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fordan posted:Maybe I spend too much time reading the bad thread, but I can't help reading this: I don't think it was a shot at GRRM, rather I think Sanderson is aware of that particular situation and what kind of fear a slowdown on his part might instill in the community. It sounds like he's just trying to reassure his readers, because he knows we been burned in the past. I just finished TWoK, and I have to say that my biggest fear is that he'll burn out partway through the series. He has just about the most ambitious plans for his writing that I've ever seen (Two more Elantris, another Warbreaker, another whole trilogy for Mistborn, NINE MORE STORMLIGHT ARCHIVES HOLY poo poo, not to mention trilogies for new stories whose details remain unknown), and it would be tragic if he just broke down trying to get it all on paper. My fear of this has been somewhat mitigated by his post. As eager as I am to continue reading the Stormlight Archives, I take news of an impending publishing slowdown as a good thing, especially one as mild as this; four books in three years, especially ones this massive in both size and content, is pretty drat good. As for TWoK itself, I enjoyed the hell out of it. Yes, the flashbacks were less interesting than the rest, especially the one about Tien's death, how mundane it was and how much there was written about it before it was actually shown. Still, Sanderson managed to introduce a fairly large cast of characters without going overboard and becoming too confusing, while keeping events moving at a good clip and just teasing us with all the mysteries that still need to be solved. I cannot begin to imagine what events could unfold that will fill nine more books of this size, but I have faith that Sanderson will come through with something amazing. He continues to impress me with both his ambition and storytelling ability.
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Oct 14, 2010 03:03
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Superstring posted:Something that I've been wondering, in Dalinar's last Stormdream we find out that all his visions have been "pre-recorded" so to speak. Yet, when he seems to be able to interact with people back in time. So is only the voice of the Almighty prerecorded? Is Dalinar actually traveling through time somehow? Something doesn't add up. It seems to be that he's possessing someone in each dream sequence so he can experience things from a first-person perspective, while the Almighty's voice narrates over top of things in a non-interactive fashion. We don't know if he's actually astral projecting back in time, or if he's just participating in a 'copy' of events that occurred (so he wouldn't be able to pollute the timeline). I'm guessing and hoping for the latter, plots with time travel in them can feel like cheating.
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Oct 15, 2010 02:27
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Synastren posted:What about the spontaneous training some of those characters show, though? If it were all just from the perspective of those characters, it makes no sense for a farmer to have the skill in battle that a member of a warlike aristocracy would have. Rargh. The narration seems pre-recorded, his possession of the random farmer and participation in events is interactive. He controls the body of the person he's in, obviously.
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Oct 16, 2010 04:53
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soru posted:I think that's what he asked for. The question is: what was the price? The price was apparently permanent and persistent memory loss about his wife. I thought the question was: for what did he need the old magic (was this one answered in the book?).
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Oct 18, 2010 22:33
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Kreeblah posted:Well, this book actually makes sense by itself, so I dunno where he got the Malazan comparison from. Emptyquoting this. Yeah, the world in TWoK is pretty bleak, but there's plenty of good in it. You've got some very strong characters and a lot of hope being thrown around (even if that hope is repeatedly crushed). It's about very small forces of good fighting like mad against the beginnings of what looks to be a hideously apocalyptic future, even if they don't know that's what they're doing. The lack of one-liners and silly accents doesn't mean it's all black and depressing, it just means the light-heartedness comes from other sources (the hope I mentioned earlier). That sounds a bit corny, but it's the impression I got.
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Nov 16, 2010 13:55
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BananaNutkins posted:A warning on Assassin's Apprentice: The first 8 pages are the main character telling you why he's about to tell you a story. Its one of the worst openings for a series I've ever read, but it picks up a lot from there. I think Liveships is the much stronger trilogy of the two. Another warning: the first trilogy will depress the gently caress out of you throughout.
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Nov 24, 2010 19:37
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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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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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treeboy posted:I haven't done any 2d in awhile an I'm tempted to pick a scene and give it a whirl as an exercise. Any ideas? I was thinking part of Vin's first training session. 1. Shan vs. Vin. They're both burning atium and you could probably do some cool things with the possibility phantom shadow thingies. End of chapter 30, it's a pretty quick scene too. 2. Lord Ruler vs. Kelsier. 3. The details of this last one are real fuzzy and I can't find it just thumbing through: The first time Vin (I think it's Vin) fights an inquisitor solo, she throws a pouch full of metal shavings at him to blind his allomantic sight. I think. I should go back and read the book again, it's been a while.
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Jan 22, 2011 10:13
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Superstring posted:I had that problem too while I was reading it. It was about 60 or 70 percent of the way through that I got fully invested in the characters. I was always slightly annoyed when he would change charcter POVs, but the chapters would be interesting enough that I'd be involved again pretty quickly. It's odd, it was a similar situation for me during the Mistborn trilogy. I liked the first book all the way through, but the second and third books weren't terribly compelling until I finished the whole series. The story, taken as a whole, was great, but before I reached the end I wasn't exactly enthralled. It was a very strange feeling after all was said and done.
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Jan 29, 2011 02:37
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Rootbeer Baron posted:Someone else said it on the boards recently (don't remember where, all of the fantasy threads bleed together) but I felt like the first Mistborn book did itself a disservice by being such a complete story that reading books two and three felt unnecessary. I went onto Sanderson's commentaries and read about books 2/3 rather than reading them flat out, and I don't feel that I missed out.. It was more of a feeling of 'oh he did that? that's cool i guess', but nothing more. I'm considering reading some of his other stuff since I've only read the first Mistborn but after my crack at the second Mistborn I'm not sure which books would hold my interest. 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. I'll recommend Warbreaker too. Sanderson's fondness for tying every tiny little event together at the end in one big explosion of epiphany is much easier to deal with in a one-volume story like this. I do hope he refines his 2nd-act pacing a bit for Stormlight Archives.
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Jan 29, 2011 07:43
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ConfusedUs posted:It's somewhere in the annotations. Ah, I never did get around to reading his Mistborn trilogy annotations, I should do that sometime. It's good to hear he is aware of the problem. Jim Butcher posted/blogged about this kind of thing actually, but he calls it the "Great Swampy Middle," referring to the second act of a story and how a writer can easily get bogged down and have trouble keeping momentum. "Sanderson Avalanche" made me grin though.
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Jan 29, 2011 22:33
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Dickeye posted:It's actually kinda cool because, wiht the exception of Shallan, who I still don't get the reasoning behind the transitions to her storyline, you meet all of the other characters as the story gets to where they are. Democratic Pirate posted:Thinking about it, the best way I can praise Sanderson's tWOK is by saying I almost want him to finish the second book before A Memory of Light. Like 60/40 divided on it.
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Jan 30, 2011 00:34
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On the other hand, he could easily turn out to be one of the characters who dies early in the series, inspiring other characters to some kind of action.
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Feb 3, 2011 21:25
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Skavoovee posted:Ohhh yeah, that'd be a bummer I hope not. Having characters come back from the dead is one of the quickest ways to cheapen a story and remove the tension from the other stories you write. In most cases, anyway.
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Feb 3, 2011 22:35
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NinjaDebugger posted: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. I believe he goes so far as to avoid spoiling future chapters, so you're probably safe to read the commentary concurrently. He mentions his spoiler policy somewhere in the commentary section, so I'd double check to be safe.
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Feb 8, 2011 21:46
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I want to believe Sanderson won't go in that direction because it's just such a blindingly obvious and cliche setup. He's clubbing us over the head with it. Please let it be a platonic friendship and mutual respect that's forming and nothing more, please?
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Mar 28, 2015 02:01
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Tahirovic posted:My theory is that there will be drama where Adolin catches the two making out and throws a hissyfit which will further turn him onto his path to darkness, this will force Kaladin/Dalinar to cleanse/kill Adolin at some point. I swear to god if this series becomes a script for a CW show I'm going to burn it to save money on my heating bill.
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Mar 31, 2015 05:12
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cams posted:It most likely will because romance is part of the human story and there are only so many ways to tell a dramatic tale of love. See that's the key though, it's PART of the human story and your proposed best-case scenario is a way to handle it that isn't on the level of melodrama I was talking about.
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Mar 31, 2015 21:30
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Captain Monkey posted:Anachronisms and such are absolutely fine, and inside character speech, are great if they're colloquial like the term 'hat trick'. But there should be a shift there to separate the writer from the story in a way, at least for me. For me, the mannerisms have to be consistent. Not necessarily consistent across characters (they can hail from opposite sides of the world after all, though people from the same communities should probably use the same mannerisms), but internally consistent. If someone speaks in full, flowery sentences full of thous and mayhapses and such, they should not drop a "yo dawg" 3 books in. I could buy Lift and her awesomeness; she wasn't my favorite character and it wasn't my favorite part of the book, but she was a young girl fending for herself and full of energy and a special ability that, as far as she knew, nobody else had. Okay, fine (Please don't run it into the ground, Sanderson, I know you want to). The most outstanding example of a jarring dialogue inconsistency for me was in Towers of Midnight (I think, may have been AMoL), where Min insults Rand, he tells her he could do with less of that, and she says, "Life's tough, isn't it?" The phrase itself seems innocuous, but it's just so flip, it feels wildly out of place compared to the way everyone talks in that world. There were other indications that the last books weren't written by the original author, but for me that one was a flashing neon sign.
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Apr 27, 2015 21:22
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