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I read Sanderson's WoT books, then the stormlight archives. Now I've started on the Reckoners books, though they seem more young adult than his other stuff. After that I'm planning on his Mistborn series. Will that give me the breadth of his cosmere stuff? Or are there some of his short stories/one-offs that I should read?
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Mar 22, 2015 16:57
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mewse posted:I read Sanderson's WoT books, then the stormlight archives. Reckoners isn't part of the Cosmere. None of his books that take place on some version of Earth are. You would only be missing Warbreaker and the two novels which take place on Sel, Elantris and Emperors's Soul. You can get a free version of Warbreaker here: http://brandonsanderson.com/books/warbreaker/warbreaker/warbreaker-rights-and-downloads/ Warbreaker and Stormlight Archives 2 have the first really obvious characters in common, though the two characters from Warbreaker that appear in Words of Radiance have either a minor role, or only appear in the third to last chapter of the book. Elantris is probably his weakest Cosmere book, while Emperor's Soul is his best book, period.
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Mar 22, 2015 17:34
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Torrannor posted:Reckoners isn't part of the Cosmere.  quote:You would only be missing Warbreaker and the two novels which take place on Sel, Elantris and Emperors's Soul. You can get a free version of Warbreaker here: http://brandonsanderson.com/books/warbreaker/warbreaker/warbreaker-rights-and-downloads/ Ok, thank you, I'll revise my list
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Mar 22, 2015 17:41
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mewse posted:I read Sanderson's WoT books, then the stormlight archives. Reckoners and anything else that takes place on earth don't take place in the cosmere, they're pretty good. You're missing a few books. Warbreaker and Emperor's Soul are definitely worth reading, Elantris is probably about 1/3 of a good book, and it's safe to skip that unless you'd like to see how bad Sanderson was when he started out (so bad). Sixth of the Dusk is also Cosmere, and I'd recommend picking it up.
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Mar 22, 2015 17:42
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senae posted:Elantris is probably about 1/3 of a good book, and it's safe to skip that unless you'd like to see how bad Sanderson was when he started out (so bad). Sixth of the Dusk is also Cosmere, and I'd recommend picking it up. I read he is putting out a revised edition of Elantris sometime soon, which cleans up some of the awkward writing and makes some other changes to improve the book. If you're gong to read it, I'd wait for that version at least. And for what it's worth, even though Elantris is flawed I still enjoyed it, it helped that I went into it with the mentality that it was his first novel and was going to be rough. His novellas are all good to great, as others have said. A lot of fantasy writers seem incapable of writing anything but multi-volume epics, and I think it says a lot about him as an author that he can also write effective short fiction that still includes interesting world-building. The magic system in The Emporer's Soul is deep enough to be the basis of a whole novel, or even a series, but he reigns it in and focuses on telling a good story.
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Mar 22, 2015 20:31
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mewse posted:Now I've started on the Reckoners books, though they seem more young adult than his other stuff.
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Mar 22, 2015 22:05
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It's just Rithmatist, and it's surprisingly good given its YA-ness. Similarly, Alcatraz and The Evil Librarians is pretty fun if you don't mind YA and dad jokes.
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Mar 22, 2015 23:45
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Everything Sanderson writes is pretty YA, imo.
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Mar 23, 2015 00:10
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Khizan posted:Everything Sanderson writes is pretty YA, imo. Only if YA means "nothing terribly graphic". Mistborn is the closest to a Hunger Games type of book but as of Alloy of Law it kind of lost that.
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Mar 23, 2015 00:17
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Khizan posted:Everything Sanderson writes is pretty YA, imo. It's that mindset that leads to people complaining about actually flawed characters in stormlight
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Mar 23, 2015 00:24
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apophenium posted:I finished Way of Kings and did not like it one bit. It's the only Sanderson book I've read and it will likely remain the only one. I kept waffling back and forth between Sanderson being a completely clueless writer and an incredibly deliberate one. Some of it reads like fan-fiction for some other author's setting. Particularly anything dealing with Shardblades/plates, spren, and any time magic is involved. Sanderson is never content to let the reader assume that spren are around. He's gotta mention it every drat time. Same thing with stormlight. There's probably a whole chapters worth of "...stormlight leaked from something..." It became really exhausting to have to trudge through these constant reminders that this is a fantasy world. Please don't forget. I'm about halfway through "The Way of Kings" and I agree with a lot of this, though I'm still managing to enjoy the book and am planning on reading the sequel. I love the guy's world building and think that he's got a lot of great ideas, but for every great idea that he has, it's implemented in a clumsy way that seems like he hasn't actually thought things through beyond "hey, cool idea! [throws it in the mix]" 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. Between the Spren, the shardblade and plate stuff, and what I understand of the basic gods/reincarnation sort of concept so far, it all definitely does feel so "video gamey"t that it's like we're actually essentially seeing a fantasy video game through the eyes of its participants, complete with stats and other "interface" type devices (spren), power-ups (shard-stuff), save states and "continues," etc. If I had more faith in Sanderson, and based on what I've read of the Cosmere stuff, I want to believe that he's going to pull a kind of Brian Aldiss Helliconia series twist later on where all of this is actually in some sort of grandiose simulation. But I don't think that's the case, I think he's just being clumsy in the implementation of some cool concepts in his fantasy milieu.
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Mar 23, 2015 03:30
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The other thing that I'm struggling with is Sanderson's writing style. I actually enjoy how breezy and accessible it is - he doesn't try too hard and the pages fly by, compared to someone like Steven Erikson, whose prose is so clunky that it often feels like something translated to English from another language, and by an algorithm at that. Erikson is the only writer that manages to, at least once per chapter, squeak out a sentence so dysfunctional and clunky that I have to read two or three times before I can even parse it. As a prose stylist, he's a real chore. Of course, he makes up for this by having created the single most interesting and fully-realized world in literally any fantasy series ever, so it's worth it. But as someone who loves reading great prose, drat, dude. The thing about Sanderson that feels like amateur hour to me is how frequently he'll use language - either spoken, directly thought, or in exposition - that's far too modern or specific to our world and scientific knowledge. I get that this is a fine line to walk, because if you go too far into trying to adapt all casual knowledge of the body, nutrition, nature, physics, etc. into the fantasy world's terms, you end up with pure word salad as all units of measurement and quantity are suddenly incomprehensible and a character will then "drink three gulplings of ale before walking quadtreen stepfarthings to the next Princery in the season of Reapmas." I get it. But Sanderson is way too casual in correcting in the opposite direction and using terms that are very specific to our world for basically everything, and the end result feels lacking in effort and, well, kind of "fanfic" or amateur. I can't think of a single example to quote at this moment, but there was something in a passage I recently read where a character literally referenced newtonian physics or something in those terms which are specifically from our own scientific history, like someone specifically used the word metabolism or something like that, and it stood way out as a freshman comp mistake. There's a bunch of that in his prose that I find very distracting, like he just hasn't considered that these characters wouldn't be thinking and speaking more or less like modern Americans for the most part. Ring a bell for anyone else?
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Mar 23, 2015 03:49
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Modern language in prose is something that has never bothered me at all. The reverse is true. I dislike when authors try to use Ye Olde Language to explain something. Why stress yourself as a writer and more importantly stressing your readers with full sentences dedicated to a simple concept. Anachronism? Maybe, but we have a word for it. Its a book written in English.
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Mar 23, 2015 04:21
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Rumda posted:It's that mindset that leads to people complaining about actually flawed characters in stormlight The complaints are not so much about the characters having flaws so much as they are about Sanderson's implementation of those flaws. Sanderson's just not that good at characterization or dialogue in general, so the flaws aren't handled with any degree of subtlety whatsoever and you end up with a thousand pages of Kaladin being an aggressively mopey idiot followed by his having an epiphany and getting a Level Up animation right before the boss fight.
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Mar 23, 2015 05:02
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Transistor Rhythm posted:Ring a bell for anyone else? I complained about "cologne" earlier in the thread, but it seems that not all that many people care.
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Mar 23, 2015 12:01
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Umbra Dubium posted:I complained about "cologne" earlier in the thread, but it seems that not all that many people care. And I complained about some of the other jarring anachronistic language as well. I never want to see the phrase "super awesome" in a fantasy setting.
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Mar 23, 2015 13:15
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I always assume these people might not really be speaking what we consider english in the first place and these are kind of translations. Then again it's turn your brain off fantasy so I'm not really expecting literature here.
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Mar 23, 2015 14:43
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Levitate posted:I always assume these people might not really be speaking what we consider english in the first place and these are kind of translations. Then again it's turn your brain off fantasy so I'm not really expecting literature here. That's the thing - it's a fine line for sure, and some fantasy writers really nail it while others go overboard and you end up with a bunch of hilarious word salad in a bid for authenticity. Sanderson doesn't strike me as the type of writer who thinks about this sort of thing in the slightest. I haven't hit "cologne" yet, but I mean, it's quite literally named after the place in Germany and is a fairly recent etymological invention (early 19th century). That's a super-embarrassing thing to just haphazardly use in writing fantasy fiction, akin to a character ordering a "Philly" at the local tavern.
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Mar 23, 2015 14:54
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Levitate posted:I always assume these people might not really be speaking what we consider english in the first place and these are kind of translations. Then again it's turn your brain off fantasy so I'm not really expecting literature here. I think that's a fair assumption for any fantasy post-Tolkien. I mean, Tolkien was good at keeping anachronisms out of his works, but a fundamental part of Lord of the Rings was that it was a translation of the Red Book of Westmarch.
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Mar 23, 2015 15:18
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computer parts posted:Only if YA means "nothing terribly graphic". Mistborn is the closest to a Hunger Games type of book but as of Alloy of Law it kind of lost that.
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Mar 23, 2015 15:19
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Mars4523 posted:Doesn't Vin slaughter people by the platoon in Mistborn? Not in very graphic detail, though. Sanderson loves his high body counts, but he's pretty averse to descriptions of gore (which is probably part of the reason why Shardblades work the way they do). Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 16:43 on Mar 23, 2015 |
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Mar 23, 2015 16:40
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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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Ithaqua posted:And I complained about some of the other jarring anachronistic language as well. I never want to see the phrase "super awesome" in a fantasy setting. Agreed. I don't care about modern English in fantasy literature for the most part, but things like 'awesome' are colloquial in a way that is very jarring, especially in a somewhat serious in tone work. Using a modern writing style doesn't mean you have to use modern slang terms, and that was my main problem with Lift's chapter, for example. It just felt really really cheesy.
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Mar 23, 2015 17:02
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The only time I remember finding modern language in Sanderson really jarring was Adolin suggesting that Jasnah was "sexist," which doesn't really make sense in terms of Alethi ideas about gender roles. It felt like Sanderson forgot an important element of his setting for a moment just to set up a bad pun.
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Mar 23, 2015 19:30
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Mars4523 posted:Doesn't Vin slaughter people by the platoon in Mistborn? Pretty much, yes. She also bisects a man and his horse in one blow. Not to mention the whole blood-fountains scene and the fight that follows it. Mistborn is a pretty dark series at times.
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Mar 23, 2015 19:33
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thespaceinvader posted:Pretty much, yes. She also bisects a man and his horse in one blow. Not to mention the whole blood-fountains scene and the fight that follows it. Mistborn is a pretty dark series at times. I'd say most of the Hemalurgy stuff is considerably darker than any ordinary, Allomancy-powered violence. Especially the 'reproduction' methods of Inquisitors and everything about the Koloss.
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Mar 23, 2015 19:58
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Cicero posted:The Autumn Republic (Powder Mage Trilogy Book 3) from noted Sanderclone Brian McClellan comes out tomorrow! Thanks for the recommendation. I've already consumed most/all of common fantasy goon-recs (Sanderon/Abercrombie/Rothfuss/Mieville/GRRM/Butcher/Lynch/Hobbs) so I was almost at the point where I'd presumed to have read most of the "good stuff" out there. Just finish the first book of the trilogy and really enjoyed it. I wouldn't quite say Sanderclone but they're definitely similar (and not in a bad way). Onto book 2 now. E: Saw some Erikson chat, and that was the one common goonrec series I couldn't get into 
Xaris fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Mar 23, 2015 |
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Mar 23, 2015 20:12
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thespaceinvader posted:Pretty much, yes. She also bisects a man and his horse in one blow. Not to mention the whole blood-fountains scene and the fight that follows it. Mistborn is a pretty dark series at times. That scene was like something out of Berserk.
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Mar 23, 2015 20:54
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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.
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Mar 23, 2015 22:31
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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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Am i mistaken in feeling that people think the "Tastefulness" of young adult books regarding sex and violence is a bad thing? Because graphic details make me squeamish and I've looong gone past being a teen.  Tho to be fair, i have read Best Served Cold on recommendation, and that has sex so brutally honest its hilarious as well as uncomfortable!  Ithaqua posted:And I complained about some of the other jarring anachronistic language as well. I never want to see the phrase "super awesome" in a fantasy setting. I passionately hate this idea. It doesn't matter how the real world uses dialogue, if any phrasing is just tossed in for shits and giggles I'd call it out because its bad writing. Thyrork fucked around with this message at 23:46 on Mar 23, 2015 |
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Mar 23, 2015 23:44
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aparmenideanmonad posted: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... There are also two categories of spren, those based on aspects of nature, like windspren and flamespren, and those based on ideals or emotions, like honorspren and gloryspren. It seems like the latter appear much less often, and have more control over who they appear to, than the former. As for anachronism-chat, it doesn't really bother me, unless it's extremely jarring, like Lift's awesomeness. But the other things just seem like the spergiest of nitpicks. I mean seriously, cologne? I get that the original word comes from a city in Germany, but most people, when they hear the phrase "wearing cologne," aren't going to immediately make that association, if they make it at all.
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Mar 23, 2015 23:46
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Thyrork posted:I passionately hate this idea. It doesn't matter how the real world uses dialogue, if any phrasing is just tossed in for shits and giggles I'd call it out because its bad writing. Of course it matters how the real world uses dialogue. If I'm reading a book about the Three Musketeers and one of them says their enemy just got a wicked sick cut on them, I'm going to be taken out of the story even if briefly. There were a few times where some of Shallan's lines, for example, reminded me more of a 21st century teenager than a noblewoman in a fantasy setting. I can move past it but it still makes the dialogue seem jarring and fake; it reminds me that it's not a person speaking these lines but a person writing them for me to read. As for cologne, obviously people did read the word and make the association to the real-life product and place. It stands out for the same reason it would stand out to me if Adolin went to the nearest butcher shop and ordered a hoagie. Of course we all know what Sanderson means by using that word, but it happens to be a word with clear ties to our own world and not Roshar's world.
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Mar 23, 2015 23:55
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The Ninth Layer posted:As for cologne, obviously people did read the word and make the association to the real-life product and place. It stands out for the same reason it would stand out to me if Adolin went to the nearest butcher shop and ordered a hoagie. Of course we all know what Sanderson means by using that word, but it happens to be a word with clear ties to our own world and not Roshar's world. That's a super-subjective thing. Like I'm not going to bitch about people describing something as 'orange' in an area with no citrus. On the other hand, there were a bunch of LotR fans up in arms about the 'meat's back on the menu' line from the LotR movies. Sanderson wrote some explanation about his personal feelings on it. I think in response to a line from mistborn where a character was 'mooning over' someone else, despite the fact that their planet has no moon, and nobody has any idea of it.
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Mar 24, 2015 00:03
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People must get really mad at Star Wars using 'rendezvous' and 'hell' in Empire. How far does the rabbit hole go? Every word we use is derived from the languages that have gone before. Are people taken out of stories because 'yard' is used, when clearly there's no Old English or German language to pull the word from? I just can't wrap my head around an argument that words based on Earth-locations are verboten when every other word is also a construct of Earth-languages and was crafted through thousands of years of morphing of Earth-history. So many of our English words are ripped from Latin and clearly Roshar didn't have Latin so... Fantasy languages with a half dozen apostrophes per sentence are way more egregious. Or reversing it like in Kingkiller Chronicles and having a character declare only wines from Vint can have a vintage, just to be clever with wordplay in a fantasy setting.
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Mar 24, 2015 00:12
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Thyrork posted:Am i mistaken in feeling that people think the "Tastefulness" of young adult books regarding sex and violence is a bad thing? Because graphic details make me squeamish and I've looong gone past being a teen. What's weird to me is that I'm completely unclear on what exactly constitutes young adult, but some young adult books like the WoT series feel completely adult to me. I just finished the steelheart, the first reckoners book, and in addition to the young adult hallmarks - no swearing, no sex, no gore (lots of violence tho?) - it felt very young adult because the protagonist was this angsty teen who would get upset when someone called him a nerd.
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Mar 24, 2015 00:15
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Mortanis posted:People must get really mad at Star Wars using 'rendezvous' and 'hell' in Empire. How far does the rabbit hole go? http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Caf
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Mar 24, 2015 00:18
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I'll raise you http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Jizz
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Mar 24, 2015 00:20
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mewse posted:What's weird to me is that I'm completely unclear on what exactly constitutes young adult, but some young adult books like the WoT series feel completely adult to me. Oh thank god, I'm not the only one. I struggled with that post because I was trying to phrase that same problem. E: I mean, I get it when say, Young Adult is applied to cheesy, Teenage drama stories. But Mistborn? Mistborn is dark, and it just happens to include a cheesy teenage love story woven in. As an aside, I think my favourite Wham moment for how hosed the Mistborn world is in book three, where Vin looks outside after she gets captured and sees the ash falling like a blizzard.  That bit really stuck to me.
Thyrork fucked around with this message at 00:32 on Mar 24, 2015 |
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Mar 24, 2015 00:28
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YA is a publishing demographic that determines how a book is marketed and sold. There is no definition to seperate the two (simply who buys the manuscript), but common features of YA include simplistic prose, a lack of violent or sexual imagery, teenage protagonists etc. Since the choice is made on a case by case basis there is a lot purchased for the adult domestic market but bought as YA elsewhere, because the market is different. Similar to the way many non-english speaking countries tend to split everything into volumes because they don't sell thick books.
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Mar 24, 2015 02:17
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