about clever/cool magic systems in general. He's good at that. He's admitedly inspired by systems like Jordan's, but his systems are far more visual/cinematic (which lets him create good cinematic actions sequences - another of his best assets). You'd recognize the passion for rules and the storytelling device of gradually introducing the reader to the magic systems and make it tantalizing etc. You might like that aspect, actually, but I think you probably wouldn't like much the rest. I've been told writing WOT has added depth to his characterizations and all, but in all the books I've read his characters were too much comic book-ish (a good dose more than Jordan's, to give you an idea). It's not necessarily in a bad way - plenty of people love iconic comic book characters like his, but it's not my cup of tea personally (WOT's, or Dumas' are pretty much my limit, or rather SW to be honest (the movies) but in SW's case there's a huge nostalgia factor playing - I was 7 when it came out.).

But yeah, Salvatore isn't a bad comparison, or Kevin Anderson. In some ways he's really Jordan's heir, but not from the same generation, and not with the same writing style. Also, Jordan had lived a lot more, there's a very naive outlook on some things in Sanderson's works that just isn't found in Jordan's. But you read Mistborn and you do recognize a certain Jordan-like quality. I'm not suprised Harriet turned to that guy, whatever I think of the final result.

I still haven't changed my mind: the biggest mistake about AMOL was to not have delayed publication until Brandon was actually done at least drafting the whole thing. That lead to extremely bad and unwise decisions concerning the way the book got split. Sanderson could certainly have done better if he could have looked at the whole and tighten it up a lot. And we would have avoided a disaster like TOM (lots of good scenes and cool developments but an atrocious novel, bloated, stretched and rushed, full of amateur mistakes like the out of sync timelines.)