See, this is were I rate nearly all fantasy dialogue... most dialogue in all literature in fact. It's a nature of words on a page that differ from the actuality of real conversation... much is lost. Most literary conversation is somewhat like over-pronouncing vowels/words when signing to get the sound right for the audience. There are very few true masters at dialoge... your mention of Beagle is certainly applicable.



Certainly not... and I am looking forward to your review... (will be adding mine to the Blog tomorrow by the way). I did a fair bit of comparisons between Martin's writing and Sanderson's right after finishing WoKs... and I maintain that Martin isn't any better at dialogue in ASOIAF than Sanderson is in WOK, and both fluctuate quality throughout. Bakker is more consistent, and at times very good. However, I get the sense that since Elantris, the book on Sanderson has been 'poor dialogue', so many reviewers bring that up. The simple fact is that his dialogue is much improved, and better than average. Why then is it a key talking point when dialogue is nearly never mentioned in reviews of other authors except when it is quite awful? That is more a rhetorical question, certainly not implying that of you.