• Welcome to League Of Reason Forums! Please read the rules before posting.
    If you are willing and able please consider making a donation to help with site overheads.
    Donations can be made via here

Robert Jordan vs Brandon Sanderson

DepricatedZero

New Member
arg-fallbackName="DepricatedZero"/>
I've just come off of reading the entirety of the published Wheel of Time back to back, and was wondering what others thought of Brandon Sanderson's work.

Personally, I'm amazed. Perhaps it's because he's wrapping up the series and not dragging on as Jordan did, but the 12th book just has so much more in it than the last 3-4 books combined, in terms of plot advancement. But moreover, I think Sanderson's writing style is better. I'm sure this'll get me lynched by some Jordan fan or another, but it was enough that I went and picked up one of Sanderson's books - Mistborn. It's just as good, just as well paced.

So I was wondering what others thought of Brandon Sanderson, compared to Jordan? Specifically as details what we've read in The Gathering Storm, but if you have other input do share.
 
arg-fallbackName="Netheralian"/>
Haven't read it yet - I'm waiting now until the series is finished. Jordan (or at least his publishers that made the decision to extend the books from a much smaller series) drove me made - especially the last few books that, like you say, had very little going on.

Glad to hear that he has done a good job though.
 
arg-fallbackName="DepricatedZero"/>
If you like the overall story, you'll love Sanderson's work. I highly recommend checking out Mistborn if you're interested in whetting your appetite for pace of the last 3 books.

I'm a relatively new WoT fan though, I've neglected it for most of my life until my roommate got me to try it. Purists might hate me. :(
 
arg-fallbackName="Lurking_Logic"/>
I don't necessarily think that Sandersons writing is better
but it is almost a welcome change back to the older style of Jordans that he showed in the start of the series (Sandersons is different to Jordans in many ways but both seem equally good)

In my opinion Jordans best works were the first 5 wheel of time books
After that he seemed to drag plot points on and really bogged his story telling down unnecessarily

Sanderson returned it to the more flowing original style of the beginning set up in book 11 by Jordan when he seemed to go back to his better style for one last hurrah
 
arg-fallbackName="Krazyskooter"/>
I stopped reading them a while back, I just couldn't keep going. It was interesting at first, then it just started to become tedious, I wanted to hurl my iPhone across the room every time I read where one of the main male characters got embarrassed because one of the female characters made a sexual comment or pass towards them... I mean, I know it's fantasy and I could suspend belief for the magic and stuff, but no damn teenage guy is going to turn down an opportunity to hook up with a good looking girl who's into them. I'm struggling to recall some of those instances but I keep getting that memory of me constantly thinking WTF?
 
arg-fallbackName="scalyblue"/>
I adored the political intrigue of books 8, 9, and 10's plotlines such as the mysteries with the borderlander rulers and the subtleties of the andorian government, as well as getting to see the girls mature from innocent naivety to calculating, well thought out plotters. There was a sense that it was dragging on because, quite frankly, books 8-11 take place during the same year or so, but following different characters' paths.

The Gathering Storm is, according to Brandon, mostly Jim's work, so the plot advancement present there was already going to happen. I think Brandon does an excellent job emulating and improving upon Jim's voice, while injecting a great deal of his own. The climax of the White Tower storyline in TGS was a shining moment for Brandon, all in all I like his work in WoT much better than Elantris and Warbreaker, and the revelations concerning a certain aes sedai's motivations in Towers of Midnight were just shocking.

I honestly don't understand why people hate the latter six books of Jim's, my favorite in the whole series is, by far, Knife of Dreams, where I get to witness Mat's shining moments as well as Nyneave's, not to say that watching Rand's actions in Towers of Midnight wasn't just...so full of awesome win that I can't even begin to describe it.

I haven't been able to sit down with Mistborn yet, though they're on my bookshelf waiting.

You do know that warbreaker is still available for free on Brandon's website, right?
 
arg-fallbackName="scalyblue"/>
Krazyskooter said:
I stopped reading them a while back, I just couldn't keep going. It was interesting at first, then it just started to become tedious, I wanted to hurl my iPhone across the room every time I read where one of the main male characters got embarrassed because one of the female characters made a sexual comment or pass towards them... I mean, I know it's fantasy and I could suspend belief for the magic and stuff, but no damn teenage guy is going to turn down an opportunity to hook up with a good looking girl who's into them. I'm struggling to recall some of those instances but I keep getting that memory of me constantly thinking WTF?

Out of the female characters involved with these teenage guys, one is the woman who punished them when they were growing up, one is the mayor's daughter who is supposed to be betrothed to one of them to be married when they become adults, another is the daughter of a woman who would gladly have the lot of them thrown in prison or executed, another is a girl who might tell you exactly when you're going to die and how, and another is a woman from a matriarchal society.

Not to mention that most of these girls can use magic, and in this world the attitude toward magic users is less than optimal. Somebody who has the ability to use magic may as well have aids with cancer infecting the aids, and be carrying around a rusty knife called the dick chopper. Yeah, that's real attractive.
 
arg-fallbackName="Lurking_Logic"/>
scalyblue said:
I honestly don't understand why people hate the latter six books of Jim's, my favorite in the whole series is, by far, Knife of Dreams, where I get to witness Mat's shining moments as well as Nyneave's, not to say that watching Rand's actions in Towers of Midnight wasn't just...so full of awesome win that I can't even begin to describe it.
I'm kinda lazy to write full reasons but some are
-The Travelling Circus which went on for way too long and took up so much time
-The Bowl of the winds subplot which again just dragged on for ages
-Matt-Tylin plot which is connected to the bowl, seanchan and Gholam but probably could have gone a bit faster and done away with all the waiting
-The Kin again as a connection to the bowl plot this was a bit long
-The Sea Folk which had too wait until after the bowl of winds plot finally finished before that could finally be resolved
-The White tower break which saw a long standoff with them in the village

Now this is not too say that I didn't enjoy the books
I personally loved Perrins story and the growing tensions around it (And in the latest book he became awesome) and the much of Rand/Aiel/Black Tower stuff was pretty interesting

It probably doesn't help that Egwene was my least favourite character (Oh how I despise her) and IMO Elayne and Nynaeve didn't really come into their awesomer moments until around book 9-10 (Birgitte helped by being awesome tho)
 
arg-fallbackName="DepricatedZero"/>
See now, in contrast, I felt like Perrin became a whiney bitch after Dumai's Wells. I loved the latter 6 books, except for where Perrin was involved. I absolutely loathed Perrin for the majority of those books. Which was sad, because he was my favorite up until Dumai's Wells. That was about the same time that Mat jumped to the fore as my favorite of the three ta'veren.

In turn, I absolutely loved the story revolving around Mat in Ebou Dar, the Bowl of the Winds, the Kin, and Elayne. I thought that was just brilliant. Knife of Dreams was excellent, and Crossroads of Twilight was an awesome book conceptually, if it dragged slightly. It was important because it brought all sideplots up to speed with the main plot, and used one major world-changing event as the pillar to build the end of the series on. People tend to hate it because it's all side characters, but it's one of the best of the series for this very reason. With everything at the same point, now, he was able to make Knife of Dreams as great as it is.

It's also thanks to that book that The Gathering Storm was able to fly forward as it did without concern for bringing plots back up to speed. Sanderson was able to similarly use the distortion from Rand's Kamehameha to sync up everything else along the way through the last two books.

Don't get me wrong - when I say that I much prefer Sanderson's style it's because his writing style is much more fluid than Jordan's. Jordan was an amazing writer, but he used far too much purple prose. It's not a matter of the events of the book - as was said earlier, Jordan wrote everything, Sanderson just put it to paper. He pointedly didn't try to emulate Jordan's style though, because that would come off as parody - instead he wrote it as he would his own, and included familiar phrases from Jordan's writing to sort of blend the two styles. That said, I think Sanderson's writing as itself is better than Jordan's.

And his stories are great too. I'm really looking forward to more Stormlight Archive, Way of Kings was fantastic.
 
Back
Top