion that gays have existed, do exist, and will continue to exist in perpetuity. He might have learned from the OSC fiasco, but the only thing he seems to be against is gays marrying. It's obviously not a very nice opinion to many of us, but it's a drat sight better then thinking forced "rehabilitation" is a good idea.
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Mar 12, 2011 17:26
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SystemLogoff posted:So, after reading Warbreaker a while ago and finding it decent, I decided to check out Mistborn. Aahhhhhhhhhhh those last three chapters, I must be getting very slack, as I saw none of that happening. (Other than the return of the Are you talking about the end of The Final Empire or Hero of Ages, because with Sanderson's (well done) foreshadowing, you should have a pretty good idea of where everything is going. fake edit: Well, almost. I missedSazed being the Hero of Ages. I'm re-reading the whole trilogy right now, and I love the early scenes with Vin and oerseur after it's actually tensoon. If you know what happens you can really tell there's something off about his personality, but the first time you just shrug it off, like Vin did.
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Apr 4, 2011 02:02
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arioch posted:They would have to figure out how the other nations managed to tap into AonDor without the benefit of Elantris. Even if they figured out how to tap AonDor from other countries, it straight up wouldn't work outside of their world. Even if they found a way to travel from world to world (and I'm sure they're be able to, given how malleable Aons are) it would be a one way trip, and it would probably kill them to be cut off from AonDor. I just finished re-reading Elantris, and I don't see any reason why the elantrians would be going after Hoid anyway. He was acting as a beggar in that book too, unless I missed something.
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Apr 25, 2011 12:57
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Decius posted:I finished the Mistborn trilogy over the Easter weekend and liked it a lot. It was the first thing I've read by him (always dismissed him as "the WoT-guy" - never got into WoT -, until John Scalzi praised him quite a bit). Great plot and twists, good characters and I liked the rather unique world (Mordor at the North Pole is a bit different from your usual Europe-blend map) and it only had some minor things I didn't like (like the already mentioned drag at the start of book 2). Going beyond that, a theme in all of his books (beside WoT and Stormlight) is that organized religion is often corruptible, or corrupted. If I didn't know any better I'd say Sanderson was an Atheist. In Mistborn the only religion with religious truth in it was corrupted by ruin, I would say Elantris is more about Hrathens growing disenfranchisement with his religion, and the realization that his monolithic religious leader has been using his followers to do evil, and Warbreaker is about the priest upper class literally preventing their god from speaking to his own people. Sanderson is really the best kind of Mormon author: the kind that isn't anything like Card.
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Apr 26, 2011 20:52
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It is quite fitting for Sazed after all.
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^^^^^^^ Edit: Unless I'm misremembering, all of the worlds/universes were created by a single overdiety shattering itself into a bunch of different worlds with different rules. It kinda makes you think that the Lord Ruler might have been onto something with the "sliver of infinity" title, and Sazed strongly hinted to it at the end of misstborn.Mistborn spoiler Clinton1011 posted:Wasn't there a priesthood who tried to take over politics and were overthrown and that's why they can't own anything now? Actually, I just remembered them. They also tried to control the fabrial magic by saying it was tied to the armlets, but it isn't, you need to be born to it. Or maybe it is sometimes and isn't others, it's been a while since I read it. All I know is that main girl transmuted something without a fabrial near the end, and was seeing those nightmare fuel letter heads at the end. egg tats fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Apr 26, 2011 |
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Apr 26, 2011 22:03
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IRQ posted:I haven't read Warbreaker yet, but the others are relatively small settings that could just be isolated continents/time periods on the same world. Warbreaker and Elantris are the only two that could possibly overlap. Mistborn has the entire world covered in ash for 1000 years, with the entire population living on a single continent, and Stormlight has giant storms that ravage half the world, with robust trade towards the other half. and technically, we only know of one set of deities for sure, and that would be ruin/preservation from mistborn.
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Apr 26, 2011 22:18
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arioch posted:The "new" Hoid is described as a younger man whereas the other Hoids are old beggars/storyteller types. Oh hey I just got to that bit in warbreaker and you're wrong (sorry). Warbreaker pg 374 posted:Siri rolled her eyes, but continued to eat the grape slices. The storyteller[hoid] waited patiently. As she looked more closely, she could tell that he wasn't quite as old as he seemed at first glance. The beard must be a badge of his profession, and while it didn't appear to be fake, she suspected that it had been bleached. He was really much younger then he wanted to appear. There's no reason to believe that he wasn't disguised in the other books, as well. I also don't really see how he's like a God when he admits to being from an order known to hop around the multiverse collecting stories, a la that one guy that knew him in WoK.
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Apr 27, 2011 00:38
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wellwhoopdedooo posted:The only thing I'd have changed is, I wouldn't have given Sazed a POV right at the beginning. I think it would have been much better if we could have watched from inside as the king's initial contempt turned to fear when he realized he was going to get killed by this thing straight out of The Matrix, and then it switched to Sazed as the king died and tried to pass on his message. I agree with everything you said, but I think you mean Szeth, not Sazed.
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May 8, 2011 18:20
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Ugly In The Morning posted:I finished the mistborn trilogy last night, and I have to say it's impressive how much every little detail came together at the end. The earring and Spook's pewter were both big "loving duh, saw that coming a while ago" things, but I liked how the Kandra/Atium thing turned out. Actually, the whole Atium arc in general was great. I've heard people say the whole ending was foreshdowed by the first 100 or so pages, but I can't remember that part well enough to know if that's right or not. I wouldn't be shocked, though.Definitely a big fan. You saw those coming because he had been explaining Hemalurgy for the whole book. I liked the sense of dread that it leant to know exactly how wrong the characters were being.
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Jun 5, 2011 02:22
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ConfusedUs posted:It's a tiny bit convoluted, but not terribly so. I'm pretty sure this is a not insignificant spoiler for Hero Of Ages.
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Jun 24, 2011 21:33
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thecallahan posted:Quick question about the ending though: Why do you think those women were kidnapped, was it like Wax and crew though, were they going to use them for breeding more allomancers? If so that's a very long term plan. I was thinking someone found out about hemalurgy and they were going to be used for that in some capacity. I was assuming they were looking for atium mistings, or possibly mistings for one of the 16 unseen "god-alloys".
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Nov 11, 2011 16:15
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wellwhoopdedooo posted:Hell, the first book is "complete". If he hadn't written another word of Mistborn, I wouldn't have felt cheated by the ending. No need to slog through the whole trilogy if you don't like the first book. I didn't even think lightsong was supposed to be funny until I read this post. I just assumed that the reason his high priest never admitted it because Sanderson knew that he was writing someone who thought they were funny, but they weren't at all. It turns out Sanderson is Lightsong 
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Nov 27, 2011 15:45
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Clockwork Gadget posted:
This isn't really spoiler-worthy, since it doesn't have to do with any of the books, but I'm assuming that a Feruchemist could store his ability to store powers, so rather then spending all his time at 80% weight he could spend all his time storing his ability to store, and then burn it all for a multiplier on his rate of storage. It would probably be a lot better for storing, say, health, since an hour of sickness would be much more healing then on someone not tapping investiture. Alternatively, it's a way to let Feruchemists collect the various magics they can do (which,like Aons, would normally only work on their world).
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Dec 16, 2011 03:16
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So Sanderson is going to be doing a Q&A on reddit. He hasn't said anything worthwhile so far, but he did drop this little tidbit:Brandon Sanderson posted:
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Jan 17, 2012 20:13
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keiran_helcyan posted:Absolutely, some of the Lightsong chapters in Warbreaker were actually painful to read. I still think Lightsong not being funny was the point. He was a literal god to everyone he ever interacted with, and considered all of the other gods to be super boring. No one he would have respected at all would told him he isn't funny. Because if that's not the case, it's just depressing.
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Apr 6, 2012 01:00
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Cthulwho posted:Am i on my own in thinking the mistborn trilogy were bad, bad books? No! Not at all! I mean, I disagree with you, and a lot of other people in here do too. It's the Brandon Sanderson thread, we all like his books! But we're also able to tell that the prose is less then stellar! That tends to be the sticking point for most people.
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Jun 19, 2012 17:38
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A better piece of advice would be to make sure your affairs are in order, because once you get to the last half of the book you won't stop reading for any reason.
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Apr 17, 2013 12:11
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Errant Gin Monks posted:Just finished.... Holy loving poo poo! The best part is when you reread book 1 page 1.
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Apr 18, 2013 21:07
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Troll Bridgington posted:I would love a November release, but I won't lose any sleep if he takes a bit longer. I'm honestly shocked he didn't need to take a break after Wheel of Time was done. But he did take a break! How do you think Emperors Soul got written 
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May 15, 2013 18:30
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I'm so glad he did this, because it's not exactly easy to understand what the characters are talking about when they're discussing complex geography, so actually seeing the Jordan defence was nice. It's too bad most of his magic systems couldn't be explained through diagram, because it's super effective, and probably cut down on the boring explainy bits a lot.
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Jun 4, 2013 10:18
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ConfusedUs posted:I had one problem with the book: Newcago. What a stupid loving name. Goddamn. Still haven't finished it (forgot my kindle at home this morning  ) but I just took this to mean steelheart is poo poo at naming things. It's not like he's the sort to allow dissent.
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Sep 26, 2013 19:29
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treeboy posted:I figured You had to be trying to save him when shooting him and it would come down to an internal mental/emotional decision to "save" him by preventing Steelheart from doing any more damage to society/people's lives. I assumed the same thing but instead of what you said I figured prof was going to go hardcore darkside at the end, and the mc was going to shoot at him and accidentally hit steelheart and for ya'll talking about sanderson's lack of grit, keep in mind that at the end of steelheart, it's heavily implied that the first thing prof did after calamity was destroy the school he worked at, killing all of the students. I would go so far as to say Sanderson's specialty is hosed up apocalyptic hellscapes. Warbreaker is the only one of his novels I can think of that doesn't fit that (elantris is 50/50 but it's still pretty hosed up with its hall of permanently injured, undying, mentally broken children and all).
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Oct 4, 2013 00:16
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api call girl posted:He could decide to "ungift" his powers. He took his power back from his giftees so they couldn't fill the batteries in his place. On top of that, no one would ever let him use his powers himself, which was why he was just a normal dude
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Oct 25, 2013 21:03
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Wolpertinger posted:I wonder how allomantic technology will 'work' - it seems like Allomancy is something to do with people, not something inherent in metals themselves. The 'magic' comes from the Larasium that they or an ancestor ate, and it's not like they have any of that around to experiment on. Maybe Atium is inherently magical, considering it's a 'magic metal' like Larasium? Well it likely would be person driven. Like, I could see a modern era mistborn having both cheap fossil fuel engines for personal use and more expensive, but less wasteful iron/steel engines being manned by a team of the appropriate metalburners. You could look at how having pewter burners (or pewter compounders) would change existing industries. How would people compete in law enforcement? Or construction? What sports exists. What I'm saying is that there's a ton of material in mistborn even without considering atium.
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Oct 29, 2013 22:29
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Democratic Pirate posted:Mind explaining more? I'd assume they're part of the huge number of people that think "young adult" means that something has a light tone. Steelheart isn't less terrifying and terrible than the rest of sanderson's stories, it's just less subtle about it
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Oct 30, 2013 23:19
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omnibobb posted:Nope - Sanderson is hardcore on the ebook train. Yeah I'm pretty sure without him we'd still be waiting on amol
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Dec 24, 2013 00:09
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DarkHorse posted:Having just finished Steelheart and liked it ok, I am surprisingly excited about this. Also burned through Alloy of Law and that was great. Looking forward to buying Rithmatist and The Emperor's Soul at some point. There's actually a short story that takes place a few weeks after steelheart [url= http://www.amazon.com/Mitosis-Recko...tosis+reckoners]here[/url] that you might like. Also newcago being that informs more about steelheart as a character than anything else could.
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Jan 8, 2014 17:34
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Mygna posted:So, regarding the last interlude, was there any mention before of Death Rattles and the Thrill being caused by "ancient, evil spren"? I wonder if Moelach and Nergaoul are merely evil like the Nightmother could be said to be evil, or if they are associated with Odium. The Death Rattles foretelling the future probably indicates the latter. The only hint regarding the Thrill being caused by odium (or his spren) that I know of is how it would fail Dalinar when he fought against parshendi. I don't think that seeing the future is actually a thing of odium though, since end of book one of Renarins radiant powers is seeing the future. That myth was probably a reaction to the heirocracy rather than actual scripture.
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Mar 7, 2014 11:36
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treeboy posted:and yet Szeth broke plenty of laws Superstring posted:Nin isn't concerned with justice, he's concerned with judgement. Bit of a difference. To go off of those Since Szeth was truthless, it could be argued that the only law he was beholden to was to obey whoever holds his oathstone. He did that, so from that point of view he didn't break any laws at all.
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Mar 10, 2014 00:07
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Habibi posted:Words Are we done with spoiler tags now? Your analogy falls apart because it should be I will pick apples and I will even pick apples if I don't even want to eat them. It's basically a way of explicitly saying rules lawyers don't get to be Knights Radiant. Or at least Windrunners.
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Mar 16, 2014 16:25
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Lobsterpillar posted:From there: The parshendi are a species that only sends people to war after they've grown their skin into a suit of armour. it's not really surprising that they'd see everyone in combat as an equal target.
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Mar 18, 2014 23:19
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Atlas Hugged posted:
The only funny joke shallan ever told: "words of radiance, page 558 posted:
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Mar 20, 2014 11:07
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Quantum Toast posted:Maybe I'm missing something, but wouldn't he still have momentum when he suddenly Lashes in a different direction? Yeah, reversing your direction midair would be like pulling 2 G for an instant. More if you lash yourself multiple times at once.
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Mar 20, 2014 16:54
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Walh Hara posted:In reference to the epigraph: “He must pick it up, the fallen title! The tower, the crown, and the spear!”. It's probably relevant that the signs of house Kholin are the tower & the crown. I'm assuming that on top of that the fallen title is that of the Knights Radiant, or Bondsmith, the Tower is Urithiru, and the spear is Kaladin himself. Alternatively, Dalinar is the Tower (since he represents Urithiru), Elhokar is the crown, and Kaladin is the spear. Actually, the more I think about it, the more I'm sure kaladin doesn't have anything to do with the spear, because that's a bit obvious for Sanderson.
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Mar 22, 2014 01:47
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