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Re: Hey John DomA Send a noteboard - 24/01/2013 05:45:30 PM
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)



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".
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Where to begin.... - 23/01/2013 05:22:12 AM 5225 Views
I agree. It wasn' a bad book so much as a weak ending - 23/01/2013 05:33:51 AM 1527 Views
Re: Where to begin.... - 23/01/2013 08:26:58 AM 1548 Views
Good to see you still around - 25/01/2013 06:07:55 AM 1452 Views
Re: Where to begin.... - 23/01/2013 01:18:31 PM 1497 Views
Re: Where to begin.... - 23/01/2013 04:11:13 PM 2792 Views
Agreed - 24/01/2013 01:24:52 AM 1500 Views
Brandon was just following Jordan's example in this - 24/01/2013 02:49:44 PM 1603 Views
Not quite - 24/01/2013 04:47:00 PM 1526 Views
Hi Dominic! - 25/01/2013 12:23:05 AM 1612 Views
Eh! - 25/01/2013 04:01:27 AM 1703 Views
Logain was in Merrilor?? - 25/01/2013 07:31:19 AM 1420 Views
And what about the Kin ? - 24/01/2013 03:18:28 PM 1497 Views
Most of the Kin didn't came to Andor with Elayne and Nynaeve - 24/01/2013 03:40:47 PM 1325 Views
Hey John - 24/01/2013 04:04:39 PM 1939 Views
Re: Hey John - 24/01/2013 05:45:30 PM 1964 Views
Yeah, his writing annoys me greatly at times - 24/01/2013 06:57:50 PM 2100 Views
Re: Yeah, his writing annoys me greatly at times - 25/01/2013 04:55:54 AM 1363 Views
I'm as much of a "mainstream" reviewer as a fantasy one these days, so... - 25/01/2013 05:16:16 AM 1730 Views
Re: I'm as much of a "mainstream" reviewer as a fantasy one these days, so... - 25/01/2013 08:37:48 PM 2151 Views
Totally agree about Mat - 27/01/2013 08:01:50 PM 1362 Views
Re: Totally agree about Mat - 27/01/2013 10:19:55 PM 2144 Views
Re: Yeah, his writing annoys me greatly at times - 10/02/2013 08:10:35 AM 1413 Views
At one point he used the word "arabesque" - how can something be that without Arabic culture? *NM* - 24/01/2013 09:25:54 PM 1014 Views
Indeed... - 25/01/2013 03:14:22 AM 1503 Views
What about misuse of titles? - 25/01/2013 06:19:16 AM 1292 Views
I was thinking of that this morning... - 25/01/2013 09:36:48 PM 1382 Views
You still Trolling the WoTBoards Larry? - 24/01/2013 11:06:14 PM 1358 Views
Ha! I've mellowed a bit, though! - 25/01/2013 04:56:47 AM 1917 Views
Been there - 26/01/2013 09:27:10 PM 1262 Views
Hello - 25/01/2013 06:21:04 AM 1223 Views
Back at you, Mark - 25/01/2013 07:46:12 AM 1285 Views
Were you the one who came up with "Selene was Mesaana"? - 25/01/2013 07:44:01 AM 1614 Views
Yep. That was me - 25/01/2013 08:26:37 AM 1431 Views
Re: Yep. That was me - 25/01/2013 08:54:46 AM 1346 Views

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