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Law Cheetah posted:after dalinar et al got radiant powers, with the voidbringers coming back, it's just not credible that the alethi wouldn't unite behind him, even though the radiants have a bad reputation. sadeas playing some sneaky game would mean nothing in the face of all that. narratively, he had to go. the tension from alodin possibly getting found out for murdering a lighteyes has bigger drama potential than any kind of machinations sadeas could have pulled. shallan getting put between the alethi and the ghostbloods, as well as the diagram and whatever szeth is mixed up in could fill the role of causing internal tension as well End of Book Spoilers Yeah, the big issue is that Sadeas didn't have any cards to play. His arguments after they get to the city are pretty weak, it's hard to go "yeah, this dude was lying about teleporting us to an ancient city". Killing him off gives Adolin something to be dark about an provides tension with his truthseeker brother, his honor-dude buddy, his fellow murderer betrothed and the rest of the lighteyes. I'd expect it to be a major point in the next book, potentially dealing with the justice stuff from the assassin.
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Mar 6, 2014 05:51
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Ithaqua posted:I would expect that she wouldn't sound like an American 13 year old. I think it's a deliberate style choice on his part, but a bad one. Olver from WoT was fine, assuming Brandon Sanderson wrote the sections from his perspective and not Robert Jordan. This is a general issue that Sanderson has. I've heard that his writing process involves a first draft with practically no voice and it shows. Some characters do have a unique and appropriate voice but it feels like he can have real issues with getting a proper voice.
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Mar 7, 2014 02:40
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thespaceinvader posted:What's wrong with the names now? Maybe I'm just jaded to fantasy lit having terrible names (quite likely, I read a shitton of bad fantasy), but his names seem fine to me. Eh, he has a lot of problems with making them meaningful. When you look at Dalinar, Kaladin or Shallan nothing really comes out and says which ones are noble or where they're from. If you're doing real names then it's easy to infer something about Pierre, Rachel and Jim Bob.
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Apr 13, 2014 15:42
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Rumda posted:Well the problem with those specific names is they ARE all noble vorin names. Right, and all the names I chose are pretty traditional Christian names. I didn't go into Li or Abdul or Mtembe or Miyamoto territory. One of the problems is that he tends to give people one word names and a last name if they're related to other people. Think about Taravingian, is that a first name or a last name? Is it supposed to be Vorin? Or the Kholin family, how is it that a large and powerful noble family like that has two branches (Dalinar and Gavilar->Elhokar)? What was Kaladain's last name? Even if he was a commoner he'd likely have something about his parent's profession unless every single person has a different first name (as it appears they do, Sanderson doesn't seem to repeat names often).
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Apr 14, 2014 14:00
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The Puppy Bowl posted:Jasnah got stabbed through the heart, pinning her to a plank on a sinking ship. It's not totally unreasonable to assume she died. That said I could easily let that slide if it weren't for the fact that 10 pages before she pops out of a wormhole back into the realm of the living a main character who is essentially decapitated is resurrected. It was lazy and stupid and I don't see why we have to argue about it anymore. Obviously Eshonai wasn't dead but even allowing a character to have that assumption coupled with the two other resurrections is pretty stupid. Eh, my problem with the Jasnah stuff is that he stuck her reveal too close to everything else happening. He could have easily had a chapter where she's sitting on a shore somewhere wondering what the hell to do somewhere in the middle of the book and not forced the end of the book to have a "btw these people aren't dead" chapter.
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Apr 28, 2014 05:30
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Rumda posted:Na the point of the scene was that she had missed everything she had planned for and her ward had taken her place have her return any earlier would have screwed that up He can still have the conversation between Hoid and Jasnah at the end, but pretending that she's dead (to the reader) adds nothing to the book and putting the reveal where it is just makes it feel like Kaladin found all the Dragon Balls and it's time to bring people back to life.
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Apr 28, 2014 13:44
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EVGA Longoria posted:Except what you're suggesting adds nothing to the plot. It's basically a handholding chapter for people who didn't pick up on obvious signs. The problem is that there is no actual mystery, and having the reveal at the end sticks it too close to the other reveal and makes it feel weak. It'd be one thing if hiding the knowledge from the reader really changed the way you read it the first time through but it doesn't, if you see through it then it's boring and if you don't see through it it's still boring.
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Apr 29, 2014 02:36
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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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Fair to Midland posted:I would say I agree, but my favorite series Wheel of Time used swears such as "Blood and Bloody Ashes" etc which I love. The funny thing is that the Malazan series actually uses a lot of "fantasy swears", but they don't feel as awkward because they're things like "Hood's Balls" which is both in character for the setting and it makes sense why it's a swear word.
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Jul 18, 2014 04:13
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Xachariah posted:It's really not that complicated, the I.C.E books and B&K books are tangential to the main story and largely irrelevant. Wait, what? IIRC Tavore is explicitly a lesbian and is never really treated as a fan service character at all, and she's a pretty major character. The way I remember it, most characters are straight, some are gay and quite a few fall somewhere in between. It's also a series where quite a few of the characters are explicitly asian, black or something else that is very not white.
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Jul 22, 2014 17:10
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Torrannor posted:If I recall correctly, Sauron made no appearance in the Fellowship of the Ring itself, and I can't remember if we saw him using the Palantir to speak with Saruman in the Two Towers or not. Was Tolkien a bad author then? When a Master breaks a rule, you look at why they did it. When a novice breaks a rule, you tell them that they hosed up. Tolkien was a Master and Sanderson is a relative novice.
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Dec 2, 2015 18:47
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computer parts posted:Tolkien also has the main antagonist of the Hobbit killed off screen from the perspective of the protagonists, and he most definitely wasn't a "Master" then. The Hobbit is structured as a series of bedtime stories and doesn't have a consistent antagonist. Bilbo isn't the protagonist of the story where Smaug dies. And the point isn't that you have to be established to be a master. If someone breaks a rule and it makes sense and improves the story then it's good, and any rule can be broken like this. 90% of the time when a rule is broken, it has a lovely outcome.
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Dec 6, 2015 23:51
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The Puppy Bowl posted:Lot of redacted up in here so I'll be taking my leave. Just swung by to say that I've just finished Part 3 and Shallan is somehow worse in this book than she was in WoK. The conversations between her and Wit are probably the most insufferable scenes in the whole series. Yeah, I'm still not a fan of his characterization. Everyone is basically the same embodiment of his idea of reasonableness with different perspectives and a gimmick. I'm hoping it'll work itself out but most of his growth seems to go into plotting and doing mtg combos with his magic systems.
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Nov 29, 2017 05:34
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