pseudorandom name posted:I think that tradition was specifically for that kingdom. That's the impression I got. Also, I hope it's not just me. I smell a loving massive No, Kaladin, you ARE the Voidbringers coming.
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# ¿ Sep 1, 2024 02:05 |
coffeetable posted:Have you finished the book? Yes I have, and I say this not in spite of the ending, but because of it. It's too straightforward and pat for me. Something doesn't jive about that ending, I'm just not quite sure what yet. Edit: To be clear, what I mean is that I really don't think Sanderson is going to lay his cards out on the table like that. That big reveal at the end is almost certainly not the whole story, even if it's not the whole story in a way I didn't expect. In his previous books, he's shown he has a way with making you think the big reveal is definitive, then turning it on its head in the next book in a way that makes perfect sense, if only you hadn't accepted the what the characters said as truth. The big reveal was done by a character, not a reliable narrator. I don't trust it. NinjaDebugger fucked around with this message at 15:21 on Sep 12, 2010 |
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thecallahan posted:In response to your first paragraph He may have actually been Szeth's master, but the Parshendi are the ones who willingly took responsibility for the assassination.
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Che Delilas posted:Another warning: the first trilogy will depress the gently caress out of you throughout. Unless you're thoroughly amused by characters who have a bad case of Just Can't Win.
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treeboy posted:I thought Marsh was just a misting though, a seeker right? How would he pull the same trick the Lord ruler did? Spikes presumably still work, and the terminators had one for every type of metal.
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Che Delilas posted:I found the way it all came together at the end pretty remarkable. The mystery is revealed so gradually that you never feel as if any progress is being made, but then you hit the end and everything comes rushing back into your conscious mind. Never before have I been so indifferent during the reading of a series while being so satisfied at its conclusion. I think you've probably missed the full effect by not reading it through, but I don't really blame you for not wanting to. He definitely realizes that the "Sanderson Avalanche" is a problem and is working on it. I have seen words to that effect somewhere, though I can't for the life of me remember exactly where.
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thecallahan posted:The man is a machine! Read the whole thing, then the commentary. I think you can do it book by book, though, I'm pretty sure he avoids spoilering outside books.
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arioch posted:Does he seriously think he's a Matrix character? Well he certainly believes he's one of a very few people who can see reality objectively.
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keiran_helcyan posted:Since we're told in Hero of Ages that those gods are composed of a mind (usually a mortal conscious), a spirit (that seems to manifest as a magic system), and a body mist and atium respectively. I'd guess from this example it'd be a fair guess that the highstorms are one of the god's bodies? That was the impression I got during the storm, yes.
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404GoonNotFound posted:Sanderson decided to go the P&P RPG route first because he's that drat nerdy. Unfortunately, the P&P RPG is loving terrible, if the preview released at gencon is anything to go by.
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404GoonNotFound posted:That's the same one you got for pre-ordering during Gencon. One line summary: The system is the worst aspects of Mother May I combined with the worst aspects of World of Darkness, with an extra layer of retardation layered on. Long summary: All characters have four basic blocks on their sheet. Attributes are Physique, Charm, and Wits. Standings are Resources, Influence, and Spirit. Traits are Fate-like aspects, you get five of them, one from each category. The categories appear to be Drive, Profession, Specialty, Feature, and Personality. Powers are where your magic goes, basically. You know how in World of Darkness games, people actively try to avoid combat because it's hard to resolve and takes forever and is generally no fun? Imagine -every single roll- being like that. All rolls are made with a pool of 2 to 10 d6. The GM chooses one attribute, standing, or power that fits your actions, then you add 1 die for each Trait that you can argue into applying, 1 die for a helpful item (or -1 if you're missing an important item), 1 die for helpful conditions (or -1 for adverse ones). Then the GM assigns a difficulty of 1 to 5, and you roll. Set any sixes aside. If the numbers on two or more of your dice match, the highest number shown on any matching set is your Result. If your Result equals or exceeds difficulty, you win! Otherwise, you fail! Then, you enter the SECOND phase of Mother May I, where you negotiate with the GM to use all those sixes you rolled to make your success even better. And this isn't even getting into the optional degrees of success/failure stuff, or the fact that any sort of conflict involves dice pools, and conflicts use the original L5R style initiative, where you go from lowest init to highest, declaring actions, and then go from highest init to lowest to resolve them, which makes combat take even longer.
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Kwyndig posted:I think a good Rioting is what's in order, it's hard to channel the OP when somebody is feeling certain very strong emotions, after all. Riot her arrogance.
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computer parts posted:If that's true then my question is who has the shard of Feruchemy? My own theory: Magic is formed by each shard and by the tension between shards. That explains feruchemy and also aondor + whatever the bone stuff was + forgery on the Elantris world.
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treeboy posted:Elantris, in my opinion, has a great climax and resolution, but the trip there is a bit dull. I knew about the Sanderson Avalanche in advance, and had fun spotting every little domino along the way.
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IRQ posted:I loving love terrible puns so maybe that's why Sanderson's awful humor works for me. Completely agree. People here need to go buy a sense of humor.
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Phummus posted:
Not sure it really counts as an unreliable narrator, here. Keep reading.
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ConfusedUs posted:I agree. I actually laughed at Shallan in WoK several times. Oh good, I thought I was basically alone in this.
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Odette posted:Wow, that good? Guess I'll pick it up sometime this week. If that book is the show's pilot episode, I will watch the poo poo out of it.
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Eric the Mauve posted:Yeah, I know about Time Lord Hoid. That's not what I meant, of course. I always wonder if there are a bunch of people out there who love the Sanderson Humor Outlet Character or if it's just a bit of authorial self-indulgence. Not that there's anything wrong with that; he's Brandon loving Sanderson after all. There are, in fact, people who enjoy it, and we have spoken up in this thread before.
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Ulio posted:Alright cool going to check that out, it did mention the site in the book somewhere. We're not kidding when we say pretty much everything gets explained in the end.
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The Gunslinger posted:I finally got around to reading The Final Empire and really enjoyed it. It had some issues but overall was really well done. The OP says the second and third book are a lot different though and that's making me a bit wary of starting into the rest. Is it worth continuing or are they so drastically different that I should just treat it as a one off and move on? The answer with Brandon Sanderson is invariably "KEEP GOING". Yes, there are slow parts. Yes, there are characters and developments that you will hate. Yes, it is always worth it to keep going. It invariably all pays off in the end.
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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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Kwyndig posted:I never did get around to reading that thing (House of Ashes) even though I preordered the RPG and so got it like two years ago. Be glad. The only thing worse than the fiction is the RPG. I'm honestly sad I preordered it.
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404GoonNotFound posted:That wasn't Super Saiyan, that was a White/Green player gaining 40 life and giving his main beast +8/+8 and Trample. To be fair, he is also an anime nerd, as I recall, it's just not as visible as his Magic addiction.
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tliil posted:Well the thing is that Sanderson could make anything work cuz he's a really good writer. Most writers come up with an interesting magical system and then fail to tell an interesting story around it. So, for me, it'd be nice if Sanderson just threw all the rules out and did deus ex machina poo poo. But hey the guy writes a lot so maybe he'll want to change it up in a few years. The rules are part of the extensive planning he does, so while he may get a lot better at hiding the rules, I doubt he'll ever actually stop planning out precisely what's possible.
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uh zip zoom posted:So he never thought to ask his kids about their mother? Or did the person who took his memories tell everybody to just not let dalinar in on the secret, a la eternal sunshine of the spotless mind? He's not capable of thinking of asking his kids about their mother, nor is he capable of receiving the information from them.
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Sherringford posted:The biggest problem with that would be that beginner mages would(I think) be better than veterans almost by default. Unless there was some sort of equation involved like "Power goes up one level per magical stone touched divided by number of people who know you are a mage, every magical stone is heavily guarded by kingdoms that don't want ridiculously powered mages" and mages had to Arsene Lupin their way to getting upgrades while remaining undetected. It wouldn't be the first series to have power vary inversely with experience. The Young Wizards series did it. As your power declines, you just compensate by applying your power more skillfully.
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ConfusedUs posted:Steelheart was amazing. Holy poo poo. A thousand times, this. I am quite happy there's going to be a sequel. I wasn't able to mainline the book like I wanted to, but it's still easily one of his best books in my head. Now if only he'd get over the made up curse words thing.
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Mortanis posted:Really enjoyed this one, though I'm usually a champion of Sanderson's works, so that came as no surprise to me. None of the twists were hard to spot, but they worked - which was important when they're not based on "Hard Magic" like Sanderson usually sticks to. Having a Soft Magic style where anything could be made up on the fly and yet still piece together logically really shows how well he does at plotting. This is totally based in hard magic, it's just not known to the reader, or the characters. I guarantee it.
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If for some reason you're reading this thread and don't have Steelheart yet, the ebook is 50% off for the rest of today on B&N.
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Cicero posted:I don't see how The Way of Kings is an apocalyptic hellscape. Yeah there's terrible parts to the world and a big bad thing coming but that's pretty much always true in high fantasy. That's only because Stormlight is about a world about to undergo the apocalypse. I mean, the entire opening was about the reincarnating saviors who are supposed to save the world time and time again saying "gently caress this, I quit."
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Habibi posted:The ever increasing number of metals in Mistborn (aren't we technically past 16 due to alloy) are easily the worst part of that series for me. :/ The gently caress are you talking about? There's been a complete list of metals for quite some time. There are exactly sixteen basic metals. The count was thrown off because they didn't realize that Atium and Lerasium were not actually metals. The metals they didn't know about in the original trilogy were the ones that they didn't have the technology base to produce.
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thespaceinvader posted:What's wrong with the names now? Maybe I'm just jaded to fantasy lit having terrible names (quite likely, I read a shitton of bad fantasy), but his names seem fine to me. Have to agree. Whole lot of humorless monsters in this thread, and people have dumb as hell names in real life, I don't really expect fantasy to be any better. I'm pretty happy if there are visible themes in related names and they're not just random strings of syllables.
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Ugly In The Morning posted:Also, was anyone surprised that Sanderson had Adolin mention that he's "shat in his shardplate" in WoR? Yeah, I mean, he didn't say "poo poo" per se, but it's the first really profane thing I've seen in his books. Very, but not for the reason you think. It's a simple reality that even happens in sports, especially things like marathons, but it's usually completely ignored in real life, let alone in fantasy novels, so it was interesting to see it become visible for a bit.
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Kraps posted:2) If using Epic powers turns you into a class A dick then they aren't really fully responsible for their actions, are they? Depends mostly on if they've ever figured out that using your powers turns you evil. If you willfully put yourself into an altered state of mind and murder a bunch of people, you are definitely responsible. How much the question of responsibility matters, though, is very much debatable, especially in the case of top tier capes who cannot be effectively restrained or forced to stop using their powers long enough for them to make such an informed decision.
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Thyrork posted:How interesting. Has something like this happened before with print-run books? Sure i've heard of Retconning before, but i dont remember any author outright tinkering with an already printed book because "It doesn't work." I wonder if people who have the ebooks will get a revised version pushed out.
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Clockwork Gadget posted:Please don't spoiler every plot point from every book in an author thread for an author that has written almost two dozen books, it makes the thread annoying to read, thanks. Spoiling the end of a trilogy most people tell newbies to read as the first one is still a lovely thing to do, whether it's against the rules or not.
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Fezz posted:Timeline issues: We actually have a hint of how this is possible even without a steady drip of atium. In the mistborn RPG, the complete table of metals includes one that is capable of storing investiture itself, and it can then be pulled out to power other things, essentially being able, at least in theory, to transform one type of investiture to another, so given even a single nugget of atium, you could pull investiture out of the other metal, store it in the atium, and then pull age out of the atium without burning it. Not as effective as burning it, but as long as you have the other investiture sources to burn, you don't have to give up the enablers.
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Hiro Protagonist posted:Fair enough, I just have a terrible history with remembering spoilers. Like, I heard a spoiler for the Final Empire's ending years before hand, and I couldn't forget it. I suggest learning to enjoy the change from enjoying not knowing where things will go to enjoying spotting how they get there. That's what I did, and now I don't have to give a poo poo about spoilers!
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# ¿ Sep 1, 2024 02:05 |
enigma105 posted:That cover. The other author is probably Joe Dever, since the blurb reads like Avatar crossed with Lone Wolf. FOR SOMMERLUND AND THE KAI!
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