Still boggles my mind that Redditors push this “author” so hard. Maybe his 2nd grade level prose glides across their smooth brains so it feels good. Anyway make fun of him for crafting a universe where competence only exists in evil and good only wins through pure happenstance
I was going to make a new thread, but this sanderson-hate thread #3056 will work.Ive dabbled in a fair amount of fantasy over the years. I've spanned the range of "quality" - from OP to what I'd consider its opus, Gene Wolfe. My question is this: is there ANYTHING that even gets near the quality of work from Wolfe, Tolkien, and (to a lesser degree) Vance.I've tried Erickson, and I just gave up on Bakker and his utter drivel. Its baby shit. Incredible world building, but children's book level dialogue, character development, and general voice. On top of all that, boring.Is the bar really so low that these are the staple of mature fantasy? Who should I actually be looking at?
>>24817181Reading real life myths from other cultures is infinitely more appealing than generic fantasy, and scratches that same itch
>>24817181The issue really is that you need to be a very specific kind of person to write something of that quality. A depth of character and experience gives a smart man that specific trigger to write something that good. Tolkien Vance and wolfe all experienced great hardship which helped to evolve their writing from great to their quality. You’re just not going to find that many people who have lived long stories lives while being decently to highly intelligent who settle down in their later years and write fantasy
>>24817092Well I could never give a shit about these books but looking him up he seems to be an American fat guy so just from that you can deduct these books are shit and dropped and I'll never read any of em.
>>24817205Good choice anon. I wish I could get that time back…
>>24817092Makes you seethe huh. He already surpassed GRRM as the greatest fantasy author of this generation. Once the 40 volume Cosmere opus is adapted you will seethe for eternity.
>>24817307Every character shall die to rocks to the skull while running around in their newest 10000 page novella short story where maybe 1-2 things happen
Mistborn is fine. You faggots are just pretentious twats.
>>24817181>muh, WolfeI hate /lit/'s circle jerking of this guy. If you want to pick a more literary fantasy author, at least go with someone good like Peake.And Vance is a fucking excellent writer. I hate the idea of him being below a guy like Wolfe.
>>24817438who the fuck is peake
>>24817092Tolkien is Tolkien because 70 years later we're still reading him. Anyone who wants to credited in his own time isn't worth the accolades he covets.
>>24817181Not all but a lot of good fantasy is pre-Tolkien
>hating a pulp author>who never claimed to be any good except that he just loves writing fantasyI don't get why OP is seething. Nobody except reddit ever pretended that he was 'good' and if you were looking into a literal pulp genre for quality but get mad at Sanderson I think the issue lies within you. Pulp is for fun. Sanderson writes stories that people think are fun. I'm willing to bet that if you lived back in the days of penny dreadfuls you'd be shitting yourself out of rage and cholera both.
>>24817438Vance's talent exceeded his ambition, for better or worse. He never even tried to do what Wolfe did, though he probably could have pulled it off if he had tried.
>>24817092What made Tolkien's work great was that he spent decades writing each book. This guy shits out slop at break-neck speed.
>>24817092Way of Kings was good. Words of Radiance was good. Warbreaker is fun, and pretty good. Elantris has good stuff in it. Mistborn was okay. Wax and Wayne first book was good. Alcatraz books are pretty good. Steelheart was good.Honestly, Sanderson is a pretty decent author all things considered. His latest stuff seems like trash, but he's got a fairly respectable resume if you take all the stuff he's written.
>>24817092It’s an ok turn-your-brain-off-story. I really don’t give a shit about magic systems, which are a big focus of Sanderson’s work. I agree with GRRM’s statement that magic is best left open ended and a little whimsical. Why the fuck would I care about the rules of magic? I don’t even care that much about world building either. Although Sanderson’s worlds (from the stories I’ve read) are actually pretty detailed and fleshed out, he’s no where near Tolkien and the like anyways. I’m personally a big fan of character focused stories like ASOIAF. I think the characters fall very flat in Sanderson’s work. Kaladin sucks, he’s a bland representation of “ptsd” or whatever, but there’s not really a sense of progression. He repeats the same arc over and over again. Shallan has a really interesting mystery attached to her backstory, but as a character she doesn’t really do anything. She just learns to be awesome and cool. Vin is the worst example, Jesus Christ, what an annoying character. She’s too perfect. The plot in his novels are solid, but they kind of just serve to move the characters around, rather than vice versa. Very few times do I feel like characters make significant actions that radically alter the course of the narrative. And the prose sucks too. 3/10 author.
>>24817529I don’t know what books you’ve been reading but only 2 of his books could ever be described as pulp. Beyond that, Sanderson himself doesn’t think his books are fun. They’re autism sperg fests over “magic systems” with characters slapped on
>>24817638True. I’d hope Sanderson himself understands that his characters are flat seeing as most of his books, especially recently have multiple cast members just completely change personalities each book because I think he considers it good writing or something. Kaladin goes from muh ptsd to muh depresshun whining to muh therapist
i'm about to start reading Wheel of Time. mistake?
>>24817713Most people who read it, love it. So it's definitely a statistical likelihood that you will enjoy it. But there is a significant number of readers who hate it. So there is a distinct possibility you won't enjoy it.
>>24817638I more or less agree with this take. I picked up the series because a friend of mine really likes it, I've read the first two books so far. I find them decent, not mind-blowing. It's basically just good normie-tier fiction, not the kind of thing you read for depth but it's a solidly-constructed entertainment product that performs as advertised. I've definitely read worse. The characters are okay for what they are. I like the way he will slowly build up a character's backstory over the course of a novel, and then reveal the defining moment of their past at around the same time the main story peaks.>I really don’t give a shit about magic systems, which are a big focus of Sanderson’s work.I have the same view. A big part of Sanderson's appeal seems to come from lore autists who like to obsess over this kind of stuff. I personally don't give a shit but I respect the level of work he put into it, and that his world is mostly believable and consistent.>>24817539>This guy shits out slop at break-neck speed.To be fair if you're going to shit out slop it's better to do it quickly. The alternative is to be someone like GRRM, where you're forcing your fans to wait literal decades just to find out which of your unlikable faggot characters ends up as king of the make-believe world you created.
>>24817092any fantasy that doesn't feel as "faggy" as sanderson stuff? I read the first law books but those were just as gay but just in a different way. Im looking for books that don't read like the author wishes kamala was president
>>24817713I personally dont see a point in reading a story with no ending.
>>24817092I tried Mistborn and it was so bad I dropped it five chapters in.Nice worldbuilding, terrible characters.
>>24817181>Ive dabbled in a fair amount of fantasy over the years. I've spanned the range of "quality" - from OP to what I'd consider its opus, Gene WolfeGene Wolfe is NOT FANTASY, it's science fiction
>>24817438Sorry but I hated on /lit/ wanking Wolfe before it was cool and I even have the archived posts to prove it. My cred > your cred
>>24817719The series is 14 books, right? The only people who read them all get Stockholm Syndromed into thinking they liked it.
>>24817443
>>24817534Lyonesse is the greatest fantasy series ever written and nothing even comes close. It is also the freshest rendition of Arthurian literature in half a millennium.
Niggas hate to see a Mormon with a big heart get his bag
>>24817713I'm at book 6, and it is somehow peak 10/10 fantasy at times, passable at others and for the unfortunate majority of it so boring and mind numbingly stupid you want to actually kill yourself. Here's how I'd rank it>Eye Of The WorldAlright but nothing great, drags a fuck ton at the start and doesn't get interesting until the mid way point, the ending is a wet far too. It's also 380k words long so yeah>The Great HuntPeak fantasy fun, the ending is absolutely .. it's just amazing that entire final act is some of the best stuff I've read ever. >Dragon RebornPainful, beyond awful for the majority of it's run time except when Rand and Mat are on the page. Jordans love of having the 3 main girls be terrible narcissists who bicker for dozens of pages in a row starts here. >Shadow RisingThis is the point where I actively started skipping the POV of the three main girls and just reading summaries for them. It's good but has a lot of hiccups and Jordan just throwing in even more boring and awful characters. The ending is great though and you get cool world building.>Fires of HeavenGreat as long as you skip the no joke 200+ fucking pages of the circus. Yes a full on circus arc that two of the girls are in. Why? Because Jordan is fucking awful that's why. But the ending is the probably 2nd best so far.>Lord of ChaosWhere I'm at; 350 pages into 1000 total. And I can say I actively am hating that majority of this fucking awful cast and the awful people Jordan loves to write about will not just go away. Nothing but bickering, arguing, scolding and hating men. But whenever Ran or Mat is on screen it's amazing. This is also the peak of the series according to many people or at least the end is so I'm interested to see how well Jordan plays it.
>>24817438>>24817534>>24819762I have read Vance's Adventure Planet - it has some instances of bad writing at the start, but becomes better and is generally pretty good for adolescent, pulp fiction.How do his other major works compare?
>>24821027Adventure Planet is good, but is kind of a juvenile work out of Vance, it feels like his attempt to emulate ERB in his own style. Lyonesse and Dying Earth are both far more "mature" works. You pretty much can't go wrong with Vance though, Adventure Planet is about the floor for Vance.
>>24820543You couldn't have been more generic if you tried
>>24817092>tfw my 1* review of WaT still doesn't have enough likes to be on page one
He's the Dan Brown of fantasy, it's easier to read and more approachable than the giants and he builds multiple stories out of the same universe so you already know what to expect even when starting a new series. It's like comfort food and you would have to be legit retarded to not understand why that is popular. Does it really "boggle" your mind? or are you just coming up with some bad faith contrarian pickme bullshit to make yourself feel special?
>>24820543*smoothes skirts**tugs braid**explains what an Aes Sedai is*having said that Rand is my favorite character OAT
>>24817758Funnily enough the quality fucking nose dives after the first two.
>>24817205And you're not wrong
>>24817529If he's pulp he's shit at pulp, pulp is supposed to be entertaining
>>24817181From what I've seen:1. Myths from old cultures (Greece, Rome, India, Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, Japan, Old English and Paradise Lost)2. Tolkien, Vance, Wolfe, Peake and, yes, even George Martin.3. Anime and Cartoons
>>24817092Maybe I'm just simple, but what more are you looking for in a book? I'm in the middle of the first Mistborn right now, and I'm greatly enjoying it. I dont think its better than something like The Hobbit or Dune, but its not out and out trash like Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. Why seethe over something thats like an 8 or 9/10?
>>24822120> 8 or 9/10That's what I call inflation
>>24822241I havent finished it yet
>>24821793>1. Myths from old cultures (Greece, Rome, India, Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, Japan, Old English and Paradise Lost)bad meme. Only the Iliad and the Tale of Genji have any literary merit at all. Some liberal translations are good too. The rest are interesting historical documents but if you're not a scholar you're wasting your time.
>>24817092>just turn your brain offi already accepted that when i started the stormlight archive series and it was still worse than expected.it´s incredible competently written, but everything felt incredibly mechanical.>the storyinstead of just finishing a storythread it gets interleaved with chapters of other characters, which stretches each 80 page substory over 500 pages. it´s a slog but i guess people consider this writing style modern.>the characterssomewhere between fun caricatures representing an aspect and "realistic" humans, Sanderson writes them with the worst qualities of both. They are juuust a bit too complex to be an archetype, but too shallow to represent real humanity.>worldbuidling&magici expected this to be the load bearing pillar of his writing, but it was incredible stale, overly technical and awkward. At this point i dont even know if its even possible to make "hard magic" interesting. The best summary i have seen a few years ago was on some thread where someone described Sanderson as the opposite of the messy genre inventor. Usually some author has an incredible idea and tries to bring that creative spark into reality and then fails halfway. Sanderson is the opposite, there is no spark. I think he´s interested in characters but not people or archetypes. He likes magic systems, but doesnt care much about magic. But his competency allows him to write great fantasy content.His apologists usually say it´s just not high literature and a fun read as you can see itt. But his works wont go into guilty pleasure territory either like any cheap romance novel or isekai slop.Reading the stormlight archive was somewhat fun, but i always expected that the real fun was just about to appear on the next page, the next chapter, the next book. Reading it felt draining.
>noone mentions Feist's worksSucks to be you guys.
>>24820543Perrin's portions of Dragon Reborn are also kino
>>24821461Rand is great yeah, I really do like him as a character and I can see why he's so many favorites. I haven't read enough like true novels since I was a kid reading YA so I'm not comfortable saying he's my favorite but I can see him going up there in the top 10.
>>24822760Yup, the reasons I always struggled with this series is the more interesting and crazy Rand, the less PoV we would get. It's one of the many reasons why CoT is ass. No Rand.
