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Mahlertov Cocktail posted:Next time I reread Sanderson books, I'm going to put Elantris and Way of Kings right next to each other just to see the the spectacular improvement. Nah, Elantris & Emperor's Soul. Shared shard and starting improvement!
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Feb 24, 2013 01:20
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Honestly I'd say Sanderson suffers by having all the longass series - his best stuff is the short stories/single books IMO.
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Feb 24, 2013 01:38
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Pimpmust posted:Or well, "too good" might describe it. Other words that come to mind: Rushed, Cringeworthy and "way to toss out all that interesting world/character building with the bath-water" (Lord Ruler, I'm looking at you). Yeah well, all that world-building wasn't tossed out with the bathwater. What the Lord Ruler is, what he has done, and what he's still doing plays a huge part in books 2 and 3. The Final Empire ties up what the protagonist characters set out to do at the beginning of the book, but in the process asks a few more questions, which the protagonists don't know about but will eventually be answered. VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE fucked around with this message at 01:53 on Feb 24, 2013 |
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Feb 24, 2013 01:50
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Pimpmust posted:Just finished Mistborn on my second/third try (got bogged down in the first chapters previously) and I liked it well enough, up until part 4. Take a break and read his short story "The Emporer's Soul" that came out recently. Most of us agree that his writing is getting much better.
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Feb 24, 2013 02:27
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404GoonNotFound posted:Nah, Elantris & Emperor's Soul. Shared shard and starting improvement! I actually haven't gotten around to reading Emperor's Soul at all yet. 
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Feb 24, 2013 02:38
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Pimpmust posted:Just finished Mistborn on my second/third try (got bogged down in the first chapters previously) and I liked it well enough, up until part 4. If it's any consolation, Lord Ruler becomes a way more interesting character in the later books (even though he's dead).
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Feb 24, 2013 02:56
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Piell posted:Honestly I'd say Sanderson suffers by having all the longass series - his best stuff is the short stories/single books IMO. Yeah, but he never really has to plan/budget time for the short stuff, it just kind of happens every time he goes on vacation/gets a long plain ride/gets cut off in traffic/etc.
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Feb 24, 2013 03:23
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Piell posted:Honestly I'd say Sanderson suffers by having all the longass series - his best stuff is the short stories/single books IMO. I think in general the short stories are better because they're newer and he's improving as a writer. The newest Wheel of Time is fantastic.
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Feb 24, 2013 18:15
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soru posted:I think in general the short stories are better because they're newer and he's improving as a writer. The newest Wheel of Time is fantastic. Are you talking about A Memory of Light? I thought that this is the weakest of Sanderson's works with the WoT series.
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Feb 24, 2013 18:36
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Furious Lobster posted:Are you talking about A Memory of Light? I thought that this is the weakest of Sanderson's works with the WoT series. Okay. Well, I disagree. Anyway, the point was that in general when you compare new things to older things, the new things are much better. Short stories are new things.
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Feb 24, 2013 19:10
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I thought the newest Wheel of Time was Brandon's worst book, period. But there were a lot of variables that went into the making of that book, and I doubt he had total control. The Emperor's Soul was really good. To me, reading it just before the last Wheel of Tome book, it felt like he was venting some of his frustration with writing the WOT. The most interesting thing is that there's only one fight scene in the entire book. Its a good fight scene, but the book shows that Brandon can write a compelling story without relying on them.
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Feb 24, 2013 19:50
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I think the shorts are so good because he admits that it is a media that he has trouble with so he works much harder on what he puts out. His short stories are some of my favorite recent fiction. I think it has a lot to do with the fact he doesn't have 100 pages to explain his "magic/whatever system" so he has to make the jump of cutting out the tutorial chapters.
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Feb 25, 2013 05:24
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Fallorn posted:I think the shorts are so good because he admits that it is a media that he has trouble with so he works much harder on what he puts out. His short stories are some of my favorite recent fiction. I think it has a lot to do with the fact he doesn't have 100 pages to explain his "magic/whatever system" so he has to make the jump of cutting out the tutorial chapters. Good. I love Sanderson but I do think he over explains his magic systems. It takes the mystique away and makes it into just another tool
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Feb 25, 2013 07:49
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spootime posted:Good. I love Sanderson but I do think he over explains his magic systems. It takes the mystique away and makes it into just another tool I'm pretty sure that's the point and exactly how he sees them. He's very much a stickler for rules in his books to the point where I expect he sees his magic systems as just more natural laws of the various worlds he writes in.
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Feb 25, 2013 08:29
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To me his magic systems are what makes his books work properly. I don't think I've ever seen a "THE EAGLES!" moment in one of his books, he defines rules and sticks to them. He doesn't change his system just because it suits him at the time to do that. When you read his books you kind of know what is possible and what is not.
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Feb 25, 2013 10:06
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Kreeblah posted:I'm pretty sure that's the point and exactly how he sees them. He's very much a stickler for rules in his books to the point where I expect he sees his magic systems as just more natural laws of the various worlds he writes in. I'm pretty sure I've seen a quote to this effect somewhere, and it's exactly right, and really the way things should be handled. If magic exists and works, then it is natural and the laws discovered by science will reflect that.
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Feb 25, 2013 12:09
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Yeah, his magic systems don't just inform what the characters can do, they inform how his entire world developed what with the storms in Way Of Kings influencing everything from ecology to the economy, or the 3 systems in Mistborn driving the government, class system, etc.
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Feb 25, 2013 12:45
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So how's the audio book for WoK anyway? I keep getting about 60-70% through before something comes up (read: Dresden or something similar) and I lose my place, so I figure going Kindle + Audible with that Whispersync thingamabob is my only chance of finishing it.
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Feb 25, 2013 18:05
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So, from what I learned/overheard at the signing, apparently Sanderson's kids are now super into Sonic the Hedgehog. And are now watching all three of the shows. So, I'm guessing the next magic system is going to be based off Speed. If the wizards go under 50 miles per hour, they explode. Because they gotta go fast.
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Feb 25, 2013 18:06
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404GoonNotFound posted:So how's the audio book for WoK anyway? I liked it. They're not my favorite readers ever, but they grew on me as the book went on. Shallan's anti-humor is much more obvious when spoken, though.
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Feb 25, 2013 18:14
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Mahlertov Cocktail posted:I liked it. They're not my favorite readers ever, but they grew on me as the book went on. Shallan's anti-humor is much more obvious when spoken, though. Too bad it's like 60 dollars and doesn't seem to qualify for any of the obligatory podcast plug offers... and I have no idea how these free membership credit things work (do you keep the book? do you have to re-up to keep your poo poo like Playstation Plus? WHO FUCKIN' KNOWS!).
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Feb 25, 2013 18:20
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404GoonNotFound posted:Too bad it's like 60 dollars and doesn't seem to qualify for any of the obligatory podcast plug offers... and I have no idea how these free membership credit things work (do you keep the book? do you have to re-up to keep your poo poo like Playstation Plus? WHO FUCKIN' KNOWS!). I got it with one of the free credit things. You just download the book and it's yours.
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Feb 25, 2013 18:22
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Mahlertov Cocktail posted:I got it with one of the free credit things. You just download the book and it's yours. Ah, I was confused by the whole "member price is 7 dollars instead of 60" thing on the book's actual page. Welp, hopefully this should help me actually finish it... if only I could figure out how Whispersync works.
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Feb 25, 2013 19:08
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404GoonNotFound posted:So how's the audio book for WoK anyway? I remember reading earlier in the thread that someone said the first part, explaining the different Lashings, is pretty hard to listen to. After that, they said it was fine.
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Feb 25, 2013 19:10
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rafikki posted:I remember reading earlier in the thread that someone said the first part, explaining the different Lashings, is pretty hard to listen to. After that, they said it was fine. He just goes into a bit too much detail. Like instead of just saying "He lashed the desk and pulled it towards him" or something, he would explain exactly how that worked. It's not that we don't want to know, we just don't need everything in the first chapter of the book. And in voice, it's even more awkward, because it's like you are listening to a reference book instead of a story. Look at channeling in WoT for an example on explaining a magic system a bit more gracefully - we get that there's channeling and we see things done with it, but it takes multiple books before we understand the underlying structure of it.
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Feb 25, 2013 19:30
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Maybe if that first chapter took place from the POV of someone else who was unfamiliar with the magic, like someone who barely survives being smashed by furniture flying around, then manages to get to but is too late for the last bit when Szeth kills the king? And then the next time we see Szeth in action it's from his POV, thus giving us the names of the abilities. I can't complain too much about the rest of the book though, but I do think there's theoretically possible to be a voice that works for Shallan's jokes. Not that I've listened to the audiobook, can't comment on that specifically.
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Feb 25, 2013 19:52
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They didn't work in the audiobook for me; I didn't have much of a problem with them when reading, but listening, at least to that portrayal, made me cringe.
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Feb 25, 2013 19:59
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Yeah, I've read that tutorial at least three times. Every time I leave the book for two long and restart I have to muscle through it. For a frame of reference of where I was last time, I vaguely remember something about Dalinar had just spent the day digging a latrine trench with his shardplate to put off thinking about his retirement. Riveting.
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Feb 25, 2013 20:01
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To be fair I don't think it's fair to make out like the audiobook readers actually act out the lines of dialogue. (I enjoyed the radio dramatizations of Star Wars and Hobbit, etc., and I think whoever it was did a decent job with the dramatizations, for example, of the Star Wars Dark Empire 1&2 comics.)
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Feb 25, 2013 20:01
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Dalinar is basically Perrin, yeah 
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Feb 25, 2013 20:03
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That's not fair at all. Dalinar actually does things within the space of one book.
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Feb 25, 2013 20:06
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As did Perrin, in the first few books. Dun. Dun. Dun.
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Feb 25, 2013 21:41
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Apparently there's only going to be 5 books in this arc of the Stormlight Archives, so there's that. (The other arc of 5 books make up the rest of the 10 total)
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Feb 26, 2013 06:34
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I might be just weird maybe for preferring the magic systems like this(all the basic facts laid out, then leaving room for mechanics exploits later), but it might be that the tutorial section is harder to get through in audio than in text, where it goes by pretty fast, and is usually in an action scene anyway, so no problem for me.
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Feb 26, 2013 07:16
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api call girl posted:Maybe if that first chapter took place from the POV of someone else who was unfamiliar with the magic, like someone who barely survives being smashed by furniture flying around, then manages to get to but is too late for the last bit when Szeth kills the king? Unnamed character POVs are almost always awkward, and the message in blood means Szeth or Gavilar are the only named characters who could do it. A Gavilar POV would have to reveal some detail about the message, so... yeah. I agree that the first chapter is annoyingly infodumpy, but I don't think Sanderson could have made a better first chapter without changing the plot around.
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Feb 26, 2013 13:07
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Amarkov posted:Unnamed character POVs are almost always awkward, and the message in blood means Szeth or Gavilar are the only named characters who could do it. A Gavilar POV would have to reveal some detail about the message, so... yeah. I agree that the first chapter is annoyingly infodumpy, but I don't think Sanderson could have made a better first chapter without changing the plot around. Doesn't have to be major changes, though. It's not like we haven't had one-off POVs in the series so far, he could even be one of the main named characters, or even Sadeas, to give his eventual betrayal of Dalinar even more weight. The message could be referenced in that chapter but not interpreted and Dalinar would think about it later giving us its content. VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Feb 27, 2013 |
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Feb 27, 2013 15:46
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api call girl posted:Doesn't have to be major changes, though. It's not like we haven't had one-off POVs in the series so far, he could even be one of the main named characters, or even Sadeas, to give his eventual betrayal of Dalinar even more weight. The message could be referenced in that chapter but not interpreted and Dalinar would think about it later giving us its content. Well, thanks for that.
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Feb 27, 2013 20:02
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Lprsti99 posted:Well, thanks for that. It's been how goddamn long since the book's been out?
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Feb 27, 2013 20:15
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Okay yeah the book's been out for a couple of years, but this isn't a Way of Kings thread - it's a general Sanderson thread, so some people might not have read the book yet.
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Feb 27, 2013 20:20
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Brandon's giving out free copies of The Emperor's Soul over at his blog.
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Feb 27, 2013 20:55
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