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Well, I think I'm becoming a Sanderson convert. That said, I've only read the twelfth Wheel of Time book and am partway through the 13th. That said, I'm pretty amazed at how amazingly well he took up Jordan's torch, and he writes the world like he has a really good understanding of it. I feel like some people who write fanfics and stuff just namedrop significant places/events in a world to prove that they know about the stuff they're writing, in a kind of desperate kind of way. I was afraid that Sanderson would do this, but he doesn't at all. I really, really liked the 12th book, and think it might be the best WoT book since the early ones (like 1-4/5). I feel like what makes his stuff great is that, as anyone would argue, Martin was an amazing worldbuilder. The world of WoT was amazingly detailed and well thought out. That said, his books really started dragging, evnts wise, and it seemed like he fell more and more in love with his world and less with progressing the plot. Sanderson is a breath of fresh air in that regard. He seems to understand that it's time to get the plot kicked into gear, and even though he's writing three books in the series, they really seem to have a lot going on...Events progress at a great pace. That said, the reason I'm posting here instead of in the WoT thread is because I wanted to ask about his other fantasy series. How are series like Mistborn and such? How would you rank them against the genre heavies like Martin/Erikson? Worldbuilding is a lot harder than writing decent scenes, I'd imagine, so I'm wondering how he does when the entire WORLD is his own. So far, everything I've read of his was imagined and thought out first by someone else, so I'm naturally curious how his worldbuilding is. As far as things like Mistborn go (I'm interested in Stormlight, but I hate getting into series when they're only like one book deep), what are your thoughts?
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Apr 15, 2011 16:59
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Awesome. I was just bumming out that I had nothing to read after this WoT book, but now I'm happy because Mistborn is on Kindle, so I'll be ripping through that. Thanks, folks!
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Apr 16, 2011 03:49
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Started Mistborn, about...gently caress I have no idea how many pages in I am. Kindle edition with no page numbers.  He just robbed the estate. Really digging it so far. You can tell it's an earlier effort by him, as the writing isn't as good as in the WoT, but it's not bad at all. As many have said, it's refreshing to read a world where magic is so originally done. I like it. So far, looking forward to seeing what's next!
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Apr 24, 2011 06:28
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Just finished Mistborn myself, and I enjoyed it. Sanderson, so far for me, has been kind of an interesting middle ground author as far as fantasy authors go. On one hand, he's not even close to the standards set by the genre heavyweights, like Martin/Erikson/Abercrombie. On the other, he's light years ahead of boring, safe fantasy like Eddings/Feist. He has a lot of great ideas, and aside from the lack of sex, his books are dark enough to feel realistic. I enjoyed is two WoT books more than Mistborn, but I'm not sure those are good judges of his writing style and skills, considering how much of it was already written/not his ideas. I like him enough to read all his stuff, though! Not eight hours passed between finishing Mistborn 3 and buying Warbreaker. I'll probably wait until at least three of the Stormlight books are out, though...I hate having to wait to read the next book in a series. It's hard enough with something like the Malazans/WoT/Martin books, but at least I had two or three of them to plow through before the wait started. As far as Mistborn went, as I said, I enjoyed it. It wasn't spectacular, and there were a lot of places that could have been tightened up, a lot of places where it seemed like he spent too much time on the characters sitting around talking needlessly. That said, I really liked a lot of the characters. I with TenSoon had had more to do at the end...Seemed like his story kind of petered out after lots of buildup. I love Sazed, Vin is fine, Elend was kind of blah. Breeze was one of my favorite characters, but he didn't do much in book 3. There were a lot of things that could use more work in the series, but overall it was good with some great fights. That all said, the thing that kept me coming back was that Sanderson is really good at setting up mysteries that you don't even realize are mysteries, and then throwing ah-HA moments at you. The mist snapping people/her earring/etc...Lots of moments where the reveals make you go "nice!" His big reveals feel natural to the plot and actually add to the stories, and what's nice about them is how well thought out they are. In too many stories, there's some deus ex machina reveal toward the end that feels like the author just shoehorned in some magical fuckery or something to make everything better at the last minute. The BIG REVEALS in Mistborn were actually foreshadowed from the very beginning, so they didn't feel cheap when they came. I really enjoyed wondering what crazy thing he was going to throw at us next, and how it would effect stuff that we thought we already knew. Overall, definitely worth reading. 7.5/10
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May 25, 2011 13:22
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Haraksha posted:The only thing I kind of disagree with here is the earring. I saw that coming as soon as they started talking about spikes being linked to ruin. "Oh, Vin always has metal in her ear." I guess my problem is that I know Sanderson too well at this point. He doesn't really throw out any red herrings. Everything has some significance, so since the earring had been mentioned more than once, I was looking for what it could be connected to. Then he started talking about being pierced by metal and I rolled my eyes. Yeah, that was one where I figured I should have seen it coming. However, unlike you, aside from the WoT books this was my first Sanderson, so I didn't realize how laden with meaning and foreshadowing everything was going to be.
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May 26, 2011 19:24
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It'll probably lower my chances of winning, but I can't not share this: http://www.tor.com/blogs/2011/05/alloy-of-law-arc-sweepstakes
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May 31, 2011 23:04
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No signup required. Just a valid email address so they can mail you if you win. But yeah, on the Tor site you can comment...Enter whatever the hell name you want and throw your email addy on it.
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Jun 1, 2011 05:19
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Awesome. I thought, from interviews and such that I've read, that he seems like a really cool, humble guy. Just finished Warbreaker, and I have to say that it's my favorite of his so far. I like how he was able to fit such a great, self contained world in about 650 pages, and I really liked the characters and plot. There were a few twists that suffered from not having much worldbuilding, like Denth/Vasher/etc turning out to be the really old guys from history. If he'd had more time to establish them in the minds of the everyday person, talk about them a bit more, it would have been way more a "whoa!" moment. As it was, it was merely "oh, that's pretty cool I guess." I really, really loved it...Something about it just flowed better than Mistborn in my opinion. It ends on a cliffhanger. Has he stated anywhere that he's planning on writing more in that universe? Gotta know more about Nightblood! It does some crazy poo poo in those last scenes that's never really explained.
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Jun 2, 2011 21:36
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Holy gently caress, dude is writing like 200 novels in the next ten years.
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Jun 3, 2011 00:49
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About 200 pages into WoK, quick question: There are only ten Shardplates and ten Shardblades in the entire world, right? It seems like the royalty of the...Forget their race name, but the brilliant general, the brother of the assassinated king, etc, those guys...They have quite a few of the ten, it seems. And the assassin has one of the blades. That doesn't seem to leave very many unaccounted for.
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Jun 5, 2011 20:47
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Thanks. Man, Sanderson is a cool dude. I added him to my Facebook, and unlike most authors, you can comment on his page. I asked him about his books, and within an hour he'd written me back. Seems like a damned fine fellow.
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Jun 6, 2011 02:58
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Acidian posted:When Joe Abercrombie was here, he pretty much said the same thing. He doesn't drink or party, so all he does is write his own books with his left hand and write jordan books with his right. He was also jokingly angry at Brandon Sanderson for putting all the other fantasy authors in a bad light with the speed he was writing. Apparently this is a slight misconception, according to him. He wrote an interesting blog post about how, before he got popular, he had a lot of books written or half written, and as his stuff got famous the publisher started picking up books he'd written years before. Warbreaker was like this, like 95 percent done with just editing needed. So, he said it seemed like he was writing at a superhuman rate when in fact a lot of it was that he'd written the stuff a long time ago and it didn't get picked up until he made it big because of WoT/etc. He also said that he'd burned through his backlog of stuff that he had, and the book flow would slow way down now...For example, no book in 2011 after years of 1-2 books per year. That said, he did say that AMoL and WoK2 will be out in 2012, hopefully. But yeah, he's now going to publish at an Erikson pace (1 book a year on average) as opposed to the crazy pace he's been at the last five years or so.
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Jun 6, 2011 21:44
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Loving AWoK so far. How self contained is it? Is it setting up a lot of hanging plot points, or is there a good, satisfying conclusion? I hope so, as waiting till next year for book 2 is going to blow. About 400 pages in, and: Kaladin = rad Dalinar = rad That one chick = less rad Glad it's just the two dudes in part 2 of book 1.
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Jun 8, 2011 03:55
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arioch posted:She's pretty rad, actually. Good. I should have said "thus far." The only gripe I have with the book/characters so far is her character, and that's mostly because she's supposed to be really witty and funny, but all her "funny" lines in part1book1 come off as forced and not really that clever. It was like Sanderson was trying to write a funny character, and just tried too hard. Maybe she'll get better.
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Jun 8, 2011 08:53
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Yeah, for some authors witty conversation comes really easily and seems natural. For Sanderson, you get the impression that he's really forcing it, it probably took him awhile to write, and isn't that good. To be fair, I didn't mind Lightsong. I also don't hate Wit, though he's not that funny. But Shallan was terrible, and I don't think it's just "she thinks she's funny but she's not." There have already been a few scenes where she's dealing with sailors/other help, ripping off "witty" retorts, and everyone around her is cracking up and being amazed at how hilarious she is. Her lines are the worst I've seen thus far, and all come across kind of like: "Young Miss, what is it you intend to do?" Shallan: "Tend the dew? I think the leaves tend dew quite well without my help, thank you." It's horrible. That said, it's my only real problem so far. I love his stuff, and can deal with a few groanworthy jokes.
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Jun 9, 2011 02:03
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ElMudo posted:Why did you have to remind me of this line? I was much happier with my fantasy that everyone else thought she was dumb. But now that you've reminded me, yes, you're right, everyone else in the story did act like she was clever. Haha, that's not actually a line from the book. I made it up. I'll take it as a sign that my criticism of Shallan is spot on, however, in that the line was so believable that you raelly thought it was her. But yeah, I didn't have the book handy and was trying to make up something that sounded like one of her lines.
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Jun 9, 2011 21:10
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IRQ posted:The sailors were obviously patronizing her, but I don't disagree that her dialog was pretty bad. I disagree. I actually reread the scene when I first got there, just to figure out if they were just humoring her. He doesn't indicate anywhere that they are.
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Jun 10, 2011 01:13
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I don't think his dialogue is as bad as some people are indicating. He's fine when it comes to dramatic stuff, and I like the interplay between Adolin and his father. It just feel like his dialogue lacks a certain...Deftness. It often doesn't flow like real dialogue does. The problem with his jokes and humor is that most incidental humor in the world comes from dialogue kind of leading it there...You say something, I say something funny back, you make a play on words, etc. Sanderson tries to shoehorn it in in places where it doesn't belong, and in a lot of ways it just screams "THIS CHARACTER IS TRYING TO BE FUNNY RIGHT NOW." As I said, his dialogue isn't bad. Definitely not memorably, as someone up above pointed as, like the genre heavyweights. Folk like Martin/Abercrombie/Erikson have some great, quotable lines in their books. Sanderson isn't there yet, but I think he could be. He's not hopeless or terrible, just not there yet. Luckily, his books are really good anyway. 
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Jun 10, 2011 01:48
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Gain 20 Pounds posted:There's a quick exchange between Wax and Lessie in the prologue that immediately made me think of those dreadful Shallan witticims in Way of Kings. I'm reading Wok for the first time and I just got to another one of these: Someone: "You've got quite a mouth on you sometimes." Shallan: "Only sometimes? Where is it the rest of the time?" *pounds face into desk*
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Jun 16, 2011 20:52
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Gain 20 Pounds posted:Not all of Sanderson's dialogue is cheesy and awkward. Just his attempts at humor. It makes me wonder if he has no sense of humor in real life and is just trying to emulate witty banter he's heard in other places. I'm not sure if being funny in real life always correlates to being funny in writing. I've met a lot of people whose style of humor was very off the cuff and not planned at all and were hilarious, but if you asked them to sit down and write a joke they'd fail miserably.
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Jun 17, 2011 11:22
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Finished WoK, and drat...Definitely his best so far. I'm sad that it's over and I don't have another book in the series to read. This is why I hate starting a series that only has one book in it. Anyway, the last 100 pages were badass. Honestly, the story was way more uplifting in a generic, kind of cliched way, but that didn't stop it from being great. I guess I'm used to grittier, harsher books like Martin's/Erikson's/Abercrombie's, so when Kaladin went back to save Dalinar I almost cheered out loud. Partly because I was expecting them to say "gently caress it" and leave. Also, they would be raped. It's not always a bad thing to write unrealistically in that sense...Heroes being heroes, etc. I like Sanderson's stuff quite a lot. Now that I'm basically done with everything he's written, I'll say this: He's a lot of fun. He's definitely not up there with the fantasy giants I mentioned up there, but he's also light years ahead of generic fantasy like Feist/Eddings/etc. "Safe" fantasy. Anyway, great stuff. Can't wait for book 2. I need it NOW.
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Jun 19, 2011 21:04
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Oh Christ, I'd forgotten about that one.
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Jun 20, 2011 03:02
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reflir posted:What would a Mistborn game have to offer that doesn't already exist in pretty much every action rpg/open world style game ever? Mana by any other name is still mana. By this logic, why write anything, make basically any music, or hell...Why even bother ever making any art again?
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Jun 26, 2011 00:10
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reflir posted:The idea was great, but you're doing it wrong. To properly make your point you'd have to stop using something as ridiculously wasteful as an alphabet with 26 different characters and just type everything in 1s and 0s. Otherwise, good effort. I liked you better a few years ago when you were the quirky Harry Potter guy I cheered for during that one TV show.
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Jun 26, 2011 11:04
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reflir posted:
I completely agree on basically all points, although I don't think it bothers me overall as much. I think he's very good at worldbuilding, and his plots are interesting enough to make the books worth reading, but they're nowhere close to the level of the genre greats who're working right now, like Abercrombie/Erikson/Martin. In ten years, I'll be rereading the Malazans or A Song of Ice and Fire, but I doubt I'll ever reread Mistborn. And I was kidding about liking you better before.
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Jun 26, 2011 11:47
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Don't forget about Warbreaker. It had some pretty clearly stated sex stuff, such as when the princess who has to marry the God King is simulating the sex night every night, moaning and bouncing on the bed. He even describes in detail how she builds, then kind of screams at the end or whatever, then stops. So, it's not like he's not acknowledging that sex and orgasms and such exist. He just chooses not to write about it all the time. If he truly did pretend that sex didn't exist or something, I'd be way more irritated about it. He knows it's there, he just doesn't go off on it for pages.
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Jun 27, 2011 21:17
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kissyboots13 posted:Awesome, because it is actually my favorite. I really liked it, but felt like it was somehow incomplete and wanted to know more about the magic system and the world so a Warbreaker sequel is the best news I've had all day. No poo poo, and right at the end he introduces some awesome stuff about what Nightblood can do, and then never comes back to it! Blargh!
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Jun 28, 2011 09:18
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Yeah it's hard as hell, but I never read these preview chapters...I have to wait for the book itself.
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Jun 30, 2011 08:07
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Charlz Guybon posted:I could totally see myself making that response to that statement. *pounds your face into desk*
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Jun 30, 2011 11:20
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Cartoon Man posted:Heres a video interview with Brandon while he was in Europe. Audio sucks though... Hahaha. I loved the book and I love Sanderson, but come on. Finest of the decade?
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Jul 3, 2011 00:22
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Affi posted:Quick (?) question about Alloy of Law As I remember it, you can't use yourself as an anchor because the body isn't made of metal, and the metals inside are immune to allomancy. However, making yourself heavier, and burning pewter, would allow someone like Vin to push against something heavier, thereby negating Kelsier's rule "never get into a pushing contest with someone heavier than you." So yes to your first question, and no to the second...I don't think you can make yourself an anchor unless you were wearing a suit of armor or something.
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Jul 4, 2011 21:54
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HOW DARE YOU RUIN NON PLOT POINTS WHAT THE gently caress MAN I have no idea why I spoilered it...I guess because the guy before me did.
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Jul 5, 2011 01:42
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Goddamn, dude's going to post the entire book on the internet, chapter by chapter.
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Jul 13, 2011 22:00
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I bought it twice!
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Jul 16, 2011 23:23
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Heh, Sanderson just posted on Facebook (not verbatim):quote:"After eating garlic for dinner, during my panel at Comic-con I said 'I'll try not to talk too much.' Jim Butcher responded 'I find that hard to believe, Brandon.'"
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Jul 22, 2011 12:32
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Affi posted:He also shouldn't describe environments or how people look either because you are a retard. I can't tell if you're trying to be funny, missing the point of the post you quoted, or just haven't read any Wheel of Time.
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Jul 29, 2011 11:50
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Heh, he just posted on Facebook teasing about the new WoT book. Apparently he's 40 percent in, and enough major characters have died that he's had to keep a running list, and was teasing spoilering it.
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Aug 3, 2011 04:33
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pakman posted:I'm just glad that I try to keep away from anything spoilerish for everything I like. Movies, books, games, etc. For example, I haven't read the Song of ICe and Fire thread since the book came out because I haven't finished it yet, and am afraid of spoilers. Also, I haven't read the Malazan thread yet either because it's on my "list of stuff to read" and I don't want to read it and chance spoiling something The Malazan thread is really, really good about using spoiler tags. So just don't click any of the big black boxes. Trust me, you're going to have questions as you read, and it's a great place to get them answered.
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Aug 4, 2011 20:01
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Haha, well, he's only 36 and seems pretty damned healthy (not GRRM fat or old or whatever), so I think he's got a lot of books left in him and isn't in any danger of dying.
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Aug 5, 2011 13:01
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Nice title IRQ...I was just thinking that I love Davos. Only 40 percent into DwD though.
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Aug 7, 2011 03:29
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