Brandon Sanderson

[Anteros]

I'll second Elantris, and say Warbreaker is good as well. Despite my comments about Sanderson in the thread, these two books were fairly decent. I really don't recommend the Mistborn series at all. The first book isn't terrible, but the second two are quite bad.

[Lethologica]

FWIW, the first Mistborn book can be read as a standalone if someone isn't sure whether they want to complete the trilogy. That's a perfectly serviceable way to get a first look at Sanderson, with obvious follow-up material if they decide they like what they see.

[Kitten Champion]

I like Sanderson. He feels rather comic-book-y with his overt attention to superpowers (which feel like superhero superpowers rather than magic) and world-building, all with rather straightforward modern heroic characters as leads. I would agree you can see the mechanics behind his writing quite clearly.

Still, ultimately I find him entertaining. I suppose for much the same reason I'll read some superhero comics, though his stories generally have a bit more creative pop and overall consistency in vision than you'd find in the more popular comics I could mention.

[Saph]

Wheel of Time: I think we just have to accept that there really wasn't anyone in the world who was going be able to finish the series in Robert Jordan's voice, with Robert Jordan's writing style, with the characters acting exactly as they did in Robert Jordan's (better) books. So while Sanderson's three final books weren't a perfect ending, I thought he did a pretty good job with what he had to work with, and I'm willing to cut him a lot of slack for the fact that he actually finished the series instead of giving us another Crossroads of Twilight.

Mistborn trilogy: It's good. The characters aren't amazing, but it has some nice ideas and the magic system is very well done. Kind of like most of Sanderson's books, really. I enjoyed it enough to read all three, though I don't think I'd go back and read them again.

Stormlight Archive: These are a step up from the Mistborn books IMO. As other people have mentioned, Sanderson has a serious work ethic, and you can see the effects if you read Stormlight after Mistborn – he's a noticeably better writer now than he was then. I much prefer Shallan and Kaladin to Vin and Elend, and I love the descriptions of the world.

[huttj509]

Wheel of Time: I think we just have to accept that there really wasn't anyone in the world who was going be able to finish the series in Robert Jordan's voice, with Robert Jordan's writing style, with the characters acting exactly as they did in Robert Jordan's (better) books. So while Sanderson's three final books weren't a perfect ending, I thought he did a pretty good job with what he had to work with, and I'm willing to cut him a lot of slack for the fact that he actually finished the series instead of giving us another Crossroads of Twilight.

Mistborn trilogy: It's good. The characters aren't amazing, but it has some nice ideas and the magic system is very well done. Kind of like most of Sanderson's books, really. I enjoyed it enough to read all three, though I don't think I'd go back and read them again.

Stormlight Archive: These are a step up from the Mistborn books IMO. As other people have mentioned, Sanderson has a serious work ethic, and you can see the effects if you read Stormlight after Mistborn – he's a noticeably better writer now than he was then. I much prefer Shallan and Kaladin to Vin and Elend, and I love the descriptions of the world.

That said, suggesting someone start with The Way of Kings...depends on the person asking, but if someone's curious, I'm not gonna hand them a bookshelf-breaker straight off, unless I know they're a particularly voracious reader.

[Corlindale]

I really like Sanderson. I don't like all his stuff, but most of what I've read ranges from good to amazing.

I absolutely LOVE the Stormlight Archives. The setting, the characters, the magic, everything. In a world of grimdark, Game of Thrones-ish fantasy, I also found it really, really refreshing that Sanderson often writes genuine heroes, instead of a bunch of morally ambigious main characters. The third book is probably my most anticipated release right now.
They were the first Sanderson books I read, so I guess that did raise my expectations of the rest of his work.

I also really liked Elantris, but Mistborn sadly lost me at the beginning of the second book. Maybe I should give them another go, just to be able to read some of his recent Mistborn spinoffs.

I quite like his novellas too, although I don't see too many people discussing those. Perfect State was interesting and I really like the Legion books. I wish the latter were part of a bigger series, instead of just the two novellas.

Reckoners were ok, but some of the YA elements could be a little jarring (even though I normally enjoy a lot of YA stuff).

[Sallera]

I'd definitely recommend The Emperor's Soul over Mistborn for a starting point. It's probably the most beautiful thing he's written, it's short enough to be read in an evening, and as some others have mentioned, it avoids most of the pitfalls of his earlier work.

[Landis963]

I'd definitely recommend The Emperor's Soul over Mistborn for a starting point. It's probably the most beautiful thing he's written, it's short enough to be read in an evening, and as some others have mentioned, it avoids most of the pitfalls of his earlier work.

I can see arguments for and against both. Emperor's Soul's magic, soulstamping, is much more esoteric and less immediately grokkable than Allomancy or Feruchemy (from Mistborn), meaning that its uses can be easily mistaken for Deus Ex Machinae. On the flip side, Mistborn (especially book 2) displays Sanderson's writing growing pains loud and clear.

[Pronounceable]

The problem with magic is usually summarized in the classic question why didn't they fly to Mordor on eagles? Sure you can use fanfiction/expanded universe/whatever to address it or simply avoid asking that but question will still be there. Sanderson rightly wanted to avoid this and the result is his quasifamous law. It doesn't have to hold true for every fantasy story but that's how he decided to roll. There's plenty of other books and writers out there that don't obey this principle.


Sanderson's fantasy books are extremely grimdark actually. Elantrians' condition is hell on earth, Mistborn world is ruled by a preposterously oppressive empire (and take a look at the final bodycount), Stormlight has a literal apocalypse approaching, only Warbreaker doesn't have grimdark oozing out of cracks in the ground. But Sanderson doesn't rub your face into terrible, so the books end up being much lighter and good natured.

Also, Elantris is zombies and Warbreaker is vampires. Still waiting to see what he'll disguise werewolves as...


Emperor's Soul is the best thing he's ever written yet. If anyone's gonna read one Sanderson thing, it should be that. Also Mistborn 3 may make up for it but 2 is bad.

[Psyren]

I'm willing to give him a try based on his good job taking over WoT alone. We were drowning in a mire of excruciatingly detailed dress descriptions and the plot taking multiple books to go anywhere before he came onboard. I haven't had much time for new novels lately, but when I do, I'll definitely be trying some of his.

On the other hand, there's this

[Anteros]

I'm willing to give him a try based on his good job taking over WoT alone. We were drowning in a mire of excruciatingly detailed dress descriptions and the plot taking multiple books to go anywhere before he came onboard. I haven't had much time for new novels lately, but when I do, I'll definitely be trying some of his.

On the other hand, there's this

I think he benefited heavily from the fact that the series was ending anyway in this regard. The last book by Jordan was already much more tightly written than its predecessors, and was already closing up a lot of plot lines. I'm sure Jordan would have stretched it out more than Sanderson...but given the badly written mess AMoL ended up being, I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

I do think he's great at building magic systems and worlds though. If you had him designing settings and then passing them off to someone who is actually a good author you could get some really fantastic stuff.

[lord_khaine]

I do greatly love Sanderson myself, to start with i think he is one of the most versatile writers i have read, and the one i would personally rate as the currently greatest fantasy author.

As people have already mentioned, then he is to start with really original with a lot of his work, and he manages some really surprising plot twists by using peoples expectations of regular fantasy tropes.

Spoiler: Serious spoilers for the Rithmatisk & Way of Kings

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Like in the Rithmatisk where after all the buildup with the main character newer having entered the ritual to get the special power, and then does it in the middel of the book, only to fail all the same?
That really left be stunned just from how unhead of it were.

Or for that matter the ending in Words of Radiance, where its revealed how the female main characters mentor were still alive? That certainly caught me by surprise as well, despite Sanderson having given us all the relevant clues to figure it out.

[Dragonus45]

I do greatly love Sanderson myself, to start with i think he is one of the most versatile writers i have read, and the one i would personally rate as the currently greatest fantasy author.

As people have already mentioned, then he is to start with really original with a lot of his work, and he manages some really surprising plot twists by using peoples expectations of regular fantasy tropes.

Spoiler: Serious spoilers for the Rithmatisk & Way of Kings

Show

Like in the Rithmatisk where after all the buildup with the main character newer having entered the ritual to get the special power, and then does it in the middel of the book, only to fail all the same?
That really left be stunned just from how unhead of it were.

Or for that matter the ending in Words of Radiance, where its revealed how the female main characters mentor were still alive? That certainly caught me by surprise as well, despite Sanderson having given us all the relevant clues to figure it out.

Spoiler: Spoilers for the same

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Also in Rihtmatist the generically so evil he had to be secretly good teacher ACTUALLY being evil and posesed caught me by surprise.

As for Jasnah after the male main character fell from the top of a tower and got back up a couple minutes later I started to realize there was no way a simple knife in the heart was going to kill anyone who was a knight radiant.

[Douglas]

Spoiler: Spoilers for the same

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As for Jasnah after the male main character fell from the top of a tower and got back up a couple minutes later I started to realize there was no way a simple knife in the heart was going to kill anyone who was a knight radiant.

Spoiler

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Unless the Knight is out of Stormlight, and it wasn't obvious to me that Jasnah had Stormlight ready to go. I probably would have realized it if I'd thought about it in detail, but it wasn't obvious without that. It makes perfect sense in hindsight, but still surprised me in the moment.

[JoshL]

My 2 cents. Like a lot of other folks, I was introduced through WoT. I was so happy the series was finished, and the resolution of plots I'd been waiting half my life for was thrilling and satisfying. I loved the very end. But his prose was clumsy and awkward. I can forgive his not really getting certain characters, because not only were they all VERY developed complex characters, a lot of the main characters had spent the past few books changing (finally growing up a little, really). So they were in a bit of flux, and had Jordan finished the series, they wouldn't have read the same way they did in the books before. But his use of language, painfully heavy handed foreshadowing (something Jordan was pretty good at, with a few notable exceptions) and a bit of a jumble knowing when things happened in relation to others (again, something I never was caught off guard with the rest of the series), I thought him a servicable, but not necessarily good writer.

Then I read Way of Kings. Or rather, the sourcebook to the RPG mechanics he ham-handedly crammed a plot into Okay, I'm exaggurating for comic effect, but the opening sequence was so mechanical it just fell short of actually rolling dex saves. The world was interesting, but felt a little contrived. By which I mean, it felt like the world was written to best show off abilities of the charcters, rather than the abilities having grown out of the world that was. Again, use of language was not really his strong suit, but it was entertaining enough for me to get through. If I saw one of his books used, I'd probably grab it, but I wasn't in a big rush to read any of them. I feel the same way about Jim Butcher; I'll grab his books if they're cheap, have fun with them, but I don't necessarily think they're good (I recognize around here, that's a minority opinion for both authors). I also grant that I should probably read more of both, because at the end of the day, I do love fantasy more than most things!

[Kd7sov]

Personally, I recommend starting with Warbreaker, on the grounds that - while it's not his best work - it's available at absolutely no cost.

On the other hand, you might not want to start with the Reckoners books; while there are people on each side of the question, those who think they're weaker than usual for him seem to be more common, and Firefight (the second) was so far the only of his books where I've correctly predicted major plot points on a first (unspoiled) reading.

Spoiler: The points in question, in case those who know the book are curious

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I got about two thirds of the nature of Epic weaknesses - my working theory was "something they felt really strongly about before Epicing", rather than specifically fear - and that Megan would revive and bail David out of trouble (though which trouble I wasn't sure - I didn't register Prof gifting to him again, and when he started healing from Obliteration I wondered whether I'd missed a mention of dawn coming).

[Kittenwolf]

I might as well throw my two copper in here too :)

Just focusing on his works rather than WoT:

Mistborn: Loved the first book (woohoo for more action girls), but felt #2 & #3 fell way short of the first. #3 was better I'll admit, but.. yeah, neither of those two are my favorites.

Spoiler: Spoiler for Mistborn series

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And gods, the heavy handed "Oh look, you have an awesomely powerful female protagonist so of course we have to have a MAN suddenly become vastly more powerful at it than she is, because gender stereotypes."

Alloy of Law & Series: Wild West Mistborn, with some hilarious nods to the Mistborn series. Thoroughly enjoyed, and I think much better paced than the original

Elantris: I really enjoyed this one too, and gods.. the horror!
Apparently it's about to be re-released as well to bring it better into the Cosmere in general.

Warbreaker: Eh, this one I just.. really didn't enjoy. And I'm not entirely sure why

Reckoners: Predictable as all hell but lots of fun

Way of Kings: Freaking amazing, and I must agree, it's very clear how much he's improved as a writer over something like Mistborn.

Brandon's forte really is in strong world building and unique magic systems. Heck, some of his stuff (like WoK) is well worth reading just for the world building pointers if you're considering creating one of your own.

[Douglas]

Spoiler: Spoiler for Mistborn series

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And gods, the heavy handed "Oh look, you have an awesomely powerful female protagonist so of course we have to have a MAN suddenly become vastly more powerful at it than she is, because gender stereotypes."

Spoiler

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More powerful, yes. More skilled and competent at what she does, not even close. When you need politicking or raw power (taking over Koloss, mostly), get Elend. When you need to kick some ass, get Vin. There's a reason Vin is always the one getting sent into fight missions even after Elend becomes a Mistborn, and it has nothing to do with Elend being too valuable to risk.

[lord_khaine]

Spoiler: Spoilers Words of Radiance&Steelheart

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Unless the Knight is out of Stormlight, and it wasn't obvious to me that Jasnah had Stormlight ready to go. I probably would have realized it if I'd thought about it in detail, but it wasn't obvious without that. It makes perfect sense in hindsight, but still surprised me in the moment.

Yeah, that is one of the main reasons for why i love his writing, a lot of the plot twists makes perfect sense and have been hinted at in different ways, but generally takes you completely by surprise all the same.
Like in Steelheart where the female love interest is confirmed dead with a found corpse.

Kinda surprised noone has mentioned his Alcatraz serie yet though, by far the most light hearted and funny of his books.

[Kd7sov]

Elantris: I really enjoyed this one too, and gods.. the horror!
Apparently it's about to be re-released as well to bring it better into the Cosmere in general.

Less "about to" than "recently"; the official date was the same as for Shadows of Self, although for some reason my local B&N didn't get it in until a few days later. (Also, I haven't actually noticed any changes to the story yet, although there's still a considerable portion of it to go.)

[LudicSavant]

I simply loved The Way of Kings.

[Landis963]

Spoiler

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More powerful, yes. More skilled and competent at what she does, not even close. When you need politicking or raw power (taking over Koloss, mostly), get Elend. When you need to kick some ass, get Vin. There's a reason Vin is always the one getting sent into fight missions even after Elend becomes a Mistborn, and it has nothing to do with Elend being too valuable to risk.

Spoiler: Mistborn twists

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I think Neo's referring to Sazed becoming a double-Shard, which does seem problematic in that light. However, it is mitigated by a couple things - Sazed only barely thinks of himself as a "him" anymore (which was essential to the prophecy) and he could only take the power because Vin did all the dirty work.

[Kittenwolf]

Spoiler

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More powerful, yes. More skilled and competent at what she does, not even close. When you need politicking or raw power (taking over Koloss, mostly), get Elend. When you need to kick some ass, get Vin. There's a reason Vin is always the one getting sent into fight missions even after Elend becomes a Mistborn, and it has nothing to do with Elend being too valuable to risk.

Spoiler: Mistborn twists

Show

I think Neo's referring to Sazed becoming a double-Shard, which does seem problematic in that light. However, it is mitigated by a couple things - Sazed only barely thinks of himself as a "him" anymore (which was essential to the prophecy) and he could only take the power because Vin did all the dirty work.

Spoiler: Mistbornspoilering :)

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Actually, the Sazed thing I didn't have an issue with, though it felt a tad on the clumsy side, since it felt to me more like Sazed was going "Well I can't be a real man if I'm a eunuch" rather than actually considering himself as a third or non gender.

On the skill etc thing with Vin. Yes, that's true, but it's SUCH a cop out "Oh look, we're not replacing her, honest, she's got the skill and he's just got raw power, which is fine right, since men are usually stronger than women?". It just infuriated me to no end.

[danzibr]

My 2 cents. Like a lot of other folks, I was introduced through WoT. I was so happy the series was finished, and the resolution of plots I'd been waiting half my life for was thrilling and satisfying. I loved the very end. But his prose was clumsy and awkward. I can forgive his not really getting certain characters, because not only were they all VERY developed complex characters, a lot of the main characters had spent the past few books changing (finally growing up a little, really). So they were in a bit of flux, and had Jordan finished the series, they wouldn't have read the same way they did in the books before. But his use of language, painfully heavy handed foreshadowing (something Jordan was pretty good at, with a few notable exceptions) and a bit of a jumble knowing when things happened in relation to others (again, something I never was caught off guard with the rest of the series), I thought him a servicable, but not necessarily good writer.

Then I read Way of Kings. Or rather, the sourcebook to the RPG mechanics he ham-handedly crammed a plot into Okay, I'm exaggurating for comic effect, but the opening sequence was so mechanical it just fell short of actually rolling dex saves. The world was interesting, but felt a little contrived. By which I mean, it felt like the world was written to best show off abilities of the charcters, rather than the abilities having grown out of the world that was. Again, use of language was not really his strong suit, but it was entertaining enough for me to get through. If I saw one of his books used, I'd probably grab it, but I wasn't in a big rush to read any of them. I feel the same way about Jim Butcher; I'll grab his books if they're cheap, have fun with them, but I don't necessarily think they're good (I recognize around here, that's a minority opinion for both authors). I also grant that I should probably read more of both, because at the end of the day, I do love fantasy more than most things!

Enlightening. In particular, the first paragraph puts into words my feelings about WoT.

Given as we seemingly have similar opinions, I'll take the second paragraph to heart.

[Saph]

Spoiler: Mistbornspoilering :)

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On the skill etc thing with Vin. Yes, that's true, but it's SUCH a cop out "Oh look, we're not replacing her, honest, she's got the skill and he's just got raw power, which is fine right, since men are usually stronger than women?". It just infuriated me to no end.

Spoiler: Mistborn

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Yeah, I'm going to disagree strongly here. The biggest problem with the Mistborn in the series, IMO, were that they were so stupidly overpowered that it became almost impossible to challenge them with anything except an even more powerful magic user. I remember reading several scenes with Vin/Kelsier/whoever massacring dozens of guards and soldiers – the scenes were probably supposed to be 'cool', but to me it came across more like mass murder. I absolutely did not want to see yet more scenes of Vin wading knee-high through blood and severed limbs just to prove how strong she was.

[Psyren]

I think he benefited heavily from the fact that the series was ending anyway in this regard. The last book by Jordan was already much more tightly written than its predecessors, and was already closing up a lot of plot lines. I'm sure Jordan would have stretched it out more than Sanderson...but given the badly written mess AMoL ended up being, I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

I do think he's great at building magic systems and worlds though. If you had him designing settings and then passing them off to someone who is actually a good author you could get some really fantastic stuff.

Well, I see folks like Saph, Douglas and khaine vouching for him, so that's good enough for me. I'll definitely be giving his stuff a try when I have the free time.

I'm also mightily resisting the urge to read those spoiler boxes, so I'd probably better step out of this one.

[Rodin]

Spoiler: Mistborn

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Yeah, I'm going to disagree strongly here. The biggest problem with the Mistborn in the series, IMO, were that they were so stupidly overpowered that it became almost impossible to challenge them with anything except an even more powerful magic user. I remember reading several scenes with Vin/Kelsier/whoever massacring dozens of guards and soldiers – the scenes were probably supposed to be 'cool', but to me it came across more like mass murder. I absolutely did not want to see yet more scenes of Vin wading knee-high through blood and severed limbs just to prove how strong she was.

Spoiler: Mistborn

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Indeed. Them taking on loads of mooks wasn't particularly notable, although I did enjoy the fights against other Mistborn quite a bit because they're similarly powered and it becomes a race to most skillfully manipulate the magic system.

I actually found myself liking Alloy of Law much better, simply because nobody IS a Mistborn and the powers the main characters have aren't particularly powerful by the standards of the universe. This means that they're actually running on skill rather than simply abusing overpoweredness.

[Douglas]

Spoiler: Mistbornspoilering :)

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Actually, the Sazed thing I didn't have an issue with, though it felt a tad on the clumsy side, since it felt to me more like Sazed was going "Well I can't be a real man if I'm a eunuch" rather than actually considering himself as a third or non gender.

On the skill etc thing with Vin. Yes, that's true, but it's SUCH a cop out "Oh look, we're not replacing her, honest, she's got the skill and he's just got raw power, which is fine right, since men are usually stronger than women?". It just infuriated me to no end.

Spoiler

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Elend's power just sort of existed without really doing anything for most of the book. I considered it more a vehicle for explaining how Rashek brought strong Allomancy into the world than anything else. Elend and Vin fight an Inquisitor together at the beginning of the book, and then he almost doesn't use his Mistborn abilities at all until the climax, at which point Vin has ascended to godhood so all his power just makes him her chief minion.

Spoiler: Mistborn

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Yeah, I'm going to disagree strongly here. The biggest problem with the Mistborn in the series, IMO, were that they were so stupidly overpowered that it became almost impossible to challenge them with anything except an even more powerful magic user. I remember reading several scenes with Vin/Kelsier/whoever massacring dozens of guards and soldiers – the scenes were probably supposed to be 'cool', but to me it came across more like mass murder. I absolutely did not want to see yet more scenes of Vin wading knee-high through blood and severed limbs just to prove how strong she was.

Spoiler

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It's been a while since the last time I reread the books, but as I recall Brandon did eventually stop showing that and just take it as given that Vin vs mooks = dead mooks. In particular I'm remembering when Vin and that crazy Mistborn (I forget his name) who served Straff got together and slaughtered their way through some keep; as I recall it cut from Vin agreeing to it to Vin reflecting on it in the aftermath, essentially.

[Lethologica]

Spoiler: Mistborn

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Yeah, I'm going to disagree strongly here. The biggest problem with the Mistborn in the series, IMO, were that they were so stupidly overpowered that it became almost impossible to challenge them with anything except an even more powerful magic user. I remember reading several scenes with Vin/Kelsier/whoever massacring dozens of guards and soldiers – the scenes were probably supposed to be 'cool', but to me it came across more like mass murder. I absolutely did not want to see yet more scenes of Vin wading knee-high through blood and severed limbs just to prove how strong she was.

This perspective approaches the issues I had with the Mistborn trilogy--pretty much everything of consequence is related to the magic system, which made everything else matter less, and in particular made scenes where magic and non-magic conflict into foregone conclusions.

Spoiler: last book

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By the end it gets to the point where the only way Sanderson can have the characters do anything of significance is to have them become the magic system.

[The New Bruceski]

I'm also mightily resisting the urge to read those spoiler boxes, so I'd probably better step out of this one.

It's the hazard of these sorts of threads. People try to keep them newbie-friendly as intended, but then one one-off comment leads into a one-off reply and things just snowball. I think the main pros/cons of Sanderson have been covered by now, so you're not missing anything except the nitpicks.