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The Ninth Layer posted:Warbreaker which is a book where I can't even remember who the main villain was or even if it had one On a related topic, Sanderson really likes the idea of occasional villainy or at least moral ambiguity with his protagonists, but he always produces redemption for them by the end of his stories (if not always in individual books). I kind of hope we get a book from him someday where we get a full blown descent into villainy from a character with protagonist-quantity levels of perspective chapters. Maybe he wouldn't be able to write it due to it loving up his avalanche mojo, but it would be an interesting experiment. I just wouldn't want it to consist of too much moral moping about because he's pretty bad at writing character angst in a way that allows the reader to have much empathy.
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May 23, 2014 04:39
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Damo posted:I should take a break from Sanderson for a bit, lest I get burnt out. I'm definitely all out of patience for plucky against-the-grain princess characters. Good god man, he needs to lay off that character archetype for a bit.
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Jun 6, 2014 00:29
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Khizan posted:It's not that Sanderson always has somebody saving the day, it's that they always seem to do it by pulling a day saving rabbit out of their hat at the very end of the book. It's like somebody at the end of the book goes "Oh, that's not right" and pulls a switch to fix the problem. I don't really think this is a fair characterization, especially of what happens in the Stormlight books. First of all, you've had Szeth and other characters in the interstitial chapters doing poo poo like this during the entire series. Second, Kaladin himself already killed a Shardbearer at one point in his past with nothing but a spear. Third, Kaladin's stormlight abilities ramp up rather obviously towards some crazy poo poo happening. So it's not so much a rabbit out of the hat as it is some other metaphor that does not entail non-sequitur surprise. He may be going full anime but there's a clear precedent for people doing this in the books and a pretty obvious sequence of events leading up to Kaladin becoming Goku.
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Jun 6, 2014 15:47
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Yeah, he describes people getting ragdolled and abused as push/pull toys in a very tidy kind of way. I can think of other authors who would spend paragraphs detailing how various limbs were pulped and what color fluid was spraying out of which body parts. Sanderson's fight scenes are like the Matrix but there's plenty of action there to make it like Sin City if that was his thing. He does acknowledge the gravity of slaughter multiple times in the mistborn books with all of the main PoV allomancer characters having moral qualms at various points.
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Mar 23, 2015 17:00
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Avalerion posted:Don't spren only appear when a person is experiencing the associated emotion very strongly? Like at the point someone goes all red faced and begins shouting profanities you wouldn't need anger spren to see how he feels. Yes and the relation between spren and the events they are correlated with is left explicitly ambiguous. Kaladin and Shallan both have scenes where they wonder whether spren are causing the associated events, caused to be there by them, just attracted to them, or something else. All of which is why I think this complaint... Transistor Rhythm posted:Spren are a great example of this. Think about how much we rely on body language, inference, social cues, etc. just to get through an average day. The existence of spren completely changes that by giving a visual representation of things that are normally intentionally hidden - fear, anger, hunger, creativity, etc. A society in which little spectral manifestations of these emotions and actions spontaneously appear would be completely and fundamentally different than anything we've seen in human civilization with entire codes of behavior that would be reactive to the fact that these things are no longer hidden or only observable through inferring and interpreting body language. We're essentially talking about a culture in which people have an entire extra sixth sense - what would that look like? How would it be different? What would the many fascinating and compelling implications of this be? I'd love to read a book set in THAT cosmology! But, regrettably, Sanderson is more than happy to just sort of toss them into the mix as a funky little addition to his world without actually thinking about or exploring any of that stuff. That's a pretty big bummer. Sanderson has constructed a whole metaphysics that spren are a major part of and has directly brought up how they are enigmatic and confusing to the humanoid residents of Roshar. There's also tidbits now and then about how seeing spren affects social interaction, so it's not like he's ignored their implications for interpersonal dynamics. They explicitly do not function as a 6th sense, and they are obviously part of a bunch of stuff that has yet to be revealed (outside of hints dropped at AMAs and such). For as often as people complain about Sanderson giving away too much too directly, he always has a ton of stuff about his worlds that is really played close to the vest even during one of his big avalanche endings.
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Mar 23, 2015 22:59
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Captain Monkey posted:This is what I want. Kaladin gets to be Goose except he's also a badass, where Adolin is straight up Mav all day long and they're awesome badass BFFs forever. Um what. Clearly they're Mav and Iceman. Tien and the various Tien replacements are Goose. Proof: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fWr6CBARMw
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Mar 31, 2015 16:08
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Other authors come up with April fools titles and fake releases. Sanderson writes an entire novella as an April fools troll to his critics.
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Apr 1, 2015 01:48
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mewse posted:I just finished the Mistborn trilogy Also with regards to Sazed vs. the Lord Ruler: Sazed gets the powers of both Ruin and Preservation after Vin and Ati (the dude who had Ruin's powers up until then) both die and is thereafter known as Harmony. Even if TLR had been equipped with star charts etc. Ruin would have found a way to gently caress it up and stop him from making things nice, just like he did when Vin was trying to fix stuff during her brief stint as the holder of Preservation.
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Apr 23, 2015 16:59
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I don't know what "grittiness" is but Stormlight and WoT both have at least as many morally fraught situations and complex characters as ASoIaF. GRRM is more willing to kill off characters, but he's also more willing to spend time writing about characters that are ultimately unimportant. GRRM writes more in-your-face descriptions of underage labia perfuming and rape but Stormlight and WoT are both more violent in terms of battles and on par for gory descriptions of conflict. Stormlight and WoT are definitely more typical "high fantasy" with magic and fantastical strangeness being more common than in ASoIaF. So if any of that is what you mean by "grittiness" then there ya go.
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Jun 22, 2015 17:28
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Torrannor posted:Jordan's last book "Knife of Dreams", already began to resolve plotlines. Faile was rescued and the Shaido were finished, Tuon returned to Ebou Dar, Semirhage was captured, Mat escaped the Seanchan held lands. And considering that Sanderson worked closely with Harriet, Jordan's wife and editor, with plenty of notes left over from Robert Jordan himself, I have no doubt that the series was entering it's endgame even before Sanderson took over. Was gonna post this. Even in WoT book 10 RJ redeemed a lot of the stories that were getting tiresome and 11 is one of the better books in the series. Gurm still has to write another book so we know whether or not he has any idea what he's doing with ASoIaF. Stormlight, whatever its other flaws, has yet to leave me wondering if Sanderson knows where the gently caress he's going with the story and side plots. It's usually an issue farther into a big series so we'll have to wait, but I think the combination of different PoV foci and timeskips will probably help with anything that would otherwise drag on to the point of boredom/pointlessness.
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Jun 23, 2015 20:30
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Initiate countdown to complaints about Sanderson using the word "piano".
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Jun 30, 2015 03:19
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Yo dawg, I heard you like the speed of light, so we multiplied the speed of light with the speed of light so you can go the speed of light while you go the speed of light.
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Jul 8, 2015 03:28
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As someone who was born in '80 and frequented libraries, book stores, and game shops with YA fantasy sections...Susan Cooper, CS Lewis, and Madeleine L'engle are examples of YA fantasy authors who had stuff out back then. Stuff like the D&D books (Dragonlance, FR, etc.) was maybe a bit more ambiguous but WoT was definitely considered a grown-up series by the librarians and book store owners. I snagged WoT books 1-3 on recommendation from an older cousin because buying/borrowing "adult" fantasy blind was a good way to end up with embarrassing soft core porn back then.
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Jul 10, 2015 14:51
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Yeah it's rough being in that part of the midwest. I'm in northern IN and at least that's <4hrs drive to Indy, Chicago, Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit, and tons of big10 college towns that an author might come to. Being in MO/southern IL is no bueno.
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Aug 18, 2015 04:57
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You guys are misunderstanding the problem of lovely localized titles. It's not that some translator, somewhere, hosed it up. It's that the localization publisher thinks a different title would work better for their market. This is all intentional...which makes it even worse really.
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Sep 24, 2015 00:22
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This is dangerous. I'm still awake and if the Kindle version goes live and gets DL'd to my paperwhite before I fall asleep...
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Oct 6, 2015 06:12
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Finished it today as well. Goddamn I'm so glad we get the next one soon.
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Oct 9, 2015 04:42
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mewse posted:Am I weird for not wanting to read this slow trickle of chapters on webpages? I read some chapters last time and it was a bad idea, I'm with you this time.
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Jan 6, 2016 01:45
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What the loving gently caress BranSan, ninja novella after you accidentally wrote two books of an unplanned trilogy and published them within a few months of each other? He's not human 
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Jan 25, 2016 05:48
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Novella: Kelsier figuring out how spren work to some degree was pretty cool. Some of his interactions with characters were alright, but the dialogue was clumsy and forced in a lot of places without his crew there to bounce it off of/smooth it out. I don't have any real complaints though, it worked as a way to get this info to fans of the Cosmere who wanted it.
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Feb 2, 2016 06:29
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http://coppermind.net/wiki/Conventical_of_Seran
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Feb 3, 2016 13:17
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I think there's examples of writing in his other recent books that are just as good, but ES is a neater, tighter package than anything else he's done. I think this is at least partly due to the shorter format precluding issues that crop up in his longer works (pacing issues, getting lost up the rear end of whichever magic system he's using to carry pieces of the plot along, taking too long to set up the ending avalanche for every single character, etc.).
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Mar 28, 2016 19:29
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RJ was a decorated Vietnam vet (2 years as a helicopter door gunner) and did his undergrad at the Citadel when he got back. He wasn't a military lifer but he lived it long enough to be able to write war and battles authentically. Sanderson, on the other hand, is a quintessential nerdy Mormon, who did a 2 year LDS mission in Korea but otherwise had mostly lived as a writer and academic. Not quite the same.
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Jul 28, 2016 00:02
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Lprsti99 posted:I really want a Mistborn game made by Arkane (the guys behind Dishonored).
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Sep 8, 2016 16:49
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mewse posted:Awesome And reply spren manifested in their very interesting and specific way upon submission of this post.
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Sep 16, 2016 06:56
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I agree with everything Leng said. Malazan has all these extremely offputting things that aren't made reasonable or revealed as an intentionally weird part of the world until long after you'd stop reading the books because they annoyed the poo poo out of you. For instance: the stupid rear end names that all the characters have that sound like they're from some 12 year old kid's D&D campaign. There's a reason for this, but it's not explained until book 4 (I think?) which is after a lot of the initial characters that had these stupid names aren't even a major part of the story anymore. Another annoyance for me was getting used to the weird show/tell dynamic that is used for some of the characters. Other characters won't shut up about how awesome these characters are, but you never really see them do anything amazing. You're "shown" how cool they are by the attitudes of others, but it can come across as lazy "telling" to set up Mary Sues for awhile. Eventually it becomes clear that these characters were, in fact, not amazing at all, but they end up playing major roles, and, in some cases, ascend to become godlike figures, because of the perception of other people. I got part way through book 2 on my first attempt at the series, to book 6 on my second attempt, and I finally made it to the end around the time the last book came out. I'm ultimately glad I made the effort as it's great story that really shines on a re-read, but it's pretty awful the first time through.
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Nov 4, 2016 18:20
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I just love that he is very aware of how some of his stuff rubs (some) people the wrong way. On Edgedancer...quote:When I decided I wasn’t going to kill myself (and my team) trying to get Oathbringer out in 2016, I committed to writing this novella to tide people over. I think you’ll enjoy this one, unless you’re one of the people that Lift drives crazy. In which case you’ll probably still enjoy it, but also want to punch her in the face for being too awesome.
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Dec 19, 2016 23:15
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Evil Fluffy posted:I'm also going to guess that the Thrill is from Odium. http://stormlightarchive.wikia.com/wiki/Nergaoul http://coppermind.net/wiki/Unmade
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Jan 3, 2017 19:28
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Avalerion posted:I don't think it really spoils anything for those, or does it? Secret history ends up long before that era. Also spoils who Khriss is when she shows up at the party in New Seran and dances with Wax briefly, as well as Hoid's significance if you haven't read Stormlight. Knowing that Kelsier is alive in general really takes away from some of the mythology and post-catacendre worldbuilding that Sanderson introduces in the W&W books.
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Mar 7, 2017 15:45
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Yeah, don't get me wrong: I agree that having read Secret History actually adds something to a lot of those scenes - but that's the sense in which it's spoiling them. Those additional bits were designed to be added and appreciated on a re-read. If you read them as published, you are experiencing the material with a set of gaps that is intentionally illuminating on the re-read. If those gaps aren't present, then you are missing experiencing the events sympathetically with the characters. I mean, Sanderson makes a pretty big effort to not be a standard 3rd person omniscient writer so as to preserve some twists - why throw that effort away by reading one of his worst and shortest efforts in the series out of order?
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Mar 8, 2017 09:37
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They were feruchemical stores that could be used by anyone, and while they also granted allomancy at Elend-strength levels he only burned steel during his brief stint using the bands - his pushes were just much stronger. He did use a bunch if the feruchemical stores though.
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Mar 20, 2017 18:24
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There's a few plot points that are extremely exciting to read the first time through in WOT books 7-10: most notably the last chapter of book 9. But yeah, I have read through the series multiple times, largely because I'd usually do so before another book came out, and there's enough character POVs I skip in those books that I'm reading maybe 30%. Elayne is the goddamn worst, followed closely by whiny Siuan. I don't have as much hatred for post-two-rivers Perrin/Faile chapters as most, but I definitely skip the majority of them.
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Jul 17, 2017 18:48
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We get Szeth and Taravangian perspectives. They're antagonists even if not completely evil.
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Oct 12, 2017 18:47
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If you're going to enjoy Oathbringer, you'd enjoy the other books in the series. It's not like there's a due date on this stuff, just pick up the other books and read them. Once you're done, then read Oathbringer. If you're lucky, the next book will be done by the time you get through Oathbringer and you won't have to suffer through the relatively short but still annoying waiting period. If you really have to read it when it comes out for some reason, coppermind.net has chapter by chapter synopses of all of Brandon's stuff, e.g. https://coppermind.net/wiki/Words_of_Radiance/Summary
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Oct 17, 2017 11:55
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team overhead smash posted:Is it ever mentioned what Venli's Form of Power is? Envoyform toward the end of the book IIRC. Lets her speak and understand language, some sort of connection powers involved.
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Nov 18, 2017 03:24
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Ethiser posted:So in one of the last interludes with the lady in the bank she had some sort of pet that feed on Stormlight and grew larger. Is that supposed to be some sort of spren that manifested in the physical world? I don't remember any mention of naturally occurring creatures that did that. It's a Larkin, she got it from impressing the giant greatshell/island thing during interludes in WoR, where she fell into the water from way up high and ended up in a wheelchair: https://coppermind.net/wiki/Larkin
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Nov 20, 2017 17:05
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Agreed. I like the concept of Shallan's character having multiple personas to call upon in useful ways, but I'm not a fan of how it's executed. I felt similarly about young-Dalinar in some of the flashbacks. Sanderson just writes the other versions of these characters (Blackthorn, Veil, Radiant, etc.) pretty flat, often invoking a single archetype in a way that's not very interesting even when the plot points they're involved in are. One of the things that both characters also suffered from was a lack of other POV characters interacting with their alternate/former personalities. Conveying a character from only their own perspective forces Sanderson to tell EVERYTHING he wants us to know about them rather than getting to show us much, and between this and the flat characterizations provided via internal monologue, it was pretty clumsy compared to how he's developed characters in previous books. Hopefully this isn't as big of a problem moving forward due to how Shallan seems to have figured out at least partially how to use her personas as tools rather than let them take over as a kind of unhealthy escapism, and Blackthorn flashbacks should be largely over.
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Nov 30, 2017 00:13
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New Yorp New Yorp posted:It's cosmere-wide. That's how all of the world hopping characters get around. Some of them (Ones Above referenced in Sixth of the Dust) also get around in the physical realm on spaceships, but that's set pretty far ahead in the Cosmere timeline compared to the other books.
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Nov 30, 2017 16:21
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Subvisual Haze posted:It's implied that 16% of the population snapped into powers when the Mists started attacking people in Hero of Ages, 1% of each of the original Misting types (as a convoluted clue from Preservation's plan that nobody understood). I wonder if a similar percentage of the current population is magic capable. Considering this was allegedly an alteration that Order made later in the pipeline once he realized the limits of his power, I would guess that Harmony didn't stick with it. After all, it's much more in keeping with Harmony for things to be "random", and by "random" I mean probably not actually statistically random but some plot convenient version of it like most fantasy...unless Brandon dorked out on statistics because that's the kind of thing he'd do and then build into his magic systems. Whether the mean is still 16% in the second case is anyone's guess.
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Jan 4, 2018 05:14
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Potato Salad posted:Renarin might be the character whose story I'm most looking forward to hearing. He seems like such a broken person, but he somehow keeps pushing himself. The journey he and Glys are going through together is heart wrenching and sweet. Neither has a clue what's happening to them, but above anything else they seem to have each other's back. I know I'll enjoy the plot points and worldbuilding surrounding it, but I'm just hoping Sanderson writes the perspective well. I like that he's writing mentally ill characters, but I don't know that he's figured out how to do it in a way that isn't resorting to caricature/stereotyping. He struggled with the more nuanced perspectives in this last book and I'm worried he'll struggle with Renarin as well. I just don't want another interesting-seeming character from the outside to be a let down once we get inside their head.
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Feb 7, 2018 06:32
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