theBoneyKing
11.15.17 | I unfortunately can't read the thing for about a month once my semester's over but I got the book in the mail today and it's a fucking beaut. |
zakalwe
11.15.17 | Interesting. What’s the basic storyline? |
theBoneyKing
11.15.17 | It's kind of hard to boil down but on the surface it's your standard end of the world fantasy story but with everything turned to 11 in terms of the scope of the worldbuilding and narrative structure and the sheer size of the books themselves. |
zakalwe
11.15.17 | Quality. I’ll have a look into it. |
Rowan5215
11.15.17 | where's my The Book of Dust hype tho |
zakalwe
11.15.17 | Sounds bloody great tbh bone, I’ve just seen a fat nerd review it on YouTube. Will definitely invest.
Row, I’m going to wait for the paperback, fucking love his dark materials. |
theBoneyKing
11.15.17 | I can post a list about whatever I want goddammit.
How's he a hack? |
theBoneyKing
11.15.17 | What's that Row? |
theBoneyKing
11.15.17 | It's certainly an investment zak but a worthwhile one imo if you're into that kind of thing and have the patience. |
Rowan5215
11.15.17 | Philip Pullman, who wrote His Dark Materials about 20 years ago, just released the first part of a prequel trilogy. possibly one of the most inventive and beautiful fantasy sagas of all time. it's nominally children's literature but so much more involved than that. I'm only a hundred pages into The Book of Dust but he hasn't lost a trick |
theBoneyKing
11.15.17 | Six, his writing's improved a lot since Mistborn though even now it's mostly just competent prose; the big appeal is in the characters, plot and worldbuilding. And idk I find his magic systems really cool, yeah he clearly loves his own stuff but with good reason. If you read into the Realmatic Theory combining all his cosmere magic systems it gets even more interesting. |
theBoneyKing
11.15.17 | I'm a big fantasy fan but for some reason I've never been that interested in the His Dark Materials books. Isn't the author involved in some shady/questionable stuff? I remember reading there was something off about him. |
theBoneyKing
11.15.17 | Malazan is fucking awesome too but I don't want to have to think that hard all the time. With Sanderson you can choose how much thought you want to put into it and at least the narratives are straightforward. |
theBoneyKing
11.15.17 | In terms of the writing though like Steven Erikson writes much better prose than Sanderson but Erikson can be pretty fucking boring at times since he gives every character he introduces 10 pages to describe their bleak life philosophy which is cool sometimes yeah but can get tiring. |
Papa Universe
11.15.17 | aaah, i haven't gotten to it yet |
Rik VII
11.17.17 | Hardly ever been that excited about a book release. First two books are both among my favorites! |
kris.
03.28.18 | i have the first two books sitting on my ipad ready for me to read AT SOME POINT
it's been like 3 years jfc |
DinosaurJones
03.28.18 | Yo... the ending of this book had me going insane. The last 100 or so pages... hnnnngggghhhhhh |
DinosaurJones
03.28.18 | I got fully absorbed in this series. Now I'm bummed waiting for the next book. |
artiswar
03.28.18 | I can't believe I missed this thread... I too just read Oathbringer and am jonesing for another book. I started reading Warbreaker (since I heard it has some crossover with Stormlight Archive) and it's really cool so far. |
theBoneyKing
03.28.18 | artiswar: All of Sanderson's "adult" fantasy books/series (that is, to date, Stormlight Archive, the Mistborn series, Warbreaker, Elantris, and a bunch of short fiction) take place on different planets in the same combined universe. Indeed there are some pretty big crossovers between Stormlight and Warbreaker (one very obvious and two that are more subtle, especially if you're coming from having read Stormlight first).
Xeno: I'm glad you enjoyed the Stormlight books! Yeah, if you're not huge on genre fiction they're not going to be your favorite thing but it's great you found something to enjoy. On the topic of Malazan, I love it, and Erikson's writing is a bit more "meaty" than Sanderson's, so to speak, so if you prefer the writing style of contemporary fiction those books may appeal to you a bit more - or you might just find it overly pretentious, who knows. :P Malazan is def worth a try though and it's more "difficult" than Sanderson's works so if that appeals to you give them a go - it is a lot of material though, be forewarned. |
DinosaurJones
03.28.18 | I haven't read any of his other work, but I think I'm going start Mistborn to tide myself over until the next Stormlight Archive. |
artiswar
03.28.18 | I've only read Mistborn and Stormlight so I'm not too sure what the 3 crossovers are. I do know the identity of Azure because someone told me (also why I'm reading Warbreaker). And I did suspect all the books were in the same universe because there are certain characters that are world-hoppers. |
theBoneyKing
03.28.18 | Definitely do it Dino, you'll become a true cosmere fanatic I promise it! :D |
DinosaurJones
03.28.18 | Oh, I'm sure I will, haha. |
Rik VII
03.28.18 | Mistborn is the other "big" thing in the Cosmere, so it's a good decision. Like BoneyKing said, there are some more upfront connections between Warbreaker and Stormlight. Note that all the stories still stand on their own and Sanderson has mentioned on several occasions that it's very important to him that every story works as an independent work. That said, some of the things that happen in Mistborn miiiight be of some relevance to later Stormlight stuff, but we'll see. |
artiswar
03.28.18 | Mistborn (first book at least) is SO fucking good. Same goes for The Black Company (I ranked all the books if you're interested in that series, some minor spoilers though). |
theBoneyKing
03.28.18 | Yeah, at this point most of the crossovers are just Easter eggs really, but they will get more and more prominent as time goes on. If you devote time to reading into the books and reading Sanderson's interviews though it does come to feel much more like a unified universe. |
artiswar
03.28.18 | As for connections between Mistborn and Stormlight, I do think Hemalurgy is going to play a big part at some point due to something that happens at the end of Oathbringer. And I think shit is going to go bananas. |
Rik VII
03.28.18 | The only Mistborn book that didn't blow me away was the second one. It's obvious that he was mostly planning it as a bridge between the first and third, it's not as eventful as those two and there are some plot decisions that I didn't like all that much ... but I loved the first one's atmosphere and the third one was just a huge series of "wow"s. It's one of the best things he's done in terms of story-telling. Almost as good as the things he did at the end of Oathbringer. |
theBoneyKing
03.28.18 | Sanderson has been hinting for a while that Hemalurgy will have massive implications when things start crossing over even more. Wish we could tag spoilers here but I assume the occurrence you're referring to is a certain thing acquired by a certain witty person at the end of Oathbringer, art? |
DinosaurJones
03.28.18 | I'll pick up the first Mistborn this weekend then... maybe the first two. I'm going to Tennessee next weekend, and I'll need some new stuff to read while I travel. |
Rik VII
03.28.18 | I think he means something different, a more violent event. A "Cosmere spoiler talk" thread would be helpful ...
Edit: @Xenophanes, I don't really see how Mistborn is "silly" when it's actually very well thought-out, but I can see the "pulpy" thing. It's an intended feature of the series to take stereotypes and play with them. |
theBoneyKing
03.28.18 | Yeah, the last 150 pages of Oathbringer are probably the most intense passage Sanderson has written yet, and that's saying something, |
artiswar
03.28.18 | I don't know, Well Of Ascension frustrated me so much that by the third book I just wasn't invested and I didn't think it was all that interesting. Well Of Ascension is a really weird one because half of it is fucking amazing, then that reveal happens and it just gets dumb imo. |
artiswar
03.28.18 | Boney, no I wasn't talking about the very last passage of the book. I was talking about the knife that can kill a god or whatever. And yeah, a spoiler thread would be useful. |
DinosaurJones
03.28.18 | I was literally having trouble sitting still while reading the ending of Oathbringer. I was all fidgety and shit.
There was so much going on, the constant switching between characters, which felt like it should have been distracting, was actually very well done. And there were so many moments where I was just like "OH HOLY SHIT" |
theBoneyKing
03.28.18 | Yeah art I realized after what Rik said that that was the scene you were referring to. Good catch, I hadn't made that connection before now! |
Rik VII
03.28.18 | Ok, I'm making a list now :D |
theBoneyKing
03.28.18 | Anyone else here have a profile on 17th Shard? I used to go on there all the time before I became a Sput obsessive. |
artiswar
03.28.18 | The part where Jasnah is just soulcasting on the fly is the sickest shit ever. |
theBoneyKing
03.28.18 | Well to be fair Xeno, the Mistborn world isn't actually as small as it seemed in the first trilogy; the Lord Ruler intentionally isolated the region in which the story took place, but there's a whole other, fully fleshed out part of the world that Sanderson hasn't fully revealed yet. |
Rik VII
03.28.18 | @Xenophanes: Yeah, I can see that. Don't agree with "bland" and "uninspired", but I can see your point with the other ones. |
theBoneyKing
03.28.18 | Xeno fwiw the first Malazan book isn't one of the series' best, hopefully you'll enjoy it enough but I suggest you get through at least book 2 or 3 (which are among the series' best) before deciding if you want to continue. |
theBoneyKing
03.28.18 | One thing that's good about Malazan is the books are more self-contained than what you usually get in fantasy series. |
DinosaurJones
03.28.18 | Xeno, you didn't like Name of the Wind? I dug that a fair bit. Not as much as Stormlight though. |
Rik VII
03.28.18 | Yeah, the final empire hasn't got much history because it has stagnated for 1000 years, so it kinda makes sense. I agree that the world seems empty and bleak, but that fits the theme of the series and the struggling of the figures make it worth living in again. I think the detail of the world of Stormlight hints at how it was probably intentional. |
theBoneyKing
03.28.18 | Yeah but a big part of that depth of history is limited by the same geographic limitation i referred to. And not to be that guy but it’s not exactly fair to compare the scope of something like Mistborn to Tolkien, I mean even as detailed as Sanderson’s worlds are Tolkien literally spent his entire life developing the mythology and history of Middle Earth. |
theBoneyKing
03.28.18 | Overall, now that it’s done, I love it despite its flaws. It’s definitely overlong and has serious pacing problems and is a bit trope-y, but at the core of it it’s a great, albeit massive, story. I don’t think you’d have the same problems with the scope of the world as with Mistborn, that’s for certain. |