Re: Pretty good. - Edit 5
Before modification by DomA at 05/09/2009 09:30:15 PM
It doesn't sound like RJ, but it doesn't sound like Sanderson either. Much more importantly, it doesn't sound like Kevin J. Anderson either, which is the yardstick for any post-author's-death collaborations in the SFF field.
Amen to all that.
The only tendency he shares with Anderson is to repeat himself in different words along the way (how many times can he say the plants have not grown, really?), and to explain a little too much.
Minor quibbles. I'm with you that he's most defintely no Anderson in the way you meant it. (*shudders
. Anderson doesn't write novels, he writes bloated outlines. Bad ones, with a lazy approach at plot progression. He can barely advance more than a single element in any given scenes and ends up with ten times too many two pages scenes which he goes and calls 'chapters". This guy should write screenplays, not books. An irony is that because of Brandon's own style, his descriptive paragraphs are actually longer than Jordan! The long opening survey of Tar Valon, for instance. Jordan would have been more succinct, perhaps much more. The grammar and prose are different, but - at least in the sample of one chapter only - Brandon defintely got the spirit of Jordan's descriptions. It reads like the way RJ uses descriptions, but written by someone else. Which is fine. Big fans of the prose (as I am, so is Cannoli) have undeniably lost something big (and not because Brandon isn't good, but because for it's not Jordan) but it's not something we had expected to get with AMOL after RJ died. Reading pseudo-Robert Jordan would have been terrible, anyway. After a few chapters, when the story intensifies, that should be barely noticeable. It may get more irritating on multiple re reads, once you're less captivated by the story itself - especially full ones preceeded by 11 books by RJ.
So, Brandon creating a new hybrid style by adapting his own to something suitable for WOT without falling into the trap of mimicking RJ? Challenge met, as far as I'm concerned. In the circumstances that there won't be (much) more of Jordan's prose I like because he's dead, and that I want to read the story and that it's well written enough to be enjoyable, and faithful enough of RJ's intents for the novel, we are definitely off to a good start. Brandon delivers, so far. This is actually "better" than I expected - Brandon has altered his style a lot more than I thought he would. Not that I didn't like it, in his books, but I didn't think it'd work in WOT. He seems to think the same, as he's altered pretty much everything I thought wouldn't be at home in a WOT book.
The writing style is more relaxed and layered than Sanderson's as employed in MISTBORN, but I didn't really detect any moments of character or dialogue that were egregiously out-of-place compared to Jordan.
Out of "voice" here and there, but not out of character. Nothing major. Rand pays too much attention suddenly to things he hasn't in some time, that sort of things. The only line that came off really weird to me is Cadsuane using a metaphor about painting when speaking of torture. The association felt odd in her mouth. Too Questioner-like.
People expecting this to be EXACTLY the same as Robert Jordan's writing have missed the point entirely. It was never about that totally unachievable goal, it was about Sanderson not completely screwing up the story and characters. So far we are off to a flying start.
Exactly. My only remaining little worry,really, is how the parts written by Jordan and chapters like this will flow together.
And those calling this 'fan-fiction' have clearly never read fan-fiction.
Totally Adam. The irony is that quite a few of those who have made those accusations don't even know their Jordan well enough to know what they're talking about (eg: saying it reads like FF because Cadsuane speaks of paintings and painters and it's barely in the series at all. Jeez. A simple keyword search show there are dozens and more references to art, painting, the new style in favour (oil on canvas)- there is a fledging 'renaissance' ongoing in fine arts in the series - RJ just mostly kept it to background descriptions or minor plot point (like Elaida commissioning a painting) etc. But it's there. Fan fiction, indeed.