Brandon Sanderson thread

Discussion in 'TMB Book Club' started by Gin Buckets, May 22, 2015.

  1. Gin Buckets

    Gin Buckets Well-Known Member
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    We talk about him enough, so he deserves his own thread.

    What is the Alloy of Law? It says it's part of Mistborn, and it's always a front page suggestion for me on audble.com. Has anyone read it?
     
  2. Jax Teller

    Jax Teller Well-Known Member
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    It's part of the Mistborn world. And yes definitely read it. I need to buy the one that just came out and read it as well.
     
  3. Jax Teller

    Jax Teller Well-Known Member
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    By the way, I wish more authors wrote on the scale he does as far as number of books put out. I mean just look at this list....

    Alcatraz series[edit]
    This series is not part of the Cosmere.

    Dark One series[edit]
    The series is about a boy who learns he is destined to destroy the world. The series was announced in December 2014, but no information on number of volumes or release dates were included.[36]

    Dragonsteel series[edit]
    This series will tell the backstory of Hoid, a key figure in the Cosmere, the universe in which most of Sanderson's stories are set.[36]

    Elantris series[edit]
    This series is a part of the Cosmere.

    Infinity Blade series[edit]
    These works are based on the action role-playing iOS video game Infinity Blade, developed by Chair Entertainment and Epic Games. This series is not a part of the Cosmere.

    Legion series[edit]
    This series is not a part of the Cosmere.

    Mistborn series[edit]
    Main article: Mistborn series
    In addition to the original trilogy and the Wax and Wayne series, there are at least two other trilogies planned in the Mistborn series.[36] This series is a part of the Cosmere.

    Original trilogy[edit]
    Wax and Wayne series[edit]
    Alloy of Law is a standalone work, the rest of the books form a trilogy.[36]

    Reckoners series[edit]
    Main article: The Reckoners
    This series is not a part of the Cosmere.

    A short story titled Mitosis was released in 2013 and takes place between the first and second book.

    Rithmatist series[edit]
    Main article: Rithmatist series
    This series is not a part of the Cosmere.

    The Stormlight Archive[edit]
    Main article: The Stormlight Archive
    This series is a part of the Cosmere.

    Warbreaker series[edit]
    This series is a part of the Cosmere.

    Standalone short works[edit]
    • Firstborn (2008) (short story, published on Tor.com)[49]
    • Defending Elysium (2008) (short story, published in October/November 2008 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction)[50]
    • Perfect State (2015) (non-Cosmere novella)[51]
    • Silence Divine (working title, forthcoming) (novella)[36]
    • Adamant (working title, forthcoming) (novella)[36]
    Collaborative works[edit]
     
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  4. The Blackfish

    The Blackfish The Fish in Black
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    The new one isn't out yet.
     
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  5. The Blackfish

    The Blackfish The Fish in Black
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    I'm a huge Sanderson fan. I've read just about everything of his.

    The Final Empire
    Well of Ascension
    Hero of Ages
    Alloy of Law
    Way of Kings
    Words of Radience
    Elantris
    The Hope of Elantris
    Warbreaker
    Steelheart
    Mitosis
    Firefight
    Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell*
    Legion
    Legion: Skin Deep
    The Emperor's Soul

    *Don't see this one on the above list. :idk:

    Not sure if I'll do Alcatraz as they're books for kids I believe. Rithmatist is next for me unless the next Mistborn book comes out before I get to it.
     
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  6. Jax Teller

    Jax Teller Well-Known Member
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    Yea I realized that after I posted. Due out in Oct I think?
     
  7. Jax Teller

    Jax Teller Well-Known Member
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    Also, it's pretty awesome that if you send a book to his office, he will sign it and send it back to you. I bet Martin's greedy ass wouldn't do that. I got the final WoT signed by him, thinking about contacting them and getting the first books in his series that I've read signed. Like the first Mistborn and Stormlight Archive signed. I don't think they even charged me for it, just shipping.
     
  8. Jax Teller

    Jax Teller Well-Known Member
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    The Blackfish how would you rank his other books that are out? Not counting Mistborn and Stormlight as we already know how awesome those are.
     
  9. The Blackfish

    The Blackfish The Fish in Black
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    This is difficult. If you ask me again tomorrow I would probably rank them differently.

    1. Words of Radiance
    2. Way of Kings
    3. The Final Empire
    4. Alloy of Law
    5. Hero of Ages
    6. Well of Ascension
    7. The Emperor's Soul
    8. Steelheart
    9. Firefight
    10. Warbreaker
    11. Elantris
    12. Legion
    13. Legion: Skin Deep
    14. Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell
    15. Mitosis
    16. The Hope of Elantris
     
  10. Jax Teller

    Jax Teller Well-Known Member
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    Quoted minus the ones I had already read lol. Looking to read some more of his when I take a break from the Malazan.
     
  11. The Blackfish

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    The Final Empire is the first Mistborn book. You've read it
     
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  12. The Blackfish

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    1. The Emperor's Soul - Novella set in the Elantris world, you don't need to read Elantris first though. I usually don't rate novellas very high but I gave this one 5 stars
    2. Steelheart - (non cosmere) Young Adult novel, what if humans randomly got super powers but only evil people. Very fun
    3. Firefight - (non cosmere) Sequel to Steelheart
    4. Warbreaker - Stand Alone novel that I believe has a lot of impact on his cosmeres. 3 characters you've met in Stormlight Archive (although maybe not by the same name)
    5. Elantris - Sanderson's first novel. A once great kingdom was beset by a sort of ruin and all the citizens are now blighted. A new kingdom now resides outside of it and randomly citizens come down with the blight and are exiled to the old city.
    6. Legion - (non cosmere) a novel about a man with a type of what seems to be paranoid schizophrenia creates imaginary people that are subject matter experts on things he needs to know, so essentially he is the smartest person ever and solves mysteries
    7. Legion: Skin Deep (non cosmere) - sequel to Legion
    8. Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell - short story about people living by a forest full of malicious spirits
    9. Mitosis - (non cosmere) short story that takes place between Steelheart and Firefight
    10. The Hope of Elantris - essentially an epilogue to Elantris
     
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  13. Gonff

    Gonff Prince of Mousethieves
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    Sanderson is a boss. Big fan of him and I love the idea of his Cosmere.
     
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  14. Jax Teller

    Jax Teller Well-Known Member
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  15. RonBurgundy

    RonBurgundy Well-Known Member

    Do we have a Stormlight Archives thread? I'm ~25% through TWOK and I fucking love it.
     
  16. The Blackfish

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    We did at one point. Idk if it got lost or not.
     
  17. billdozer

    billdozer Well-Known Member
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    Sanderson on some of his cosmere plans, mainly around Mistborn. Thought it was interesting that he's planning on taking Mistborn to space eventually:

    Shadows of Self is out today in hardcover in the UK, and I’m touring the UK this week and next. I talked in a previous post about the book release, and will point you toward that one if you’ve not read much of the Mistborn series. (Or if you’re not interested in the writing side of why I make the decisions I do.)

    However, for those who want to dig deeper into what’s going on here, I wanted to talk about the Mistborn series as a whole. As I was developing the Cosmere, I knew I wanted a few threads to span the entire mega-sequence, which was going to cover thousands of years. For this reason, I built into the outline a couple of “core” series.

    One of these is the Stormlight Archive, where we have the Heralds who span ages, and which I eventually decided to break into two distinct arcs. Other series touch on the idea of long-standing characters. Dragonsteel, for example, will be kind of a bookend series. We’ll get novels on Hoid’s origins, then jump all the way to the end and get novels from his viewpoint late in the entire Cosmere sequence.

    With Mistborn, I wanted to do something different. For aesthetic reasons, I wanted a fantasy world that changed, that grew updated and modernized. One of my personal mandates as a lover of the epic fantasy genre is to try to take what has been done before and push the stories in directions I think the genre hasn’t looked at often enough.

    I pitched Mistorn as a series of trilogies, which many of you probably already know. Each series was to cover a different era in the world (Scadrial), and each was to be about different characters—starting with an epic fantasy trilogy, expanding eventually into a space opera science fiction series. The magic would be the common thread here, rather than specific characters.

    There was a greater purpose to this, more than just wanting a fantasy world that modernized. The point was to actually show the passage of time in the universe, and to make you, the reader, feel the weight of that passage.

    Some of the Cosmere characters, like Hoid, are functionally immortal—in that, at least, they don’t age and are rather difficult to kill. I felt that when readers approached a grand epic where none of the characters changed, the experience would be lacking something. I could tell you things were changing, but if there were always the same characters, it wouldn’t feel like the universe was aging.

    I think you get this problem already in some big epic series. (More on that below.) Here, I wanted the Cosmere to evoke a sense of moving through eras. There will be some continuing threads. (A few characters from Mistborn will be weaved through the entire thing.) However, to make this all work, I decided I needed to do something daring—I needed to reboot the Mistborn world periodically with new characters and new settings.

    As a warning to writers out there, this is usually considered a publishing faux pas. Readers like continuing characters, and creating breaks as I have done (and will continue to do) often undermines sales. Readers naturally feel a momentum in finishing a series, and if you give them a break point—with everything wrapped up—the push to get out the door and read the next book isn’t there.

    However, while that’s the rule of thumb in publishing, I worry it has led to poor artistic decisions in some series. When series get very long, a weird thing seems to happen in reader brains. While they want to read about their familiar characters, they’ve sometimes started to feel annoyed by them—and are really just reading to find out what happens to them in the end.

    While we love continuing characters, we also seem to get fatigued with them. (Unless the author does some clever things, like how Jim Butcher has handled Dresden.)

    The Mistborn reboots are one method I’m using to combat this. Reader reactions, through both reviews and sales of my first reboot, have so far been positive—but I know my publisher is very concerned about this strategy.

    I’m confident nonetheless that it is best for the long-term health of Mistborn.

    So how does Shadows of Self fit into this entire framework? Well, The Alloy of Law was (kind of) an accident. It wasn’t planned to be part of the original sequence of Mistborn sub-series, but it’s also an excellent example of why you shouldn’t feel too married to an outline.

    As I was working on Stormlight, I realized that it was going to be a long time (perhaps ten years) between The Hero of Ages and my ability to get back to the Mistborn world to do the first of the “second” series. I sat down to write a short story as a means of offering a stop-gap, but was disappointed with it.

    That’s when I took a step back and asked myself how I really wanted to approach all of this. What I decided upon was that I wanted a new Mistborn series that acted as a counterpoint to Stormlight. Something for Mistborn fans that pulled out some of the core concepts of the series (Allomantic action, heist stories) and mashed them with another genre—as opposed to epic fantasy—to produce something that would be faster-paced than Stormlight, and also tighter in focus.

    That way, I could alternate big epics and tight, action character stories. I could keep Mistborn alive in people’s minds while I labored on Stormlight.

    The Alloy of Law was the result, an experiment in a second-era Mistborn series between the first two planned trilogies. The first book wasn’t truly accidental, then, nor did it come from a short story. (I’ve seen both reported, and have tacitly perpetuated the idea, as it’s easier than explaining the entire process.) I chose early 20th century because it’s a time period I find fascinating, and was intrigued by the idea of the little-city lawman pulled into big-city politics.

    Alloy wasn’t an accident, but it was an experiment. I wasn’t certain how readers would respond to not only a soft reboot like this, but also one that changed tone (from epic to focused). Was it too much?

    The results have been fantastic, I’m happy to report. The Alloy of Law is consistently the bestselling book in my backlists, barring the original trilogy or Stormlight books. Fan reaction in person was enthusiastic.

    So I sat down and plotted a proper trilogy with Wax and Wayne. That trilogy starts with Shadows of Self. It connects to The Alloy of Law directly, but is more intentional in where it is taking the characters, pointed toward a three-book arc. (The Bands of Mourning, the second of the arc, comes out in January. The final book of the arc hasn’t been written yet; I’ll dig into that after Stormlight 3 is done.)

    You can see why this is sometimes hard to explain. What is Shadows of Self? It’s the start of a trilogy within a series that comes after a one-off with the same characters that was in turn a sequel to an original trilogy with different characters.

    But I promise that it is awesome.

    Hopefully this digging into my own writing psychology has been useful (or at least interesting) for you readers and writers out there. As always, thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy Shadows of Self!
     
  18. Gonff

    Gonff Prince of Mousethieves
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    I bought Shadows of Self. I'm trying to decide between reading it or Elantris next.
     
  19. RonBurgundy

    RonBurgundy Well-Known Member

    Woah, the second book is coming in January?

    Also I'm reading Alloy of Law right now, it's not part of the trilogy but has the same characters and setting??
     
  20. Gonff

    Gonff Prince of Mousethieves
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    Elantris it is.
     
  21. Gonff

    Gonff Prince of Mousethieves
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    Pretty sure he wrote this one and the next one at the same time.

    Yes, Alloys of Law is a standalone with the same characters in this new trilogy.
     
  22. RonBurgundy

    RonBurgundy Well-Known Member

    Is the trilogy related to the plot of AoL?
     
  23. Gonff

    Gonff Prince of Mousethieves
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    That long article above said it's connected.
     
  24. RonBurgundy

    RonBurgundy Well-Known Member

    I only ask because I finished AoL yesterday and there's a lot of unfinished business at the end
     
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  25. Gin Buckets

    Gin Buckets Well-Known Member
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    I still haven't read Alloys of Law, but looks like it'll be next on my list. I've loved pretty much everything Sanderson has published, so why not.
     
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  26. The Blackfish

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    I was put off by the addition of guns at first, but allomancy really changes the nature of guns and I really enjoyed it. Wax and Wayne are fantastic characters.
     
  27. RonBurgundy

    RonBurgundy Well-Known Member

    I liked it exactly the same as the other Mistborn novels, 7.5/10.

    Wayne is a great character, I thought his female characters were pretty shitty compared to his usual quality.

    My biggest complaint was actually his action scenes, which are usually Sanderson's best features. There were a couple that were too much for me, way to over the top.

    Fucking shooting one bullet into another that was slowed and deflected by the speed bubble, wrapping around and hitting the half koloss in the head, are you fucking serious with that bullshit wizardry?
     
  28. MORBO!

    MORBO! Hello, Tiny Man. I WILL DESTROY YOU!!!!
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    Okay, so I listened to the Elantris audiobook, and I'm a little confused. It was 27 hours, and the last chapter had...

    Raoden meeting Sarene in Elantris just after she was "taken by the Shaod."

    Now I'm almost certain there's more, as the end of the audiobook said there was a part 2, but I don't see that anywhere. I looked up the book's wiki, and I see that there are several more chapters to go.

    I downloaded the book from Audible, so I feel like I shouldn't have gotten some shitty copy. Where is the second half of the book? It doesn't just end there, right?

    I should add that this was the Recorded Books version. Not the three part Graphic Audio version.
     
  29. Gonff

    Gonff Prince of Mousethieves
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    No, it doesn't end there.
     
  30. MORBO!

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    Well wtf.
     
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  31. RonBurgundy

    RonBurgundy Well-Known Member

    Has anyone read Shadows of Self yet?
     
  32. The Blackfish

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    I haven't. I'm 75% through Erikson's The Bonehunters (long as fuck) then I'm reading SoS
     
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  33. Gonff

    Gonff Prince of Mousethieves
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    Reading it after Words of Radiance. So it'll be a while. Hopefully I'll get to it before the month is out. I'll definitely post thoughts.
     
    #34 Gonff, Nov 6, 2015
    Last edited: Nov 6, 2015
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  34. MORBO!

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    I haven't figured it out. I have no idea why the audible version just basically cuts out two-thirds of the way through, says that the download was broken into two parts, and then there's no indication that a second part is available. such bullshit.

    The good news is that I found the Graphic Audio version on Youtube (it has the different voice actors, music, sound effects, etc.). I don't like it as much, but I just need to get through the last 4 hours of the damn story.
     
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  35. MORBO!

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    Starting Mistborn trilogy today. Wish me luck.
     
  36. Gonff

    Gonff Prince of Mousethieves
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    I loved them. They seem to be somewhat polarizing, but I really enjoyed them.
     
  37. RonBurgundy

    RonBurgundy Well-Known Member

    Fun series, not even close to SLA but I enjoyed all 3 fairly equally. End of 3 got weird IMO.
     
  38. RonBurgundy

    RonBurgundy Well-Known Member

    Started Shadows of Self, solid as always.

    Love the Mistborn universe, glad he wrote more books in it.
     
  39. Gonff

    Gonff Prince of Mousethieves
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    I'll start it within the week. I'm ready for Mistborn on space ships, but that may be a while.
     
  40. The Blackfish

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    40% through SoS. Enjoying it.
     
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  41. Gonff

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    I thought SoS was good and that it ended strong. It's not as good as the original trilogy, but it's a fun read and I enjoy the flintlock fantasy genre.
     
  42. BayouMafia

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    Started last night. I loved Alloy of Law and this one so far isn't quite up at that level but I'm still enjoying it.
     
  43. RonBurgundy

    RonBurgundy Well-Known Member

    Finally getting around to going through Shadows of Self. I see Hoid makes an appearance...
     
  44. The Blackfish

    The Blackfish The Fish in Black
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    Hoid is in all Brandon Sanderson's cosmere novels. I haven't noticed him in Shadows of Self yet, but fuck I'm almost done (84%) and I probably wasn't paying enough attention. Now having to go back and think about what I may have missed.
     
  45. The Blackfish

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    Elantris 10th Anniversary leather bound edition on sale on Sanderson's website. Order by today to have it autographed, numbered and personalized. Order by next Monday for just autographed and numbered.

    $100 though.
     
  46. RonBurgundy

    RonBurgundy Well-Known Member

    I didn't notice him in the first 3 Mistborn or in Alloy of Law.

    He's a coachman at around 28%
     
  47. The Blackfish

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    You can find his wiki page on coppermind or 17th shard and it will list who he was in every novel. Brandon basically had to tell us who he was in Mistborn
     
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  48. The Blackfish

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    Went back to around 28% in my kindle app and didn't see anything between like 27 and 30 that caught my eye, I was just skimming though
     
  49. RonBurgundy

    RonBurgundy Well-Known Member

    Sorry 31%.

    “Never touch the stuff myself,” Wayne said. “Causes headaches. Hey, Hoid. Can I catch a ride up there with you?”