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Gamesguy posted:I don't generally read much fiction, but I loved this book and the Name of the Wind by Rothfuss. I think I like the downtrodden youth rises to greatness genre(my favorite character in this book was the spear guy). Have you read Mistborn? It also has the "downtrodden youth rises to greatness" thing going on and Elantris kinda does, too. For other authors, you might like Brent Weeks' Night Angel trilogy, though it does get a bit dark in parts (it's a series about assassinations; go figure). If that doesn't bother you or if you can get past it, it's a fun read.
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Nov 28, 2010 09:05
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Gamesguy posted:I don't generally read much fiction, but I loved this book and the Name of the Wind by Rothfuss. I think I like the downtrodden youth rises to greatness genre(my favorite character in this book was the spear guy). The Warded Man by Peter V Brett is pretty good and along those lines. It has a fairly typical fantasy with a somewhat unique magic system based around runes. I haven't read the sequel, but people tell me its good. I think of the book as Wheel of Time-lite. The Lies of Locke Lamora is an awesome, fun fantasy novel about a group of thieves, and the main character comes from about as low prospects as possible. Too bad the sequel is the most disappointing book I read last year. And Scott Lynch is currently in some kind of Aspie / male menopausal meltdown, which he likes to post about on his blog thing. MartingaleJack fucked around with this message at 10:35 on Nov 28, 2010 |
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Nov 28, 2010 10:32
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BananaNutkins posted:The Lies of Locke Lamora is an awesome, fun fantasy novel about a group of thieves, and the main character comes from about as low prospects as possible. Too bad the sequel is the most disappointing book I read last year. And Scott Lynch is currently in some kind of Aspie / male menopausal meltdown, which he likes to post about on his blog thing. Is that the dude acting like Gurm but actually being up front ab out having crippling depression writer's block? (for which I would completely excuse Gurm) I keep hearing that series mentioned, but I haven't tried it yet. I won't bother if it's going to be Gurmed.
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Nov 28, 2010 11:21
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Thanks for the suggestions guys.BananaNutkins posted:The Warded Man by Peter V Brett is pretty good and along those lines. It has a fairly typical fantasy with a somewhat unique magic system based around runes. I haven't read the sequel, but people tell me its good. I think of the book as Wheel of Time-lite. I read that earlier this year and got partways through that before I gave up, just got really bored with it. The whole book basically revolved around one character, which is fine, but I couldn't bring myself to care about him at all. Maybe it's the writing style, but it just put me off. Gamesguy fucked around with this message at 11:50 on Nov 28, 2010 |
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Nov 28, 2010 11:44
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Gamesguy posted:I don't generally read much fiction, but I loved this book and the Name of the Wind by Rothfuss. I think I like the downtrodden youth rises to greatness genre(my favorite character in this book was the spear guy). Furies of Calderon is pretty awesome. The main character is the only person in his society of magic users without any super powers. And he kicks rear end nonetheless. Xachariah fucked around with this message at 13:12 on Nov 28, 2010 |
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Nov 28, 2010 13:10
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Gamesguy posted:Thanks for the suggestions guys. It actually does switch characters. The writing style is bland, but the story does pick up. I just like the concept of this book so much (no spoilers); people are basically living in the dark ages because at night they're terrorized by demons which materialize out of the Earth, and when the book starts, humanity is fading away.
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Nov 28, 2010 20:02
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IRQ posted:Is that the dude acting like Gurm but actually being up front ab out having crippling depression writer's block? (for which I would completely excuse Gurm) More or less. Anxiety, too, and he's apparently on meds now. The first book ties things up pretty reasonably on its own, though, and it's better than the second one anyway, so I've been recommending people just read that and pretend it's a standalone book for the time being.
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Nov 28, 2010 20:58
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Scott Lynch had a really good short story in the Swords and Dark Magic anthology called In the Stacks about a magical library. I recommend that, in fact I recommend the whole anthology.
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Nov 28, 2010 21:58
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Just finished the book and really enjoyed it. There were some points that just seemed to drag on (by the end of it I was pretty over Kaladins childhood). Although I doubt it will end up this way I would love if it turned into the "good" way and "bad" way to try and save the world between Dalinar and Taravangian, please don't make it so that any one who does evil things for good turns out to really be evil all along Sadeas Also on another note what is with the American cover art on so many fantasy/sci-fi novels looking like it just came out of the 80s? You can have perfectly good modern cover art on fantasy books. While the Australian (and European I am guessing) cover is not fantastic it is still a ton better than the one in the OP, I have noticed this with a number of books from the US. Sonisi fucked around with this message at 13:41 on Dec 3, 2010 |
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Dec 3, 2010 13:38
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America always gets poo poo cover art for scifi/fantasy. I think there might be a significant number of readers who actually just walk into a store and grab whatever had the most garish dorky cover and the publishers are doing it because of that. The rest of us have to hide in dark corners when we read lest regular people see the abominable crap
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Dec 3, 2010 21:08
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Sonisi posted:Just finished the book and really enjoyed it. There were some points that just seemed to drag on (by the end of it I was pretty over Kaladins childhood). Although I doubt it will end up this way I would love if it turned into the "good" way and "bad" way to try and save the world between Dalinar and Taravangian, please don't make it so that any one who does evil things for good turns out to really be evil all along Sadeas The guy that did the cover art for Way of Kings is the same artist that did the cover art on several of the first fantasy novels Sanderson read as a kid. So Brandon has a big nostalgic hard-on for the guy, he did an enormous blog post about it. At least it's better than WoT cover art 
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Dec 3, 2010 21:36
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I like the American cover, I think the lighting and setting are fantastic.
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Dec 3, 2010 22:14
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Sonisi posted:Also on another note what is with the American cover art on so many fantasy/sci-fi novels looking like it just came out of the 80s? You can have perfectly good modern cover art on fantasy books. So, there's this thing about cover art in the US. It hasn't really changed much since the 80s for sci-fi and fantasy, so that is modern cover art here.
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Dec 3, 2010 22:36
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Finally finished the Mistborn trilogy after racing through the first one. The second two never grabbed me as hard, mainly because I just didn't like the gods aspect of the story. Though, I did like how everything fit together at the end (Vin's earring) plus the final appreciation of the Lord Ruler. I've now read: The Way of Kings, Mistborn 1, Warbreaker, Mistborn 2-3. Sanderson really gets off on systematizing magic (boy loves his magic cards) but I do appreciate the twists in story. I really want more Stormlight Archives. I just hope he doesn't get too ambitious and starts so many stories without finishing older ones.
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Dec 4, 2010 08:03
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Neep posted:Finally finished the Mistborn trilogy after racing through the first one. The second two never grabbed me as hard, mainly because I just didn't like the gods aspect of the story. Chekhov's earring. I kept waiting and waiting to see what the significance would be since book one. But he finally delivered. quote:Sanderson really gets off on systematizing magic (boy loves his magic cards) but I do appreciate the twists in story. I really want more Stormlight Archives. I just hope he doesn't get too ambitious and starts so many stories without finishing older ones. I'm reading Elantris right after having burned through Mistborn pretty quickly. A lot of the same elements are apparent. A lot of very similar characters with very similar styles. Not really a problem, but I think I need a break from Sanderson after this one to clear the palate.
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Dec 4, 2010 08:08
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Speaking of the cover, if you got the cash... http://michaelwhelan.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=350
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Dec 4, 2010 14:47
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Yea I don't get the complaining about the cover. Compared to most fantasy covers it's pretty good. At least it looks like real art, and not like a five year old drew it.
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Dec 4, 2010 23:22
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subx posted:Yea I don't get the complaining about the cover. Compared to most fantasy covers it's pretty good. At least it looks like real art, and not like a five year old drew it.  Click here for the full 938x1425 image.
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Dec 4, 2010 23:42
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Cartoon Man posted:
i never understood how that artist decides which scenes from the books to draw, because he invariably picks the dumbest ones. The final scene on dragonmount would've been way better. (from very far away so you can't see his horrific humans) treeboy fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Dec 5, 2010 |
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Dec 5, 2010 00:05
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Cartoon Man posted:
It doesn't even make sense, but when I look at this, I hear Quasimodo yelling, "Sanctuary! Sanctuary!"
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Dec 5, 2010 04:06
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I was bored this weekend and started a Mistborn re-read. I'm about halfway through Well of Ascension, and I'm a little suprised I never thought more about the bronze earring tidbit being brought up at least once every 50 pages for the entire series more during my initial readthru. It holds up pretty well though, I'm excited to see the ways in which he expands the universe in the other books he's writing.
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Dec 6, 2010 22:37
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Dramatika posted:I was bored this weekend and started a Mistborn re-read. I just finished my second read of the trilogy, kicking myself for missing so many subtle things. Re-reading this series is like watching Sixth Sense for the 2nd time. If only one tenth of the authors out there had Sanderson's level of planning and detail...
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Dec 7, 2010 01:14
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Although I think the Mistborn trilogy would only be ruined when it gets tied into the Shard-verse proper (and the sequel trilogies). So I'm eager to find out how he's going to prove me wrong.
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Dec 7, 2010 03:08
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arioch posted:Although I think the Mistborn trilogy would only be ruined when it gets tied into the Shard-verse proper (and the sequel trilogies). So I'm eager to find out how he's going to prove me wrong. Shard-verse?
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Dec 7, 2010 03:19
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IRQ posted:Shard-verse? All of his books (minus WoT obviously) are supposedly in one "Universe" or something. Apparently an old god got split into shards and give people powers in different ways on different worlds. He hasn't done much other than mention it thus far though.
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Dec 7, 2010 04:51
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subx posted:All of his books (minus WoT obviously) are supposedly in one "Universe" or something. Oh, ok. Having read Mistborn and Elantris of his so far I can't say I saw anything similar about them outside them being obviously written by the same person.
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Dec 7, 2010 07:32
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Every book he writes (minus WOT) has a charecter that pops up called Hoid. He usually only has a scene or two in which he tells stories or has information for the main charecters. Most people forget he was even in the book once they finish reading it. (I know I did.) In the Way of Kings, Hoid is further explained to be a worldsinger. He can travel between the worlds of the different books through a plane called the shadesmaar. Towards the end of the book, Shallan learns how to travel there too in order to work magic. (Or something...drat I gotta re-read that book again.) Hoid's motivations are still unknown, though he does seem to help the good guys in each book. I have to say, I kinda rolled my eyes when I learned all these books tied together, mostly because of how bad the Dark Tower (Stephen King) turned out. But now I really think that Brandon has a vision and can pull this off. Unlike King, he doesn't seem to be pulling this out of his rear end in order to sell more books. And with Brandon's work ethic, we should be getting 1.5 - 2 books a year. GURM would have a heart attack if he had to write that much.
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Dec 7, 2010 13:23
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Cartoon Man posted:Every book he writes (minus WOT) has a charecter that pops up called Hoid. He usually only has a scene or two in which he tells stories or has information for the main charecters. Most people forget he was even in the book once they finish reading it. (I know I did.) It's fine to me - it's a pretty loose tying together. I don't think he's forcing things, which makes it just a nice side story (maybe eventually a larger story, but for now its just side notes). I think Warbreaker had the best Hoid part - he told some really neat stories. Seemed to have the biggest part in that book anyways. I don't remember him talking that much in Mistborn/WoK. subx fucked around with this message at 16:20 on Dec 7, 2010 |
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Dec 7, 2010 16:16
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Hoid was an informant that Kelsier talked to for info in Mistborn book 1. I think that was his only appearance in the series, it was just one chapter.
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Dec 7, 2010 16:25
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Dramatika posted:Hoid was an informant that Kelsier talked to for info in Mistborn book 1. I think that was his only appearance in the series, it was just one chapter. And he basically told Kell all this poo poo that he already knew
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Dec 7, 2010 16:35
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Dickeye posted:And he basically told Kell all this poo poo that he already knew Yeah, and the only thing he didn't already know (that Vin had fabricated links between Venture and Renoux) he would have found out when Vin got back from the ball anyways.
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Dec 7, 2010 16:43
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Dickeye posted:And he basically told Kell all this poo poo that he already knew Does it count if Vin had the chance to meet him in the third book, but chose not to? Sanderson mentioned this in one of his chapter postmortems. http://www.brandonsanderson.com/annotation/290/Mistborn-3-Chapter-Twenty-Seven
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Dec 7, 2010 16:46
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var1ety posted:Does it count if Vin had the chance to meet him in the third book, but chose not to? Sanderson mentioned this in one of his chapter postmortems. Yeah, Vin needs information so she first goes to see Hoid but gets a bad feeling and runs away before talking to him.
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Dec 8, 2010 08:11
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you know thinking about it, I'm guessing that in the end it's going to be revealed the highstorms are not a "bad thing", but are really some sort of preventative measure put in place by the Creator. Kind of like the reveal about the mists and why the planet is the way it is in Mistborn Also curious what happened to the Almighty's shard power, in Mistborn we know that (ending spoiler, don't read unless you've finished the trilogy) Vin inherits Preservation's power, and then Sazed inherits the power of both Preservation (from Vin) and Ruin I think it'd be safe to say that Odium doesn't possess it as otherwise the world would likely be a much shittier place. Maybe the highstorms are the Creators power running rampant? Or the result thereof?
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Dec 8, 2010 22:11
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var1ety posted:Does it count if Vin had the chance to meet him in the third book, but chose not to? Sanderson mentioned this in one of his chapter postmortems. Wow, I didn't know he posted a bunch of supplemental stuff on his website. I think he's becoming my favorite author.
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Dec 9, 2010 00:43
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IRQ posted:Wow, I didn't know he posted a bunch of supplemental stuff on his website. I think he's becoming my favorite author. He's the only author I know of that writes DVD style commentary on every chapter of books. Hell, he might even write them for the WoW books if Harriet (Jordan's widow) and crew will let him.
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Dec 9, 2010 02:00
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treeboy posted:Also curious what happened to the Almighty's shard power, in Mistborn we know that (ending spoiler, don't read unless you've finished the trilogy) Vin inherits Preservation's power, and then Sazed inherits the power of both Preservation (from Vin) and Ruin Part of me thinks that its whats causing the Highstorms. They seem to be the source of the stormlight, which is likely the Almighty's version of magic. The only issue is this would mean the Highstorms haven't been happening all along, but I can't tell if they exist in few flashbacks we see.
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Dec 9, 2010 05:52
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I think it's mentioned that the shardarmor seemed to used to glow. Perhaps the highstorms started happening after the armor stopped glowing. In other words, the shardarmors used to contain all the magical energy the highstorms now imbue into gems.
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Dec 9, 2010 06:27
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arioch posted:I think it's mentioned that the shardarmor seemed to used to glow. Perhaps the highstorms started happening after the armor stopped glowing. In other words, the shardarmors used to contain all the magical energy the highstorms now imbue into gems. I doubt that something as mundane as armor contained all the power that highstorms represent, at least not from an author like Sanderson. Divinity is a big theme with him and having a major source of the world's magic not somehow related to the gods seems unlikely. Plus we already have the Radiants presumably going through some sort of hell/rebirth cycle, which makes me think their power doesn't just coincidentally come from armor. More likely that whatever event or circumstance gave rise to the highstorms also affected the armor.
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Dec 9, 2010 11:35
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Che Delilas posted:I doubt that something as mundane as armor contained all the power that highstorms represent, at least not from an author like Sanderson. Divinity is a big theme with him and having a major source of the world's magic not somehow related to the gods seems unlikely. Plus we already have the Radiants presumably going through some sort of hell/rebirth cycle, which makes me think their power doesn't just coincidentally come from armor. More likely that whatever event or circumstance gave rise to the highstorms also affected the armor. But the thing is, Sanderson's lower-level gods are generally just ascended mortals who've been bestowed powers somehow from the shards of Adonalsium. And we're talking anything from ridiculously powerful like Sazed on down to Steel Inquisitors, then the inhabitants of Elantris, those monks, etc. Sanderson's "divinity" is often not divine. And there were a LOT more shardplate sets than just the relatively few sets we see currently floating around. There were ten ORDERS of Knights Radiant and they seem to all have had shardplate and shardblade. Yes, the potential Knights Radiant seem to be making a comeback in terms of their powers returning in the mortals, but I don't see any indication so far that the original group of Heralds are coming back, in fact the last one that actually held to their code/oaths/whatever came back and died at the end of the first book.
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Dec 9, 2010 12:31
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