All things Brandon Sanderson

  • Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!



    Go here and give us your nominations!
    Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
Agraza

Agraza

Registered Hutt
6,890
521
not soon enough
frown.png
 
Nebuchadnezzar

Nebuchadnezzar

Golden Squire
458
50
Last update on it we got:

And now, as many of you have been hoping to read, some news about
WORDS OF RADIANCE, the sequel to THE WAY OF KINGS.

The book is progressing well. But it's also going slowly. Big epics
just take so much TIME. It's not simply the wordcount; the longer
and more complex the book gets, the more time it takes to produce
each page. A weaving of a half dozen characters and plots is a
difficult thing to juggle. I love it, but boy is it hard.

I'm at 260,000 words as of this writing. (The target is 300,000
words, or about the length of THE GATHERING STORM.) Awesome things
are happening in the book, but I worry that it feels too
fragmented, with everyone doing their "own thing" and without a
stronger narrative to hold the book together. This was an issue
with the first book, but the powerful Bridge Four sequence served
as a backbone for the entire book and held it together.

This book needs more of an eye toward the entirety, and that's my
main focus right now as I finish up the last chapters and turn
toward revisions. I wanted passionately to have it out by November
of this year, but that's growing more and more difficult. I know
you all would rather have a better book later, and I'm not going to
force anything.

At this point, we still have a "soft" release date of November, as
listed on Amazon. However, we haven't committed to retailers for
that date, and we haven't bought marketing space for it. (Which are
the two big things that lock in a publication date.)

THE WAY OF KINGS was turned in in May 2010 and came out in
August/September 2010, and TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT was turned in in
August/September 2010 and came out in November 2010. So there is
still plenty of time, but I can't promise anything. It could come
out anywhere between November 2013 and May 2014. (Though it's
highly unlikely to be later than that, considering how much I have
done, and how well the writing is going.)
Click to expand...
 
S

Superhiro

Silver Knight of the Realm
439
43
Rereading the Mistborn trilogy. He's definitely made quite a bit of progress as a writer. I groaned reading the first book when I came across someone "landing maladroitly" for the 7th time.
 
zzeris

zzeris

King Turd of Shit Hill
<Gold Donor>
20,590
88,093
This just goes to show how much time epics really take to produce. Sanderson is probably the most prolific writer I've ever read and this is taking a while. I know he had to finish up Jordan properly(Hallelujah?!) but I'm still itching to get back into this series. The first book was just so much better than anything before it(by him). And it's all HIS.
 
Agraza

Agraza

Registered Hutt
6,890
521
Fuck WoT. That series went to the dogs long before RJ died. I need more stormlight god damnit.
 
Gask

Gask

Silver Baron of the Realm
13,118
51,274
zzeris_sl said:
I'm still itching to get back into this series. The first book was just so much better than anything before it(by him). And it's all HIS.
Click to expand...
Amen. I wish he had left WoT to rot in favor of this, his own story.
 
S

Superhiro

Silver Knight of the Realm
439
43
Would he have gotten the deals to make this series possible if he hadn't been picked for WoT?
 
Uriel

Uriel

Blackwing Lair Raider
1,835
2,285
Superhiro_sl said:
Would he have gotten the deals to make this series possible if he hadn't been picked for WoT?
Click to expand...
Yes, he was already an up and coming super star fantasy writer at the time. I think he wanted to do WoT because he grew up reading it, and wanted it to be finished nicely.
 
Nebuchadnezzar

Nebuchadnezzar

Golden Squire
458
50
Yeah, they would have given him a contract based on Mistborn sells, but without WOT he wouldn't be #1 NY Times Bestseller guy he is now.
 
Arative

Arative

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
3,064
4,776
I know I certainly picked up all his books based on his writing of the WOT series. Prior to that, I had not read him.
 
L

Lemmiwinks_sl

shitlord
533
6
I have Elantris and WoK but they are on my shelf unread. They both got pretty awesome reviews from this forum and other review sites. Im reading two other books at the moment, and juggling a third sounds inconvenient.

Should I read Elantris before WoK? Ive been hesitating on starting WoK because it gets great word-of-mouth praise, and if its that good, I'd rather have two books in the series to consume rather than one.
 
V

velk

Trakanon Raider
2,679
1,261
Lemmiwinks_sl said:
Should I read Elantris before WoK? Ive been hesitating on starting WoK because it gets great word-of-mouth praise, and if its that good, I'd rather have two books in the series to consume rather than one.
Click to expand...
Elantris is noticeably weaker than his other books, but it's still good, and is self contained, so there's that.
 
Gask

Gask

Silver Baron of the Realm
13,118
51,274
Lemmiwinks_sl said:
I have Elantris and WoK but they are on my shelf unread. They both got pretty awesome reviews from this forum and other review sites. Im reading two other books at the moment, and juggling a third sounds inconvenient.

Should I read Elantris before WoK? Ive been hesitating on starting WoK because it gets great word-of-mouth praise, and if its that good, I'd rather have two books in the series to consume rather than one.
Click to expand...
I read a few of his Mistborn books and couldn't really get into them and some of his other books felt like fairly generic fantasy fare but I thoroughly enjoyed Way of Kings. It's not that it is a flawless novel, it has several, but the drama of bridge four really drew me in and got me to give a damn about them which is a rare thing. Its main problem is that every other perspective save for Szeth's just feels like an interruption to the real story but Sanderson seems to be working on this for the next one.

Anyway it is book 1 in a supposedly 10 book series... so we all have quite a wait ahead of us. If you have time and want to read a good book then go crack/click it open.
 
zzeris

zzeris

King Turd of Shit Hill
<Gold Donor>
20,590
88,093
Might as well start with Elantris and get his early book out of the way. WoK is far superior and the next one is my top option for future reading. Hopefully, it's just as large as WoK because I've almost run out of books I really want to read right now.
 
BoldW

BoldW

Molten Core Raider
2,081
25
After a youtube link from here, I started watching his lecture series. Covers what seems one semester, and is real interesting as he will often cite other contemporary fantasy authors and the styles or tools they use, so you get those "OMG yes!" moments. Germaphobes beware, though - he's pretty gross with the way he handles candies then throws them to students who ask questions.

I'm actually not a big fan of Sanderson, and agree with him that Rothfuss is the man, but the lecture series is amazingly interesting.
 
Grimmlokk

Grimmlokk

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
12,190
134
We're so God damned spoiled right now for good to great fantasy writers it is insane. I've mentioned it before, there's like this club of them that are all under or right around 40 years old with Sanderson, Rothfuss, Abercrombie, Lynch etc etc. And there's more of them every year with guys like Mark Lawrence hitting the scene. I guess you've got to give credit to guys like GRRM and Erikson(and even Jordan) who broke out of the LOTR mold a bit and were successful doing it, makingdifferentfantasy a viable option for a lucrative career.

edit: I'm sure JK Rowling played a part as well.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.