The thing I think Sanderson has taken the most liberty with

[9horsehitchr]

I would like to thank Brian Sanderson for finishing the series, indeed his work on the series introduced mento his other works, the mistborn trilogy and the new stormlight archive which I'm really excited about. He isn't Robert Jordan and doesn't pretend to be, they would be big boots to fill.

My only complaints about his WoT writing in ToM, excepting mat's painfully unfunny humour nonewithstanding can be summed up in one word....

 

"son"

 

Anyone else notice it too? A

[gary0044187]

I understood the fact that he would write the story differently and the need to compress the end of the story into a manageable time frame. Even the change in the way people talked was reasonable. What bothered me was Mat's note. Mat can speak the Old Tongue fluently from his many memories (memories of lives as well educated noblemen, even one life where a man wrote a book on war). He seemed quite literate in the previous books. Why then is his letter so poorly written in this? I enjoy his antics and even the ones from the previous book but it seems to me that this was not quite him.

[Bob T Dwarf]

I understood the fact that he would write the story differently and the need to compress the end of the story into a manageable time frame. Even the change in the way people talked was reasonable. What bothered me was Mat's note. Mat can speak the Old Tongue fluently from his many memories (memories of lives as well educated noblemen, even one life where a man wrote a book on war). He seemed quite literate in the previous books. Why then is his letter so poorly written in this? I enjoy his antics and even the ones from the previous book but it seems to me that this was not quite him.

 

The letter was deliberate. It was designed to be so outrageous that it would get past Elaye's filter ( Norry ) and actually get to her. It was further crudified so that Elayne would KNOW that it really came from Mat.

 

He'd already tried "proper" letters. He'd already tried going to the Palace. The letters got no response and he'd been turned away at the Palace. Time was burning and he HAD to get started on the cannon.

 

Nothing strange about the way Mat or that letter was written given that set of hurdles for Mat to overcome. Sanderson has flat been brilliant when it comes to writing Mat.

[David Selig]

What bothered me was Mat's note. Mat can speak the Old Tongue fluently from his many memories (memories of lives as well educated noblemen, even one life where a man wrote a book on war). He seemed quite literate in the previous books. Why then is his letter so poorly written in this?

I think the poor spelling and over the top trouble with "big words" was intentional by Mat.

 

Elayne doesn't know about his memories from the Finns. As far as she knows from Nynaeve and Egwene, Mat is a village boy without much education except basic literacy and who is not much of a reader (as noted several times in the books). So she'd expect a few mistakes from him, exaggerated to show his brand of humour to be clear the letter is from him.

 

Or it could be as simple as that all those memories he has are from much earlier times, when the spelling was different, so he's confused by that. ;)

[Corvias]

I'd like to preface this criticism by commending Brandon for tackling and largely succeeding in this epic task.

 

Now I'd like to echo the sentiment about Brandon's choice of phrasing by offering a specific example. In the Chapter titled "Boots" near the end, Setalle Anan asks Mat the difference between nobles and common folk. Mat replies with:

 

"It's all about the boots."

 

WHAT? Is this a Nike commercial? After reading that absurdly out of place, anachronistic line, I nearly stopped reading. I half expected Setalle to reply with "For reals?" followed by Mat again with "Worrrd."

 

Hm. I think I just had an idea for a sig.

[gary0044187]

Or it could be as simple as that all those memories he has are from much earlier times, when the spelling was different, so he's confused by that. ;)

I actually thought about this for a few hours after reading the chapter. It is a reasonable assumption to make. Reading the passage, I didn't get that he did it intentionally. I will have to wait til I have a little more time to read the story again before I pass judgment. I look forward to reading the version of these last three that will be jordanified. I wonder if the team that does it will drag them out 5-6 books. I really felt like this book could have been expanded to 3-4. I commented to a friend of mine how it seemed like Sanderson had done everything I always wanted to see in this book (except of course, killing Taim and Daved Hanlon, but I guess you can't kill all your bad guys in one book). I was torn by that after having experienced so many years of little actual plot development.

[Kahlika]

The letter was deliberate. It was designed to be so outrageous that it would get past Elaye's filter ( Norry ) and actually get to her. It was further crudified so that Elayne would KNOW that it really came from Mat.

 

He'd already tried "proper" letters. He'd already tried going to the Palace. The letters got no response and he'd been turned away at the Palace. Time was burning and he HAD to get started on the cannon.

 

Nothing strange about the way Mat or that letter was written given that set of hurdles for Mat to overcome. Sanderson has flat been brilliant when it comes to writing Mat.

 

I think that's the first time I've ever seen New!Mat described as brilliant.

 

While I'm deeply appreciative of Sanderson picking the series up, delighted that I will get an ending, think he's a talented author, and have enjoyed both TGS and ToM I do have to acknowledge that he writes Mat terribly. Sanderson is better with some characters and worse with others, it's to be expected. It's a pity he clearly struggles with one I personally like so much but that's the way it is.

 

I think it has something to do with just having a different sense of humor to RJ's, as someone mentioned above, but Sanderson's Mat is a caricature. One of the most accurate descriptions I've seen about the way Sanderson deals with Mat is that he reads like he was guest authored by Pratchett, and although that referred to TGS specifically it really didn't improve any in ToM. The letter made me cringe, the rabbit made me cringe, his language/tone/dialogue made me cringe, literally so badly I was just completely unable to suspend disbelief in places. Despite Mat being one of my favourite characters in the series (from book 4 onwards at least) I actually dread getting Mat scenes now, they're painful to read if you loved RJ's characterisation of Mat.

[didymos]

Now I'd like to echo the sentiment about Brandon's choice of phrasing by offering a specific example. In the Chapter titled "Boots" near the end, Setalle Anan asks Mat the difference between nobles and common folk. Mat replies with:

 

"It's all about the boots."

 

WHAT? Is this a Nike commercial? After reading that absurdly out of place, anachronistic line, I nearly stopped reading. I half expected Setalle to reply with "For reals?" followed by Mat again with "Worrrd."

 

 

Anachronistic? How? "All about" is not modern slang. Neither is "It's all about" There's nothing particularly odd about the line as a whole, grammar-wise. It's standard English all through. It just happens to resemble an old ad slogan....to you. I myself had forgotten all about that particular ad campaign. You might have had a point if Mat had said "I'm all about the gold crowns, yo" but as it is.....no.

[aamornn]

Ahhhhh. Mr. Brandon Sanderson. We owe you a great debt. Nobody will ever have any reasonable argument to the contrary. That being said, can you please please please please revert the bloody ashes to blood and ashes, or the more elaborate Blood and Bloody Ashes? oh and stop saying tempest so much :( It's a word that just seemed to irk me and stuck out to me. I know you're quite fond of it as Im half way through reading the way of kings. In ToM you seemed overfond of it. As for any of the other complaints or critics, they hold no accord in my mind. Thank you very much for undertaking this vast vast work. We are all happy to see it coming to an end. Now strap yourself to your keyboard and dont stop writing!! I want AMoL in 2 months time! :(

This, this, a million times: this! I know languages evolve and oaths/swears change, but this one has felt way too unnatural. Trying to put myself into story, I can't see any reason for the change. It's no shorter - "Bloody Ashes" and "Blood and Ashes" both have 4 syllables. If anything, "Bloody Ashes" takes longer to say because you can't run the the second syllable (the -dy) into the third the way you can with "Blood 'n' Ashes."

 

Worst of all (imo) - every time Mat says "Bloody Ashes" my mental Mat voice is suddenly English for the next few lines.

 

Setting that aside, I wanted to say a few things about pacing. I disagree with a lot of people about BS's pacing. This seems to be something almost everyone thinks is an improvement, but I found the pacing in TOM very hard to get through. Perrin's story arc was just way too slow. And I say that as someone who usually enjoys Perrin's scenes and as someone who has never complained about the supposed slowness in Jordan's writing.

 

Reading through this thread has helped me realize why I found the pacing painfully slow: it's the hand holding. I never minded Jordan's speed (or lack thereof) because he was painting a picture. Even if there wasn't much action happening, we always learned something - e.g. what happens in Tear when Rand isn't there; what Tuon really thinks about "toy;" the back-story of an Aes Sedai; etc. BS's slowness comes from the hand holding. If you got it the first time, the 2nd and 3rd times are just wasted space. For all his lack of action, I never felt like RJ was repeating himself.

[Bob T Dwarf]

BS's slowness comes from the hand holding. If you got it the first time, the 2nd and 3rd times are just wasted space. For all his lack of action, I never felt like RJ was repeating himself.

 

I'm sorry but what series are you reading? All Jordan did was repeat. He beat us over the head repeatedly, book after book with the same sets of stock phrases. He described things in such excruciating detail that there was absolutely no room left for the reader's own imagination.

[Baelorn]

I like both styles. RJ's attention to detail could be frustrating but I feel like Sanderson tends to gloss over a lot of stuff that could be more detailed. I think the difference is most apparent when it comes to how characters react to certain things. It could just be that he has so much to do to wrap this story up in three books though.

 

I swear if he rushes the moment when Mat reveals, to some certain characters, that he's married to Tuon I may have to throw aMoL down in disgust. That's probably my most anticipated moment aside from the confrontation with the DO.

[aamornn]

I'm sorry but what series are you reading? All Jordan did was repeat. He beat us over the head repeatedly, book after book with the same sets of stock phrases. He described things in such excruciating detail that there was absolutely no room left for the reader's own imagination.

I don't think I worded my earlier post adequately. Let me see if I can be clearer in my response to your point here.

 

He beat us over the head repeatedly, book after book with the same sets of stock phrases

 

I'm not denying that, but I think these stock phrases actually speed things up. Everyone hates Nynaeve's braid tugging (although I never mind it), but it's an efficient (indirect) way to tell the reader that she's upset. Repeating those "stock phrases" and actions meant he didn't have to explain them each time.

 

RJ's style was to give us all the relevant info in one hair tug. BS, on the other hand, would have Nynaeve pull her braid. Then Egwene would think Gee, Nynaeve sure tugs her braid a lot when she's up. Then a few lines later Nynaeve would say "I'm so upset, I could pull my braid out!" That's what I mean by hand holding. In case you didn't get it from the hair tug, he's going to tell you 2 more times that Nynaeve is mad.

 

He described things in such excruciating detail that there was absolutely no room left for the reader's own imagination. Again, I don't disagree, but I see this same fact from a different perspective. I don't particularly care what shade of blue someone's dress is, but I never minded hearing it for a few reasons. 1) As I said in my last post, it is new information. RJ might describe a dress as "ocean blue" and he might even refer back to the ocean blue dress, but he wouldn't describe the same dress 3 different ways. Related to this - painting a picture with words is an art, and RJ was very skilled at it. 2) I may not care about dress colors, but Elayne, Egwene, and later Nynaeve do care. If the chapter I'm reading is in their POV, I expect them to notice and care about dress color. 3) Long descriptions can be important for pacing. Here's an example of what I have in mind:

 

Say there are 2 characters in a car. They talk for a while and then there's a 10 minute lull, during which time the passenger stares out at the scenery. Then the conversation starts back up. There's a few ways an author could write this scene. They could do basically what I just did:

DialogNarrator: The conversation died and Mat stared out the window for the next ten minutes. More dialog. Or, instead of telling the audience that there was a lull in the conversation, you can show it. To do that, you need a long chunk of text that isn't dialog. An obvious choice in this case is whatever Mat's staring at.

 

I think RJ used this technique well.

 

 

I didn't mean to come off as so critical to BS, but I stand by my claim that while RJ did reuse phrases and actions, he was rarely repetitive in the hand holding sense. BS on the other hand, does too much hand holding. I think, as others have said, it's a style that works better for a younger audience, and if the whole series were written that way, I wouldn't be upset, although I probably wouldn't have gotten hooked on the series either. I think that when RJ was repetitive, it was usually to a good purpose: to set the tone, to show a character has/hasn't changed, to inject some humor, etc. but I can't think of many cases where RJ was repetitive to make sure the audience got it.

[Corvias]

Now I'd like to echo the sentiment about Brandon's choice of phrasing by offering a specific example. In the Chapter titled "Boots" near the end, Setalle Anan asks Mat the difference between nobles and common folk. Mat replies with:

 

"It's all about the boots."

 

WHAT? Is this a Nike commercial? After reading that absurdly out of place, anachronistic line, I nearly stopped reading. I half expected Setalle to reply with "For reals?" followed by Mat again with "Worrrd."

 

 

Anachronistic? How? "All about" is not modern slang. Neither is "It's all about" There's nothing particularly odd about the line as a whole, grammar-wise. It's standard English all through. It just happens to resemble an old ad slogan....to you. I myself had forgotten all about that particular ad campaign. You might have had a point if Mat had said "I'm all about the gold crowns, yo" but as it is.....no.

 

By "Anachronistic" I mean it sounds more contemporary than what you would expect to read in a fantasy book. Or maybe a better way to describe it would be "too casual". I couldn't see RJ writing that line, that's for sure. I know Brandon said he wasn't going to even try to mimic RJ's style, but this particular line just stuck way out there to me. YMMV.

[didymos]

I couldn't see RJ writing that line, that's for sure.

 

Well, if it helps, RJ actually used the "all about" construction quite a bit in the books. Not in exactly the same way, but in pretty much the same sense, and even in dialogue now and then.

[TigerGamer]

The characters are very, very, veryveryvery emo when written by Brandon. Many of the characters were reduced to emo caricatures of their former selves, and I found it hard to deal especially, as has been widely agreed upon already, with Mat. But also with other characters to a lesser degree. Lan, in particular, is being poorly written. He whines, complains, and scolds; gone are all inklings of stoneface as we came to know and love him. In fact, Sanderson seems incapable of understanding the taciturn nature of warriors in Randland, and refuses to attempt the trick of emoting by showing the nonverbal side of human communication, opting instead to take the easy way out and have these strong men say everything they're thinking and feeling. Being a taciturn warrior-like beast myself, it makes it difficult to get over some of these scenes. I understand that some softening of stone is necessary, given the nature of the action in the final leg, but I mean really. It's just lazy.

 

 

I can agree with this.

 

I would add that the characters give off much more modernistic one liners, RJ never did this. I thought I was reading a something set in 1990's America, or perhaps the story had been hijacked by Joss Whedon. This is something I very much disliked.

 

At times Mat was a caricature of a modern day, down-the-street-trying-to-sneak-things-past-his-wife father figure. It was ridiculous. Mat is supposed to be the typical, Clint Eastwood great American hero, down to his hat and his take no nonsense approach. This Mat was ALL WRONG. Please just go back to "flaming" and "blood and bloody ashes," no more bumps on a pig's backside crap. For Pete's sake I almost through my book.

 

Throw in all the indepth descriptions of gratuitous blood spattering, something RJ never did bother to describe overall, and it just felt wrong.

 

I liked the story, plot lines, etc, it just doesn't feel WoT to me anymore.

 

T'A'R, though very cool, just made me think of the Matrix. RJ did this MUCH better and it would've been interesting to see how he would've developed it in the written word.

[Bob T Dwarf]

I'm sorry but what series are you reading? All Jordan did was repeat. He beat us over the head repeatedly, book after book with the same sets of stock phrases. He described things in such excruciating detail that there was absolutely no room left for the reader's own imagination.

I don't think I worded my earlier post adequately. Let me see if I can be clearer in my response to your point here.

 

He beat us over the head repeatedly, book after book with the same sets of stock phrases

 

I'm not denying that, but I think these stock phrases actually speed things up. Everyone hates Nynaeve's braid tugging (although I never mind it), but it's an efficient (indirect) way to tell the reader that she's upset. Repeating those "stock phrases" and actions meant he didn't have to explain them each time.

 

RJ's style was to give us all the relevant info in one hair tug. BS, on the other hand, would have Nynaeve pull her braid. Then Egwene would think Gee, Nynaeve sure tugs her braid a lot when she's up. Then a few lines later Nynaeve would say "I'm so upset, I could pull my braid out!" That's what I mean by hand holding. In case you didn't get it from the hair tug, he's going to tell you 2 more times that Nynaeve is mad.

 

First, thanks for taking the time to make such a rational response. I'll try to be equally rational.

 

For me, the problem with what Jordan does here is that he takes fifty words to say what could be said in one.

 

It also makes the characters one dimensional. Nynaeve apparently has only one response to frustration.

 

Mat will never break down and admit to himself that he enjoys looking at women. There will always be the whole song-and-dance about how he's checking this one out for that other character. It's funny and endearing the first couple of times. After that it's just old and tiresome.

 

A form of that applies to every character in the series. Women always smooth their skirts, sniff, and try to look intimidating when they embarrass themselves. All women not just some.

 

We aren't stupid. After you show us something four or five times we get it. Write a macro, create a shortcut that encapsulates a particular behaviour pattern for a given character. Like say, "Nynaeve felt frustrated." and let us picture her pulling her braid and grimacing. Don't keep hitting us over the head with that same stock "Nynaeve-feels-stupid-and-nearly-yanks-her-head-off passage every time.

 

He described things in such excruciating detail that there was absolutely no room left for the reader's own imagination.

Again, I don't disagree, but I see this same fact from a different perspective. I don't particularly care what shade of blue someone's dress is, but I never minded hearing it for a few reasons. 1) As I said in my last post, it is new information. RJ might describe a dress as "ocean blue" and he might even refer back to the ocean blue dress, but he wouldn't describe the same dress 3 different ways. Related to this - painting a picture with words is an art, and RJ was very skilled at it. 2) I may not care about dress colors, but Elayne, Egwene, and later Nynaeve do care. If the chapter I'm reading is in their POV, I expect them to notice and care about dress color. 3) Long descriptions can be important for pacing. Here's an example of what I have in mind:

 

Say there are 2 characters in a car. They talk for a while and then there's a 10 minute lull, during which time the passenger stares out at the scenery. Then the conversation starts back up. There's a few ways an author could write this scene. They could do basically what I just did:

DialogNarrator: The conversation died and Mat stared out the window for the next ten minutes. More dialog. Or, instead of telling the audience that there was a lull in the conversation, you can show it. To do that, you need a long chunk of text that isn't dialog. An obvious choice in this case is whatever Mat's staring at.

 

I think RJ used this technique well.

Or, he could have switched viewpoints and used that book-space to show us what somebody else important to the story is doing and then come back when the conversation in the car resumed.

 

Jordan would first use up three pages describing nothing anybody would ever have to deal with again, then resume the converstaion, and finally jump backward in time to show us what the other important character had been doing concurrently. That wastes a lot of book space and reader time and does nothing but confuse the timeline for the reader.

 

Yes, I accept that one woman is going to notice what another woman is wearing. Unless that attire in some way affects how the women interact, I don't need to go inside each of their heads and waste my time listening to them prattle to themselves about it. It's just noise. The signal to noise ratio in these books is feeble enough already without the constant introduction of more noise.

 

 

I didn't mean to come off as so critical to BS, but I stand by my claim that while RJ did reuse phrases and actions, he was rarely repetitive in the hand holding sense. BS on the other hand, does too much hand holding. I think, as others have said, it's a style that works better for a younger audience, and if the whole series were written that way, I wouldn't be upset, although I probably wouldn't have gotten hooked on the series either. I think that when RJ was repetitive, it was usually to a good purpose: to set the tone, to show a character has/hasn't changed, to inject some humor, etc. but I can't think of many cases where RJ was repetitive to make sure the audience got it.

 

We'll have to agree to disagree on that. All I ever saw was Jordan flogging us half to death with the same repetitive descriptions.

[didymos]

This Mat was ALL WRONG. Please just go back to "flaming" and "blood and bloody ashes," no more bumps on a pig's backside crap. For Pete's sake I almost through my book.

 

This is why making statements about who wrote what and that therefore they suck at writing so-and-so is a bad idea: RJ wrote that stuff. Confirmed by Brandon:

Towers of Midnight book tour, Dallas Borders 4 November 2010 - aurik reporting

 

Q: What was the most jaw-dropping scene (or scenes) to you when you read the material for Towers of Midnight?

A: Verin.

Q: That's what you answered for Book 12. I'm asking about book 13, which I've already read.

A: Everyone in line close your ears...The whole Tower of Ghenjei sequence. That was all written by Jim. Also, the surprise proposal at the end.

[kes]

i was fine with most of the character development as they couldn't all act like spoiled brats for their entire lives, especially not in the positions they were placed in.

 

The only part that reeked of Sanderson to me was the whole Dragonmount soliloquy with Rand. Maybe I'm wrong and that is all RJ, but he often has his characters sit around and have this grand speech to themselves and that scene just really threw me off. I pretty much hated it.

[CoonDawg]

The way Sanderson uses "They fell silent" every page. He does this in all of his books, and it's pretty much the only thing he does I hate. You can't use that for everything! If Character A walks into a room and tells Character B that he's going to die, it will read "Character B fell silent". YOU WERE ALREADY SILENT! YOU CAN'T "FALL" ANYTHING!

 

It's a small quirk of his, but I sure hope he stops using it.

[Bob T Dwarf]

The way Sanderson uses "They fell silent" every page. He does this in all of his books, and it's pretty much the only thing he does I hate. You can't use that for everything! If Character A walks into a room and tells Character B that he's going to die, it will read "Character B fell silent". YOU WERE ALREADY SILENT! YOU CAN'T "FALL" ANYTHING!

 

It's a small quirk of his, but I sure hope he stops using it.

 

Well, not every woman sniffs, and smooths her skirts and stares down her nose, either. Just all of the ones that Jordan wrote. It's an hourly ritual with them. They only get excused if they're being spanked for no justifiable reason.

[didymos]

Well, not every woman sniffs, and smooths her skirts and stares down her nose, either.

 

Do a search in the e-books or on IdealSeek for "sniff", "sniffed", "smoothed", etc. You'd be surprised how seldom they actually appear, relative to other actions (not to mention sheer word-count), and especially after deducting the Hurin-related occurrences of "sniff" stuff and the ones that aren't actually about the nasal passages of annoyed women and the lower portions of their clothing. As far as the nose-staring thing: barely registers. And Rand and other males do it too.

[didymos]

The way Sanderson uses "They fell silent" every page.

 

He did use it more frequently in tGS than Jordan had (though not remotely so often as every page), but Jordan did use it pretty often himself. Multiple times in all but WH (and it'd be twice in that one if you count "fell blessedly silent").

[Bob T Dwarf]

Well, not every woman sniffs, and smooths her skirts and stares down her nose, either.

 

Do a search in the e-books or on IdealSeek for "sniff", "sniffed", "smoothed", etc. You'd be surprised how seldom they actually appear, relative to other actions (not to mention sheer word-count), and especially after deducting the Hurin-related occurrences of "sniff" stuff and the ones that aren't actually about the nasal passages of annoyed women and the lower portions of their clothing. As far as the nose-staring thing: barely registers. And Rand and other males do it too.

 

IdealSeek is broken then. They have hourly drills. All women form up every-hour-on-the-hour for mandatory sniffing, smoothing, and staring practice. It's in the Charter of every city, town, hamlet and village. There are Royal Decrees.

 

Fines for missed practices are excessive. Repeat offenders face severe spankings.

 

You can't go more than three pages without at least one of Jordan's women sniffing at something.

 

Really.

 

No, really.

 

 

 

 

 

[Caius Callus]

*Sniff*

I'm sure everyone is aware that Terry Goodkind was the 2nd choice for completing the series. I think we shall all give thanks to whatever we give thanks to that BS got the job.

[Bob T Dwarf]

*Sniff*

I'm sure everyone is aware that Terry Goodkind was the 2nd choice for completing the series. I think we shall all give thanks to whatever we give thanks to that BS got the job.

 

Yes. Ugly as it is, closet S&M is better than outright rape.