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Old 10-16-2011, 04:43 AM   #34
afa
The Forgotten
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer View Post
The only strike against him is that I just don't really like what he writes. Sanderson is brick-by-brick world-builder and a complex, magic-system architect.
I don't think he's all that bad, really. Maybe it's because I would consider Jordan to be the brick-by-brick kind of guy, and Sanderson by comparison isn't nearly as guilty. In many ways, I think he strikes the middle-ground between Jordan's tedious minutae and, say, Abercrombie's barebones style of world-building (particularly in The First Law).

And I actually like his magic-system architecture. Virtually all forms of magic in Fantasy books is a variation of, I guess you could say, telekinesis. I actually enjoy the fact that he puts some effort into explaining how the magic *works* and, more importantly, the inherent limitations in the same. I feel it makes it a tad more believable (or as believable as something like magic can get).

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Some of my favorites include: Guy Gavriel Kay, James Blaylock, China Mieville, Tim Powers, and Joe Abercrombie. I'd like Patrick Rothfuss a lot more if he would get his raging case of diarrhea of the word-processor properly treated! I also enjoy Charles de Lint, K. J. Parker (whoever he/she is), and Michael A. Stackpole. There's also Neal Stephenson, Daniel Abraham and Felix Gilman. I can't believe I almost forgot Paul Kearney.

Some newcomers that I've been digging lately are Daniel Polansky, Mark Lawrence, Dexter Palmer, and Anthony Huso. I'm going to quit there.

For stand-alone fantasy; I'd recommend Stackpole's Once a Hero or Talion: Revenant... Kay's Tigana or Lions of Al Rassan... Powers' The Stress of Her Regard... or Blaylock's The Last Coin.
Thanks for the recs. I shamefully admit that I am quite unfamiliar with many of those authors, but I shall now add them to my list of authors to check out. I've read Abercrombie (my favourite), Mieville (my least favourite), and have Rothfuss and Lawrence on my TBR list. Did you not like Rothfuss's (or should it be Rothfuss'? I hate writing names ending with s...) books? I've only ever heard good things about The Kingkiller Chronicle, and am really looking forward to reading it; now you're scaring me.

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I love Abercrombie, but I'm getting a little tired of the way he's
Spoiler:
pimping the Bloody Nine's alive/dead status. If he's dead... stop talking about him and move on. I can respect the symmetry of Logen's entrance and exit in the narrative. But if he's alive... then quit pissing around and start writing about him already. He was mentioned by name or by title almost 70 times in The Heroes.
I agree. It doesn't bother me quite as much as it does you, but I've sort of wondered the same thing, particularly while reading The Heroes.

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Sorry for the long post.
Would you be surprised if I said I like long posts?

Last edited by afa; 10-16-2011 at 04:47 AM.
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