TTT is awesome for those that haven’t read it
Wife liked it and I started reading blind. Was great
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Nothing untrue here. Make it to the end though if you’re that far. His highest highs are how the books finish.
Though I will say the characters in Way of Kings are much better than his previous books. They at least seem non-flat.
The next book is the favorite of many fwiw.
The Way of Kings (Book One of the Stormlight Archive) by Brandon Sanderson
I’m a fan of A Song of Ice and Fire, the books on which Game of Thrones was based, and hang out on the ASOIAF subreddit a bit. Periodically there are “what else should I read if I like ASOIAF?” threads. Stormlight Archive is one of the perennial suggestions. I was wary of Sanderson, who seems like he churns out a lot of generic fantasy, but I thought I’d give it a go.
I had mixed feelings about this. The worldbuilding and narrative construction are very good; the book doles out new information at a comfortable pace. It’s engaging, you want to know what happens next, and the ending is very well done. It’s exciting, a ton of revelations happen in quick succession, and it leaves me wanting to know where the plot is going.
So much for the praise… now the criticism.
The characters are dull. There are three major characters. One is called Kaladin Stormblessed and is exactly as much of a generic fantasy hero as he sounds. He’s good at fighting, charismatic, skilled at healing people, noble, stoic, resourceful, and also (surprise!) some sort of “chosen one” who is developing new powers. Another is Dalinar Kohlin, a sort of heroic older warrior-lord figure in the vein of Theoden from LOTR. These two really don’t have many flaws; Dalinar is kind of stubborn, but that’s it. The third character is a woman, Shallan, who is maybe slightly more interesting, although the long pages of supposedly “witty” conversations she had with others were painful to sit through.
Then there’s the prose. Sanderson is quite a poor stylist and the writing suffers from another problem which I saw someone in another review accurately sum up as “Sanderson doesn’t trust his readers”. Nothing can be left as subtext in a scene; characters’ motivations and emotions are spelt out explicitly. Everything is repeated over and over, be it events from a character’s past, or basic facts about the world, or repeated descriptions of identical events (for example, people’s eyes burning out when killed by shardblade). The incidence of this where I finally lost my mind was near the end of the book, when during a transaction involving an item called a shardblade (people who have read the book will know what I’m talking about here) a character says out loud that shardblades are so expensive as to be worth a kingdom. DUDE WE KNOW! EVERYONE IN THE ROOM YOU’RE SPEAKING TO KNOWS THIS, EVEN THE CHILDREN! SHARDBLADES HAVE BEEN A MAJOR FEATURE OF THE BOOK, EVEN THE BIGGEST MORON READER IN THE WORLD KNOWS THE BASIC FACTS ABOUT THEM AFTER 1500 PAGES OF EXPLANATION! It is so tilting and I don’t get how this sort of thing made it through editing.
ASOIAF it is not, but at least it’s probably going to get an ending. I will at least read the second one, but I think I’m going to take a break first and try out some other epic series. Other recommendations in these threads have included Realm of the Elderlings, The Expanse, Malazan Book of the Fallen, and Memory, Sorrow and Thorn. If anyone has read any of those, comments sought.
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If you’re taking suggestions, my favorite sci-fi/fantasy trilogy is the Coldfire trilogy by CS Friedman. It has a sci-fi basis for why people are living in a fantasy setting with magic. Great world building, incredible prose, and one of the best endings to a series I’ve ever read.
She recently expanded the series with a prequel called Nightborne.
I also loved her other fantasy series the Magister trilogy.
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this is a very accurate review
still my favorite fantasy series 
the next one is the best one, hopefully you can make it through
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They re-recorded and I just finished listening to the first book in the Belgariad by David Eddings, originally published starting in the 80’s and probably finishing after I got out of college (the first time). Classic fantasy but from before all the tropes became stale, may be where some of them came from. May not have aged very well vis a vi women stuff. Some characters a little rapey as was the custom at the time, and it is usually problematic when entire races of people are the baddies. Not much nuance to the good and bad guys. But the world building is fun and the dialog was good enough I used to re-read the 12 book series every couple of years. “There is only so much time you can spend in the company of a dead pig before becoming depressed” is just a great line.
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I’ll think about it, got a lotta options.
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Eddings is kind of an exemplar of what I don’t like in fantasy. I am not generally a big reader of the genre, I am just making an effort now to try out some a few epic series in case one of them is good. One of the reasons I was skeptical of Sanderson is that I kind of despise Wheel of Time and if he was chosen to finish it, I figured he must be a guy who writes similar stuff. The Way of Kings, despite its faults, is certainly better than Wheel of Time. Sanderson can at least write female characters who are not variations on the theme of “massive bitch”. I once read that Robert Jordan based all his female characters on his wife, which is hilarious.
Side note, also quite funny is that Eddings was born in the very beautiful Snohomish, Washington, then made a pile of money, and chose to live out his days in… Carson City, Nevada? Very odd.
When I first read the Belgariad I was still very much into sword and sorcery fantasy, and absolutely loved the series, but by the time he finished the series I had grown a bit tired of the genre, too much D&D, too many movies, I’m still not much of a fan of it, but nostalgia brings me back to this series.
Realm of the Ederlings is a great series but not really anything like ASOIAF. Hobb made me care about the characters so much that i cried a few times throughout it which is something no other fanatasy author has done.
He also has non-binary, trans, autistic, multi-personality, depressed, etc. characters too that aren’t completely 1-D or defined by those traits. One of his strengths.
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The Expanse is good sci-fi. Also a tv show on prime.
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The LGBTQ focused magazine Prism and Pen is publishing one of my short stories in serialized form. Here is part 1.
Parts 2 and 3 come out Tuesday and Thursday.
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tldr agree with everything you said. I don’t read tons of fantasy but love it in principle and when it’s good it plugs me straight into into how fantastic reading felt to my little kid brain being initiated with Chronicles of Prydain, The Dark is Rising, The Hobbit, etc etc. I still love reading YA.
I haven’t read Stormlight in fifteen years but definitely liked TWoK and for me it was easily above replacement-level especially the structure. But the series didn’t get its hooks in me and I bailed somewhere in book two. Also those books are concrete bricks and I live in relentless fear of getting plot committed to a wheelbarrow of bricks
I can’t 100% vouch for this because it’s been so long but at the time I remember thinking that the Patrick Rothfuss Kingkiller books were way more my jam. But I guess you’ve tried those already? It’s obviously another of these forever unfinished series if that’s a problem. Was sorta relieved when the Lin-Manuel Miranda adaptation fell through.
speaking of cursed adaptations I think they’re finally closing in on Blood Meridian. Oof, man, short of a peak Villeneuve- / Nolan- / PTA-level fever dream, that’s just never gonna work. I hate how supercilious this sounds but for me that’s the kind of deal where anyone attracted to the project is almost by definition wrong for the project, Exhibit A being James Franco jesus harpooned christ I’m glad that collapsed. If they really have to do it, then I hope they at least audition Glenn Fleshler for the Judge. But it’s still fucked
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Kingkiller chronicle going unfinished is a damn tragedy right up there with ASOIAF.
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So true. For me it would need to be the Coens, John Hillcoat, or Ridley Scott, all three who have proven they can knock a Cormac adaptation out of the park.
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—Coen bros crushed it so hard, source material really suited them too
—I need to reread & rewatch The Road, Oprah made it so popular and that’s a good thing, but for me the book felt like lower-tier CM and the film wasn’t my favorite. Might be on me. I’ll give them another try. And Risky you’re in luck since Hillcoat is the dude attached to Blood Meridian. (Also the two of them were good friends.)
—haven’t seen The Counselor and I honestly sorta forgot all about it, definitely didn’t know that CM wrote the screenplay, thanks I’ll check it out
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I really liked the first Kingkiller book and then thought the second one was fine at best, so the death of the series didnt affect me. I could already see him running out of ideas.
The Dark is Rising is a deep cut, I loved that as a kid, its like crack cocaine for kid brains.
If you love YA still and have not read the Earthsea series, the first trilogy in particular, get reading. I really love it. I sometimes pick it up and read a random passage and just keep reading until the end because the writing just flows. Its poetic.
Halfway through listening to Empire of Silence, the first book in the Sun Eater series by Christopher Ruocchio. So far it is keeping me interested, was a little disturbed to see there are like 15 books in the series so far with “book 1.5” nonsense going on. Set in the future it is supposed to be space opera and “epic fantasy” but so far we’ve just left the planet. Everyone trains with swords because there are personal shields that stop fast stuff like bullets… I’d rather he figured out a way that blasters didn’t just instantly kill you like a stun setting or something. Interesting mix of technology, the political system pretty feudal with an Emperor and various under titles controlling planets and whatnot who can have higher technology and serfs who cannot.
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Part 2
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