Long time, no see!
Yeah, the book was very underwhelming (I actually think it is one of the poorest in the series in terms of prose and plot execution)
Yeah, the book was very underwhelming (I actually think it is one of the poorest in the series in terms of prose and plot execution)
It's fairly rare English prose bothers me - even in pop lit. like this, but Brandon's really bad enough to be seriously distracting. The more his novels became complex and big, the more it stands out as a weakness.
English is the most basic tool of his trade, he should really invest some time to hone his skills. His editors who let it slide are no better. It's getting more and more annoying to see him brush it off as unimportant every time someone mentions this. He hides behind this notion his prose is "invisible". He should realize it's bad enough it's anything but invisible. Not much of the craftsman's pride there, I guess.
The book was full of semantic mistakes. He often gives words a meaning no dictionary recognizes, is sometimes completely way off (using favours in the sense of smells in TGS), transforms nouns into verbs (like deciding that "to game" is an acceptable synonym of "to play", makes full of syntax errors, full of jarring anachronisms (a sandpaper metaphor, medical terms, precise geologic vocabulary given to farmers etc.). His use of pronouns is distracting to the point of annoyance - half the time he uses a pronoun when the context calls for the character's name and the other way around. We often get the pronoun first and later the name in the sentence, eg: "She believed Egwene should do better", in an Egwene POV! In general, he uses names instead of pronouns way too much in POVs for a 3PL context - RJ could go pages without using the name of the POV character after its first mention in a scene.
It's stunning Tor lets stuff like this be published when a simple language polishing pass by a professional reviser would solve this (though the way Brandon himself speaks of his writing, his raw stuff before editing is much worse than this. I guess the editors correct the worst of his grammar and spelling and just give up at some point). They really have lowered their standards. I guess it's worrying that so many younger readers find Brandon's English "just fine".
Where to begin....
23/01/2013 05:22:12 AM
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Re: Where to begin....
23/01/2013 01:18:31 PM
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I think Rand and Moridin sword fought because channeling at SG is v dangerous so they minimised it
24/01/2013 12:40:45 AM
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Re: Where to begin....
23/01/2013 04:11:13 PM
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There was a HUGE goldmine of complexity that RJ planted in the story that BS just completely ignored *NM*
23/01/2013 06:35:17 PM
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Seriously, the entire book I was scratching my head wondering why the hell the Channelers
25/01/2013 06:32:26 AM
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Hey John
24/01/2013 04:04:39 PM
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Re: Hey John
24/01/2013 05:45:30 PM
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Yeah, his writing annoys me greatly at times
24/01/2013 06:57:50 PM
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Re: Yeah, his writing annoys me greatly at times
25/01/2013 04:55:54 AM
- 1312 Views
I'm as much of a "mainstream" reviewer as a fantasy one these days, so...
25/01/2013 05:16:16 AM
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Re: I'm as much of a "mainstream" reviewer as a fantasy one these days, so...
25/01/2013 08:37:48 PM
- 2101 Views
All but remains, for me at least, is a story that isn't as memorable as it could have been
27/01/2013 03:03:59 AM
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Re: All but remains, for me at least, is a story that isn't as memorable as it could have been
28/01/2013 09:26:24 PM
- 1416 Views
Perrin growled. Slayer was too quick! Perrin was fast, too. Sooner or later, one of them would..." *NM*
24/01/2013 08:23:12 PM
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At one point he used the word "arabesque" - how can something be that without Arabic culture? *NM*
24/01/2013 09:25:54 PM
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Indeed...
25/01/2013 03:14:22 AM
- 1457 Views
He actually said he took "many advanced courses in linguistics"? That makes it even worse.
25/01/2013 02:19:31 PM
- 1166 Views
Re: He actually said he took "many advanced courses in linguistics"? That makes it even worse.
25/01/2013 08:53:38 PM
- 1521 Views
Well, Brigham Young is the *best* Mormon university out there.
26/01/2013 01:37:16 AM
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Re: Well, Brigham Young is the *best* Mormon university out there.
26/01/2013 03:20:09 PM
- 1265 Views
You still Trolling the WoTBoards Larry?
24/01/2013 11:06:14 PM
- 1308 Views
Ha! I've mellowed a bit, though!
25/01/2013 04:56:47 AM
- 1865 Views
Been there
26/01/2013 09:27:10 PM
- 1210 Views
I went to the World's Fair in 1982 with my family - again, small world!
27/01/2013 03:08:27 AM
- 1957 Views
Were you the one who came up with "Selene was Mesaana"?
25/01/2013 07:44:01 AM
- 1556 Views