Lirlond said:

Read the rest of the Cosmere books. Thats what im doing. Really enjoyed alloy of law. Warbreaker is good so far. How are eladriel and emperors soul?

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DieH@rd said:

We are less than 2 months away!

http://www.tor.com/images/stories/wallpaper/WordsofRadiance-Shallan/SHALLAN_2560x1600.jpg[img][/QUOTE]

I presume that is not a cover art.

And is that insect thing a mantis shrimp? Or something inspired by one anyway.

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Woorloog said:

I presume that is not a cover art.

And is that insect thing a mantis shrimp? Or something inspired by one anyway.

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NekoFever said:

The Shallan painting is the endpaper art: http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/12/michael-whelan-shallan-endpapers-words-of-radiance

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GRW810 said:

Been debating whether to check out his books for a while now, they look like my sort of thing. I will eventually. Where should I start?

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GRW810 said:

Been debating whether to check out his books for a while now, they look like my sort of thing. I will eventually. Where should I start?

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Basileus777 said:

I wouldn't start with Elantris, it's his worst book and his writing has come a long war from then. I'd go with Mistborn or Warbreaker.

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GRW810 said:

Been debating whether to check out his books for a while now, they look like my sort of thing. I will eventually. Where should I start?

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sirap said:

Eh, it's a little rough around the edges..but Elantris provides a good insight into Sanderson's writing style while still being relatively short. The reason I recommend it to first time readers is that it's hard to go backwards with Sanderson, and once you've fallen in love with his work you're almost guaranteed left wanting for more

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Lirlond said:

Hope the UK get to keep the White and "ghostly" images that his previous books have used. I hate when covers don't match.

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Fleet_of_Foot said:

I just feel like his writing is second-tier compared to some of the other fantasy giants.

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Fleet_of_Foot said:

I just feel like his writing is second-tier compared to some of the other fantasy giants.

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Woorloog said:

Name some you do like, please. I'm curious, for Sanderon's writing, style, ideas are very much what i like in general (for comparison, i do not like Tolkien (aside from his worldbuilding) or... Hmm. Figuring out who is a bigger name is not easy.. Glen Cook?* EDIT Joe Abercombie, didn't like The First Law trilogy really).

*I don't have many fantasy books i do not like. And those i don't, are not big names

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X-Frame said:

Yup, here is the new cover though, a lot better!

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Mumei said:

Well, yeah. I think Sanderson has great plotting; he does a great job of setting up dominos and then knocking them down. He has characters who probably have more personality than depth, but are still generally fun and likable. But his prose itself is middling, and some story of his story conventions become repetitive as he reuses the formulas across different books. And yes, his prose is sort of middling - he's no Wolfe, Le Guin, Simmons, or Beagle, for instance.

On balance, I really like his books. I'm generally pretty good at adjusting my expectations based on what I'm reading, though.

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Fleet_of_Foot said:

Hate to name some so obvious but GRRM obviously. I'm also very partial to Patrick Rothfuss, though his output is pretty limited so far. But I'd put him way above Sanderson. I also think Scott Lynch is way above Sanderson. So those three are what are "first-tier" for me.

Since I kind of lump fantasy and sci-fi together, I'd name Dan Simmons as another writer who puts someone like Sanderson to shame.

These are all just opinions. I really am trying to get into Mistborn but it just feels amateurish.

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Yonafunu said:

The Path of Kings's cover is still superior. Can't wait for this one though.

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Woorloog said:

What is "middling" prose? This is something i've never understood.
I know prose can be simple or flowery but neither is automatically a bad thing. Beige and purple prose, right?

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Mike M said:

Currently reading The Way of Kings, and I'm finding it pretty... Eh... I don't hate it or anything, but it seems that so much of the world building just consists of depictions of marine life living on land. That was the focus of my major in college, so while descriptions of plants looking and acting like coral may seem exotic, it's just familiar stuff to me. That leaves the truly original stuff like spren kinda underwhelming, and the physical descriptions of the various races just seem outright stupid in most instances (particularly the one where everyone grows their eyebrows out. There's no way to sell that where it doesn't abjectly ridiculous).

There's enough mystery with WTF is going on between the one and two-thirds lead characters to maintain my interest, thankfully enough.

Kaliden

Spoiler

is presumably the reincarnation of the Herald/Radiant that fell during the prologue and was abandoned. I was kind of thinking it may have been Dhalinar, but then Kaliden started sucking the light from spheres and stuff.

Shallan

Spoiler

just soulcasted for the first time. The weird creatures she only sees when sketching is by far the most intriguing thing in the book so far, I'm eager to find out what's up with that.

Dhalinar

Spoiler

is boring boring boring. He's gotten a few good action set pieces, but otherwise it's nothing but handwringing over the visions and following the code. Hopefully his plot thread picks up soon, I kinda see the trailhead to where he and Kaliden eventually intersect now that Kaliden is having visions during highstorms and ran into Dhalinar's son.

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see5harp said:

Yea I read Way of Kings just last year. I can't imagine having to wait for the sequel for this many years. You could have gone to college as a freshman and would be close to graduating!

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Mumei said:

"Average"
"Not great, but not terrible"

If you want me to explain what I mean by that, well... I don't feel confident enough in my ability to write about writing to attempt to articulate an objective justification for the opinion. I would point to the authors I mentioned as examples of prose in science fiction and fantasy that I do really appreciate, though.

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Basileus777 said:

That's not too long, especially since Sanderson has put out like 4 books since then. It's not like he's GRRM where you never know when/if you'll get it, it was just a matter of Sanderson finishing off WOT and getting around to this.

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Mumei said:

"Average"
"Not great, but not terrible"

If you want me to explain what I mean by that, well... I don't feel confident enough in my ability to write about writing to attempt to articulate an objective justification for the opinion. I would point to the authors I mentioned as examples of prose in science fiction and fantasy that I do really appreciate, though.

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PhoenixDark said:

It's a rather simple writing prose similar to what you'd find in a best selling suspense novel, but with more detail. That's not to knock Sanderson but clearly his writing is largely just there to present the plot. It's not meant to present a particular style of feel, it's sort of like a serviceable car that gets you from A to B. Hence why he can pump out books so fast.

Gene Wolfe has a certain flair to his writing for instance, it's distinguishable from others. Even Martin has a certain style, and finds a more poetic voice in the later books (consider how he writes the Dornish chapters in Feast especially).

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Fleet_of_Foot said:

Hate to name some so obvious but GRRM is one. I'm also very partial to Patrick Rothfuss, though his output is pretty limited so far. But I'd put him way above Sanderson. I also think Scott Lynch is way above Sanderson. So those three are what are "first-tier" for me.

Since I kind of lump fantasy and sci-fi together, I'd name Dan Simmons as another writer who puts someone like Sanderson to shame.

These are all just opinions. I really am trying to get into Mistborn but it just feels amateurish.

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Draconian said:

Rothfuss completely jumped the shark for me when he decided to

Spoiler

write a 50 page romance section near the end of Wise Man's Fear

. I am not easily offended or annoyed with author's decisions, but that crap was awful and should've been cut if his editor had any sort of backbone.

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massoluk said:

IMO, Wiseman's Fear kinda jumped the shark when a significant portion of the book is

Spoiler

dedicated to Kvothe getting high in a mystical realm and learning the art of fucking from fairy

. It was a pain to read through, with me hoping it will end next page so I can get to more interesting shit.

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Woorloog said:

What is "middling" prose? This is something i've never understood.
I know prose can be simple or flowery but neither is automatically a bad thing. Beige and purple prose, right?
EDIT The only thing i know that is not good nowadays is use of said-bookisms. Goddamn annoying too.

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Cyan said:

Let me help Mumei out here, because I agree with him and I think I might be able to articulate why.

There are far more variables that go into a writing style than a single axis of simple through flowery. You can break things down in a lot of different ways, including word complexity, specificity, balance of parts of speech, narrative summary vs action, use of imagery, POV penetration, choice of narrator, dryness vs color, word rhythm, sentence rhythm, paragraph rhythm, transparency vs style, and many, many more (many of these are interrelated, as well).

Your typical purple prose is high on word complexity and high on adjectives and adverbs, uses overly complicated imagery, and is not backed up with any skill in rhythm or specificity. Your Asimovian prose uses a lot of simple verbs and proper nouns, little imagery, low POV penetration, a lot of dryness or clinicality, high transparency.

I'm not going to analyze all the authors Mumei mentioned (especially since I haven't read most of them in a while), but off the top of my head Beagle is tops at imagery, specificity, and rhythm, leans more towards nouns and verbs, and is deliberately stylistic when it's called for (see e.g. the first page of The Last Unicorn).

My take on Sanderson is that he leans to verbs, nouns, and adjectives, generally simple and not high on specificity. He has high POV penetration and (correctly) leans towards action over narrative summary. He pays little attention to word rhythm, a little more to sentence rhythm, and he has decent paragraph rhythm. He is high on transparency and doesn't do stylistic; I'm not sure he can, since I've never seen anything from him that wasn't this way. His narrators don't have a lot of color and can be dry if not clinical--given the high POV penetration, this may be a function of having characters without much depth. (In part, dry narration is a function of the choice of transparent prose, but it's quite possible to do both; see e.g. Lois McMaster Bujold).

I would guess that Mumei's view of Sanderson as "middling" is down to Sanderson's generally simple and non-specific word choices, weak imagery, and lack of attention to rhythm.

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Joyce said:

Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

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Nabokov said:

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, an initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style*. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.

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Nabokov said:

So Humbert the Cubus schemed and dreamed—and the red sun of desire and decision (the two things that create a live world) rose higher and higher, while upon a succession of balconies a succession of libertines, sparkling glass in hand, toasted the bliss of past and future nights. Then, figuratively speaking, I shattered the glass and boldly imagined (for I was drunk on those visions by then and underrated the gentleness of my nature) how eventually I might blackmail—no, that is too strong a word—mauvemail big Haze into letting me consort with little Haze by gently threatening the poor doting Big Dove with desertion if she tried to bar me from playing with my legal stepdaughter. In a word, before such an Amazing Offer, before such a vastness and variety of vistas, I was as helpless as Adam at the preview of early oriental history, mirage in his apple orchard.

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Le Guin said:

I'll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeland that Truth is a matter of the imagination. The soundest fact may fail is prevail in the style of its telling: like that singular organic jewel of our seas, which grows brighter as one woman wears it and, worn by another, dulls and goes to dust. Facts are no more solid, coherent, round, and real than pearls are. But both are sensitive.

The story is not all mine, or told by me alone. Indeed I am not sure whose story it is; you can judge better. But it is all one, and if at moments the facts seem to alter with an altered voice, why then you can choose the fact you like best; yet none of them are false, and it is all one story."

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Beagle said:

The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone. She was very old, though she did not know it, and she was no longer the careless color of sea foam, but rather the color of snow falling on a moonlit night. But her eyes were still clear and unwearied, and she still moved like a shadow on the sea.

She did not look anything like a horned horse, as unicorns are often pictured, being smaller and cloven-hoofed, and possessing that oldest, wildest grace that horses have never had, that deer have only in shy, thin imitation and goats in dancing mockery. Her neck was long and slender, making her head seem smaller than it was, and the mane that fell almost to the middle of her back was soft as dandelion fluff and fine as cirrus. She had pointed ears and thin legs, with feathers of white hair at the ankles; and the long horn above her eyes shone and shivered with its own seashell light even in the deepest midnight. She had killed dragons with it, and healed a king whose poisoned wound would not close, and knocked down ripe chestnuts for bear cubs.

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Wolfe said:

It is possible I already had some presentiment of my future. The locked and rusted gate that stood before us, with wisps of river fog threading its spikes like the mountain paths, remains in my mind now as the symbol of my exile. That is why I have begun this account of it with the aftermath of our swim, in which I, the torturer's apprentice Severian, had so nearly drowned.

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Cyan said:

Let me help Mumei out here, because I agree with him and I think I might be able to articulate why.

There are far more variables that go into a writing style than a single axis of simple through flowery. You can break things down in a lot of different ways, including word complexity, specificity, balance of parts of speech, narrative summary vs action, use of imagery, POV penetration, choice of narrator, dryness vs color, word rhythm, sentence rhythm, paragraph rhythm, transparency vs style, and many, many more (many of these are interrelated, as well).

Your typical purple prose is high on word complexity and high on adjectives and adverbs, uses overly complicated imagery, and is not backed up with any skill in rhythm or specificity. Your Asimovian prose uses a lot of simple verbs and proper nouns, little imagery, low POV penetration, a lot of dryness or clinicality, high transparency.

I'm not going to analyze all the authors Mumei mentioned (especially since I haven't read most of them in a while), but off the top of my head Beagle is tops at imagery, specificity, and rhythm, leans more towards nouns and verbs, and is deliberately stylistic when it's called for (see e.g. the first page of The Last Unicorn).

My take on Sanderson is that he leans to verbs, nouns, and adjectives, generally simple and not high on specificity. He has high POV penetration and (correctly) leans towards action over narrative summary. He pays little attention to word rhythm, a little more to sentence rhythm, and he has decent paragraph rhythm. He is high on transparency and doesn't do stylistic; I'm not sure he can, since I've never seen anything from him that wasn't this way. His narrators don't have a lot of color and can be dry if not clinical--given the high POV penetration, this may be a function of having characters without much depth. (In part, dry narration is a function of the choice of transparent prose, but it's quite possible to do both; see e.g. Lois McMaster Bujold).

I would guess that Mumei's view of Sanderson as "middling" is down to Sanderson's generally simple and non-specific word choices, weak imagery, and lack of attention to rhythm.

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Cyan said:

Let me help Mumei out here, because I agree with him and I think I might be able to articulate why.

There are far more variables that go into a writing style than a single axis of simple through flowery. You can break things down in a lot of different ways, including word complexity, specificity, balance of parts of speech, narrative summary vs action, use of imagery, POV penetration, choice of narrator, dryness vs color, word rhythm, sentence rhythm, paragraph rhythm, transparency vs style, and many, many more (many of these are interrelated, as well).

Your typical purple prose is high on word complexity and high on adjectives and adverbs, uses overly complicated imagery, and is not backed up with any skill in rhythm or specificity. Your Asimovian prose uses a lot of simple verbs and proper nouns, little imagery, low POV penetration, a lot of dryness or clinicality, high transparency.

I'm not going to analyze all the authors Mumei mentioned (especially since I haven't read most of them in a while), but off the top of my head Beagle is tops at imagery, specificity, and rhythm, leans more towards nouns and verbs, and is deliberately stylistic when it's called for (see e.g. the first page of The Last Unicorn).

My take on Sanderson is that he leans to verbs, nouns, and adjectives, generally simple and not high on specificity. He has high POV penetration and (correctly) leans towards action over narrative summary. He pays little attention to word rhythm, a little more to sentence rhythm, and he has decent paragraph rhythm. He is high on transparency and doesn't do stylistic; I'm not sure he can, since I've never seen anything from him that wasn't this way. His narrators don't have a lot of color and can be dry if not clinical--given the high POV penetration, this may be a function of having characters without much depth. (In part, dry narration is a function of the choice of transparent prose, but it's quite possible to do both; see e.g. Lois McMaster Bujold).

I would guess that Mumei's view of Sanderson as "middling" is down to Sanderson's generally simple and non-specific word choices, weak imagery, and lack of attention to rhythm.

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DieH@rd said:

We are less than 2 months away!

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GRW810 said:

Been debating whether to check out his books for a while now, they look like my sort of thing. I will eventually. Where should I start?

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Cyan said:

SNIP
I would guess that Mumei's view of Sanderson as "middling" is down to Sanderson's generally simple and non-specific word choices, weak imagery, and lack of attention to rhythm.

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Mumei said:

This was very helpful!

I don't think that simple prose is bad in and of itself - I think much of Le Guin and Beagle's prose is also fairly straightforward. And that's not my criticism of his writing (or PD's, I don't think). I think his style is, for lack of a better word, entirely lacking in élan. It's not that his prose is -bad-, I don't think; there's just no style to it. While I won't say it never occurs, I don't come to a book by Sanderson expecting to experience interesting turns of phrase, labyrinthian sentences I can get lost in, lyricism, particularly vivid or beautiful imagery, the use of assonance, alliteration, or consonance; I don't expect to be moved by the sheer aesthetic experience of words beautifully arranged. I couldn't have articulated it quite the way you did, but that's essentially the thrust of it.

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