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Notes -
Wanted to write a longer review of The Way of Kings to spark a bit more of a discussion on Sanderson and fiction in general. Blog version of this post if any are interested.
One of my 2025 reading goals was to read more “normie” books, which basically entailed reading more books that my non-online friends recommended to me. The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson, the first book in the Stormlight Archives series had to be one of the most frequent recommendations I have received, especially from my college friends. A couple of my other Baltimore friends were embarking on a read of this book too, so I decided I would give it a shot this past summer, reading in Spanish as I usually do with easier fiction1.
To cut to the chase, I really didn’t like this book, although strangely also enjoyed my time reading it. The book was extremely bloated: it’s longer than all of Lord of the Rings and contains far less plot, has juvenile, unbelievable worldbuilding, and has so little character development and growth that I’m beginning to doubt the tastes of my many friends who recommended the book to me. That said, The Way of Kings is extremely readable, and if you just want to turn your brain off and read some Lit RPG, MCU-like adventure pulp, this book is the perfect thing for you.
Short plot summary
The Way of Kings takes place on the alien world of Roshar, which is known for its extremely strong and powerful storms. These storms infuse precious stones with “stormlight” which can then be used to power machines (soulcasters) or perform magic. Despite the beautiful map depicting this world, we only get to see a tiny portion of it in the first book: The Shattered Plains which are in the southeast corner of the above map.
The plot of the book centers on three different characters: Kaladin, who is a depressed slave, forced to carry assault bridges for a war that is being fought on the Shattered Plains, Dalinar Kholin, a noble who is in charge, at least in part of conducting said war, and Shallan, a want-to-be scholar trying to study under Dalinar’s niece, who also has to attempt a heist of a soulcaster.
The plot is a bit hard to describe beyond that without getting into spoiler territory, which is a big part of the problem with this book: a lack of direction and bloat.
Bloat
The Way of Kings is 383,389 words. All of The Lord of the Rings, including supplemental material like the appendices of The Return of the King, is approximately 550k words. So for more than 2/3 of the length of that entire series, we basically get a book that serves as a long prologue to the Stormlight Archive, with maybe some serious action in the last 80k words. This is not uncommon in epic fantasy series: the first entry in the First Law Trilogy, The Blade Itself, serves a similar role, as does the first Wheel of Time book, and arguably The Blood of Elves in The Witcher series. But none of these are as long as The Way of Kings, as weak stylistically, or as devoid of momentum for the rest of the series.
The bloat present in The Way of Kings is present on multiple levels. The most egregious is on the sentence/paragraph level, where Sanderson literally repeats himself. Some examples below:
I don’t know what Sanderson’s editor was doing, but cutting this kind of dialogue could have shaved off nearly 10% of the book at least.
Then there’s repetition on a larger scale. The book is filled with nearly identical scenes in which not much happens. Dalinar assaults mesa after mesa with only minor variation that moves the plot forward at a snails pace. Shallan has lunch and reads books. Kalinar has countless training sessions with his bridge crew that blend together in my mind. Contrast this to chapters in a book like Game of Thrones. This is what happens in the eighth Tyrion chapter in that book
There are at least four plot beats in this chapter. Contrast this to a typical Kaladin chapter in The Way of Kings:
There is one thing that really happens in this chapter, and it doesn’t really move the plot forward at all.
I estimate at least 50% of the scenes could be cut in this book with nothing being lost.
Bogus world building
In a certain sense, the worldbuilding of Sanderson is very effective. He’s very good at constructing impressive vistas, like the city of Kharbranth, which is built into the side of a mountain, or the Shattered Plains as a whole. Things like shard blades and the quasi-superheroes who wield them are also “cool” upon first glance. But the moment you look behind any of these shock and awe spectacles, it turns out there’s almost nothing there. Sanderson’s world building in this book feels incredibly arbitrary and poorly thought out.
Take the central feature of Roshar: it’s extremely powerful storms. We get some sense of how this affects everyday life on Roshar: the city of Kharbranth for example has grown to prominence because of its extremely sheltered location that protects it from the most damaging effects of said storms. Yet the strength of these storms is conveniently forgotten when it’s not important to the plot. Big armies are camped out in the open on the Shattered Plains: how are the damages from these storms not bigger, especially among the merchants/prostitutes/camp followers who aren’t officially part of the army. And this is not to mention how little of an understanding we have of how the agricultural system works when these storms are such a big issue.
Then there’s the issue of gender. Sanderson seemingly randomly decides that certain traits are masculine and feminine in this world. Not only is this not really how this works in the real world, but actively makes little sense in his own world. Reading for example, is something that basically only women practice. Yet any man or group of men who learned to read would have a huge military advantage. This kind of trait would not last long in a competitive society, which Alekezar almost certainly is.
Religion too is largely pretty undeveloped. There’s no real tension between competing religious beliefs, even in kingdoms that have only recently been converted to the dominate faith of vorinism, which is basically a reskin of Christianity. Contrast this again to Game of Thrones, where we see significant religious tension when Stannis tries to burn heart trees sacred to the Old Gods, or septs dedicated to the seven, or when Cersei gets locked up for treating the Faith of the Seven as a power-hungry atheist would. In The Way of Kings, there is no real consequence for Jasnah’s atheism, and no real religious tension between competing religious beliefs.
The problem I think, comes from Sanderson’s opinion of culture as something completely arbitrary and cosmetic. I want to say that this comes from his Mormon faith, but I honestly think it’s pretty common in the West right now. Islam, Buddhism, stoicism, and Christianity aren’t funny hats that you wear because they’re cool, they developed out of the real material and spiritual realities of past societies. Religion and culture are the way they are because of the way the world is, not because someone merely decided that they were true2.
Bad taste: why do people like this book?
Despite all my criticisms of the book, I did enjoy myself while reading it. The basic plot beats follow the heroes journey, while painfully slowly, and it is satisfying to see our characters grow in power and (eventually) make better decisions. Reading felt like watching a Marvel movie, which scratches a certain itch, while not being particularly healthy as a large component of one’s intellectual diet. I will probably continue with the series, as Sanderson has sufficiently hooked me on the plot enough for me to want to find out what happens.
What I don’t understand is how this is praised as one of the best books of all time. The prose is weak and bloated, the world building is shallow, and the characters are cardboard cut outs of people pulled from a children’s cartoon. There is no forward momentum of the plot, and the attempts at romance and wit are cringey and juvenile.
Yet people love this book. Why? I have a few theories.
First of all, I don’t think people read particularly widely any more. If this was the only fantasy book I had ever read, I think it would have been difficult not to have been impressed by the scale and scope of the novel, as well as the “character development” of the three main characters. Yet compared to the other genre greats, like GRRM, Ursula Le Guin, Joe Abercrombie, Robin Hobb, or even Robert Jordan, it’s hard not to see this as an unpolished YA novel.
Secondly, the relative flatness of the main characters makes it very easy to do a self-insert. Kaladin, Shallan, and Dalinar are all pretty much defined by one or two key traits, which makes it very easy to slot yourself into the story in their place. This also explains the appeal of Harry Potter, who has the same trait up until around halfway through the series.
Thirdly, I think the simplistic morality and illusion of “philosophy” that this book offers appeals to people who want to think of themselves as tackling the big questions, but who lack the intellectual chops and/or the ability to move outside of their narrow worldview to consider truly alien cultures.
Finally, I think a lot of the hype around these books is due to the consistent, predictable nature of Sanderson as an author. Just like with your favorite Harry Potter slashfic writer who releases a new chapter every week, you know you will get 2-3 Sanderson books a year, with a minimum level of quality and an assurance of a certain level of action and “cool” new worldbuilding.
1.5/5 stars
This serves two purposes. First, it slows down the pace of the story so I can marinate in the details/prose. This is slowly becoming less effective over time as my Spanish improves: I may need to switch to another language soon. The second purpose is to get some daily practice with the language.
Yes one might argue that I have the causality reversed, but these faiths and the culture that were built around could only work if they mapped on to the real material conditions of the world and the spiritual conditions of the human mind.
I've watched a fair amount of Sanderson's lectures on fiction writing, and have one point to add.
Sanderson is well aware that The Way of Kings is an absurd passion project. He makes fun of himself for including not one, not two, but three separate prelude chapters. He makes it abundantly clear that the only reason he is able to write this kind of drawn out epic fantasy is because he's already established his fan base and they know what they're getting.
So to answer your last question: this book gets 5/5 reviews because it's for a specific audience and that audience loves both the book and the author.
I've also read it and would give it maybe 3/5 but that's because I think Shallan is boring - remove all her chapters and I'd give it a solid 4.
I brought this exact point up with a friend: what exactly does Shallan add to this book? Yes she is apparently important to later books, but you could introduce her then with all her chapters!
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I agree with most of this, especially the bloated nature of his writing in this series. I gave up in book 2, where yet another character has a fall from grace, and joins a slave caravan, and we spend chapters following his journey. Really Sanderson? It was hard enough reading this plot line the first time with a somewhat interesting (though obviously special magical boy in training) character, but doing it all over again is just redundant.
I don't mind Sanderson's earlier works; I feel like the Mistborn series is a good middle-ground for him - good plot, interesting characters / magic system, and the whole thing moves along quickly enough that any holes are here and gone before you pay too much attention to them.
On a similar note, I am struggling through The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon at the moment, which comes highly rated on the usual places, with glowing reviews. The writing is abjectly awful, characters are again cardboard cutouts with predictable arcs, and the worldbuilding is verging on nonsensical. It's leaving me wondering how long, sprawling, poorly written (which I don't think Sanderson is btw), and weakly engaging books like this keep getting thrown up as examples of good fantasy. Is this the best we can hope for now?
Edit: FWIW I think Sanderson's world building in the Stormlight Archives is actually pretty good, it just gets dragged down by the plodding story.
I think people try to create some objective sense of what is "good" worldbuilding and what is "bad." Sanderson's worldbuilding is sort-of slapdash and relies heavily on rule-of-cool, which I don't think is a bad thing - it just doesn't work when paired with torturously meandering and overstuffed writing. It needs sharp prose and quick action.
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I pretty much agree with all your criticisms and also enjoyed the book as I read it. It really struck me as it did you how repetitive and baggy it is, something it has in common with successful books in most genres today (other recent culprits I've read – 'There are Rivers in the Sky' by Elif Shafak and 'Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow' by Gabrielle Zevin).
You might think that in an age of frenetic short-form content it would be the tautly written books, in terms of both plot and prose, that would break through as they make less demands on our time and pack in more beats per page, but that has not been the case. At all. My theory is that people are so used to scrolling at speed and not having to think that they read in sort of the same way, so that repetition and cosy re-confirmation is the only way they can actually take in and understand what's going on in the story. Conclusion: the faster we read and the more distracted we become, the longer and flabbier novels are going to become.
This is f'd up. We should be taking the same time as it takes to plough through epics to read miniaturists and elegant stylists with care. (Kazuo Ishiguro, Patrick DeWitt, Yoko Ogawa, Percival Everett could all be worth a try in this regard.)
'Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow' is offensively bad. The contents of that book, knowing who wrote it, and the fact that a female east asian librarian whole-heartedly recommended it to me almost made me wish for a moratorium on east asian female writers writing anything. Holy fuck it was bad.
Was it engaging to read? Yes. Was it engaging in the same way watching a trainwreck is engaging? Also yes.
Come on, you can't dish up all those details and then not explain what you mean. It's like you crafted this post to make me both want to learn more about the book and never learn anything else about it.
Sorry for the late reply.
Disclaimer: I read this like a year ago, so the details might be hazy, and I am not re-reading the book to give you a more accurate critique. Also, I will be spoiling the entirety of the book. Continue at your own risk.
Where to start? Well, at the obvious place; the author, Gabrielle Zelvin. Gabrielle Zelvin is half eastern European Jew, half Korean, who went to Harvard University. Now let's switch tracks. What are the deuteragonists of the novel? Sam Masur, a half-Jew, half-East Asian man, and Sadie Green, a bonafide women-in-stem. And here we arrive at the most obvious and glaring problem; it is painfully apparent that the protagonists of the novel are essentially self-inserts. Sam Masur represents the half-Jew half-Asian experience, and Sadie Green represents the women in higher education experience. You can imagine how a progressive half-Jew half-Asian would portray themselves, the narrative and their environment. Hint; annoyingly.
While I list out my grievances with this book, keep in mind that the writing is tumblr tier; overly saccharine, uses too many metaphors, and is generally unfulfilling/meaningless.
The book is a narrative exploring the relationship between Sam Masur, and Sadie Green, through the narrative device of their joint game development company. Gabrielle Zelvin either doesn't play games, or is ass at describing games. As a gamer, there were many many instances of me tilting my head at some of the descriptions. They aren't strictly wrong as far as I remember, just not completely 100% accurate. Think the Doakes meme of him staring in his car; you know something's up but you can't put your finger on it.
Sam Masur is used as a punching bag for Gabrielle to take out all her frustrations about nice guys on. I'm not joking. The entire beginning of the book sets up this weird dynamic where there is some sort of romantic tension between Sam Masur and Sadie Green. Sam and Sadie are literal childhood friends who go through a falling out; the natural conclusion is that there is going to be some tension. However, Sam Masur is portrayed as a pathetic, emotionally immature, ugly, indecisive, loser. He's literally crippled. Gabrielle goes at length to insinuate if not state that just because you are nice to a woman, you aren't entitled to be in a relationship with them. And I'm not kidding you, Sadie Green ends up with an almost caricature of a chad; a tall, emotionally mature, strong, smart, funny, Korean man. Oh and he's called Marx btw.
Speaking of romantic misadventures, Sadie Green's professor, mentor, Dov, is also, clearly a stand-in for Gabrielle's own experiences with older men. Sadie falls for him, even though he has a wife, and undergoes an extremally toxic relationship that culminates in the grand finale for why this book is hot fucking ass, but more on that later. In short; this book is a barely concealed cathartic writing experience for Gabrielle to complain about guys she doesn't like; nice guys and toxic old guys women fall for.
The middle part of the book is a mess, but in short it details the growing tension between Sadie and Sam, because Sadie feels that the media is giving most of credit with respect to contributions to Sam. There's that feminist lens again. This whole thing culminates in Sam metamorphosing into another caricature; this time of a tech-bro. He literally get's a buzzcut after a suicide attempt, dresses in turtlenecks, and transforms into a confident speaker in front of the press, in a seemingly miraculous reversal from his usual timid nature. And throughout this whole sub-narrative, you can feel the resentment dripping. Sadie is pissed off at Sam for being the face of the company, for getting most of the praise, for being charismatic, as opposed to her more reserved behavior in-front of the press. Again, you can literally see that the narrative is a soapbox for a progressive passive woman to complain about what they perceive as slights they receive from the world.
The ending is the most political, partisan drivel you will ever see. The book's emotional climax is a shooting conducted at their studio, wherein Marx dies, conducted by a radicalized white teenage man, over the inclusion of gay marriage in their MMO. It's so blatantly biased. When I was reading it I literally thought to myself, "Are we forgetting about Charlie Hebdo"? It's progressive fanfiction, where their enemies actually do the things they accuse them of doing.
But see, all of these pale in comparison to the scene that utterly dooms this book. Remember that toxic relationship with the mentor I mentioned? Well, apparently, that relationship had a bondage element, where the mentor would tie Sadie up and shave her pubic hair. Also, that relationship lead to an abortion. But that's not the worst part. In the midst of this description, there's a throwaway line about how the mentor experimented with pissing on her. What the fuck. It is so against the run of play of the narrative of the book. Like, seriously, why the fuck are we talking about piss kinks in a fucking book ostensibly about game dev? That's the reason why I went crazy. This scene is emblematic of the overarching problem of this book. Which is that the book is Half-Jewish, Half-Asian woman smut/bellyaching wrapped up in the most meagre of narratives. The subtext drips with resentment that only a half-jewish, half-asian women could have. Its romance scenes include the scenes that would get women hot; the older mentor, and the bondage, and the piss and the pubic hair and the Korean chad. It validates all the annoyances/"challenges " that that demographic has; about asian nice guys, and people downplaying their accomplishments, and about toxic old guys they
fall in loveget manipulated into being with, and imaginary white extremists.Another reason why I had a strong reaction to it was because at that time, a lot of sci-fantasy books were being written by asian women and recommended to me. And reading their synopses, you could tell that they had the same problems as this book.
Genuinely, we need to shut things down until we know what the fuck is going.
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I've been thinking of something similar... looking at royal road every popular webnovel has extremely obvious, in-your-face exposition, presumably because they don't expect anyone to slow down and take their reading seriously. (And also because of all the foreigners reading english language fiction by other foreigners.)
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For your next review, I suggest dialing back the levels of sneering and condescension a few notches. And drop the Bulverism. I see nothing to suggest that you stand heads and shoulders above the drooling morons (like me) who like Sanderson.
I'm glad you admitted that you read a translator's version of the book in a language you don't speak well, because I was pretty confused at some of the things you got wrong. Did you not consider that you might like Sanderson's works more if you read them properly? This is like inverse elitism, the exact opposite of saying "Oh, you haven't read The Iliad in the original Greek? Tsk, tsk."
Some of my biggest issues with your post:
Sanderson's books are not LitRPG. Weird that you would use that word without knowing what it meant. Was it just intended as a sneer?
"Take the central feature of Roshar: it’s extremely powerful storms." Well, at least I know you didn't run this through an AI before posting. But, like, Sanderson goes into great - arguably unnecessary - detail about the logistics of the Shattered Plains camps (lots of soulcasted stone buildings for shelter, soulcast grain, etc.) and the storm-evolved agriculture (flora that hides from the storms, fauna with hard carapaces, etc.). Claiming that Sanderson's worlds - at least the physical/magical aspects of them - are "arbitrary and poorly thought out" is kind of insane, as I honestly can't think of another fantasy author this would apply to less. Note that for this series especially, there's actually a team of people nitpicking his worldbuilding. I'm sure you can find real examples of mistakes on the wiki, but your take that he somehow forgot about the camps on the Shattered Plains is at the low-comprehension level of "lol, why didn't the eagles fly the ring to Mordor"?
"there is no real consequence for Jasnah’s atheism, and no real religious tension between competing religious beliefs." My jaw just about dropped at this. The culmination of Jasnah's arc is literally an assassination attempt on her by the church - did you somehow MISS this? Aside from this, IIRC you might be right that there's not a huge amount of religious tension in the first book, since all the main characters practice Vorinism, and the Radiants are still barely emerging. But it's coming. (Also, there are a couple of world-spanning religious wars in the backstory, but I can't remember how much history is mentioned in the first book.)
"[re gender] Not only is this not really how this works in the real world..." Eh, real life is often stranger than fiction. Sure, the reading and safehand thing is a bit weird, but so are lots of real-life gender divides across history. Sci-fi and fantasy have a long tradition of exploring weird speculative cultural quirks, and I don't think they all need to be justified beyond divergent cultural development.
"What I don’t understand is how this is praised as one of the best books of all time." Huh? By who? Do you happen to have some overly enthusiastic friends? If so, just be happy that they've found something they love. I think most Sanderson fans are well aware that he's not writing Literature, he's writing fun popcorn fantasy with neat worldbuilding, hard magic systems, fun little twists, and an interconnected universe. (Your MCU analogy is a good one!) GRRM is obviously a much better writer, but his books also make me feel like shit, so I bowed out of GoT early. When I read Sanderson I know I'll have a good time. This is ok.
BTW, I do know the feeling of having something recommended to me that everyone else seems to enjoy but I just couldn't. For me it was The Three-Body Problem, The Kingkiller Chronicles, and Elden Ring. Yeah, it kinda sucks. But there's no need to act so superior about it.
I didn’t feel like I was particularly sneery in my review, but YMMV. To address your points
The horses are meant to be identical to our own. Humans on Roshar are refugees from what is implied to be basically fantasy earth, horses are one of the species they managed to bring breeding populations of over. I don't remember if the first book talks about this much (possibly in the context of axehounds being called that despite no other hounds existing).
Spoilers! Is not in the first book, but I had been told as much by friends.
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TBH I'm probably just forgetting how much of the worldbuilding is in the first book, but I know plenty about the agriculture from the rest of the series. Their food, like their plants and animals, is pretty different from ours; it's heavy in grains (harvested from hard-shelled plants) with spices for flavour, and their wine is also distilled from grains. Hoid, acting as an author surrogate, comments on this a few times.
To be fair, you might be right about this one. I forget exactly what her assassin's motives were, but it wasn't an official act.
Well, Jasnah gets away with it because she's a very powerful noble, but I'm pretty sure the book goes into how it damages a lot of her relationships (even aside from attacks on her life). Anyway, I think you're reading too much into Sanderson's personal views. Vorinism in the book is a bit eclectic like our modern Christianity (for some historical reasons); I don't find it out of place at all. Other religions on Roshar have different levels of adherence.
I feel like this must be wrong, archaeologically speaking, but my history is terrible and I can't counter you with a good example.
I mean, so is Infinity War, but nobody's going around comparing it to Schindler's List...? All the high ratings are because people really enjoy it. If somebody's saying it's the next LotR, fine, you can laugh at them. I really don't think that's the modal Sanderson fan.
I agree and here's a good example. Prior to 1066, (it started to get better after) Norman male nobles were basically illiterate. Reading was unessential to their role in society and was confined to administrators and clergy. Much like Alethi society, Norman noble's role was primarily martial; hunting, fighting, and warfare. Norman women were expected to manage the estate and were consequently more literate. This is in contrast to Anglo-Saxon nobles who had a much high expectation and tradition of literacy. History clearly demonstrates who won that "fitness" contest. Literacy doesn't affect fitness in a highly martial medieval warrior society.
Thanks for this example! I stand corrected.
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As I recall, Sanderson mentioned his time on Mormon mission in Korea as an inspiration of some of the cultural world building in Stormlight, specifically. Which makes sense. The culture can stay irrational longer than most of its members can stay alive.
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What about everyone else? Imagine your reaction to someone who eats cats. That's what atheists should be treated like in a generic Western European fantasy setting with an organized religion. And I say that as an atheist.
(Going into later-book spoilers) I mean, Jasnah is kind of a social pariah because of it? She's just powerful and doesn't care. It hurts Dalinar a lot more later, when he's considered an apostate. Vorinism, after repudiating the Hierocracy, is influential but has no official power. I think the reaction to Jasnah in the series is kind of like the reaction a well-connected American congressman would have gotten for being an atheist in the 1960s.
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Thank you. I don't really care if someone doesn't like Sanderson, taste in art is subjective and it's ok to like different things. And I don't mind if someone wants to give a detailed rationale for why they didn't like the book, have at it! But it is so uncalled-for to write a long post sneering at Sanderson fans as people who just haven't read much, or are midwits, etc. One can not like something without being a dick to those who do like it.
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Sanderson is very good at what he does. What he does is crank out easily digestible lowbrow epic fantasy. Sanderson novels are the MCU films of contemporary fantasy literature. He's a self-admitted mediocre prose artist, but he has a reasonably effective plot formula and has a genuine knack for writing fantasy action scenes, which make his books fun to read if you're into that sort of thing. The gimmick-based world building and magic systems appeal to the nerdism of fantasy fandom and gives a sense of novelty to what are otherwise fairly forgettable stories.
Sanderson is YA, but aimed primarily at men in their early twenties rather than women in their early twenties. The fact that his writing is not on the level of GRRM is the point - almost every higher caliber SFF writer I can think of is also significantly heavier, which is not necessarily a plus.
I have an ungenerous theory: this is a plus for two reasons. The first is that epic fantasy is a genre that implicitly equates bulk with quality (you compare it to LotR, but LotR is quite modest in length compared to later epic fantasies), so a padded writing style helps there. A lot of readers want the pointless fluff. The second is that it makes it easier to read without paying close attention. It's okay if you miss details because Sanderson will just tell you again.
Ironically, I believe this was actually one of the things his editor reined him in on. Something like "You can't write easily digestible prose most of the time and then turn into Hemingway for three paragraphs."
Is the implication that Hemingway is not easily digestible?
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Isn't YA aimed at people in their early tens? It's just called YA to flatter their egos.
Some of the more successful fantasies of the past decade or so have been YA series Throne of Glass and Shadow and Bone (by Sarah Maas and Leigh Bardugo, respectively) and approximately 11 zillion copycats. The books are nominally aimed at people in their late teens, but it turns out people in their twenties have more money.
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I think he is referencing the perception that the "YA" audience now skews older than the people it was originally supposed to appeal to. The idea being that "YA" is now targeted at the demographic of "YA fans" (made up predominantly of adult women who are looking for YA genre tropes) and no longer appeals as much to actual teens. I haven't dug into how true this is.
As a once-young adult, young adult genre has always been trash, it's the label that your Christian mom will let you buy and read than anything else.
The genre deliberately caters more to the parents buying the books than to the kids.
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Wiki says 12-18.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_adult_literature
Most women reading (read?) the magazine called Seventeen are in their early tens, too.
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I'm not sure why it was called YA, but a central example of a YA novel is a coming-of-age novel. Aimed at someone who is one the brink of or currently transitioning to adulthood (or rather, adulthood as it was before the extremely extended adolescence we have nowadays). (Note the earlier Harry Potter books were NOT YA, they was "middle grade").
Publishers have come up with a new category called "New Adult", but the central example is still a coming-of-age novel -- only for college-age people. Reflecting the extended adolescence we have today.
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What do you think people in their mid-later tens read?
If my niece is anything to go by, manga and webtoons...
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TikTok closed captions? If you want me to be 100% serious, then fine, I'll extend YA to midtens, but I totally expect late tens to switch to regular midwit literature without YA labels.
I suppose late tens was when I switched to webliterature.
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Also, there are plenty of people (hello!) who couldn't care less about his prose. I don't read to enjoy the quality of the words themselves (no shade on those who do, it's just not my thing), I read to enjoy the content those words convey. People love to dunk on Sanderson saying his prose is mediocre, but rarely seem to consider that not everyone values that the way they do.
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You're too harsh on Sanderson I think. Sanderson is not on the level of HP slashfic. Go on AO3. You will See Things there and thoroughly reassess your opinions about writing quality.
Not much happens in Way of Kings. That's standard in fantasy. There is maybe 100 pages in the first book of the Wheel of Time where nothing happens. There is an entire book of filler in the Wheel of Time.
Books 1-3 of Stormlight were fine with moments of excellence, only by Book 4 does it degenerate into therapy-slop and an ass-pull twist. Also too much MCU inter-cosmere crossover stuff.
They have female scribes to do the reading for them? Literacy was low back in medieval times. It's no more dumb than real stuff we did like footbinding.
The reading thing bothered me because the society did not adapt around it much. Men are still constantly sending critically important letters to each other all the time, they just also keep a woman with them at all time to draft and read letters. To be fair the time in the book could be seen as a transitional period, it is revealed that several important men can read, and the impression I got was that basically all important men can read, and just engage in performative illiteracy.
Mostly I don't like it because I think it speaks to a 'culture is arbitrary' progressive/feminist mindset that is born out of the insight that, actually pink could have just as easily been a boys color, and extrapolating that out to literally every gendered aspect of society and declaring that nothing is grounded in reality.
No, it's definitely not the case that all important men can read, not counting some of the other nations where the taboo doesn't exist. At the start of the series, I think there are only two extremely iconoclastic men who can (and it's spoilery to say who).
I could be wrong, like I said it was an impression I got over the first 3.5 books. I can't remember specific details but I felt like every Kholin that we spent any time with could read, and maybe it was just vibes but I thought Sadeas probably could as well. All of the ones we know for sure can read, hide it and pretend to be illiterate publicly, so it seemed plausible to me that other characters that we don't know as well could be doing the same. Taravangian can read and write. I am not really sure of any important noble men who are ostensibly Vorin where we get any sort of firm confirmation that they can't read, like an internal monologue moment lamenting their illiteracy or something.
None of the Kholins can read, nor can Sadeas. (Dalinar starts to learn later in the series.) Check the wiki if you don't believe me. Taravangian and (I believe) Gavilar can, and they do keep it hidden... but you understand just how extreme an exception those two are, right?
EDIT: Heh, sorry, I totally forgot about Renarin (like everyone else in the story). I think he might have been learning to read even before WoK, in possible preparation for becoming an Ardent.
How can there be such a long argument about men not reading in Way of Kings without anyone mentioning glyphs? They’re literally a secondary writing form that doesn’t “count” for the religious proscription. Men both read and write using glyphs all the time. Nothing formal, granted, but they see use in a huge variety of situations, including war.
You could have stopped it there! Hehe. But you're right, glyphs fill a very large gap here.
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This was my experience of reading the Twilight series a while back, at the recommendation of IRL friends. Also the time my godmother gave me a copy of Eat, Pray, Love.
I like Sanderson better than either of those. I like him about as much as Edgar Rice Burroughs, and more than Dickens, who's bloat I can't stand, and don't read by choice. I like him more than Terry Brooks, who is also a prolific mid-tier novelist, but went downhill faster, IMO. I haven't tried reading GRR Martin, and don't intend to, even if he manages to finish Game of Thrones, which seems unlikely at this point. The premise of 100 Years War, but with dragons and some vague magical happenings seems unappealing, even if the writing is better.
Prior to reading Sanderson, I read most of the St John's Reading List, as did the friend who recommended Mistborn. Brandon Sanderson is good like Joss Whedon, not like Tolstoy. If I'm having a good time, then I'm happy that there are 100 hours of Buffyverse shows to watch, and five Rosier novels to read, because they're fun. I guess I'm also glad there are 60 hours of War and Peace available, but not in the same way. I feel like I'm taking a course and learning a lot about the world and what people are like and building out my model of life and humanity reading War and Peace. If I'm reading The Way of Kings of watching Buffy, I know I'm not really learning much of anything, but it does get me a bit out of my own head and problems, which can be good.
I guess you are probably not Mrs. Psmith, then.
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I really liked The Way of Kings but looking back on it the reasons I liked it are not that good.
For background, I was in college, depressed, and hadn't read a physical book for pleasure in a long time. In search of a familiar comfort from my childhood, I got a library card and picked up The Way of Kings because it was the first of a series and the author seemed familiar - like one of those you saw come up on Reddit threads.
I liked that the world felt like a puzzle. It was a truly alien world! And there were mysteries that happened in the past. It felt like the reader had more clues than the characters, so we should be able to put things together faster. This wound up disappointing me in the sequels, but for the first book it felt full of potential.
I liked that the book was easy to read, which makes the motivation required to read it much lesser. I think a lot of the "I enjoyed reading as a kid, but now I don't" that young adults experience is tied to attempting to read more difficult books, when as a kid they were probably reading books with simple prose and an uncomplicated plot.
But what I liked the most was that Kaladin seemed to get it. Yep, there's no point. Nothing matters. But he made the oaths to put life before death anyways. And then goodness was vindicated in the end. Trite? Sure. But it kept me off a bridge of my own.
Now my reading palate has expanded and I can see all the flaws with it. But it still holds a special place in my heart.
In my experience, it's more that as a child and teen, people were happy that I would disappear for hours straight to go read a complex novel. They were happy both that I was reading the novel, and that I was occupying myself. So I would read things like The Brothers Karamazov or Les Miserables or Light in August as an older teen, and enjoy them.
Now, as an adult with children, I read things more like The Way of Kings, because I might be interrupted at any moment, and even if I fight back, and glare, and say that I'm reading and want to keep reading, the immersion is not there. Brandon Sanderson writes in a way that invites immersion even if read late at night after a full day of work and putting the kids to bed for an hour. Emotional fatigue has the same effect. One winter, I was living alone in rural Alaska, and read everything by Edgar Rice Burroughs, because I was making up six different classes, from scratch, spanning 12 grade levels, and wasn't up to much else, but was also bored.
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Based. I feel the same about Feist's Magician, which in hindsight is almost painfully simple. But sometimes you just want simple comfort food.
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I read the first Mistborn series, knowing nothing about Brandon Sanderson, and thought "This author has to be a Mormon." I looked him up afterwards and yup, bingo.
Sanderson is a mid author who has become enormously popular through a combination of prolificacy, pure nerd appeal, and writing books that are unsophisticated yet reliably entertaining, like fantasy potato chips. I have read about a dozen Sanderson novels, and eventually they all run together. He does worldbuilding made to be written as RPG splatbooks, and his characters basically win by figuring out the exploits in whatever game system their GM has given them. The plot and character beats are the same, the dialog always has the same tone, and you can be assured it will always be
LDSComics Code Approved.I really liked The Way of Kings and thought I'd invest myself in a long epic fantasy series, but I should have known better since I never got past the first Wheel of Time book (the series which Sanderson famously finished after Robert Jordan died). The second Stormlight book was so boring and tediously Sandersony that I bailed on the series and have pretty much given up on him, though I'll probably read something else eventually. He always writes pretty good series starters, and they just get worse as the series goes on. I started the second Mistborn series and never read more than one book. Cytonic turned to shit by book three. Elantris (his debut novel) is so badly-written I question the literacy of people who praise it. Steelheart tries to be grimdark superheroes but it's pure YA. In fact, almost everything Sanderson writes is YA, but it's YA for M:tG-playing nerds, with only chaste Mormon romance and no problematic, messy, and challenging females (no, not even Vin or Shallan- powerful/crazy is not the same as scary) so dudes can enjoy it without either thinking too hard or being challenged.
I'm being critical but, like I said, I've read about a dozen of his books, so clearly he is doing something right. The ideas are cool, and there is a certain comfort in knowing what you're getting. I keep picking up the next one thinking "Maybe this one won't suck by book two." But he's a harder sell for me nowadays. Increasingly everything he writes reads like someone writing fanfic of his own work.
I have nothing but respect for his dedication and his drive, and he really, really loves what he does. I can overlook his dorkiness and Mormon cosmology that always inserts itself into the books. I ignore the whole Cosmere thing-- I am not a fan of tying every single book into the same multiverse and I don't care about how Hoid is going to appear this time, like Stan Lee always making a cameo in MCU films. But for prolific reliably entertaining authors, Stephen King and Adrian Tchaikovsky both have just as much range and are far superior writers.
The reliability thing is actually pretty great/important. I'm hesitant to read too far into the readership of places like Ao3 or Royal Road or what have you, but I actually think web serials are something that will only grow more popular in the future. A nice drip drip of book which suits the avid readers (who just assemble large numbers to follow at once, or dig up finished ones) just as well as the causal ones (for whom more than a chapter or two at a time might be a heavy lift, and are used to things releasing on a cadence). So for Sanderson, producing eminently readable books at a steady pace is a genuine superpower, and readers like it. Waits between books are always rough, but for Sanderson fans you can just go to his website and see nice circles that slowly but surely tick upwards with progress towards the next two books.
Or you can be a GRRM fan and be waiting a decade for a book that he basically has written three times over but then threw in the trash can only to start over again. It's a bit insulting. (At least Rothfuss just out and said he got depressed and hasn't even really bothered to even give fans false hope)
Put another way, beyond a minimum level of talent, if you can churn out books reliably you can make a good living and grow popular as quantity as a quality of its own.
All of this discussion, though, misses one big part of the appeal of Sanderson. Well, maybe two. The maybe is the worldbuilding. For some people an interesting world can forgive a large number of writing errors (and not all of his books suffer as terribly from length issues! The Mistborn sequel quartet of books are actually about half the length of the average original trilogy book on an individual basis). The bigger one is twistiness. Let's give Sanderson some credit, here: the Mistborn trilogy, for example, has some excellent little twists at the end of each book that are quite fun, especially if you don't know they are coming.
Japan has already figured out a clear [webnovel > light novel > manga > anime & beyond] pipeline and China & Korea look to be following that route. It seems like the self published web novel stuff is increasingly dominating the media landscape over there and I expect it could be similar in the West if entertainment companies can figure out a similar route to mass consumption.
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I am not convinced that any book in the scifi/fantasy genres should count as a normie book.
Bro, they've got wandshit #1 on the nyt bestseller list these days.
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/quicksilver-callie-hart/1145866827?ean=9781538774205#
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SF/F is as mainstream as capeshit now. Being a LotR or SW fan doesn't make you part of an isolated little nerd subculture anymore.
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Thanks for the Tchaikovsky rec! Which of his books do you recommend in particular?
If you like epic fantasy, I really like his Shadows of the Apt series (it was his debut). It's big and bloated and goes on for a while and some of the middle volumes are kind of filler, but I was never bored. For science fiction, I love Children of Time (it has David Brin/Uplift vibes), but The Final Architecture is a close second. All of his stand-alones are also good. Service Model and Alien Clay were his recent Hugo nominations and I thought they both deserved it.
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I've long thought that all the bad things in Sandersons writing are not simply being overlooked by his fans, but are actually the secrets to his success. He is writing mid-wit slop for funko pop collectors who need their hands held in order to follow the story.
As a midwit funko pop collector who usually wants his hand held when reading for pleasure and particularly enjoys reading Sanderson when his brain is fried, I agree with this take.
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I think I agree. He's the romantasy equivalent for dudes.
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I agree that the later books aren't as good, but the core of a Way of Kings is Kaladin's story. It's hard to not feel for the literal cannon fodder with the worst job in the world overcoming their own fear of failure and worthlessness. That brotherhood is very real. When he is sentenced to death, it is a touching moment.
...which, arguably, makes all of the other parallel plots feel lacking in comparison. Even Kaladin's story degrades into him 'seeking therapy' in the most soyish of terms. But it had that seed of greatness within it, that made me slog it out three books to see if it would come about again. The fact that Sandersons disappoints does not detract from the strongest themes of the original work.
I agree in some ways. Kaladin really does follow the heroes journey quite well in this book: going from depressed and suicidal to a real leader of men with supernatural powers. However, it's not like this plot line hasn't been done a million times before, a lot of ways in a much more satisfying way because the characters involved are real people instead of cut outs. Kaladin doesn't really have to change his worldview at all throughout the book: he's still completely obsessed with saving people, he's just gained the powers to actually do so effectively. Contrast this to something like Joe Abercrombie's A Shattered Sea YA series where the main characters are also a bunch of pathetic slaves, but actually have to change their outlook on the world and really sacrifice to grow in strength (whereas Kaladin just gets a bunch of Deus Ex machina powers). Any shonen anime (Attack on Titan, etc.) has the same arc. For a non-fantasy example, consider the movie Cool Runnings about the development of a Jamaican bobsledding team. I'm not particularly convinced that Kaladin's story is anything special compared to the wider world of literature.
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Thanks for the review, it reminded me of why i got about 200 pages in and never bothered to finish it. Definitely drove home why having a good editor is important.
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