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I listened to 2/3s of Elantris through audiobook on a long trip. I absolutely HATED the beginning; I was completely bored, but I'd already listened to my other books first so it was either that, or the radio. I stuck it out, but it was just so boring until 4 or 5 hours in, and then it started getting interesting. Part of the problem was the audiobook's quality; they basically did it like a narrated movie with sound effects and voice actors, rather than directly just reading the book, and I found that extremely annoying, but barely anything was going on at first. I'd already listened to over half of the book by the time I got home, but it definitely had gotten better, and then read the rest, and liked that much more than the audiobook, too. So I don't know if it's really that boring and tedious when you read it, but regardless, it's my least favorite Sanderson book. I still liked it regardless, but those first few hours I was so completely bored. The Way of Kings is 1007 pages? Holy crap, no wonder it took me so long to read. One of the things I really hate about Kindle is that it doesn't really give you a page count that you can immediately understand, so I had no idea how long the book was. That explains why when I stayed up to finish it at 87% that it took so long, I guess. Absolutely loved the book, though; frustrated as hell waiting for the next one.
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May 5, 2012 00:13
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Kreeblah posted:Was it the one by these folks? They turn books into radio dramas, so if you've never listened to any before, I could see it being kind of weird. Yes. At first I thought it would be kind of neat, but I didn't like it. The voice acting wasn't very good for more than a few characters, or was just retarded ("You can tell I'm evil because I have an evil voice!!!"), and I really did miss some of the stuff in between dialog that they didn't narrate; it made enough of an impression that I realized that I was able to notice that they weren't reading the entire book, skipping sentences here and there. Just not my kinda thing, I guess.
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May 5, 2012 05:56
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Antti posted:I won't delve into thread to avoid spoiling myself but I just finished The Well of Ascension and gently caress you Brandon Sanderson now I need to find the last book as soon as I can. I know the feeling; I just finished Alcatraz Versus the Shattered Lens. The series, while extremely silly and kinda stupid, was also really good, even if they're aimed at younger kids. Nothing like leaving the fourth of five books on a cliffhanger, and then apparently not writing (or announcing plans to write) the fifth one yet! At least the Mistborn Trilogy is already written, though I felt a bit down when I finished Alloy of Law, because that was excellent, too. I'm in the middle of way too many series right now; Dresden Files, Iron Druid, Stormlight Archives, The Lost Fleet, now this one, and at least two others that I can't think of off the top of my head.
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May 12, 2012 16:31
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Piell posted:The Lost Fleet is all right if you can get past the part where every book has literally the exact same plot. Yeah. I liked it; started it as an audiobook when I went to Florida last year. It's not perfect, but it was entertaining, as far as military Sci-Fi goes. The first series seems to be better than the books afterward, though; just got the last one that was released yesterday, though, so now I have more to read, along with a handful of smaller Sanderson books I haven't gotten to yet. I'd still definitely recommend it to anyone that likes Sci-Fi, though; a six book main series, two follow ups, and more to come apparently, so there's plenty to read. Iron Druid is great; it's not as good as Dresden, but it's very similar in a lot of ways and definitely worth reading. The humor is definitely hit or miss, though; he hits as often as he misses. I still like the invention of the word "gently caress puddle" in book three.
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May 13, 2012 14:15
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bowmore posted:So when does Elantris start to get interesting? I'm 200 pages in and so far it's been a bit of a bore. I tore through the Mistborn trilogy and Warbreaker and loved every second of it. Maybe halfway in or so? By the end, it's pretty good, but it suffers big time from having three? point of view characters, and only one is even slightly interesting.
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Jun 7, 2012 09:36
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We've talked about this before, but Elantris is both a great book and an incredibly boring one. The last 20% of the book is really good, but the first half is almost entirely really, really boring, though most of Raoden's parts are decent or better, even when nothing is really happening. I stuck with it because it was the only audio book I had left on a big trip, and didn't regret it, especially since by the time I got home I was able to read the remaining book and it was getting into the good part.
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Jun 15, 2012 01:21
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That family was the worst. I didn't like any of them, they didn't seem at all like normal people, and were more along the lines of being a fairly sheltered Mormon's idea of what a normal family is like.
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Jun 18, 2012 07:27
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Oh.  Maybe he'll manage them better now that he's a decent author, or the kids are older?
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Jun 18, 2012 21:26
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I liked Lightsong; he was so lame he was funny again.
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Jun 21, 2012 04:37
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You've read great things here about Elantris? I thought the consensus was that Elantris was mediocre at best. I feel it has one, sometimes two interesting point of view characters, and one that was so mind-numbingly boring that she almost tanks the entire book. I feel it's Sanderson's worst book, but I don't regret reading it, and wouldn't mind a re-read, but definitely wouldn't say great things about it. It's just so mediocre until the ending (everyone knows Sanderson writes great endings.) Whatever you do, though, do NOT listen to the audiobook. That helped to make a boring book into a terrible one, and I only stuck with it because I was on a long trip and out of audiobooks to listen to (ironically, it started getting good by the time I got home and could read the actual book.)
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Oct 18, 2012 02:34
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If only I knew what he wasing talking about.
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Jan 5, 2013 01:27
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I never catch plot twists in advance, but I caught Megan as an Epic really quickly, though not that she was a "bad guy," and as soon as it was mentioned that the Prof didn't use his tensors, I figured out that he was an Epic, too (and confirmed once the idea of gifting was introduced). I like Steelheart, and I'll look forward to the next one, but it is not his best work. It's just so . . . Mormon, if that makes any sense. The terrible, terrible "swear words" drove me absolutely nuts, and Sanderson's really bad attempts at being funny just don't work at all except in small doses. It felt like Alcatraz. I loved that series and hope he finishes it sometime in the next decade (he apparently has the rights back to it), but that kind of nonsense humor really goes best in a nonsense world. Could be the YA'ness showing through, though. And it hurts that I finished reading the Worm webserial a bit ago. It's not polished very well (it is a rough draft, basically), but I absolutely love Worm, and it was just a much better read than Steelheart, even though Sanderson is one of my favorite authors. Still, Sanderson's misses are still so much better than most people's best work.
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Sep 30, 2013 22:59
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What I don't get is why Firefight doesn't just kill everyone after infiltrating the group, rather than playing along with them (and killing that one Epic at the start). Use her powers to take the form of a member of the group, murder each person in their sleep if possible, but put the blame on the other person if somehow she gets caught. I mean, she can make illusions AND she can't die. Those are two pretty incredibly powerful abilities. I don't see what she (or Steelheart) get out of the long con. It's part of why I like Worm so much more than Steelheart. Wildbow is a master of taking a power that looks semi-useless and looking at it from every possible angle and finding a really powerful strength behind it. Instead of just giving a bunch of random comic book powers and strengths like in Steelheart, someone tends to be really good in one area and you get to see how someone with that particular strength would try to find every possible utility behind that strength because it's all they have. The Undersiders all look like they have really weak powers (Skitter controls bugs, Grue can project darkness, Regent can make people trip, Bitch can make dogs bigger and able to take more damage, and Tattletale is good at figuring things out) but they quickly establish themselves as big league players, taking out opponents that on paper seem much more of a big deal by finding their real weaknesses and exploiting them (and these weaknesses don't include "I can only be killed by someone wearing an argyle sweater" or so on like in Steelheart.) I guess what I'm saying is that if you liked Steelheart, go read Worm. It starts out a bit weaker (but still pretty great) with a girl being bullied at school while coming into her powers and just grows into this massive universe with extremely well fleshed out characters with realistic motives and goals. There's almost no power creep, even though the stakes continuously keep getting higher. It could definitely benefit from being polished (it's a first draft, basically), but it's honestly a lot better than a ton of published books, and would be among the best if it went through the whole revision process that it would need in order to get published. It's about 1.5 million words, though, so it'll keep you busy for a while. http://parahumans.wordpress.com/2011/06/11/1-1/
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Oct 20, 2013 20:00
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Given that one of the most popular YA novel series in recent times is more or less about children brutally murdering each other for reality TV, I don't think that there's really an issue.
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Oct 31, 2013 18:52
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I thought the first Dune was kinda of interesting but also kind of stale; great ideas, but so slow paced. The second book was really incredibly boring, and I think I even read the third book before concluding that it wasn't for me at all. It's very bland and old fashioned and you can go chapters and chapters and chapters without anything happening except people talking about maybe doing something later. It's also a sci-fi classic, so SOME people really enjoy it. Your mileage may vary, but that's my experience with it.
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Dec 5, 2013 21:34
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Damo posted:So, we're getting 2 Wax and Wayne books this year, right? I know Sanderson said he wrote two, I wonder if they are going to be released one shortly after the other. I think a lot of that is that Sanderson just got better as a writer. He started as an okay author, and quickly made his way to great. The progression from Elantris to his newer stuff is just amazing. Mistborn is enjoyable, but he'd do a much better job if he wrote them now.
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Jan 2, 2015 07:29
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Decius posted:Lucas revealed that Darth Vader is Luke's son at a con before Star Wars V was released. Wow, I'd really like to read that version of the script!
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Jun 10, 2015 17:08
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There are a lot of people that come to the thread and haven't read them and plan to, though.
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Jun 23, 2015 01:32
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Rithmatist is good, Alcatraz is really stupid but fun. Steelhart is readable, but I don't know if it's really good comparable to his other works; it's just okay.
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Aug 3, 2015 19:04
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quote:I did some exploratory scenes for it this summer, though these may or may not end up in the actual book. I have been tweaking the outline, and am starting to feel very good about it. Writing the book should consume the entire rest of 2015, with a 2016 release. I do plan the Stormlight books to be an every-other-year thing. So yeah, another Stormlight in 2016, plus Bands of Mourning, Calamity, another Alcatraz, and maybe one or two smaller or YA works like Legion or The Rithmatist.
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Oct 26, 2015 21:19
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And the delay's fault isn't even his, it's the people that aren't him. "Dude, slow down, we have to read and edit and things to do to to get this ready to publish, and you're expecting us to do all this plus our other clients' works on a thousand page book several times for a thousand page book in eighteen months, minus the time you spend writing?"
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Dec 19, 2015 17:30
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Speak for yourself, I thought they were excellent.
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Jan 25, 2016 23:28
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I can't remember much from The Rithmatist, so I'm looking forward to re-reading it before the next one comes out.
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May 21, 2016 00:35
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And the voice acting from the Phillips CDI Zelda games!
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Feb 12, 2017 01:14
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Captain Monkey posted:oh no what if someone doesnt read a book right They could die.
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Mar 8, 2017 17:12
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LolitaSama posted:So, this post shows up on the first page of google for me when I was researching if I should continue with the Mistborn trilogy. Brandon Sanderson is by far my favorite author. He isn't perfect, but he's a lot of fun and he's getting better.
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Mar 10, 2017 23:20
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Torrannor posted:
I have to disagree - Elantris is a complete slog to get through, though the last quarter of the book is good. I've re-read almost everything of Sanderson's at least once, but I have very little interest in rereading Elantris. Emperor's Soul is amazing.
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Jun 21, 2017 17:39
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Legion figured out interstellar travel.
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Dec 19, 2017 00:31
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I just realized that Hoid commenting to Shallan in WoR about axehounds (what is a hound?) was really funas a hint in hindsight, now that we know how humans got to Roshar. Kind of odd that they wouldn't bring dogs with them, though.
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Jan 16, 2018 19:44
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Wayne is pretty funny.
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Jan 21, 2018 01:16
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Tahirovic posted:I've tried to had my Kindle read to me but that sound/voice is just not good, wonder if it could actually play proper audio books, that would make for nice package deals in the Kindle store. Can't your phone play audiobooks if your Kindle can't? I feel like even my non-smart phone a few years back could still play audiobooks if they were the right formats.
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Feb 12, 2019 16:53
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I can see that happening. Odium is absolutely terrified of Harmony, so something is probably going to go down to neutralize/kill him, which ties into Autonomy showing up since Autonomy is active on Scadrial at the moment. OneTwentySix fucked around with this message at 14:47 on Jun 3, 2019 |
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Jun 3, 2019 14:43
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And then there's the fact that he wrote Bands of Mourning because he didn't know how to end Shadows of Self, and had them both out next to each other.
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Nov 15, 2019 14:43
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