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I posted that I read Way of Kings in the fantasy thread, so I'll just quote my post from there. (I changed my mind, and tagged the whole thing until I figure out the Rhythm of Posting)Pennsylvanian posted:Kept hearing about Brandon Sanderson for years, so I picked up Way of Kings because it was a series-starter and on the top of the list when I searched for him. I really liked it. It's the first fantasy book I've finished in about ten years. A few thoughts: In the replies, someone mentioned that the pacing issue is known and is called the Sanderlanche. Also in the replies, people mentioned that praise for Shallan's wittiness is probably a mixture of characters just putting up with the noble light-eyed girl, and I agree. It definitely made sense that Kabsal put up with it so he could get closer to her, and there were times that Jasnah straight-up chided her for it. But I also felt that Brandon was trying to have it both ways by outright congratulating his characters for being witty in a way that almost breaks the fourth wall. Also, it's not really just Shallan. I actually groaned out loud when I read a particularly bad line that a sailor said to her (something about "walking backwards"). I showed it to my girlfriend who's a Sanderson fan, and she said she remembered that line for being particularly bad, as well. It's not something that's killing my enjoyment, I just don't like when humor gets same-voicey while the author is constantly congratulating themselves, and Sanderson is far, far, from the only author who's guilty of doing it. The Szeth scenes I think were important for setting him up as a dangerous character who was capable of doing incredible things. It's just that they were rough to read for someone completely unfamiliar with the author's work. Also, I liked Shallan's chapters just fine. Pennsylvanian fucked around with this message at 03:23 on Feb 3, 2021 |
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Feb 3, 2021 03:15
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Bruceski posted:Yeah. Sanderson likes to build up multiple threads/viewpoints and then they all come crashing together at the climax. One person's discovery gives context for what it cuts to another facing, or someone just gets a chance to catch a glimpse of another character and think "how are they doing THAT?" When this works it's pretty incredible, but it also means that his stories are very back-loaded and that back doesn't give an obvious point to stop and breathe. Less of an issue in a short story like Mistborn, moreso in something the size of Way of Kings. He's trying to get better at the unevenness; his first published book, Elantris, is basically dead until the avalanche happens. The back part of the book was okay with me. I like that for once, a battle scene was very well-paced. The only problem I had with the pacing was the hot-swapping without real buildup in the early parts of the book. I still don't know what the hell was up with that story in the fishing village. Unless it gets brought up again or I forgot what its relevance was, it just feels like he needed a cliffhanger chapter break.
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Feb 3, 2021 14:56
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Sab669 posted:The Interludes are... I don't want to say just world building chapters that let you take a breathe from everything going on in the actual story, because on subsequent re-reads / with greater Cosmere knowledge of all his works you'll pick up on important details in said Interludes, but things that happen in all of those chapters might not become relevant/apparent for a book or two or even three. Yeah, I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt that it would be important or at least relevant. It was just frustrating when Kaladin's story hooked me so early on.
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Feb 3, 2021 15:45
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Started Words of Radiance. It's my first audiobook, so if I make any goof-ups, it may be attributable to that. Thoughts: -Welcome back, Gaz.  -Reading Kaladin's arc, I kind of feel like a dog who has his bowl taken away every time it gets interesting. The whiplash is shocking and kind of annoying, because it's always something like "and then the assassin cut Kaladin's head off. CHAPTER 6: Shallan was petting a bird on its cute bird head when..." -Shallan's arc feels like I'm being fed grapes by someone. Every time I feel hungry or bored, someone stuffs a grape in my mouth to keep me happy. It's slow-paced, but I'm interested in her character without the story having to put her in constant danger. -Dalinar is still as interesting as he was in the first book. Eshonai is really dull, but I'm interested in the implications of what's going on with her story. -I don't know how many more passages Rysn gets, but holy poo poo that scene of her at the Reshi Isles was hideously boring and went on forever. I think if I had been reading the book, I'd have done some serious skimming. -From now on, when someone comes to me recommending a fantasy author with praise for how good their world-building is, I'm going to understand it as "they build a big world and it all makes sense," instead of "they do a good job building it." Brandon's not the worst by far, but it kills me in fantasy writing when a character in a book is handed a piece of candy, which results in diatribes about how candy is made in this land, and which king invented it, and what that king's whole life is like, and apparently this is the only culture with candy because it has religious influence and it can't just be a piece of candy. If anyone can recommend me some fantasy that doesn't randomly dump wikipedia articles about its lore, I'd be interested. -Another thing that this book does that lots of other fantasy does is that it treats a new book in the series like it's the first book in the series. I mean this in the sense of pushing away established characters to introduce brand new characters in a way that's pace-killing. I'm talking about when Kaladin or Shallan or one of the Kholins is about to do something interesting, and then I've got to have that interrupted in order to be introduced to some new character and their daily routine. A friend of mine who I like discussing writing with put it well when he compared it to A Song of Ice and Fire. ASOIAF is a good example of introducing characters both poorly and well. ASOIAF establishes a strong early cast of characters, and pushes them in different directions together without overly-dedicating itself to specific arcs. And when Martin introduces new characters, it's often through the eyes of established characters (like Jon meeting Ygritte/Tormund/Mance instead of introducing each of those characters separately with their own POV). But then ASOIAF does falter in that regard when it reaches the middle sections of the series and builds up a massive bloat of characters. I just wanted to introduce that series as a way of saying "Brandon, it's frustrating when you leave me hanging on your well-written word like this." Again, I still like what I'm reading, and I love blasting through Kaladin's arc (and the characters around it, of course) and relaxing with Shallan's. I just like picking apart stuff that I enjoy as well.
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Feb 7, 2021 02:42
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M_Gargantua posted:The Craft Sequence by Max Gladstone. Good sell. My deal with the Dark Souls games is that I'll just beat them and re-beat them, and I'll never look up lore about the games because I like being lost and figuring out stuff for myself and I don't care if I'm wrong. I'm okay with world-building being that abstract.
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Feb 8, 2021 02:19
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Got further in Words of Radiance today. Thoughts: -I skipped the section called "Lift" about a character of the same name. I'll go back and make sure it's not important, but I was just actually angry at the book at that moment in time. I'm genuinely tired of how bad he is at cliffhanger porn. I'm okay with being left in suspense as long as something with a character I'm invested in is happening. But when a passage like "And then Maincharacter turned around and saw his best friend, his best friend pulled out a huge goddamned sword and used that sword to cut Maincharacter's goddamned head off," followed by a chapter break and the next chapter is "Bimbly pibbles and Dippy Doo-doo walked through the shumbly beach when Bimbly looked over to Dippy and asked 'uwu should we get some wunch befowe we go to the scwuppems fair uwu," It's not captivating, it's just annoying. -Once I got over that, I'm up to Shallan and Kaladin finally having their "just talk" moment in that cubby hole during the storm and I'm of course enjoying it. Brandon's pacing is way better when he has characters converging. -I always have a hard time when a King and a huge gaggle of characters around a King are just "we cannot politically defeat this man who is completely underneath us and is always doing crimes." Just loving arrest or kill the guy like everyone else in your kingdom seems to get away with doing.
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Feb 9, 2021 02:26
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DarkHorse posted:That's a big part of the character development for dalinar, he's deliberately trying NOT to just abuse his power, for several reasons. One, Alethkar is barely a country and though it was forged by brutally killing anyone that resisted, it's not a good way to keep it alive past said bully's death. And two, Dalinar himself no longer wishes to be the Blackthorn, for reasons that will become obvious in later books I know. It's just a very tiring thing to have to deal with in so many different stories. Maybe just once in a while, I'd like to experience a fantasy story where the protagonist can just be a ruthless power abuser in a practical way. Leng posted:Lift is divisive. I hated her POVs in WoR too. She's the main character of the Edgedancer novella which you could probably skip without too much of an issue for the first five books (she's a main character for the back five), though it did make me like her more. I'm still not a fan of how different her speech is compared to everyone else. It is just really jarring for me. It was just a really inopportune place to introduce such a character for a chapter that lasted 2 hours in an audiobook. This was also after that Rysn section that seemed to go on forever. Pennsylvanian fucked around with this message at 03:15 on Feb 9, 2021 |
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Feb 9, 2021 03:09
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Fezz posted:I think the problem is the audiobook format. It really stretches out the content. I certainly don't remember it taking me an hour, let alone two, to read the interludes. I was just listening to the dialogue and groaning, and I saw that I was only twenty minutes into a ~1h 15min chapter. The other interludes were not nearly so bad for the most part. It was also just placed during a really bad spot for it, and I have no context for any other Sanderson works. Pennsylvanian fucked around with this message at 03:53 on Feb 9, 2021 |
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Feb 9, 2021 03:50
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I'd like to reiterate that I don't intrinsically dislike Lift. I legitimately only gave her a tenth of a chapter, I have no prior knowledge of who she is as a character, and I plan to go back and catch myself up with her. What did upset me though, is that her section came right after Kaladin won that duel for Adolin and got his dumb rear end imprisoned. The tonal jump and switch to a very long character introduction chapter reeked of the author not knowing what to do with the constant Kaladin cliffhangers and time jumps. Also, keep in mind that this is after I polished off Way of Kings in the span of a few days, and then immediately went on to Words of Radiance. I could have been more amenable to the story switching back to Shallan or Dalinar, or even Eshonai (whose story I'm still not feeling), but the piling up of chapters that end with lines like "And then Kaladin's balls fell off," followed by long-rear end character introduction chapters in the middle of a book wore my patience thin.
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Feb 11, 2021 04:22
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ConfusedUs posted:The big duel in WoR is my favorite scene in the series. It's also the closest thing to magic pro wrestling I've ever read. It owns so much. yep, and I love how the weight of the caste system just comes crashing back down on Kaladin's dumb head at the end.
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Feb 11, 2021 04:40
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Finished Words of Radiance today: -If Sebarial was Highprince of War, this series would be over by now and everyone would be partying. -Adolin did nothing wrong. Seriously. I realize there will be ramifications for his actions, but if the book wants me to think that "Oh, he shouldn't have done it because it sinks him to Sadeas' level," then it's gonna have to convince me that he didn't simultaneously avenge 5,000 dead soldiers while preventing Sadeas from pointlessly killing more people in the future. -I don't get the Shallan hate that I see online, especially from people who think I'm crazy for not being into Rysn or Lift. I think her "blushing" during every other line of dialogue is kind of overdoing it, though. -I came around on Wit. I think he made a bad first impression on me, as he was introduced around the time the book was calling Shallan "clever" all the time. Now that he's willing to tease himself a little, as well as let himself be teased, I get a little warm feeling any time I know he's about to show up. -Like Way of Kings, the last push of the book was super engaging and expertly paced, especially compared to the early-middle parts. I'm not a sweaty monster who needs the plot to always be pushed forward. For example, I could have an eight hundred page book about Bridge Four just dicking around. But there's just a genuine pacing problem where he'll leave interesting threads hanging just to introduce some really long, excruciating chapters that could have been split up and sent to different parts of the book. -Brandon is like the complete opposite of a lot of authors in that the more people he has in a fight scene, the better he writes it. I find his one-on-one duels are really dull, even when those people are flying around like Dragonball Z-meets-Gang-Beasts. On the other hand, he writes the only good battle scenes I've ever read, and I loved the Adolin four-on-one duel scene.
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Feb 13, 2021 02:28
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Shallan's intro was kind of bleh. I told a lot of people that I didn't like all of the "clever" and "witty" dialogue when I was first reading the book, and literally everyone assumed that I was just talking about Shallan. I was also thinking about lines from Kabsal, the ship captain, and that one sailor, who were all throwing out cringe lines all in the span of a chapter or two. I think her story beats of having increasingly higher hills to climb was well done, but her first two chapters sounded like theater kid banter. I know I can sound overly-negative and it's something I'm working on (the problems of growing up in a really WASPy household), but I am enjoying this series so far. Pennsylvanian fucked around with this message at 05:50 on Feb 15, 2021 |
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Feb 15, 2021 05:48
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I can tell from what little I've read that he seems really structured and consistent.
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Feb 16, 2021 22:21
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I think they're both great. I think that Michael is a little better at doing female voices than Kate is at doing male voices, but that's mostly just because of his husky Navani voice. It is kind of funny to hear Kate read Kaladin as like a meathead caveman, though.
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Feb 17, 2021 01:27
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NikkolasKing posted:That's such a great point. I never thought of it that way but you are 100% right on with that description and it is totally hilarious. Also I can only hear Kramer's Sadeas as this guy: 
Pennsylvanian fucked around with this message at 03:49 on Feb 19, 2021 |
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Feb 19, 2021 02:35
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Blasting through Oathbringer now. I really only have positive things to say so far.
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Feb 21, 2021 02:21
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I'm about 2/3rds through Oathbringer. I like it a lot. It feels like this was supposed to be two different books, though.
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Feb 26, 2021 02:13
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I'm late into Oathbreaker, and it's kind of lagging for me. I am really, really tired of world-building this late in the game.
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Feb 27, 2021 03:52
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Finished Oathbringer. This was a good story sandwich. The beginning started out really good, then dragged (for me at least) at the tail end of when The Gang Went to Shadesmar , and then got really good again at the end. The slow parts were fewer for me in Oath than they were in the first two books (it really just amounts to a handful of chapters' worth of world-building in the middle), and I appreciate that he toned down the length of some of the interludes this time around.
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Mar 4, 2021 04:40
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Thyrork posted:I could see her doing Jasnah. Dream casting would have Claudia Black as Navani.
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Apr 29, 2021 08:21
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Taffer posted:What the gently caress this post is violence This was the first I'd heard about the film project, and I just imagined an animated movie with her voice as Navani's as that's how it was in my head while reading the books. Speaking of which, I just started RoW, and it's... okay? I heard some pretty negative stuff when I started reading the books for the first time last fall. It's more full of character arcs than previous books and I feel like his prose is flowing way better than previous books. I just came off of reading Fellowship of the Ring for the first time, and I've been starving for something resembling good dialogue and characters. Pennsylvanian fucked around with this message at 00:21 on May 1, 2021 |
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Apr 30, 2021 23:58
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That's kind of a shame. I always like the sorts of villains that try to pull you in to their worldview like the way Moash did for me. I am getting a little tired of having to read about Navani getting all hot and bothered every time she sees Daddy Dalinar.
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May 1, 2021 03:03
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I am kind of feeling it slow down. I hope Shallan starts to have a point soon, because I thought that they had kind of wrapped up her multiple personalities for the most part, but there's a whole lot of "Veil looked at the wall. Radiant thought Veil shouldn't look at the wall. Veil was that kind of person who looked at walls really quietly and intensely while Radiant preferred to look at ceilings."
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May 3, 2021 03:11
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Yikes. I liked Shallan just fine and wondered what they were going to do with her after it seemed like Brandon wrapped up her multiple personality thing at the end of Oathkeeper. I said earlier here or the Fantasy Thread that I could just read a book about Bridge Four just screwing around because he developed so many of those guys to the point where it's just fun to watch them move through minor arcs. I like seeing Kaladin trying to find his new space and Adolin trying to figure poo poo out. But Shallan's sections feel weirdly drawn-out and go back to Brandon's main problem as a writer where character internalizations get really repetitive and recursive because it seems like he doesn't want one character's chapters to feel longer than another's. I feel like she'd be way more interesting as seen through Adolin's eyes in this book. It also bugs me that they keep talking about Renarin, who seems like he'd have a cool arc, but they barely even acknowledge that he exists (so far, at least). I still maintain that Adolin did nothing wrong and that Dalinar is genuinely an rear end in a top hat for making him feel bad for killing Torol. Pennsylvanian fucked around with this message at 01:48 on May 4, 2021 |
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May 4, 2021 01:41
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Taffer posted:That's a really neat idea, I wish that's how all those sections had been done now. Probably would have made me much more sympathetic to her and less exhausted by her tiresome internal monologue going around in circles. There was a part I just passed where Adolin sees her look in a trunk, snap it back shut and insist nothing was wrong. He just went along with it because he trusted her. When it went back to Shallan, there was just more dull internalization where the book was explaining her every motive and thought, even throwaway stuff like "Shallan had to ask tricky questions to root out the spy. Shallan was good at asking tricky questions." I'm the kind of the person who likes the former scenario over the latter. I think there's a lot of intrigue in these books, and I wish Brandon would trust himself and the reader to have little more suspense here and there.
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May 4, 2021 19:14
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Like I said, I enjoyed Shallan in the first three books, but she seems to be spinning her wheels in RoW. Lots of her chapters so far are her just explaining her character to the reader while there's a perfectly good spy-catching tale to be told. I also kind of like hearing about how offputting she is to other characters from their perspective.
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May 6, 2021 17:13
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I'm past the big turn in Part 2 of RoW. Things are interesting with Kaladin and Dalinar and Navani, but I wish that after so many books, Venli would do something interesting. Adolin is in the middle of a ghost trial for himself and the fate of humanity but we haven't heard from him in like a hundred pages, meanwhile Venli gets eight more chapters of nothing happening.
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May 10, 2021 16:10
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I feel like Ice and Fire has created a stigma in Fantasy where you have to constantly just be offing characters "or there are no stakes."
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May 11, 2021 05:37
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Further in RoW: It is becoming more obvious that Venli was meant to be something different and that Eshonai was supposed to live. I can't believe that Venli has received this much page-time with very little to show for it. I wonder what the word counts for her chapters are like compared to Kaladin's in the first two books. I did enjoy that Rlain finally snapped and was like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0_f5fkrCTA&t=5s I'll give the book the compliment in that the interludes are much snappier and relevant than previous entries in the series, and I'm expecting the incoming Sanderlanche intrigue before the end of the book. I'm just a little tired of introspective Venli chapters. I don't feel like the book has deserved 73 chapters so far and that this all could have maybe been split into two more succinct volumes. Pennsylvanian fucked around with this message at 01:33 on May 14, 2021 |
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May 14, 2021 01:26
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I am 32 years old. I've always had a problem being tired. I have no trouble going to sleep, but no matter what, I always just feel destroyed. I tried telling people this growing up, but the response from adults and my parents was "You're not tired, you're young." Anybody else's was response was "well, everyone feels tired." I listened to a podcast last year where a guy talked about always being tired because of sleep apnea, and his descriptions of waking up at least a dozen times a night. I went to a Doctor with my shiny new health insurance and she was like "yeah, that's messed up and you're probably going to have some health problems down the line, idiot," and ordered a CPAP machine for me. Now, in addition to getting an actual full night's sleep for the first time in my life, I actually dream (If I ever did dream before, it was like quick little flashes before I'd inevitably wake up). Last night I had one of the few lucid dreams of my life, and because I just read all of Stormlight over the last few months, my dream took place with where I was sort of an observer of events of Way of Kings. I was in one of the bridge crews observing Kaladin's arc but... It wasn't Kaladin. He was replaced by Majima Goro from the Yakuza games. Specifically, it was Majima from Yakuza 0 where he starts out super-serious, and by the end of events, he's the trash-talking, fun-loving weirdo from the later games and he could fly around with Radiant powers. I don't know why I felt I should share that, but I'm just going to hot potato it into the thread.
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May 22, 2021 17:43
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At the end of my Stormlight reading, I can see why people recommended Sanderson as a world-builder to me. While there have been times where I just wanted him to get back to a good plot point, I was never as exasperated with his world-building as I was for something like Fellowship of the Ring or the dryer parts of Ice and Fire. I think that he has a writing style where even if he is getting self-indulgent, he (and his editor I'm guessing) understand how to deliver a fantasy world in a way that's engaging in the moment for a reader. I've read some respected fantasy novels lately, and I keep backing away from them every time I have to read a long-rear end, run-on sentence that lists all of the lakes, mountains, geographical features, cities, etc. that the author needed to create in order to make their maps look more filled-in. Brandon's prose feels like that of a good teacher's- it lets whoever is listening to him give a chance to gradually compartmentalize what he wants to tell you.
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May 23, 2021 00:45
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I actually just happened to get bored of podcasts and audiobooks today and instead listen to some Youtube book reviews of Rhythm of War and I think I'm never going to listen to Youtube book reviews again. I tried three separate channels and they were all run by complete lunatics who shat on Adolin and his story while talking about how emotional they got over way less interesting arcs like Shallan's.
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Jun 13, 2021 05:21
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I thought Shallan was interesting in the first book. Her arc wasn't as tense as Kaladin's, but there was still intrigue (though I really, really didn't like her first few chapters of cringey dialogue). Second book was also good, and the scene in the chasm was an all-timer. It was when the books started to really focus on her multiple personalities in Oathbringer and Rhythm that I got really tired of her. Her introspective moments really highlight Brandon's flaw in regards with repetitive prose, and I swear there was a resolution with her at the end of Oathbringer that Rhythm of War just pretends didn't happen.
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Aug 22, 2021 02:12
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Eh, Arabic culture has the whole left-hand/right-hand manners system, so it doesn't seem too wild to me.
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Aug 22, 2021 17:42
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I don't think fantasy authors are going to go back to Hollywood anymore. It takes like ten years to make something that the author is going to lose control of somewhere along the way. Granted, I don't think that they're all going to be safe as streamimg series what with the budgets that are being put up for stuff like Wheel, Rings, or Thrones. I'm expecting a crash soon.
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Aug 7, 2022 18:54
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Netflix had a few fantasy flops in Marco Polo and others, but they also have way too many DoA shows like their anime adaptations and whatever new ripoff of Jack Reacher/Taken they release once a month. When I said "crash" I specifically meant these $100 million+ fantasy series that are going to scare them away from those kinds of projects.
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Aug 7, 2022 22:08
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