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Oh, hey, just noticed that this new thread started up. I'll get back to Way of Kings tomorrow. Since it's been established that Sanderson sucks at the technical aspects of writing, I'll move on to discussing characters and plot.
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Mar 16, 2019 23:43
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Before I start, I want to thank you for this, and reinforce the message:TheGreatEvilKing posted:Don't touch the poop Way of Kings Part 4 The first three installments of this read-along of Way of Kings focused solely on technical aspects. The first showed that Sanderson's prose is boring and uninteresting. The second took a look at his much-vaunted world-building in the Purelake, a massive lake hundreds of miles across that has lucky fish. The third went through the remained of the Purelake interlude and demonstrated that it has no plot relevance, no thematic importance, and serves no purpose in the story besides acting as a callout to some of Sanderson's other books and his weird extended universe thing. I am currently on page 309, out of 1252. That puts me almost exactly 25% of the way through this book. Given that a lot of books would be wrapping up by this page count, I think it's worth checking in on each of our MC's and seeing what they've been up to. Kaladin Stormblessed quote:"The world just changed, Gaz. I died down at that chasm. Now you've got my vengeful spirit to deal with." Kaladin annoys me. He's just... not very interesting as a character. He's badass, then gets depressed for a while, then feels better, and then he's immediately badass again. Tor did a blog post about how this book is about mental illness and "broken people saving the world." So far I'm not impressed. I'm equally unimpressed by the class warfare theme that Sanderson tries to use Kaladin for. I'll give the book a bit more time before I dig too much into those, though. Also, his character arc is... not what you'd expect. quote:"You were right, Father," Kaladin whispered. "You can't stop a storm by blowing harder. You can't save men by killing others. We should all become surgeons. Every last one of us..." Shallan Davar quote:Sometimes, she wondered how it had come to this. She was the quiet one, the timid one, the youngest of five siblings and the only girl. Sheltered, protected all her life. And now the hopes of her entire house rested on her shoulders. quote:She was pale-skinned in an era when Alethi tan was seen as the mark of true beauty, and though she had light blue eyes, her impure family line was manifest in her auburn-red hair. Not a single lock of proper black. Her freckles had faded as she reached young womanhood - Heralds be blessed - but there were still some visible, dusting her cheeks and nose. quote:"See, she was too discriminating. The body needs many different foods to remain healthy. And the mind needs many different ideas to remain sharp. Wouldn't you agree? And so if I were to only read those silly Szeth-son-son-Vallano, Truthless of Shinovar quote:Szeth-son-son-Vallano, Truthless of Shinovar, wore white on the day he was to kill a king. The white clothing was a Parshendi tradition, foreign to him. But he did as his masters required and did not ask for an explanation. quote:What would these men say if they knew that the man who emptied their chamber pot was a Shardbearer and a Surgebinder? A Windrunner, like the Radiants of old? The moment he summoned his blade, his eyes would turn from dark green to pale - almost glowing - sapphire, a unique effect of his particular weapon. quote:Szeth gloried in being wasted; each day he was made to clean or dig instead of kill was a victory. That evening five years ago still haunted him. Before then, he had been ordered to kill - but always in secret, silently. Never before had he been given such deliberately terrible instructions. Dalinar Kholin quote:You must unite them, the strange, booming words had told him. You must prepare. Build of your people a fortress of strength and peace, a wall to resist the winds. Cease squabbling and unite. The Everstorm comes. Dalinar (and thus the actual plot) was only introduced after the interludes. Since he's only gotten twenty or thirty pages so far, I'll withhold judgement on him. This is a complete summary of everything important that's happened in 310 pages. To summarize: Kaladin got carted around as a slave, tried to kill himself, and now he's trying to get the bridge crew to work out. Shallan begged for an apprenticeship until she got it. Szeth assassinated a king for reasons we don't know. Dalinar had some dreams, wagged his finger at some of the other Highprinces for their gamesmanship, and he's learned that the book actually has a plot. All of this is punctuated with a half dozen different battle scenes, none of which are interesting. All of the characters have a lot of backstory that they're explicitly refusing to tell us. All pertinent questions about the world at large are ignored until Sanderson decides he wants to reveal them (why did the Parshendi have Gavilar assassinated? What are these weird spren things? What does the prelude set thousands of years ago have to do with anything?) No overarching themes have shown up: classism is only in Kaladin's story. The search for knowledge is only in Shallan's story. And Szeth and Dalinar haven't had enough page time to establish any themes. Everything is just drawn out and out and out to fill up page space. No wonder this is 1200 pages long. We're 300 pages in and nothing has happened.
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Mar 17, 2019 22:55
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Intentional doublepost: is there any feedback on my format here? Due to this book's scale and impact on the genre, I felt it deserved more than just a single effort-post. However, with the shocking lack of content in this book, I couldn't justify a chapter-by-chapter readalong like BotL did for Rothfuss. There really just isn't enough to the story. My compromise was to do a series of posts each focusing on a specific aspect of the writing (prose, characters, worldbuilding, etc. Soon I'll start going into specific themes.) Is this approach working for people? I've still got another 950 pages, so I have plenty of time to tailor this to the thread. Dear god I have another 950 pages to go.
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Mar 17, 2019 23:11
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Xotl posted:Oddly, I'd appreciate a little more detail on just how Sanderson manages to waste so many pages. What goes into 300 pages of fluff; what does that fluff look like? Is he a rampant worldbuilder, a repressed dressmaker like Robert Jordan was, someone who likes endless pages of pointless conversation, something else? I'm getting the sense that a lot of it is worldbuilding, but is it literally all storing up future plot seeds? Worldbuilding is the biggest factor. And it's definitely not all for plot purposes. How much do you want to know about currency? We've gotten probably five pages collectively describing how they use glowing magical gems embedded in glass spheres as money, and how they leave them outside during storms to recharge the magic. Did you know that you can use them as reading lights? Or for lighting during surgery? But it's better if they're all the same kind of gem, because otherwise they give off different colors. Or how about worms? We've got a page describing how to remove worms from their crops so they won't eat all the grain. Or we can talk about the Purelake, and how it's a single lake hundreds of miles wide with lucky fish. Four pages. And of course, we get constant interruptions in the middle of all the battle scenes to talk about how cool their magic armor and swords are. Or we can talk about spren. There's this one kind that shows up around dead chasmfiends. Nobody knows why. I don't know if it's important but now you know! Isn't that interesting? It all adds up. Really fast. TheGreatEvilKing posted:I really think the darkeyes/light eyes stuff is more of a racism deal, just with eyes instead of skin. Not sure what you're referring to, but please share once we get there! I see a classism theme based on how much he plays up the "games of nobles with peasants caught in the middle" aspect for the war. The "go to war to gain renown so you can marry the noble girl" thing also strikes me as more of a class thing. But there's a lot I don't remember about this book. Whatever it ends up as, I hope it's better than Mistborn's "the lower classes were genetically engineered to be subservient and better at manual labor after we wrecked the ecosystem" thing. That was certainly interesting. A human heart posted:if i was a cool smart man with a lot of time maybe i'd write a big ol effort post about how this is the root of contemporary anglo american fiction being mostly bad. And please do this.
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Mar 18, 2019 02:26
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There's this massive army that's been sitting in the middle of a barren wasteland for six years. So maybe those worms I mentioned are going to eat all the grain and there's going to be a famine and this army with overextended supply lines is going to starve? They literally feed the army with magic. So no, that's never going to be important. It's just random factoids.
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Mar 18, 2019 02:46
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:I saw it more as racial due to the hereditary biological trait of eye color, but your case for classism is fairly strong too. It's... not a perfect analogy. The genetic component is definitely a weak point in my argument. I think there's even something about mixed children have a 50-50 chance of being lighteyes or darkeyes. I think we'll get a lot more about that once Kaladin starts interacting with the lighteyes, wouldn't surprise me if one of the bad guys goes on a rant about how darkeyes are inherently inferior. Or someone might accuse Kaladin of being a reverse-racist because he hates the lighteyes or something. I'll have to see how it plays out, I really don't remember that part of the book (basically all I remember after this point is Kaladin ping-ponging between saving the day and being an idiot.) But ultimately I'll probably make an intersectional/Marxist argument here: racism is one tool that has been exploited to maintain the power of the upper class, and is closely tied to other forms of discrimination. Supposedly darkeyes can actually become lighteyes if they win great feats in battle. But it hasn't happened in recent memory. Astonishingly, this hasn't happened to Kaladin according to the wiki.
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Mar 18, 2019 05:15
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Oh, hey, not remembering THAT. I'm surprised I didn't see that on the wiki, it's usually obsessively detailed. Or I just missed it while skimming. Bet he throws a temper tantrum about that one. Yeah, seems like a point in your favor. I'll keep an eye out for that. What the hell is up with Sanderson and genetic exceptionalism? Is this some Mormon thing? Guess I need to watch Book of Mormon again. Also I don't give a drat about spoilers. I'm reading this book for the second time so I can get the series off my to-read shelf without feeling too guilty. Post whatever evidence you want.
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Mar 18, 2019 05:38
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Silver2195 posted:That's not actually how it works. That makes more sense and lines up a bit better with what I remember, thanks. We've already gotten hints about that with Szeth's eyes changing when he uses his magic. I'll have to see how it's presented when it comes up. That reveal is at the end of book 1, right? See, this is the sort of world-building that I can get behind, it helps support and build a theme. Pat already pointed it out: Patrick Spens posted:The legitimization and de-legitimization of authority is a running theme throughout Stormlight. Dalinar and Gavilar are both jumped up thugs who seek to legitimize their power by becoming the kind of virtuous rulers who would have deserved to be kings. As a class, lighteyes are the reverse. Greedy and violent thugs who cling to the signifiers of legitimacy even after the knowledge of what light eyes meant has been forgotten. (Just to short-cut this in case anyone's going to bring this up: yes, the fact that spheres glow will be relevant when Kalidan's dad steals them, and that event does feed into the over-arching authority theme, but it could have been written in just as compelling a manner with normal coinage. Or a really expensive lamp. It certainly does not merit how much page space they've gotten.)
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Mar 18, 2019 23:55
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