Timewaster's Guide Archive

The single vote for Elantris is from me, unless I've gone crazy. I've read all of Brandons books apart from the Alcatraz ones, and Elantris is still my favourite.

It's not really because of the characters or the plot. And Brandons writing is far better in his later books (Warbreaker, mmm delicious Warbreaker). I love Elantris because of it's setting, and the magic. I especially love the little touches, like with the Elantrians getting wounds that don't heal and slowly drive them insane. Brandon is always coming up with concepts I've never heard of or imagined before, and sometimes I find myself wondering whether he is insane.

It's funny, really. I tried explaining Mistborn to a friend at work. "Yeah there's these dudes who basically swallow flakes of metal and it lets them fight like ninjas. Honestly. It's so great I bought a signed first edition.. What? Why are you looking at me like that? They fight like ninjas. Yeah I said they swallow metal. They burn it in their stomachs. Ninjas. Ninjas!!"

Thank god I didn't have to try and explain Warbreaker. "Uh, well, these dudes get these things called breaths, which are kinda like peoples souls but not really and everyone starts with one, and they can put them in objects and tell them to do things. Like throwing a rope and telling it to 'strangle things'. Honestly it's really cool."

Maybe he just puts a bunch of words in a hat and draws them out. Huh, let's try it. *rummages in a hat*

Flowers, sniffing, reality. Okay... So Sniffers (the magic users) snort the distilled scent of different flowers and use it to warp the fabric of reality. *rummages again*

God Emperor, Gardener, Dragon, Twilight. So in a world set in constant twilight (where it's hard to find the good flowers, like Daffodils which let you warp time) there is an evil God Emperor (The Gardener) who is really a dragon and he sucked out all the sunlight for his own personal garden.

So now we need the Brandon twist. *looks in the hat* Good, evil, flowers. So it turns out that the Gardener is actually good, since without the perpetual twilight Sniffers would destroy the world by rampantly warping reality, but in another twist he's actually evil because he eats everyone who enters his lair, and plans to return the sunlight (which he thinks is good but is evil because the Sniffers will blow up the planet). So he's good and evil. And in a final twist, this is all taking place on a giant flower, which another Sniffer sniffs on another world, which is also a giant flower, and the image repeats for all eternity until one of them sneezes and ruins it. This also all takes place in 60 pages after 800 of buildup.

Damn. This is why Brandon writes the books huh. Oh well.

Doing it in the first 20 pages is understandable.  500 pages into the 3rd book is not.  Repeating the same info within 2 pages of each other is not.  I've read many books and I have NEVER seen anything like what was in these...

Then whatever you do, don't read Talon of the Silver Hawk by Raymond E. Feist. You will hear Talon repeat the same facts about his races genocide, half the time within a page of the last mention, that you will probably go insane. I don't even want to count how many times he's referred to the fact that his people used to bathe in lakes and streams...

But anywho, the only repetition I noticed was usually Sazed thinking the same thing over and over. The rest of it I probably just glossed over. Once your mind has been burned by Feist nothing else is really quite so in your face.

Thanks Ookla. This is one case where I'm happy I got the American covers, they're pretty good.

Now I just have to hope Amazon stocks the UK WOT cover, I don't want KHHHHAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNN staring at me every time I put the book down.

I don't have an order of who's my favourite, so off the top of my head...

David Eddings (The characters in the Belgariad are brilliant. He may not be the most sophisticated writer, but along with Tolkien he got me into fantasy.)

Raymond E. Feist (Again, not the most sophisticated author,  but my old English teacher gave me a copy of Magician, and I love the whole Riftwar universe. He needs to write more about Kelewan, though.)

George R.R. Martin (Wish he'd write faster)

Frank Herbert (I love Dune)

Robert Jordan

Brandon Sanderson

My all time favourite though has got to be Janny Wurts. The Wars of Light and Shadow is the best fantasy series I've ever read, and her standalone books are great too, especially Master of Whitestorm.

But what if, prior to reading the book, you learned that the editors / authors Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmed & Ahmed Khan supported the 9/11 attacks as the righteous judgment of Allah delivered upon the wicked and/or regarded Osama bin Ladin as a hero? Would you be available to divorce yourself from this knowledge as you read the book, even if nothing of the sort was directly stated in the book?

Ignoring the rest of this debate for now, sort of, this is actually quite an intriguing question. Honestly, I've always taken books/films/games and so on at face value. I don't think the background or activities of an author should have any bearing on me personally while I read the stories they've told. The 9/11 question is a bit tricky, since I'm Scottish and it doesn't hold the same sway over me as it would an American, although I still do think it was a terrible atrocity.

You could mess around this question in a million ways though. Like what if the 9/11 attacks had also killed my brother, and the guys who wrote the book were in total support? Then I'd probably burn it.

But really, you could throw it away the other way I suppose. Would you read a book by an American who was in favor of the Iraq war, that's caused so much civilian collateral damage and killed so many people? It's easy to make things sound bad if you feel like it.

Anywho, like I said earlier, it's a matter of opinion. If you do believe about getting an understanding about an authors background to help understand their books, or whatever it is exactly you like doing, then feel free.

For fun's sake, how would you answer the question you asked, about the book and 9/11?

Skeptic, this is basically one of the biggest sort of problems you can run into when following an author/actor/whoever. When you find out about too much about them and their personal life, sometimes you can't stop your brain automatically nagging at you about it every time you see more of their work.

If you take for example the other day when I was reading some movie reviews from a reviewer I like, he mentions halfway through in his own words that he's a 'Big fat virgin'. This could potentially change the way I read his articles, and think about them. But then common sense kicked in. Why do I like his articles? Because of the way that he writes them. His life so far has built him into the person he is, and that's all developed his writing style, so I don't care what he does in his personal time.

Same goes with Brandon. I didn't know he was a Mormon until you brought it up, even though I've been following him and reading all I can. Or maybe I did read that he was a Mormon but just frankly didn't care enough about it to take it into account.

In another author example. Raymond E. Feist is a big D&D fan, and at times it is very obvious that this is an influence on his work. I have no problems with D&D, I quite it and all the video games based on it. This influence obviously adds to his writing style, and he's non the worse for it.

But what I'm trying to say is everyones writing style or anything else they do is built on the experiences of everything they've done and seen in their life. Brandon's only influence isn't just Mormonism. I might be disturbed if all of the swordfights in his books were based on serial-killer murders he undertakes on dark stormy nights, but I doubt that's happend.

And I'd also like to point out:

Frankly I wish Mr. Sanderson had kept his personal beliefs regarding religion private, as now I may see things that aren't even there when I read his next book.

I just had a browse through all of his books that I own, and I can't find any reference to his beliefs. I feel like pointing out:  It's your own fault!

Regardless, you're entitled to your own opinion and I respect if you find the Mormonism aspect off-putting. Or just any religious influence in anything you read. But, honestly, there's probably religious influence/references in almost everything, especially in the fantasy genre, it's just really a question of whether you have the background knowledge to recognise  it for what it is, or just plain coincidence.