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Literate Chaotic / Re: Unofficial What are you Reading Thread?
« on: October 07, 2017, 06:22:27 pm »Anyway, I'm now reading the preview chapters for Oathbringer, the third book in Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive series.
So far, Kaladin's depression is not making him repeat the same mistakes over and over again, which is nice to see after the last two books. The depiction of Kaladin and his depression may be one of the best I've ever read, but going down that road a third time would've been completely unnecessary.
Adolin doesn't seem to be turning to the dark side or anything after his entirely justified murder of Sadeas. It is complicating things, but thus far it doesn't seem to be causing him any major distress.
Dalinar's flashbacks are showing just how much of a complete dick the younger Blackthorn was. It's actually hard to believe they're the same men, the difference is that great. The implied murder of a noble child to claim his shardplate in the wars of unification is the worst thing so far, but we've also had scenes where Sadeas appears to be picking out women to rape, with Dalinar not commenting, and an awful lot of glee taken in killing his enemies.
Shallan's courting multiple personality disorder to not deal with the memories of killing her mother while training in using the shardblade with Adolin. I'm sure this will have no negative repurcussions whatsoever, given Shallan's already fragile mental state.
Voidbringers can play cards. Who knew?
I've been impressed with that series so far. I'd all but given up on Sanderson after the 2nd and 3rd Mistborn books, but a friend gifted me Way of Kings and I really enjoyed it. There's still something about his style that bothers me and I can't quite put my finger on it. It's probably best exemplified in Stormlight Archive by the axehounds. You have a creature that's for all intents and purposes a dog. It acts like a dog, it's trained like a dog. It's called a fucking hound. But it has a shell. Some of those worldbuilding choices are distracting, like they're just different for the sake of being different without really adding anything. It's okay, man, you can write about dogs.
Based on this thread I started reading the Prince of Nothing books. I just started Warrior Prophet the other day. The Darkness that Comes Before was a really refreshing take on fantasy, and Bakker's writing is incredibly confident.
