I’ve heard the first couple of books are a bit iffy, but that it gains strength as it progresses
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Half way through book two of Way of Kings and this is exactly how I feel. I’m enjoying it but the magic isn’t there (ironically).
It’s unfair to compare fantasy series to Tolkien but, fuck it, with all the backstory and the Silmarillion and so on, JRRT feels like a writer trying to convince you that there is order to things when underneath it all there is mystery and the unexplained. Sanderson feels like a writer trying to convince me that there is mystery and the unexplained in his world but really I think there is order: there are neat little answers to questions about his universe and if I keep plodding through the stories long enough he’ll keep doling them out to me.
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I mean Sanderson is a very modern writer, which means a large chunk of his mysteries are because the reader (or viewer, as this is all I very TV/film) is not provided the full story, whereas a classic mystery is based on the character the reader/viewer follows not having the full story. IMO anyway
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That’s an interesting way of putting it. I quite like Donaldson’s take of “I am absolutely not going to explain magic” for this sort of thing. The idea that the magic is so far beyond human understanding that there may as well not be rules.
Sanderson is the opposite. Everything links together and works like a physics system and honestly I do like it, but it removes a lot of the sense of mystery that better fantasy thrives on.
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Honestly option A is closer to the real world. Like I can do maths in my head that most people struggle with, but run like someone with no cerebellum. Why? Dunno, neurons and stuff.
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It’s very popular at the moment in fantasy in general I think, the idea of a very structured rule-based magic system. Like the rise of “side quests” in table-top RPGs, I think it’s computer game RPGs reinforming an “analogue” medium because computer games are now people’s entry to the genre much more than where they finally landed. Maybe?
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Yeah, I almost said it feels very computer gamey. In Mistborn it’s almost like the characters had skill trees they were progressing down.
As a lifelong gamer I am entirely ok with games informing other media, but it does make it feel very different to more traditional approaches.
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I’m not ok with it! Magic is such such a hard thing to get right and I totally get why you need to have checks and balances otherwise the whole thing can topple into absurdity “and then the goodies won because magic happened!”
However, however, there needs to be mystery for it to feel like magic. Gandalf is a perfect example. His powers are limited, holding the Balrog at bay before his final confrontation with it clearly saps him and yet he’s allowed a mystical resurrection because… Magic. It’s ineffable, unknowable. In a tabletop or computer RPG it has to be rule bound. You can’t take down Gannon or Ornstein and Smough because you feel like it but in books there needs to be room for awe and wonder.
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Finished Tchaikovsky’s Days of Shattered Faith at the weekend, the third in his Tyrant Philosophers series. I really enjoyed it, imo this might be the best series he’s done, certainly the most consistent so far.
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Book four is just as good. 
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Yep, nearing the end of four. Two still edges it for me, but all four (plus the novella) are great.
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I’d agree with this.
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