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I'm as much of a "mainstream" reviewer as a fantasy one these days, so... Larry Send a noteboard - 25/01/2013 05:16:16 AM
Agreed. It isn't as "clear" as the best juvenile/YA fiction nor is it able to demonstrate a mastery of complex clauses. It feels like a barely-expanded screenplay more than anything else. Actually, that's too harsh on screenplays, as the better ones convey even without the actor emoting a greater clarity than many of Sanderson's scenes in his novels.

I've said so a few times before, but IMO he'd make a better scriptwriter than novelist. He's got a great sense of visual and a vivid imagination, and other qualities that would serve him well if he wrote for the screen. He'd need help to fix his dialogues, though.


Agreed. Or if he wrote in collaboration with someone who is a better technical writer. But as it stands, his dialogues make me cringe still after nearly eight years.

It's so frustrating, because if he would put better effort into developing appropriate styles for the stories he writes, his fiction could go from "flawed execution of potentially good ideas" to something worth reading more than once. The Emperor's Soul I think is his best story conception, but even it falters due to the inattention to prose nuances. Frustrating.

I agree. His total disinterest in that aspect of his work a professed in interviews is frustrating.


I keep saying to myself he's still a "young" writer (I think he's 1-2 years younger than my 38 years), but the development has not been quick or consistent, to say the least.

Yes, it was jarring. Now I don't think of RJ as a master prose stylist, but at least his writing was consistent in terms of the effect he aimed to achieve. Trying to emulate even part of that didn't help Sanderson any, I'll grant. It read like Amateur Hour at times.

I know what you mean and I largely agree. It's strange on which aspects he chose to put efforts in and what he didn't. He's better in his own novels, though his work on WOT has started to show in his own work, and it's not necessarily a good thing.

Way of Kings felt somewhat bloated to me, but I'm speaking from memory of a single read back in August 2010. I will likely re-read it sometime this year or next before the next volume comes out, but I do not look forward to that.

He tried to adopt a descriptive style, but he never found a good balance. On average, his descriptions were two, three times as long as RJ's (overdone), and his use of them was terribly uneven. He'd spend way too many paragraphs describing a totally insignificant inn in Arad Doman (the setting for a single Cadsuane scene) in TGS, but then he'd go with chapters like the first in AMOL where he almost strips it all down to dialogue (a regression to his Elantris/Mistborn 1 days, which at this point can only be called "Brandon has a lazy day";). It results in a very uneven book, with little care to harmonize the style or even story development. It's way too stretched one minute (eg: way too many Gawyn scenes in TGS. He used more scenes in TGS/TOM with him to finish a simple arc than RJ had used for the characters in the whole series. Way too many Androl scenes as well - a pure indulgence as he was the character Harriet let him do what he wished with, to the point the arc became totally predictable) then the next minute it's one baffling shortcut after another (after all the build up, he got the final battle at Cairhien offscreen, and even more oddly, he had the final battle at the BT happen off-screen. He did that a lot in the book, very stretched set ups, and then the conclusion happening off-screen. Very odd storytelling choices.).


Indeed. I think I said somewhere, maybe in my review, that there was an odd expansion/compression issue with several scenes here. I'm certain if I re-read the previous two books (which I haven't), I would find some similar cases, but it was really noticeable here, especially in the scenes that you mention. It felt like the opening expository-type scenes were too long and the important scenes too disjointed and brief due to a lack of narrative rhythm. While I understand that the epilogue was (mostly) RJ and that little could be done about that particular abruptness, there were just simply too many scenes that ended mid-scene with no "payoff" to them over that brief mentions elsewhere that diminished the impact. I can understand it happening occasionally (if memory serves, wasn't Mat's battle in FoH with the Shaido leader not shown directly?), but this frequently in the concluding volume? Poor planning.

I know you don't think much of RJ's characterizations, but they rest heavily on inner thoughts during POVs (with frequent use of unreliable perception from the POV characters of the actions/thoughts of the others in the scene etc.). Brandon in key scenes deprived us completely of those, barely bothering with body language (it's like RJ's already limited palette was reduced to smiles and frowns. A lot of frowns) - making the motivations of the characters very confusing and vague. It's often all we had to follow them in RJ's books, and with Brandon it's just gone (and contrary to something you wrote elsewhere, it's very easy for the big WOT fans to recognize the voice of each character. With Brandon they read all the same, they're all generic and often out of character.


Actually, I thought his development of Rand's character was fairly good (when I re-read PoD in 2010 in light of his old blog post about PTSD and the "ice" persona he had, my opinion of that book improved greatly), but for many others, I thought he relied too heavily upon repeating prior descriptions. Now I know repetition is utilized in epic romances (this is fresh on my mind after reading La Chanson de Roland and subsequent Roland/Orlando epics in English, French, and Italian in December) to create a familiarity with a character quickly, but I think RJ relied too heavily on 3rd person descriptions of the other character in a scene when he could have used paralanguage/interactive scenes more frequently to develop character ties. But as for the individuality of characters, I did have that problem with a great many of RJ's characters years ago, as the means by which they were described were too similar in a great many cases. Of course, this is more true for some of the secondary and many of the tertiary characters (which I would hope is what I was alluding to whenever I made such a comment, but memory is fallible).

Now that we have hindsight of what RJ was planning for Mat, Brandon's execution of the transition between the Mat of KOD to a Mat who flees to hide in the skirts of his wife is appalling bad - unconvincing from start to finish.


Indeed. Very unconvincing.

Well, it reads much like contemporary American English in its social registers and use of verbs as nouns and vice versa. Doesn't make it good, but it does seem to appeal to those who speak in a similar fashion.

It's way too "modern" and colloquial for most Fantasy. It's one aspect of secondary worlds Sanderson still has a great deal to learn about.

Sanderson uses a register that in French would be used only to create a specific "naturalist"/realistic effect in a contemporary story. And even then, if a novelist used that level of written language anywhere but in dialogues or via a first person POV, he'd be thorn apart by reviewers.

Well, I guess he would be by anglophone reviewers too if he wrote mainstream literature.


I frequently skewer his misuse of prose, more so in posts here than in my reviews (I have other points to cover and try not to write more than 1200 words, including quotes, for most of them), but he truly needs to improve his craft if he wants to keep a large fanbase, as his deficiencies in style, dialogue, and characterization development can lead eventually to readers growing weary of seeing his same few tricks trotted out too frequently. I'm very close to abandoning reading any of his works, even though the majority of them I have received as review copies over the years.
Illusions fall like the husk of a fruit, one after another, and the fruit is experience. - Narrator, Sylvie

Je suis méchant.
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Agreed - 24/01/2013 01:24:52 AM 1354 Views
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Yeah, his writing annoys me greatly at times - 24/01/2013 06:57:50 PM 1947 Views
Re: Yeah, his writing annoys me greatly at times - 25/01/2013 04:55:54 AM 1211 Views
I'm as much of a "mainstream" reviewer as a fantasy one these days, so... - 25/01/2013 05:16:16 AM 1602 Views
Re: I'm as much of a "mainstream" reviewer as a fantasy one these days, so... - 25/01/2013 08:37:48 PM 2012 Views
Totally agree about Mat - 27/01/2013 08:01:50 PM 1221 Views
Re: Totally agree about Mat - 27/01/2013 10:19:55 PM 1997 Views
Re: Yeah, his writing annoys me greatly at times - 10/02/2013 08:10:35 AM 1260 Views
At one point he used the word "arabesque" - how can something be that without Arabic culture? *NM* - 24/01/2013 09:25:54 PM 935 Views
Indeed... - 25/01/2013 03:14:22 AM 1368 Views
What about misuse of titles? - 25/01/2013 06:19:16 AM 1165 Views
I was thinking of that this morning... - 25/01/2013 09:36:48 PM 1251 Views
You still Trolling the WoTBoards Larry? - 24/01/2013 11:06:14 PM 1211 Views
Ha! I've mellowed a bit, though! - 25/01/2013 04:56:47 AM 1761 Views
Been there - 26/01/2013 09:27:10 PM 1116 Views
Hello - 25/01/2013 06:21:04 AM 1102 Views
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Yep. That was me - 25/01/2013 08:26:37 AM 1291 Views
Re: Yep. That was me - 25/01/2013 08:54:46 AM 1201 Views

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