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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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