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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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