10-30-2021, 09:45 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-31-2021, 08:30 AM by Mattias Westlund.)
(10-29-2021, 07:55 PM)Nayrb Wrote: I've been sneaking fun reading as I've been working on this thesis, and I've still been reading the Black Company books. They are fun, but sometimes I also find that they just sort of gloss over atmosphere in favor of character intrigue and plot. It's really not bad, just a different style. But, yeah, sometimes it kills the mood a little. Erikson does the same thing, but then he'll throw something at you that just HAS to be a spectacle, like a huge mysterious statue or something. When you get those kinds of things, it makes up for the fact that the city is just "the city," or whatever.
Sanderson does pretty much just that. His characters are cardboard cutouts, his worldbuilding largely amounts to "oh, this is a thing btw", yet when the time comes to describe something that interests him he can spend five pages detailing how someone performs a feat of magic and how the whole underlying system works. Yes, it's a style and it isn't bad per se, it's just not my cup of tea. To me it feels like Sanderson focuses on the wrong things, making his worlds and the people inhabiting them feel like soulless constructs that only exist to forward the plot. I'm perfectly happy to read more terse prose but there needs to be balance in terms of what gets detailed descriptions and what doesn't, I think. Some flavor once in a while as opposed to just matter-of-fact statements is nice too. Like, I dunno, instead of At the mouth of the river was an ugly, run-down city, why not The city huddled at the mouth of the river like a kicked dog or something like that. SOMETHING.
(10-29-2021, 07:55 PM)Nayrb Wrote: I think as long as they don't write like Raymond E. Feist, it'll probably OK
You know, I'm pretty sure I've read some book by Feist but I don't recall which one it was or what it was about. Isn't he the guy who wrote the story for Betrayal at Krondor? Whatever book I read, it obviously didn't make want me to check out the rest of his work.
(10-29-2021, 07:55 PM)Nayrb Wrote: Recently, I was in a SF mood, and I bought a book by Ben Bova (I work at a used bookstore, and with my employee discount, it's peanuts to take a chance on paperbacks). It was awful. I guess he was an influential editor, but that must have been his main skill. (So, if we're starting a list of authors to avoid, put him on there, ha!) Reason I bring that up is that I just hate it when there's some author with a lot of praise that I can't wait to check out, and then I'm unimpressed.
Yeah, I definitely feel that way about Sanderson. I'm not saying people should avoid him, I just expected more from someone in the upper echelon of fantasy literature. I'm not a huge fan of GRRM either, speaking of big names in modern fantasy, but at least the guy has a bit more flair to his storytelling.