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Post by sjfaerlind on May 3, 2014 19:37:01 GMT -6
So I'm a huge Sanderson fan and I'm currently reading the second (massive) book in the Stormlight Archive epic fantasy series: "Words of Radiance". Has (or is) anybody else reading this series and do you want to chat about it?
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Post by Firiath on May 5, 2014 10:41:52 GMT -6
I haven't read any of his books yet, but he's on my to-read list. Is there any book (or series) you could recommend? Which one should I read first?
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Post by Taliesin on May 5, 2014 17:24:42 GMT -6
I have never heard of this guy. What flavour of fantasy does he write? Is it anything like your own writing, sjfaerlind? If it is then I'd probably like it.
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Post by sjfaerlind on May 6, 2014 8:40:53 GMT -6
Sanderson has an amazing imagination, coming up with some of the most original fantasy magic systems and worlds that I've ever seen. This guy really thinks outside the box which is what I love about his writing. If you want a taste of his work to see if you like it, he's put one of his earlier novels "Warbreaker" up on wattpad free to read: www.wattpad.com/story/6828459-warbreakerI really enjoyed Warbreaker and thought it was a pretty solid story. One of my favourite series of his was Mistborn, a trilogy of novels: cool magic systems (Yes! There are actually 3 in the series: allomancy, feruchemy and hemalurgy!), neat world and a plot complex enough that when the end came together, I was totally blown away by all the subtle hints scattered throughout the books. I thought this was a great read. A sequel novel that takes place after the Mistborn trilogy was The Alloy of Law and I think for pure entertainment value, it has to be one of my favourite stories. Last year I read The Rithmatist, which is actually a middle grade novel meant for a younger audience. I bought it wondering if my son would like it and after reading a chapter I was hooked. The Stormlight Archive is not for people who dislike detail and epic fantasy. If detail bores you, I wouldn't recommend you try this one. The first book is Way of Kings, and I will admit that I had a lot of trouble getting into it. The world in this series is extremely bizarre and totally unfamiliar. It took me 450 pages to become comfortable enough with it that I was finally hooked. (My hubby on the other hand, was hooked from the very beginning because it opens with an amazingly detailed fight scene. I usually have to just slog through those.... ). Boy, am I ever glad I finished that book though! Wow! The world is amazing, the characters are phenomenal and the author kept me guessing the whole way through. I've had no trouble getting into the second book.
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Post by Taliesin on May 8, 2014 21:35:21 GMT -6
I will have to sample him then. Thanks for the link, sjfaerlind!
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Post by Liadan on May 9, 2014 16:58:46 GMT -6
To give a more negative review of Sanderson's stuff, I'm not really a huge fan of him. They're an enjoyable enough light read, I suppose, but I've often found his work to be more reminiscent of video games than novels. But if your tastes run towards explicitly detailed magic systems and improbable fight scenes that tend to focus more on "the rule of cool," with a fairly YA feel (again, think video games or YA anime series, I guess), it's something I'd definitely recommend. It's just not to my own personal tastes.
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Post by sjfaerlind on May 10, 2014 6:49:19 GMT -6
He's definitely a mainstream-type traditionally published author, that's for sure. What books of his have you read Liadan?
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Post by Liadan on May 10, 2014 14:32:26 GMT -6
He's definitely a mainstream-type traditionally published author, that's for sure. What books of his have you read Liadan? The Mistborn trilogy was the only stuff of his that I managed to finish. I think I tried both Elantris and The Way of Kings and never managed to finish either.
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Post by megatherium on May 11, 2014 5:29:42 GMT -6
He single-highhandedly saved the Wheel of Time series. That's enough for me to like him. Not that it ended perfectly, but considering the uphill battle he had to contend with, to turn it into something worth reading, he did a great job. He also did the series more justice than Robert Jordan had planned to.
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Post by sjfaerlind on May 12, 2014 21:34:16 GMT -6
Much though I loved Wheel of Time, Jordan REALLY needed to wrap that one up and I think Sanderson did a great job of it. I think Jordan's wife chose wisely when she picked him to finish it for Jordan. Certainly, it put Brandon Sanderson's name out there and catapulted his career into the big leagues since WoT had such a huge following. Tastes in reading are all individual Liadan. I've never managed to track down a copy of Elantris yet, but it's on my list. How far did you make it into Way of Kings?
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Post by Liadan on May 12, 2014 21:41:50 GMT -6
Much though I loved Wheel of Time, Jordan REALLY needed to wrap that one up and I think Sanderson did a great job of it. I think Jordan's wife chose wisely when she picked him to finish it for Jordan. Certainly, it put Brandon Sanderson's name out there and catapulted his career into the big leagues since WoT had such a huge following. Tastes in reading are all individual Liadan. I've never managed to track down a copy of Elantris yet, but it's on my list. How far did you make it into Way of Kings? I'm not sure, I'd guess maybe 20% of the way through at most? Like I said earlier, though, it's definitely a matter of personal taste. I just figured I'd throw in another opinion for folks who were debating on reading it, since what I disliked so much about Sanderson's writing (as listed above) may be entirely their thing. It's often helpful to describe what you like or dislike about a certain series when making recommendations (or anti-recs!).
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Post by sjfaerlind on May 12, 2014 21:58:12 GMT -6
Much though I loved Wheel of Time, Jordan REALLY needed to wrap that one up and I think Sanderson did a great job of it. I think Jordan's wife chose wisely when she picked him to finish it for Jordan. Certainly, it put Brandon Sanderson's name out there and catapulted his career into the big leagues since WoT had such a huge following. Tastes in reading are all individual Liadan. I've never managed to track down a copy of Elantris yet, but it's on my list. How far did you make it into Way of Kings? I'm not sure, I'd guess maybe 20% of the way through at most? Like I said earlier, though, it's definitely a matter of personal taste. I just figured I'd throw in another opinion for folks who were debating on reading it, since what I disliked so much about Sanderson's writing (as listed above) may be entirely their thing. It's often helpful to describe what you like or dislike about a certain series when making recommendations (or anti-recs!). Of course. All opinions are welcome and valuable. I'm surprised you made it that far into Way of Kings of Sanderson isn't really to your taste Liadan . The only reason I managed to tough it through the beginning of that book was because I had faith that he'd deliver in the end. I wasn't disappointed but then I do like epic fantasy and his writing style. What didn't you like about Mistborn Liadan?
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Post by Liadan on May 12, 2014 22:27:23 GMT -6
I tried really, really hard. Happily, I can no longer remember anything about WoK. I think my problems with Mistborn were what I listed above. It seemed really juvenile and YA-ish in a lot of places, and Vin's characterization often felt off to me (particularly the part where she tells off Kelsier in the first book; I found that unbelievable considering the rest of what Sanderson had shown us). At times, I felt that I was reading a novelization of a video game. The fight scenes were definitely where I felt that the most; while Sanderson's very explicitly detailed magic systems were, in fact, quite interesting, there was this whole thing of "This power negates this power! Vin uses her Secret Hidden Attack!" sort of feel. He also took a lot of time to tell us alllll about his interesting magic system, which kind of messed up the pacing for me, to the point I ended up skipping that. In fact, I'd argue that a novel was the wrong medium for the story Sanderson wanted to tell, and that he'd have been better off creating a game. We could have a tutorial reading all about his magic system and then proceed to duke it out in Mistborn wars in totally impossible fight scenes while running on rooftops in the dark and looking fabulous! (It's how I also feel about the Hunger Games; I'm undecided between film/TV, but I think that a visual medium would've served the story better.) When I read it, I was more-or-less looking for an easy, entertaining read to breeze through, and it certainly did that at parts, which is why I managed to finish the entirety of the trilogy. But it's not really something I'd pass along to others, unless what I disliked about the series is specifically what they're looking for.
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Post by sjfaerlind on May 13, 2014 9:23:01 GMT -6
Wow...it's constantly amazing to me how two people can get such different things out of a series!!!! To me, Sanderson has all the layers included in Mistborn that make a great story: the pure entertainment value of the action and drama, the background detail in the world and magic systems he created in that series, and a very profound underlying message layer that totally blew me away. The "villain" who we loved to hate in the first book of Mistborn, is revealed to be just someone doing the best he can under poor circumstances by the end. Looking back you can really see how a so-called "good man" who wanted to save the world from destruction was led down the path into so-called "evil" by the challenges he faced to do that. The whole idea of how "Harmony" was created at the end and the underpinnings to that message totally blew me away. There's a huge message about the whole light vs dark / necessity of having both "good" and "evil" in reality there! A LOT of thought and planning went into pulling that off and burying it into the story. Amazing! Sure there's plenty of YA-ish/Hollywood entertainment value if you only look at the surface stuff but if you read much deeper into it and put everything together at the end, ther's far more to Mistborn than only that. As far as characters go, VIN and Kelsier (and to a lesser extent: Elend Venture, are the flashy/noticeable ones but it's really Sazed who is the best one in my opinion. He's a very interesting and complicated character. I can almost rate him as high as Gerrald Tarrant in C.S Friedman's Coldfire Trilogy....almost. To me, that's the mark of a truly great author: one that can pull off all layers of a story convincingly. Mistborn has entertainment value for those who want only the mindless read, background detail for those who want it and the philosophical stuff for the thinkers. Readers then only need to look as deep into the story as they want to in order to get what they like: there's something there for everyone. That's a pretty damn hard (if not impossible) balance to achieve and I think Sanderson does a good job of it. Incidentally, I think they did eventually launch a Mistborn video game. At least I saw that they were going to on Sanderson's blog.
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Post by Liadan on May 13, 2014 14:16:10 GMT -6
Wow...it's constantly amazing to me how two people can get such different things out of a series!!!! To me, Sanderson has all the layers included in Mistborn that make a great story: the pure entertainment value of the action and drama, the background detail in the world and magic systems he created in that series, and a very profound underlying message layer that totally blew me away. The "villain" who we loved to hate in the first book of Mistborn, is revealed to be just someone doing the best he can under poor circumstances by the end. Looking back you can really see how a so-called "good man" who wanted to save the world from destruction was led down the path into so-called "evil" by the challenges he faced to do that. The whole idea of how "Harmony" was created at the end and the underpinnings to that message totally blew me away. There's a huge message about the whole light vs dark / necessity of having both "good" and "evil" in reality there! A LOT of thought and planning went into pulling that off and burying it into the story. Amazing! Sure there's plenty of YA-ish/Hollywood entertainment value if you only look at the surface stuff but if you read much deeper into it and put everything together at the end, ther's far more to Mistborn than only that. As far as characters go, VIN and Kelsier (and to a lesser extent: Elend Venture, are the flashy/noticeable ones but it's really Sazed who is the best one in my opinion. He's a very interesting and complicated character. I can almost rate him as high as Gerrald Tarrant in C.S Friedman's Coldfire Trilogy....almost. To me, that's the mark of a truly great author: one that can pull off all layers of a story convincingly. Mistborn has entertainment value for those who want only the mindless read, background detail for those who want it and the philosophical stuff for the thinkers. Readers then only need to look as deep into the story as they want to in order to get what they like: there's something there for everyone. That's a pretty damn hard (if not impossible) balance to achieve and I think Sanderson does a good job of it. Incidentally, I think they did eventually launch a Mistborn video game. At least I saw that they were going to on Sanderson's blog. See, for me, what you called a "profound underlying message" is just a tired and not particularly original rehashing of the usual "LOOK AT HOW CLEVERLY I'M DECONSTRUCTING TROPES." Mistborn was published in 2006. Just from fantasy alone, we had Stephen R. Donaldson doing that sort of deconstruction from 1977, and Pratchett in 1983. While fantasy in its current commercial form has a less rich history than science fiction (in its current commercial form), the fact that there were people writing quite seminal works of fantasy deconstructing those same tropes (which in turn inspired other works) from thirty years ago means that most readers of fantasy (as opposed to people who occasionally will read the "gone mainstream" series, such as Harry Potter or Game of Thrones) have already encountered this elsewhere, and often done better to boot. An example of an actually clever deconstruction of tropes in a novel would be Helen Oyeyemi's Mr Fox, where the eponymous character, a writer of slash fiction, is forced to confront the huge problems of general misogyny and specifically the commercialization of violence-towards-women in his work, when his fictional muse comes to life and starts writing stories as well, challenging Fox's views on literature. (This is putting it incredibly simplistically, as the novel's far more complex than that, but yeah.) A more well-known and classic example would be Octavia Butler's science fiction novel Dawn, the first book of the Xenogenesis trilogy. Where most fantasy books, in an attempt to have a "deep, underlying theme," would simply catalog the horrors of slavery and leave it at that, Butler (a black woman) recreates the slave narrative in SF form. Her character, Lilith, is kidnapped by aliens when the world destroys itself in nuclear war. It's clear, from the start, that the Oankali (the aliens) are well-meaning captors. They don't starve or torture her, and in fact take good care of her; they're invested in making sure that she stays alive to repopulate Earth. However, it's just as clear from the start that the Oankali are terrifying and sinister, if for no other reason than that they hold all the power while Lilith had none. She is forced to learn their language, and to serve as something of a Judas Goat for other humans who haven't assimilated as well to the Oankali. The Oankali aren't doing this for an entirely altruistic purpose either--in order to preserve their species, they engage in something called the gene trade, which they do with the humans (without asking their consent). This ends up to a "sexual relationship" (in reality, rape) between Lilith, her partner, and one of the Oankali, in which the Oankali repeatedly insists that it's not only for the greater good, but that they'll experience greater sexual pleasure as well. All of this, of course, is an echo of the slave narrative during the times of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Given that, at the time, the perceived reader of SFF was assumed to be white and male, this novel is a highly uncomfortable read, making the reader empathize with Lilith while also pointedly exploring the issues that divide white and black Americans even today. Even though Dawn was published in 1987, it's still a highly cultural relevant read, and I suspect it'll remain so for the next few decades to come, given that the current party line across both major political parties in America involves a denial of racism and how it exists today. To return to your specific points about Sanderson's Mistborn, you focused on three major points: 1) That the villain has other motivations than what we suspected, 2) That he is the quintessential tragic villain, 3) That a balance between good and evil makes "harmony". Mostly putting aside how well he executed those concepts (like really? was the bits about slavery even necessary? and the "THERE WILL BE A PLOT TWIST!" signal was obvious from the first book alone), rebuttals: 1) This is something that you don't even need to take a basic psychology class for (though I suppose it might help). Most adult human beings are well-aware that other human beings are quite complex creatures with their own motivations that can't be parsed at first glance. 2) Tragic villains are so overwhelmingly prevalent that they might as well not even be a deconstruction of a trope anymore, but a full-on trope played straight at this point. 3a) I'm pretty sure this idea has been around for, like, thousands of years in religious, non-Abrahamic traditions. 3b) The good/evil binary's been done to death already. And for that matter, binaries in general (good/evil, man/woman, light/dark, etc. etc.) limit not only the imagination, but also philosophies and moralities. To talk about how "there are shades of gray!" in good/evil constructed moralities is somewhat attempting to deconstruct said binary, but at the end of the day, "shades of gray" morality is still firmly wedded to the binary of good/evil.
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