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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: -Kaladin's arc is the real story here. I think Brandon did a really good job of just having the world poo poo on him in a way that actually made sense as opposed to other stories that feel like the authors pile on misfortunes just for the sake of having conflict. It did get a little heavy with the foreshadowing for what happens near the end. Not long into the book, I basically assumed that Kaladin was going to do some thing where his bridge crew impressed Dalenar in some way . -I'd say the story's pacing was inconsistent up until maybe the last 2/3rd of the book. I think Brandon realized that Shallan's story needed to be given some tension early on, so thank god he pretty much came out of the gate early and say that she wanted to steal Jasnah's Soulcaster, or the first chunk of the book would have been rough for me. The early passages were a little frustrating because Kaladin's story kept getting halted on cliffhangers to go and see fishermen talk to one another or to go on with longish world-building screeds. I was originally not hot on Dalenar's arc because it came after Kaladin's story kept getting interrupted, and I was not excited about how long it took for these poncey high fantasy nobles to do anything interesting. And then I did eventually get super-invested in Dalenar's story just to have it abandoned for what felt like half of the book later on. -The final battle at the tower is one of the best-handled battle scenes I've read in a book. -As is usually the case with fantasy, the humor is mostly a miss (for me). I'm not really fond of humor being limited to clever wordplay, which is how most humor seems to be handled in fantasy. Sometimes when I saw characters in this book throwing clever phrase-turns or puns at each other, I just kept thinking of them getting owned by some middle school bully who calls them a bunch of dumb nerds. -The only sections I outright didn't like were Szeth's, mainly because of how Brandon wrote his fight scenes. There were all this unnecessary "he lashed to the ceiling" and then "grabbed the blade with both hands," and then "lashed one leg up on the ceiling and another onto the end table," lines that dragged out the fight and just made it feel like I someone transcribed a Pong match. It got a little ridiculous to read, and felt absent of pathos. As absurd as the shardbearer fights could get with everyone "spinning" into groups of Parshendi, Brandon at least tied the fight scenes to Dalenar's inner turmoil when it came to slaughtering Parshendi. The last part of Szeth's story was a really well-handled reveal, though. -Overall, this is the first time I've felt invested in a high fantasy story. Usually when a high fantasy story throws in anime sword men and super-magic, I start checking out because it starts making 99.9999% of people in the world useless to the overall story, but I love how Dalenar's story almost directly addresses that concern of mine.
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Feb 2, 2021 03:59
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eke out posted:yeah, this basically -- she's part of a courtly aristocratic tradition that values that kind of 'clever' wordplay among young noble women, but it fails to make it clear to the reader that we should see her as a try-hard teen performing 'cleverness' to desperately attempt to distinguish herself, rather than a funny character that the author thinks is funny. I do understand that when the book compliments her wittiness, it's often portrayed as "She's witty, but it's also likely that people are just patronizing the light-eyed girl." It makes sense when Kabsal kisses up to her as he's trying to get close to her, but Jasnah also outright berates her for it on a few occasions. On the other hand, I think you nailed my overall feelings in that Brandon is trying to have it both ways. He's far from the only author to congratulate themselves by applauding their characters' "witty" banter, especially in fantasy.
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Feb 3, 2021 02:45
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I posted my edited thoughts over there, with more spoiler tags. Hopefully I put the tags in the right spot. Also, it technically wasn't the first fantasy book I finished in the last decade. Just last year, I beta-read an incredibly interesting fantasy story that was kind of a like a horror story/political thriller. It had some obviously rough spots, but I hope the guy finishes it. It's like nothing I've ever read before. Pennsylvanian fucked around with this message at 03:36 on Feb 3, 2021 |
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Feb 3, 2021 03:18
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Can you share the author? Sounds neat and kinda up my alley and I'd like to keep an eye out for it. He's never published anything, and I only know his first name/handle. He's one of those types of people that works a lot of hard jobs and from what he's said, he used any of his free time to practice writing. I met him when I posted a "looking for players" thread on Reddit and thought he had some really cool characters, who all turned to out to be from this writing project of his. He says he's still working on it, but he can't give it much time since he's an essential worker and has been doing extra shifts since last March. He still tries to make it to our sessions. Maybe I'll tell him that I'll level him up for every chapter he finishes polishing. Basically, the story is about a woman knight who is called into a different kingdom to investigate a mass murder. As she does, the story goes from a murder mystery, to something like Assault on Precinct 13, to something like The Descent (So, the climax isn't the high-action sequence, but a tense cave-crawl instead, which is kind of unique for fantasy). The mystery is exacerbated by post-war political tensions as she can't figure out who to trust. Pennsylvanian fucked around with this message at 14:48 on Feb 3, 2021 |
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Feb 3, 2021 14:35
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Yeah, he said last month that his New Year's Resolution is to get it out in public in some form or another (he's been working on it for a while- he showed me an early draft from like ten years ago that he completely abandoned in favor of a re-write and it shows massive improvement). Last I talked to him, he was tweaking the B-plot to read a bit better, and that he wants to get more people critiquing it soon. He's nervous about throwing it all out at once, so he's been been toying with the idea of turning it into some kind of Early Access-style webnovel where people can give him feedback as he works on it and some of his short stories, one of which was an interesting take on They Are Made of Meat. I'm trying to be as gently encouraging as I can be.
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Feb 3, 2021 16:55
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Walh Hara posted:Hmm, kinda agreeing with Cicero here: which worldviews are too modern/progressive for a medieval world? On one hand there's the problem where some of the viewpoints which we think are modern aren't. On the other hand it's also the case that when considering the viewpoints of old cultures we tend to only consider the viewpoints of (a very small subgroup of) the ruling class. Plenty of failed rebellions for things we consider progressive now. That, or a fantasy world won't have certain religions or cultures from our world that would block "progressive" or radical views. Imagine what Europe or the Americas would look like without Christianity, or what the Middle East would look like with Judaism or Islam fostering certain ideologies. Hell, the only real book of guidance that I've heard more than one person talk about is the titular Way of Kings, and the one guy who regularly talks about it is treated like an insane weirdo for thinking it's good. And I've only read one book in the series, but it doesn't seem all that progressive or modern. Slavery and caste systems exist, and despite there being supposed restrictions on what even the higher castes can do, they rarely seem stifled by said laws. There are also sexist aspects of the society where women aren't allowed to do some things, and men won't allow themselves to do certain things. So what may seem progressive just comes from the fact that it's a fantasy universe, but it's still a very backwards (from our view) society.
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Feb 4, 2021 00:19
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Ccs posted:So I'm now reading what might be one of the best fantasy novels I've ever read? Still too early to say but scene-wise, this has had passages that haven't been equaled in other work I've encountered. The book is Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman. I picked the audiobook of this up during work after getting steamed at some really bad pacing in Words of Radiance. I was kind of not on board since the first half hour or so was about a man trying to rape a little girl. Once it got past that, I was enjoying it much more. It moves along, has a great atmosphere, a good audiobook reader, great mood. I made it to just after that lake demon fight and I'm looking forward to getting further into it.
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Feb 9, 2021 02:30
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I've been reading a lot of books lately that all seem to have the looming "DARK SPAWNVOID HUNTERS" on the horizon. It was cool to just have a few establishing bite-sized stories with no more than a paragraph or two of lore per ten pages of story. The interaction of a jaded knight with a sweet little girl just seems like that type of fantasy movie that would come out in the 1990s and I'm extremely into that. Pennsylvanian fucked around with this message at 04:20 on Feb 9, 2021 |
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Feb 9, 2021 04:12
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I've been blowing through some big-name fantasy like LOTR, Ice and Fire, Stormlight, etc. lately and I wore myself out with all of the overbearing worldbuilding so I got a Warhammer audiobook, Trollslayer. It's written like pulp which is just fine with me, but it's also nice to have Felix pick up a lantern without going into a three page diatribe about what country made the lantern and why the bests lanterns all come from that country. I am also entirely sick of dream sequences that exist either to: a) foreshadow a future plot twist b) gaslight me away from guessing a future plot twist.
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Apr 22, 2021 07:05
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tildes posted:^ this is me. I honestly just basically skip all of them at this point. It’s usually some heavy handed metaphor which was already conveyed by the plot imo. They're also usually paced differently in whatever books they're written into, too. The non-dream sequences in a given novel will have limited descriptions of actions while the dream sequences will describe every step and breath in excrutiating detail. An extended duel scene will be half the length of "Jaime dreamed his dad was real mean." I've sort of discovered that if you read the first line of every paragraph in these kinds of dream sequences, then you'll more than not understand what's going on. Gotrex and Felix have been a nice pallate cleanser. It's cool to just have characters doing things which seems to be a lofty concept for a lot of fantasy.
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Apr 22, 2021 19:52
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bagrada posted:Have you seen the two Realmslayer audio dramas starring Brian Blessed as Gotrek? They are... something, as he hams it up and the other voice actors try to keep up with him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWAu7CQK6Wg
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Apr 22, 2021 21:29
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I did it. I finally finished Fellowship of the Ring after picking it up and putting it down since roughly middle school. I really didn't like it. I realize how important the story is to some people so I'm not going to be "that guy." I just found it thoroughly unenjoyable and a chore to get through. There are no real characters or arcs because it feels like anytime a character speaks or even makes a move, Tolkien uses it as a prompt to go into an extended worldbuilding spiel. Google puts the page count at 423 and somehow Legolas is still just the Elf, Gimli is just The Dwarf, Aragorn is still The Human With a Secret That's Not a Secret, Gandalf is The Wizard, and the Hobbits are pretty fun but are still pretty hollow for such a long book.
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Apr 27, 2021 16:47
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StrixNebulosa posted:Wow, I've never seen a comment that so perfectly encapsulates "this book isn't for you". I'm in the middle of Fellowship now - the Hobbits just left the Prancing Pony - and I've been in love with the rich detailing of everything, and the Bombadil chapter was an absolute delight. Can't wait to get to Rivendell! I was actually okay with the book up to that point. Tom Bombadil was a huge bump in the road, but I was willing to give a lot of compliments to the book. Then the pacing just hit a wall for me at Rivendell and I was only reading the book just to say I finally finished it.
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Apr 27, 2021 17:20
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I can see what people enjoy about it, at the least. When it's at its best, it gives you that "storyteller" feel like grandpa is telling you the story while you sit on his knee or you're in an open-air theatre. The world itself feels full, but what's happening in the book in the present just feels hollow a lot of the time.
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Apr 27, 2021 18:06
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Coquito Ergo Sum posted:Yeah, this always bugged me a little. A character will be stranded with their horse, but for some reason the character would rather starve than eat whatever the horse is eating that makes it somehow survive the journey. I really like how in Between Two Fires, it mentions that the characters are willing to just eat weeds and grass in an effort to stay alive between more substantial meals. Finish your book. You do all of these things so well. I smelled your battle scenes while reading them.
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May 10, 2021 23:02
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So I've finished up all of The Stormlight Chronicles (Way of Kings to Rhythm of War). I like them overall, which should be evident that I made it through 4,000 pages of them. The books are at their best when characters are interacting with one another with brief periods of introspection between them. They can however be a chore when the inverse happens. Someone posted a sample of Brandon's weird repetitious style of writing and it was a perfect example of when his prose doesn't work for me and makes the books really feel dragged out. I liked Kaladin and especially Adolin, as well as most of the other characters. I liked Shallan for the other books but not during RoW. I hated Venli's arc, mostly because takes up what feels like half of RoW's page count but I feel like it was entirely unearned by the end of the book. The ending of RoW also just goes bonkers with things like body-swapping, introduction of new characters/threats and universe terms and it just felt really bizarre and jumbled by the end. I'll likely get the next book when it comes out because I am invested in what's happening, but I definitely feel like I'm going to have to deep-dive the wikipedia to remember all of the different types of spren, Knights Radiant, Gods, magic terms, Parshendi terminology, etc. EDIT: Crap, I forgot to put in the spoiler tags originally. Pennsylvanian fucked around with this message at 05:19 on May 16, 2021 |
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May 16, 2021 02:01
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Ben Nevis posted:I recall we'd talked a couple weeks ago about fantasy with gay male protags, and I just read one that was pretty good. White Trash Warlock by David Slayton is the first in a series. The main character is Adam Binder, a witch from Guthrie, OK who heads out to help his estranged brother. When he gets out to Denver the city has a giant malevolent spirit hanging over it. Obviously Adam needs to fix this. Slayton says he based the character on his own experiences growing up gay in Guthrie, OK. The main plot of this one wraps up, though there's obvious hooks for a sequel (due out in October). I found it to be good, very readable. I got through it faster than expected. I enjoyed the working class protagonist, and being set in Denver, felt like a pretty decent take on the urban fantasy. Like, years ago, there was a webcomic thread on the forums where someone posted a comic that took place in fantasy version of Pennsyltuckey and starred a sassy talking lich. Every once in a while I try to find it, but no luck as of yet.
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May 16, 2021 23:56
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NinjaDebugger posted:Not sure how sassy he is, but are you thinking of Steve Lichman? Nah, it's a different one. The one I'm thinking of was done in black and white.
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May 17, 2021 01:13
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I hate to admit it, but I gave up on Blacktongue Thief. I adored Two Fires but I've been reading a lot of world building heavy fantasy and I just dread running into more paragraphs of fake history and magic rules. I'm going through Leviathan Wakes and it's been a breath of fresh air to get away from family trees and descriptions of special, irregular food.
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Mar 11, 2022 18:03
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