7 ms·

Brandon Sanderson is an interesting case; I have only read the Stormlight Archive books (and his wrap-up of Wheel of Time), and though I can totally see his app

Brandon Sanderson is an interesting case; I have only read the Stormlight Archive books (and his wrap-up of Wheel of Time), and though I can totally see his appeal, I would also totally disagree that he belongs up there with the true greats, at least currently. Reading his books, I feel like I'm in some kind of Marvel universe, complete with quippy dialogue and 'coolness' that to me gives a stink of 'commercialism' that I can't get past. In the Stormlight Archive, Shallan is the best example of this: Her dialogue is so forcedly hip and witty that cringes abound whenever I read it. To me, it ruins the whole atmosphere and I feel like I'm in a plastic universe, rather than a living breathing one. His worldbuilding is great, but his worlds are devoid of authenticity IMO.

pfisch 9y ago
I think that example is kind of right about Shallan, but I can't think of similar analogues in any of his other books. Though I don't really care for the newer steampunk mistborn trilogy. Actually I thought most of the standalone short stories in the cosmere book itself were pretty great.
abalos 9y ago
Now that you point it out, I definitely remember the quippy dialogue from Oathbringer. You should give the original Mistborn trilogy a go or the Reckoners series. One of the reasons he's my favorite author is that he 1) pumps out solid books almost yearly and 2) his series are very different even though they're all fantasy.
- rohansingh 9y ago
  I think if this person finds the quippy dialogue in Oathbringer off-putting, then they are going to absolutely hate Reckoners.
- BorkJames 9y ago
  Personally I went from Oathbringer to Mistborn and found the characters to be worse. Perhaps it was too far into the twilight-y romance through the first half to keep my attention. Great world-building, but I dislike the characters.
mrcarrot 9y ago
Absolutely. I've found I have a really hard time with how he writes action as well. I always feel as though he's describing someone playing a video game.
- SXX 9y ago
  Might I guess that you are avid gamer or was one before? Since I had exactly same feeling when I read Mistborn and didn't find agreement on it with some people who are far more into books rather than games. Though I didn't have same problem with any other books probably because they have less action scenes. All his magic systems have well defined mechanics and strict rules behind them so it's kind a expected and I feel like somebody who used to play a lot of games see through it more easily. Whatever it's good or bad depend on your own preferences in fantasy. Personally I see this as a good thing since opposite would be ever repeating contrived coincidence of just-one-another arcane trick rediscovery. Probably these limits on what magic can or cannot do is one of things that make him improve his writing.
- flintchip 9y ago
  Yes! I recently picked up the Way of Kings but found the way he described the action/fantastical elements really jarring. It was like he felt he needed to spell it out rather than let the reader discover it organically. I've been told I need to struggle through though as it's supposedly a great story.
- Cthulhu_ 9y ago
  like, "<character> cast Fire on <enemy> for 110 dmg (+3 from Ring of Fire)"?
  - SXX 9y ago
    No, but once he start to introduce some "magic" mechanics he literally describe it in details: how exactly it's works and looks like as if he was describing politicking. Also I took "magic" into quotes since in Cosmere books for the reader (!) it's always more like set of additional physics-like laws of world mechanics rather than some mystery.
epage 9y ago
Shallan is also a person with a lot of baggage putting on a false front, so your description seems authentic to the character.
- egjerlow 9y ago
  I have heard this sentiment before, and unfortunately I am not convinced that the obnoxiousness of this character was intentional rather than accidental. I don't have much to back this up: basically my hypothesis is that Sanderson is trying to pander to a specific audience, to whom the witty banter he is attempting is appealing, and genuinely attempting to make Shallan 'cool' fits with this hypothesis. Furthermore, as others have also mentioned here, his other attempts at similarly witty characters have also been flawed, so there's that.
  - lovich 9y ago
    Did you get through the second book yet? I pretty much hated the first half of book one when shallan showed up due to way she spoke and acted, but the second book goes into much more detail about her baggage. Other characters also have in universe reactions to shallan that are smiliar to yours
    - egjerlow 9y ago
      I did read the second one, in fact one of the most jarring passages I found (see sibling comment above) is from this book, so I don't think learning about her backstory solved this issue for me.. But I see you and several others have made this same point so maybe I'm being curmudgeonly. I think that Shallan, as presented, is written lazily and with a way of thinking and talking that has been forcibly transplanted from our (as in, the World, 2018) current culture and into a fantasy universe, which is jarring to me.
SXX 9y ago
After many years with more serious read I got back to fantasy in September by starting with Wheel of Time, then all of Cosmere books where I finished Oathbringer just weeks ago with some 10 first Discworld books in between. Sanderson isn't perfect, but his writing improved immensely with each new book. I wouldn't really recommend anything other than Stormlight Archive and might be Mistborn era 2 unless person want to be very Cosmere-aware though. Still his problem with Shallan is pretty much the same as he had with Mat in first of his WoT books and basically with every other witty character in every of his earliest books. He just wasn't good enough for writing some types of characters, but still tried to include them regardless. I think everyone will agree that he actually become better at this since most of people I talked with enjoy Hoid in SA. I don't try to justify it, but I think it's not that easy to fix character like Shallan since her character was well defined in first book released in 2010. I guess what we can see in Oathbringer it's attempt to do that although not very good one.
- egjerlow 9y ago
  Thanks for the input - though I feel like Shallan is just symptomatic of a larger problem, I could also be wrong and I will give him the benefit of the doubt and keep reading SA.
  - SXX 9y ago
    I would certainly recommend finishing SA since I personally got as much of enjoyment out of it as I only had from ASoIaF. Also I would recommend it even more if you're on first book or not yet get to Shallan's back story in second since a lot of things will make more sense once you know it.
    - qu4z-2 9y ago
      I think Shallan also isn't as clever as she thinks she is, in-universe. That makes it somewhat more palatable to me.
      - SXX 9y ago
brynx97 9y ago
Within the cosmere universe, there is a one off novella that Sanderson wrote called "The Emperor's Soul". It is quite good, and it won a Hugo award. I very much disagree about his worlds lacking authenticity. It seems you have some strange suspension of disbelief resulting from Shallan's dialogue (which I find is true to her character and upbringing). I agree some of the writing for dialogue is "off", but I feel much of this results from Sanderson's pace of writing.
snarf21 9y ago
You are right that worldbuilding is his strongest attribute. His characters are getting better and better and Stormlight's are his best yet (imo). Keep in mind that he is still evolving and he is prolific. He generally releases 1+ books every year while still being a professor. Martin's books are really solid, when he ever writes them..... Remember this is his opus after a lifetime of writing. (I personally think his Fevre Dream is a great book)
mnarayan01 9y ago
Her wordplay often feels weak (though "hip" seems like an odd way of describing it), but you could probably fit all of it in one page and there are over 2000 pages in the first two books. If you feel disinterested after reading 2000+ pages I'm not inclined to say you should read the next 1000+ page book, but others should note that this is probably not a common opinion. (Shallan does suck the air out of the first book to some extent, but she's great in the second IMO.)
- egjerlow 9y ago
  Take this line of dialogue (don't remember whether it's from the first or second): "Well, she wanted me to get married too", Shallan said. "So I wouldn't call her sexist. Merely... Jasnah-ist?" She paused. "Jasnagynistic? No, drat. It would have to be Misjasnahistic, and that doesn't work nearly as well, does it?" Now, without devolving into debating the anachronicity of the terms used here in general - this is a good example of what I am talking about, and perhaps 'hip' was the wrong way to word it, but it goes beyond mere 'bad wordplay' for me. If you can read the above without cringing, all the more power to you. For me, passages like these completely break immersion and leave me wondering whether I'm reading some kind of bad fanfic. And unfortunately, yes, that does color the rest of the reading, because trusting the author to be competent is (at least to me) an important part of staying immersed. And, thusly let down by Sanderson, my mind moves onto the other things that can be seen as flaws. That being said, I don't feel disinterested: He has several good qualities as a writer. But just like the Marvel movies probably won't be regarded as the masterpieces of our times, despite their popularity, Sanderson's books are not, to me, worthy of such praise either. In the words of Francis Bacon, his books are to be "swallowed", not "read wholly, and with diligence and attention".
  - rexaliquid 9y ago
    I'm not sure how anachronism applies to a fictional setting, but have you never played with words to coin a new one? Pulling apart words and putting them back together is one of the more relatable demonstrations of intelligence, imo.
  - mnarayan01 9y ago

pfisch 9y ago

I think that example is kind of right about Shallan, but I can't think of similar analogues in any of his other books. Though I don't really care for the newer steampunk mistborn trilogy. Actually I thought most of the standalone short stories in the cosmere book itself were pretty great.

abalos 9y ago

Now that you point it out, I definitely remember the quippy dialogue from Oathbringer. You should give the original Mistborn trilogy a go or the Reckoners series. One of the reasons he's my favorite author is that he 1) pumps out solid books almost yearly and 2) his series are very different even though they're all fantasy.

rohansingh 9y ago
I think if this person finds the quippy dialogue in Oathbringer off-putting, then they are going to absolutely hate Reckoners.
BorkJames 9y ago
Personally I went from Oathbringer to Mistborn and found the characters to be worse. Perhaps it was too far into the twilight-y romance through the first half to keep my attention. Great world-building, but I dislike the characters.

mrcarrot 9y ago

Absolutely. I've found I have a really hard time with how he writes action as well. I always feel as though he's describing someone playing a video game.

SXX 9y ago
Might I guess that you are avid gamer or was one before? Since I had exactly same feeling when I read Mistborn and didn't find agreement on it with some people who are far more into books rather than games. Though I didn't have same problem with any other books probably because they have less action scenes. All his magic systems have well defined mechanics and strict rules behind them so it's kind a expected and I feel like somebody who used to play a lot of games see through it more easily. Whatever it's good or bad depend on your own preferences in fantasy. Personally I see this as a good thing since opposite would be ever repeating contrived coincidence of just-one-another arcane trick rediscovery. Probably these limits on what magic can or cannot do is one of things that make him improve his writing.
flintchip 9y ago
Yes! I recently picked up the Way of Kings but found the way he described the action/fantastical elements really jarring. It was like he felt he needed to spell it out rather than let the reader discover it organically. I've been told I need to struggle through though as it's supposedly a great story.
Cthulhu_ 9y ago
like, "<character> cast Fire on <enemy> for 110 dmg (+3 from Ring of Fire)"?
- SXX 9y ago
  No, but once he start to introduce some "magic" mechanics he literally describe it in details: how exactly it's works and looks like as if he was describing politicking. Also I took "magic" into quotes since in Cosmere books for the reader (!) it's always more like set of additional physics-like laws of world mechanics rather than some mystery.

epage 9y ago

Shallan is also a person with a lot of baggage putting on a false front, so your description seems authentic to the character.

egjerlow 9y ago
I have heard this sentiment before, and unfortunately I am not convinced that the obnoxiousness of this character was intentional rather than accidental. I don't have much to back this up: basically my hypothesis is that Sanderson is trying to pander to a specific audience, to whom the witty banter he is attempting is appealing, and genuinely attempting to make Shallan 'cool' fits with this hypothesis. Furthermore, as others have also mentioned here, his other attempts at similarly witty characters have also been flawed, so there's that.
- lovich 9y ago
  Did you get through the second book yet? I pretty much hated the first half of book one when shallan showed up due to way she spoke and acted, but the second book goes into much more detail about her baggage. Other characters also have in universe reactions to shallan that are smiliar to yours
  - egjerlow 9y ago
    I did read the second one, in fact one of the most jarring passages I found (see sibling comment above) is from this book, so I don't think learning about her backstory solved this issue for me.. But I see you and several others have made this same point so maybe I'm being curmudgeonly. I think that Shallan, as presented, is written lazily and with a way of thinking and talking that has been forcibly transplanted from our (as in, the World, 2018) current culture and into a fantasy universe, which is jarring to me.

SXX 9y ago

After many years with more serious read I got back to fantasy in September by starting with Wheel of Time, then all of Cosmere books where I finished Oathbringer just weeks ago with some 10 first Discworld books in between. Sanderson isn't perfect, but his writing improved immensely with each new book. I wouldn't really recommend anything other than Stormlight Archive and might be Mistborn era 2 unless person want to be very Cosmere-aware though. Still his problem with Shallan is pretty much the same as he had with Mat in first of his WoT books and basically with every other witty character in every of his earliest books. He just wasn't good enough for writing some types of characters, but still tried to include them regardless. I think everyone will agree that he actually become better at this since most of people I talked with enjoy Hoid in SA. I don't try to justify it, but I think it's not that easy to fix character like Shallan since her character was well defined in first book released in 2010. I guess what we can see in Oathbringer it's attempt to do that although not very good one.

egjerlow 9y ago
Thanks for the input - though I feel like Shallan is just symptomatic of a larger problem, I could also be wrong and I will give him the benefit of the doubt and keep reading SA.
- SXX 9y ago
  I would certainly recommend finishing SA since I personally got as much of enjoyment out of it as I only had from ASoIaF. Also I would recommend it even more if you're on first book or not yet get to Shallan's back story in second since a lot of things will make more sense once you know it.
  - qu4z-2 9y ago
    I think Shallan also isn't as clever as she thinks she is, in-universe. That makes it somewhat more palatable to me.
    - SXX 9y ago

brynx97 9y ago

Within the cosmere universe, there is a one off novella that Sanderson wrote called "The Emperor's Soul". It is quite good, and it won a Hugo award. I very much disagree about his worlds lacking authenticity. It seems you have some strange suspension of disbelief resulting from Shallan's dialogue (which I find is true to her character and upbringing). I agree some of the writing for dialogue is "off", but I feel much of this results from Sanderson's pace of writing.

snarf21 9y ago

You are right that worldbuilding is his strongest attribute. His characters are getting better and better and Stormlight's are his best yet (imo). Keep in mind that he is still evolving and he is prolific. He generally releases 1+ books every year while still being a professor. Martin's books are really solid, when he ever writes them..... Remember this is his opus after a lifetime of writing. (I personally think his Fevre Dream is a great book)

mnarayan01 9y ago

Her wordplay often feels weak (though "hip" seems like an odd way of describing it), but you could probably fit all of it in one page and there are over 2000 pages in the first two books. If you feel disinterested after reading 2000+ pages I'm not inclined to say you should read the next 1000+ page book, but others should note that this is probably not a common opinion. (Shallan does suck the air out of the first book to some extent, but she's great in the second IMO.)

egjerlow 9y ago
Take this line of dialogue (don't remember whether it's from the first or second): "Well, she wanted me to get married too", Shallan said. "So I wouldn't call her sexist. Merely... Jasnah-ist?" She paused. "Jasnagynistic? No, drat. It would have to be Misjasnahistic, and that doesn't work nearly as well, does it?" Now, without devolving into debating the anachronicity of the terms used here in general - this is a good example of what I am talking about, and perhaps 'hip' was the wrong way to word it, but it goes beyond mere 'bad wordplay' for me. If you can read the above without cringing, all the more power to you. For me, passages like these completely break immersion and leave me wondering whether I'm reading some kind of bad fanfic. And unfortunately, yes, that does color the rest of the reading, because trusting the author to be competent is (at least to me) an important part of staying immersed. And, thusly let down by Sanderson, my mind moves onto the other things that can be seen as flaws. That being said, I don't feel disinterested: He has several good qualities as a writer. But just like the Marvel movies probably won't be regarded as the masterpieces of our times, despite their popularity, Sanderson's books are not, to me, worthy of such praise either. In the words of Francis Bacon, his books are to be "swallowed", not "read wholly, and with diligence and attention".
- rexaliquid 9y ago
  I'm not sure how anachronism applies to a fictional setting, but have you never played with words to coin a new one? Pulling apart words and putting them back together is one of the more relatable demonstrations of intelligence, imo.
- mnarayan01 9y ago