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BananaNutkins posted:The problem with Sanderson's writing in Stormlight isn't that it's too detailed. It's that the details are all repeats. He's told us what a crem-encrusted wall looks like about forty times before the first book is over. There's a dance you have to do as an author between reminding the reader of the environment when they need it for immersion and only showing the details that are pertinent necessary for the scene. Sanderson's terrible at it, or maybe great at it if you're a 13 year old who needs constant reminding and clarification. Yeah, the former editor in me screams when I read a lot of his passages. Some of the Stormlight books could easily have double-to-triple digits' worth of pages removed without sacrificing the author's vision just by cleaning up his language and repetition to read better. Shallan's inner monologue after she starts picking up multiple personalities stick out to me. "Shallan held the fork in her hand. Veil liked forks. Veil liked forks because they reminded Veil of sharpness, like a blade in the night. A blade in the night like Veil. Radiant was not fond of forks. Radiant thought forks looked like Chimgrims, the ungraceful antlered ungulates of the Shattered Plains. Radiant didn't like Chimgrims because their forked antlers reminded Radiant of forks, which she didn't like..." I guess this is my way of saying that I finally finished Rhythm of War a few weeks ago and the last few pages of the thread had points I agree with I'm not sure how much of this is actually spoilers, but here I go: -The start of the book felt like whiplash as while I realize that Brandon doesn't want to have the idea of "curing" people with emotional/mental health issues, I felt that Shallan rounded a corner in Oathbringer and that Rhythm forgot her progress and pushed her back around the corner. I was genuinely wondering if I was reading flashbacks for her sometimes. -Shallan was nothing. I liked her in the first two books, but like I said before, I feel her arc has been inconsistent where it feels like Brandon keeps forgetting what happened in previous chapters. -Adolin's story was my favorite. I felt like it was the perfect length on its own, but that the bloat of the rest of the characters hurt his arc because there's an absurdly long pause in his arc that lasts for hundreds of pages. -Venli's arc was not great. I think Brandon believes that tension happens when he has characters walking around feeling worried, and that more worrying means more tension. Venli's arc feels like hundreds of pages of nothing at times. Her arc requiring pauses in other characters' chapters definitely feeds in to any critiques I have of those stories. Taking several slow-moving arcs and separating them using one, much bigger and slower-moving arc was not a great idea. -I'm torn on Jasnah. I thought she was interesting in the first book, but I soured on her character later on when it felt like they ran into the Tyrion Lannister (from the show) trap of saying that she is so smart when you can actually poke holes in a lot of the unassailably "intelligent" things she says. That scene (I think it was in Oathbringer) where she talks about genociding the Parshmen sticks out. While Kaladin was right that it was a morally disgusting suggestion, it also bothered for some reason nobody in a room of military background spoke up and asked just how they were going to wipe out a race of people when the Alethi were struggling just to fight a small amount of Parshendi warriors in a desolate corner of the world. Rhythm has a sequence where she actually gets to see war first-hand and it seems like it takes her down a peg, but I wonder if it'll actually change anything in her before the next book starts fanboying over her again. -Navani was fine. I liked her ending. Her arc was a little long, but it's compounded by Venli's chapters stretching out the rest of the book. -The Cosmere stuff is lost on me unfortunately, so I think I may have missed out on a lot of the significance, there. I read and watched a bunch of reviews before and after reading RoW, and they all gave it nothing but glowing praise, so I felt like kind of an rear end about my negativity until I saw this thread. Brandon is successful and productive yes, but if his editor is actually doing their job, then I would hate to see what the other drafts of RoW looked like. Coquito Ergo Sum fucked around with this message at 14:54 on Aug 2, 2021 |
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Aug 2, 2021 14:39
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| # ¿ Apr 19, 2024 08:35 |
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That's a fairly admirable stance for him to take. It's rough to have a story you want to tell just to receive the feedback that half of your readers don't want to hear a certain amount of it. The problem with Venli is even at the end, I don't really know what the point of her story was. I feel like the most I got out of her story was that she gave more impact to Raboniel's ending. I guess she'll be more important with some of the revelations at the end of RoW, but getting through all of her chapters is a big ask. That sucks about Eshonai not being a planned death. I remember doing draft reads for authors around 2015-ish and thanks to Game of Thrones, everyone wanted characters to be under the constant threat of death or "otherwise there would be no stakes" and that was frustrating to have to witness. Planning a five-book arc sounds difficult, since there aren't many series that run that long that ended in a way that was satisfying as any solid trilogy, so I respect that he's going at it with such diligence.
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Aug 3, 2021 02:04
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Leng posted:Is now the time to tell you that the Stormlight Archive arc is planned to be TEN books? Tunicate posted:It's two five book arcs which are supposed to be complete on their own and have a decade timegap between them. That's what I was going for.
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Aug 3, 2021 06:29
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So, I've finished Stormlight. I enjoyed it all even though Rhythm felt like an absolute slog at times. What would be a good series to move onto next, maybe something with not-so-powerful magic?
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Oct 9, 2021 17:45
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I really did not like RoW when I finished reading it, but I'm guessing it's sort of like LOTR or the later ASOIAF books in that they're kind of easier to digest and appreciate on a re-read. While I can probably scan through the slow, repetitive (re: Venli) parts more easily, I still can't make heads or tails of all of those twist endings. Do I need to read other Sanderson series for them to make sense? My book club had the same qualms I do in that regard. Am I wrong though in thinking that it feels like a lot of the Stormlight character arcs get rewound sometimes? I understand that a character can't just decide "okay, my trauma is fixed" but sometimes it feels like the narrative forgets that certain progress was made or character-changing events happened. It feels like there was progress with Shallan at the end of Oathbringer that is completely negated or forgotten by the start of RoW. Leng posted:Sanderson's position is that when he writes the books, is he's translating them to English: Thanks to how Metal Gear Solid 3 handled the whole "they're speaking English but it's actually Russian" question I just read all high fantasy that way now and it helps me swallow down some of my questions and misgivings when a character in a fictional universe is eating "beef bourguignon" or says some idiom that only exists because of some Earth event or location.
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Nov 12, 2021 17:15
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I think not even so much more of Adolin's plot, but it might have been interesting to see some more of Shallan's story through his eyes. RoW did not really need the page count it ended up with.
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Nov 16, 2021 02:10
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Spoiler tags apparently don't like to be repeated, so I deleted what I had before I feel like he's trying to reel back Jasnah. He had a scene in Oathbringer where she joined in on some council meeting, and she casually mentions that they should just kill all the Parshmen. Kaladin then understandably goes "wait, no, that's bad" and she in turn shoots him down with facts & logic, not caring about anyone's emotions. Let's not dwell on the fact that it's also not as coldly strategically brilliant as she thinks it is, as they're all stranded in the middle of a war they're basically losing against the Parshmen, so it's not like they could realistically do what she wants anyway. The book still seems to want to treat it as a "you go girl" moment though and comes off as bizarrely tone deaf. Having her actually see a battle and feel like poo poo about it in RoW is kind of nice, but they still give her a free murder pass moment. I don't know what Brandon wants out of that character. Coquito Ergo Sum fucked around with this message at 05:20 on Nov 17, 2021 |
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Nov 17, 2021 05:17
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Is there a decent summation of the events of RoW's ending? I really feel like I didn't get all that I should have out of it, and I'm worried that I'm going to go into the next book confused as hell.
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Nov 18, 2021 16:52
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NikkolasKing posted:So randomly in the RPG thread we started talking about ASOIAF. The last two big modern Fantasy series I've read are ASOIAF and Sanderson's stuff and one reason I prefer Sanderson is his treatment of religion and faith. George writes ASOIAF's religion from the perspective of a man who rejected and questioned his faith very early on in his life and incorporates his feelings on the power of religion into ASOIAF's narrative. The three religions of Ice and Fire are basically analogues of Catholicism, Zoroastrianism, and various Paganist religions with the occasional pre-Catholic Christian sects thrown in for flavor. The only one of the belief systems that exists on Westeros as an organized church that we see is the Faith of the Seven, his take on Catholicism, and what we see of The Faith is an entity that seems to exist mainly to maintain its own existence. The Faith is more noticeably active in his lorebook, Fire & Blood, but for The Faith of the Seven, the Will of God tends to exist when The Faith needs it to, usually when it feels threatened by another political entity like any Westerosi Lordship or even the maesters. Individual characters all seem to have different feelings about religion in their day-to-day lives. Certain people like Catelyn are devout Seven worshippers, while most other characters seem to be fairly moderate in their observance, while even (apparently) atheist characters still bow and kneel and pray when they feel it's socially expected of them to do so. Old Gods worshippers seem to act like Pagan believers in that they're expected to act with an awareness of their Gods, but without a centralized church don't feel the social responsibility that Seven worshippers do. Lord of Light worshippers I can't comment on because the religion only recently arrived on Westeros from Fantasy Chernobyl, and its followers consist of a drunk priest, a possible charlatan, Sam Tarly's aunt, and a bunch of Stannis' edge-screen bannermen. As for the Gods themselves, there's no real proof of their existence except as an explanation for magic. The Old Gods may just be a way to explain the weirwoods, while the Seven may accidentally be worshipping The White Walkers, while The Lord of Light might just be a result of someone seeing so much magic and thinking "okay, it's caused by a God." Generally, when it comes to the origins of its faiths, Planetos' religions were created as a way of trying to explain the inexplicable (which is one of the things I think he was trying to say with his "Ice and Fire is science fiction" remark). I've only read the Stormlight books, so I don't want to pretend I can analyze Brandon, but for him he seems like a believer who has internal dialogues with himself over how he compromises his faith when it comes into contest with his ideals. Stormlight feels like he's trying to touch on some of the same things that George is vis-a-vis creation myths but that Brandon is more trying to work out how he feels about his faith as he's writing it.
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Jan 9, 2022 02:43
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It's more that it seems like he's always almost on the edge of passing out from running out of breath.
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Feb 16, 2022 04:57
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