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He’s the Stephen King of Tolkien-rip off fantasy. He churns them out, sure, but I don’t consider the quality all that high.
by edgyquant 5y ago
He’s the Stephen King of Tolkien-rip off fantasy. He churns them out, sure, but I don’t consider the quality all that high.
- lolinder 5y ago> Tolkien-rip off fantasy You're free to dislike the books, but this is an extremely unfair characterization. Sanderson's books bear very little resemblance to Tolkien's beyond the genre and the elaborate nature of the worldbuilding.
- edgyquant 5y agoIt’s not unfair. The genre he writes is a genre of Tolkien ripoffs of which he is the most prolific.
- lolinder 5y agoIf you're including Game of Thrones and Wheel of Time, then I guess Sanderson broadly falls into that same category. I'd hardly label any of them "rip-offs", though, especially given that there are books out there blatantly ripping off Tolkien right down to elves, dwarves and halflings.
- space_fountain 5y agoThere are Tolkien rip offs, but Tolkien didn’t invent fantasy, and unlike a lot of fantasy authors Sanderson doesn’t include elements like dwarfs, or elves or really anything that Tolkien came up with as far as I can tell. Are you maybe confusing him with someone else?
- bradly 5y agoI’ve only read the Mistborn series, but I didn’t find it all similar to Tolkien–not in style or themes.
- justinpombrio 5y agoBy "Tolkien ripoff", do you mean anything beyond "fantasy novel"?
- TylerE 5y agoExcept King can actually write dialog that isn't 100% cringe. Sanderson's refusal to have characters ever actually curse is just infuriating.
- vxNsr 5y agoYour need for swearing in dialog for it to sound real says a lot more about you than it does about the author.
- hannofcart 5y agoHe uses "storming" as a proxy. :)
- TylerE 5y agoYes, and it reads like something a prudish 60 year old would write for 5 year olds.
- buscoquadnary 5y agoI actually have always appreciated it because I have taken it as a level of world building beyond what is obvious. Most all profanity in our language can in some way be traced back to a religious context. It would the make sense that on other worlds with totally different religious backgrounds they would use different cursing. In fact his usage of this concept is so subtle that you can detect what characters are from the world and which ones aren't by whether they use damnation as a noun or an adjective.
- sjansen 5y agoGoramit! You've reminded me Firefly was killed too ruttin quickly.
- pigscantfly 5y agoThis is exactly why Mat was so badly butchered at the end of the Wheel of Time: Sanderson doesn't have any experience of carousing to draw on, and prudish is spot on.