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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   943 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 20, 2025

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So, what are you reading?

I'm adding Jews in the Soviet Union, Vol. 1, another open access book, to my list. Looks like the full series isn't published yet, but volumes 1, 3 and 5 are out.

I just started Oathbringer, the third novel in the Stormlight Archive series. I really enjoyed the second half of The Way Of Kings and the first two-thirds of Words Of Radiance, but I found the totally forced love triangle her appears to be building between Shallan, Kaladin, and Adolin extremely tiresome and off-putting. I’m hoping he abandons this as the series continues, but clearly he put it there for a reason. (The reason, I suspect, is that he realized he is creating a commercial product which is likely to be consumed by a large audience of women, who want and expect that sort of thing. Perhaps I’ll be proved wrong and he’ll develop it in a way that is more artful and plot-relevant than he has this far.) I’m loving the world-building, I just need the characters to be more consistently well-written if I’m going to continue the series after this one.

Stormlight Archive is where I pretty much bailed on Sanderson. I really liked the first book, but the second was so tedious I lost any desire to continue the series.

This is, in fact, what seems to happen with all his series. A decent first novel increasingly becomes self-referential Cosmere wank in the later books. And more and more it's Brandon Sanderson (tm) writing a Brandon Sanderson (tm) novel. The man has no range.

I have not read any of his other stuff (I read a lot of fantasy literature in middle school and high school, but took a very long break from the genre) so I have no preconceived notions.

You probably know he's hugely popular, and I'll admit I've read quite a few of his books because he's got a pleasant and entertaining style, but in my opinion he's very overrated. However, if you like the series (SA is his "flagship" magnum opus), he (unlike GRRM and Patrick Rothfuss and Scott Lynch) will probably actually finish it.

And he'll also write like five other books per year along the way.

You probably know he's hugely popular

Yeah, I definitely wanted this to be my bridge back into the genre, and had heard a lot of great things about it. I agree that the characterizations are dicey at times and that much of the dialogue writing is awful. I find the cosmology interesting, though, and I admit I’m a sucker for the “here’s a list of factions with distinct personality traits and iconography, sort yourself into the one that you’d be a part of” trope.

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