Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, it was the first Mistborn book. Not the single characters, of course (Kelsier couldn't be more different from Kamina if he tried, except for their willingness to try doing the impossible), but the general shape of the story.

Yeah, I was less thinking of what the characters were like as individuals and more the roles they played in the story. Kelsier takes our protagonist under his wing and dies heroically facing... well, in Kamina's case, it was an agent of the Evil King (who we are currently unaware is opposing a yet greater evil), but still. And then he remained a presence throughout the rest of the story.

Never mind what we learned in later trilogies.

Welp, now I can't get the idea of Libera Me From Hell being the soundtrack for the Kelsier vs Lord Ruler scene out of my head. And then Rap Is A Man's Soul as a Triumphant Reprise for Vin vs All The Inquisitors in Hero of Ages.

Edited by NativeJovian on Jan 17th 2019 at 6:33:38 AM

row row fight the powah

During Preser Vin's Curb-Stomp Battle against the Inquisitors, I kept hearing Emiya from UBW in my mind.

Reference:

In a world (one we likely don't deserve) where Brandon was responsible for writing Kingdom Hearts , what do you thing would happen? Besides "Be better written" I mean. And where would Hoid most likely show up?

Even if he was writing it, merging the intellectual properties of two different companies is complicated enough without making it Cosmere as well. So there'd be no reason for Hoid to make an appearance.

Edited by rikalous on Jan 30th 2019 at 1:48:23 AM

Well, the mechanics behind the existence of Roxas and Namine might actually make sense, for starters.

Gotta be honest, I can't really picture a Kingdom Hearts that isn't clearly making up the mechanics as it goes.

Has anyone read Children of the Nameless? It's a free Magic: The Gathering short story, and it's pretty cool. You don't need to know Magic to understand it (I certainly don't know much), but I'm hoping someone here does know Magic, and can maybe shed light on one or two things.

Edited by Discar on Mar 2nd 2019 at 9:34:18 AM

I know some stuff about Magic. Even with that knowledge, though, some of the story elements are still weird and mysterious.

I don't know anything about Magic, but I read it. It was... good? A pretty solid short story in general, but it didn't feel particularly Sanderson-y to me. Davriel had a bit of Sanderson's fingerprints on him (a charmingly infuriating trickster-type who seems to succeed effortlessly via luck and guile, but is ultimately far more than he appears? Yeah, that's a Sanderson-style character), but Tacenda was fairly flat and one-dimensional. She filled her role in the plot well enough, but didn't feel like a complex, multifaceted Sanderson protagonist.

A thing occurred to me where knowing a bit about Magic adds some context to the story that might be interesting.

See, a thing about Magic as opposed to a lot of other collectable card games is that you and your deck are, in theory, a part of the setting. Like if you play one of the Star Wars CCGs you're just kind of moving abstract bits of Star Wars lore around. There's no conceit that in-universe you're commanding Luke Skywalker and Jango Fett to somehow team up and attack your enemies. In Magic there absolutely is that conceit that you the player are a worldhopping super-wizard and game is your duel with a rival worldhopping super-wizard. Every card in your deck is a spell you cast, every creature on the field was called forth from the ether. You don't have a discard pile, you have a graveyard because that's where shit goes when it gets killed in your battle. The whole game has the baked-in idea that you exist in-universe as a planeswalker.

Or at least that's the theory. In practice the conceit is only sort of borne out. Originally the lore was that planeswalkers were basically gods, effectively immortal and known to create entire worlds when they wanted to. This creates a story problem if you want to have planeswalker protagonists and also have protagonists that get challenged and endangered and so forth, so a story event involving Time Bullshit(TM) was produced that broke the universe and nerfed planeswalkers down to just usually very skilled mages with the ability to worldhop, like our boy Davriel. While this made a lot of story tasks easier, it did have the side effect of making planeswalkers less closely model players. Instead of someone with capabilities matching the varied cards in your deck, a planeswalker is someone who can only cast within their theme of time magic or fire magic or whatever.

I told you all that to tell you this, which is that Davriel Cane looks to me like an attempt to make a post-nerf planeswalker that works like a Magic player. For instance, his thieving gives him a grab-bag of different capabilities, similar to a Magic player who's going to want to have an answer for all kinds of different plays and unlike the typical story planeswalker who, as mentioned above, is usually operating in a narrow specialty. The Vancian fire-and-forget aspect of the stolen spells also matches the nature of the card game where once you've played a card it goes in the graveyard and you can't use it again, whereas story planeswalkers can spam their signature moves endlessly like mages usually do. So the whole powerset is very meta without being obtrusive about it.

Just finished Skyward. That's a good.

This is super cool.

Although way outside my dice price range.

I do regret not picking up the regular versions a few years ago though.

Dice where you can't tell which number is which fundamentally betray the concept of dice.

Looks like only number 6 is the symbol. Plenty of dice use that form, and it works pretty well.

Just finished Starsight. Very good, better than the first book, though the sudden change of setting was surprising. The ending hit me with a lot of tropes I hate, like framing someone for your own crimes. It was good, but now I'm mad and have nobody to punch.

So I just read the first chapter of Rhythm of War. It's a Lirin perspective chapter set a year after Oathbringer. Saying anything more would actually spoil it, because...

You can too! You need to sign up for Brandon's newsletter here and then confirm it in your inbox. The chapter is in the bottom half of the newsletter! ...and then go to reddit to get the last two paragraphs which the newsletter accidentally cut.

Early draft so don't mind the typos and mispellings.

Ahhhh damn I wanna read that. Timeskip already?

I've just finished Starsight and now I have a lot of M-Bot feelings.

It's really, drastically different to Skyward. Practically all new characters (I mean, Jorgen and Cobb are in it, but only just), new setting, new plot structure and goals. Skyward felt quite... tied to a particular bundle of tropes, you know, and logically it was going to be difficult to keep it tied to them given how it ended. But I was still a bit surprised. In a good way?

I feel like Sanderson also wanted to just, throw every neat idea for an alien species he possibly could into this book. Not complaining, I like my aliens alien.

You know what I was actually reminded of? Dark Side of the Sun.

Edited by LoniJay on Dec 15th 2019 at 12:27:48 AM

I really enjoyed Starsight too.

I can't help but think maybe Sanderson wants to make each book about dealing with Spensa in a new culture, with book 4 establishing a peace between the three.

I’ve read The Stormlight Archive but no other Sanderson books, and think they’re excellent. I was especially engaged with the arcs of Shallan and Kaladin in TWOK, Kaladin in WOR, and Dalinar in Oathbringer.

Shallan because of her love of learning (which has unfortunately become very deemphasized compared to her illusions). Kaladin because he gets crushed to the ground so many times and always manages to not only get back up, but lift others up with him. And because I think he’s very justified in his bitterness against the bigoted Alethi social system. Dalinar because I love redemption arcs.

And I love the moral clarity of the books. Doing what’s right may be unfathomably difficult (Kaladin, all the time but especially in TWOK), and it may not always be clear (Kaladin, in Oathbringer, trying to figure out who to defend), but “journey before destination” fundamentally rejects the idea of doing evil so that good can result.

I’m not super into the magitech as a whole, though the possibilities of Soulcasting are fascinating. I found Shadesmar a little too mundane and a bit of a missed opportunity; I thought it could have been far more alien.

I’ve heard Sanderson’s more recent stuff like The Stormlight Archive is better than some of his older works. Which of his other books would people here recommend?

Edited by Galadriel on Dec 30th 2019 at 11:00:08 AM

I would recommend reading all of them personally.

But if you're in a Cosmere mood I would suggest Warbreaker^note It's also free on his website in ebook form if you want something standalone, or the first Mistborn book (The Final Empire) if you want to start a longer series.

If you want something out of the Cosmere, The Rithmatist is aimed at slightly younger readers but is great.

Edited by 32ndfreeze on Dec 31st 2019 at 3:38:45 AM

Personally I liked the first Mistborn but the latter two (especially the second) were a drag in comparison. Haven't read the sequel trilogy but I'm planning on picking it up soon; heard from multiple people that it's pretty good.

I finished Elantris but I really had to force myself towards the end, found it dreadfully boring and wished the priest character was the focus instead of the other two. It gets a bit of a pass since it's his first but that aside I just really didn't like it.

I'd give a second thumbs up to Warbreaker, I found myself enjoying it as much as the Stormlight series and kinda wishing that he had written a little more on that world instead of just lumping the characters into the other.

Edited by carbon-mantis on Jan 1st 2020 at 12:25:40 PM