Agreed. It isn't as "clear" as the best juvenile/YA fiction nor is it able to demonstrate a mastery of complex clauses. It feels like a barely-expanded screenplay more than anything else. Actually, that's too harsh on screenplays, as the better ones convey even without the actor emoting a greater clarity than many of Sanderson's scenes in his novels.



I remember years ago on Westeros where he and I got into a discussion on that issue (sadly, the thread was deleted for space reasons a couple of years later). I did see some improvement in his Mistborn novels, but lately it's been worse in effort and quality.

It's so frustrating, because if he would put better effort into developing appropriate styles for the stories he writes, his fiction could go from "flawed execution of potentially good ideas" to something worth reading more than once. The Emperor's Soul I think is his best story conception, but even it falters due to the inattention to prose nuances. Frustrating.



Yes, it was jarring. Now I don't think of RJ as a master prose stylist, but at least his writing was consistent in terms of the effect he aimed to achieve. Trying to emulate even part of that didn't help Sanderson any, I'll grant. It read like Amateur Hour at times.



Well, it reads much like contemporary American English in its social registers and use of verbs as nouns and vice versa. Doesn't make it good, but it does seem to appeal to those who speak in a similar fashion.