The Brandon Sanderson books could have been much better.

[Scarloc99]

Ok first of all I would rather have the BS books then not have the series finished at all and in a ranking of other people finishing someones work this is not GOT levels of bad, but, on my last reread of the last 3 books I found myself going over each one twice and realised that for a long time I have convinced myself they are much much better then they actually are. I am not going to get into the Lore problems (I have many) or the issue with how certain characters personality is changed, or they suddenly speak in a way that is alien because that is all down to personal feeling and I have no doubt there will be things I liked that others hated. I am instead just going to focus on how bad his writing is generally. 

Everyone goes on about gawyn, the part of his story that is irritating, BS wrote. he manages to be even worse then RJ at writing relationships, or dealing with emotions and as a result this whole section feels like it is written for a teenage novel rather then an adult piece of fantasy fiction. 
BS relies far too much on cheap dramatic tension and making contrived situations to push the story forward, in all of RJ's writing I don't think he ever had to manufacture a Dream Spike incident to try and add some tension to a scene, and BS does it twice (both times the Spike gets used as a tool to make a battle more tense I cringe a bit at how badly written it is), he also does this in other places, artificially creating a feeling of tension in a really contrived way. 
BS fails to deliver real emotion, Even the Verin scene, which I used to tell myself was really emotional, is really badly handled. We get the reveal about verin, then the second reveal a paragraph later, then the final reveal a few sentences after that with no time given for the reader to process the impact. You add in that he has this event happen while as a reader we are also focused on what is going to happen to Egwene and it just crams far to much into far to small a space. RJ brings genuine tears to my eyes in several moments in the story, BS I just read it all kind of numb. 
In general he seems unable to find organic clear reasons to get characters where he needs them to be, or out of situations he puts them in. 
He brings the "creator" into the story in a way RJ never did, and I doubt ever would have done and never pays it off in anything that could not have worked without him. 

he just is not a very good high fantasy writer, I have tried reading his own books and he is probably the only author where I just decided to give up part way through not because of the story but the writing. 

Now there will be many who disagree, and I don't want to get into debates about canon or what your fav character did or didnt do because that will alwys be up for interpretation and opinion, but when it comes to the mechanics of how you write and construct a story the fact is that Brandon Sanderson was never a good fit for RJ's work because he in no way wrote with the same level of detail, or understood how to create real drama and emotion from the written word. Like I say I am happy he gave it a go and we got the end of the series from him, but in reality he missed on so many levels with the writing style. 

Anyone else agree with me? 

Edited September 6, 2023 by Scarloc99

[Samt]

Everything could always be better.  As you mentioned, the whole "everyone needs to go on a suicide mission to kill Demandred kind of gets weirdly repetitive."  I also think that BS was a little too reluctant to kill off major characters when it kind of makes sense for them to die (it is the end, anyways).  Lan and Faile both have fakeout deaths and then miraculously survive for what seems to be the sake of a happy ending.  Talmanes also survives after being set up to die heroically.  However, in fairness, RJ also seemed to have an aversion to letting characters die.  

 

It's true that some of the characters feel different when BS writes them.  But I actually like BS Mat better.  There are various times when BS Mat makes me laugh out loud and I never really got that from RJ Mat.  

 

There are lots of loose ends at the end of AMOL, but I think that we have to assume that was always the plan.  Your objections to the dream spike, the Verin reveal, or the creator are not really things that bother me or that I noticed as being weak.  Frankly, I'm not even sure what you mean by bringing the creator into it.  If this is talking about Nakomi, my understanding is that she is not a BS creation.  

[Scarloc99]

6 hours ago, Samt said:

Everything could always be better.  As you mentioned, the whole "everyone needs to go on a suicide mission to kill Demandred kind of gets weirdly repetitive."  I also think that BS was a little too reluctant to kill off major characters when it kind of makes sense for them to die (it is the end, anyways).  Lan and Faile both have fakeout deaths and then miraculously survive for what seems to be the sake of a happy ending.  Talmanes also survives after being set up to die heroically.  However, in fairness, RJ also seemed to have an aversion to letting characters die.  

 

It's true that some of the characters feel different when BS writes them.  But I actually like BS Mat better.  There are various times when BS Mat makes me laugh out loud and I never really got that from RJ Mat.  

 

There are lots of loose ends at the end of AMOL, but I think that we have to assume that was always the plan.  Your objections to the dream spike, the Verin reveal, or the creator are not really things that bother me or that I noticed as being weak.  Frankly, I'm not even sure what you mean by bringing the creator into it.  If this is talking about Nakomi, my understanding is that she is not a BS creation.  

Nakomi is a BS creation, pretty sure he admitted it, but he also said somewhere that the Creator talks to Rand twice in his books (although he then says that anyone talking in capitals is always the same person which contradicts that). 

I think it comes after the, what, 15th time of reading the 3 books I think, and trying to be more critical of the writing style, I don't know why but tying the turning off of the dreamspike to the Ashaman being able to escape just felt too contrived, as did setting the dreamspike at Tar Valon at the exact same moment Egwene is having her fight, and simultaneously contriving a reason for gawyn to stay in Andor just a few hours longer because of a stupid letter only to "almost lose his foot" as he runs back. it felt like lazy writing and that he could have achieved the same effect in a much better way. If you look at RJ's writing he builds up tension and emotion without resorting to cheap writing tricks. loose ends are fine, I have no issue with leaving things dangling to never be resolved, this story is not about how they fix the problems created by the last battle. 

The Verin thing has come more and more from thinking about her arc and just how wasted it was by both RJ and BS, for me she is the most fascinating character, someone who has decided to do despicable things, and I imagine in order to prove herself she has had to kill small children, torture animals and worse, because she has weighed up that the pros outweigh the pain and suffering she has and will create. I would love to have seen more of her mind, seen her having moments of doubt, or wondering if the scales had tipped to far the other way, had she waited too long to out the black ajah. There is so much to unpick about her, and it is wasted in a throwaway couple of paragraphs and then she dies and we move swiftly on. She is to my mind potentially the best character in the entire story in terms of what RJ could have done with her in terms of telling a true arc, and therefore the most wasted in terms of what is actually done with her. 

No issue with the fakeout deaths, Perrin deserved a happy ending, and theLan bit makes sense, but like you the endless treadmill of characters marching to there death at Demondredds hand is just a bit silly, if for no other reason then you would think the Sharans would up there personal security of him after the first one gets through lol. I think I just am realising that I don't like BS style of writing and, as I am getting older, am starting to wonder a bit if I will actually read them ever again now. 

[Lightfriendsocialmistress]

4 hours ago, Scarloc99 said:

No issue with the fakeout deaths,

Just curious what was your first reaction to the fakeout deaths of mat and avi (and others) when Rand is battling rahvin? I remember when I read it the first time how disoriented I felt going from the shock of believing these characters to be dead and then realizing they weren’t. Or was I the only sucker who believed them dead on first read?

[Scarloc99]

2 hours ago, Lightfriendsocialmistress said:

Just curious what was your first reaction to the fakeout deaths of mat and avi (and others) when Rand is battling rahvin? I remember when I read it the first time how disoriented I felt going from the shock of believing these characters to be dead and then realizing they weren’t. Or was I the only sucker who believed them dead on first read?

It’s been so long since that first read I can’t really remember but I am pretty sure I expected Rand to balefire them back to life, RJ didn’t kill good guys off. 

[Lightfriendsocialmistress]

1 hour ago, Scarloc99 said:

It’s been so long since that first read I can’t really remember but I am pretty sure I expected Rand to balefire them back to life, RJ didn’t kill good guys off. 

Wow, my hats off to you for possessing such spot on intuition from the start! I’m impressed 

[Scarloc99]

2 hours ago, Lightfriendsocialmistress said:

Wow, my hats off to you for possessing such spot on intuition from the start! I’m impressed 

I think at the time I knew both characters where important later on as well, and it seemed fairly obvious the Balefire foreshadowing that had happened up until then. 

[Samt]

19 hours ago, Scarloc99 said:

The Verin thing has come more and more from thinking about her arc and just how wasted it was by both RJ and BS, for me she is the most fascinating character, someone who has decided to do despicable things, and I imagine in order to prove herself she has had to kill small children, torture animals and worse, because she has weighed up that the pros outweigh the pain and suffering she has and will create. I would love to have seen more of her mind, seen her having moments of doubt, or wondering if the scales had tipped to far the other way, had she waited too long to out the black ajah. There is so much to unpick about her, and it is wasted in a throwaway couple of paragraphs and then she dies and we move swiftly on. She is to my mind potentially the best character in the entire story in terms of what RJ could have done with her in terms of telling a true arc, and therefore the most wasted in terms of what is actually done with her. 
 

We know that Verin has been compiling her black ajah list for decades (well before the beginning of TEoTW and probably since well before the beginning of NS).  I don't think it's ever explicit as to exactly how much nasty stuff black ajah are required to do for the sake of proving themselves (or whether they are required to continue doing evil things regularly as some sort of purity test).  The black ajah seem to believe that the oaths they make their adherents take are enough of a loyalty test and insurance policy (which is itself somewhat strange considering they literally subvert the oath rod in the first place to make the members take the black oaths).  Which is to say, certainly the black ajah would require Verin to do evil things when it served a purpose, but maybe not just to prove herself.  This goes doubly when we consider that torturing children and whatnot without a specific purpose is an additional risk of being caught.  So any evil acts that Verin does have to fit into a larger purpose for the BA.  And considering that Verin is a mole for the whole story, any actions she takes have to also be consistent with her being a mole.  

 

All of that is kind of a long winded way to say that while you certainly can build an interesting story to create an even more dramatic reveal around Verin, that story doesn't write itself.  It takes quite a bit of time on the page to build it up and make it fit into the larger story while also being consistent with the reveal (ie. you need to be able to look back after the reveal and everything Verin did still has to make sense in the context of her being a BA mole).  

[swollymammoth]

I'm re-reading the series rn, and I haven't read the Sanderson entries in more than 10 years. I loved them at the time. I'm a little nervous to get back to them. Style-wise, there almost isn't anyone I could imagine being worse to take over for RJ than Brandon. His prose is so minimalist. I asked him about it once, and he said that his approach is to make his prose invisible. That is just the total opposite of RJ who is on the record talking about all the time he spent slaving over his sentences. 

 

That being said, I do still like Sanderson's books on their own, and he definitely knows how to weave together plot threads to create satisfying moments. In that regard, I think he's the best at what he does. Just like RJ was the best at delivering great writing. So maybe it will all balance out in the end? 

[swollymammoth]

On 9/7/2023 at 4:35 AM, Scarloc99 said:

I think at the time I knew both characters where important later on as well, and it seemed fairly obvious the Balefire foreshadowing that had happened up until then. 

I think the foreshadowing is the difference. A fake-out death is bad when the character just kinda turns out not to be dead. RJ set up the balefire thing, so when Mat came back to life, it was actually an earned bit of payoff rather than an instance where the author tried to just bait the audience with something cheap. 

[Lightfriendsocialmistress]

On 9/12/2023 at 4:13 PM, swollymammoth said:

I think the foreshadowing is the difference. A fake-out death is bad when the character just kinda turns out not to be dead. RJ set up the balefire thing, so when Mat came back to life, it was actually an earned bit of payoff rather than an instance where the author tried to just bait the audience with something cheap. 

Excellent forsights and observations of the build up and foreshadowing! I still didn’t catch it on my first read