Mistborn was so-so. A good story, but the same old formula. Maybe I'm just jaded after having read wayyyy too many fantasy stories. But shit Wise Man's Fear is new and I'm pretty sure I consider that my new favorite book ever. Too bad the 2nd one was a huge disappointment. I hope the 3rd is better.
haven't read malazan and the reviews sound interesting. I have the first 3 of dragonriders to read though.
Wise Man's Fear was the 2nd book... I'm a little confused here. I personally really enjoyed both The Name of the Wind and AWMF. Really looking forward to the 3rd.
I'm reading it right now on the recommendation of a friend; so far halfway through book 3. In my opinion, book 2 was amazing and 3 is looking great so far, but book 1 was basically shit. I feel like he didn't explain basic things, that were needed for the story to make any sense at all. Even things that the main characters seemed to already know, but were never announced.
Plus the way that none of the magic is ever explained until book 2, made the whole thing seem like a big Deus Ex Machina waiting to happen.
Plus the entire book had a sort of LOTR feel to it. I can't recall specifics but I remember thinking at several points "This is direct plagiarism"
Yes, there are A LOT of similar names... "Misty Mountains"/"Mountains of Mist", trolls/trollocs, etc. But the story in itself is very different other than a strong Good vs. Evil, save the world, defeat the big bad dude theme. I personally wasn't really ever a fan of LOTR but do really like WoT.
I think my main issues with WoT have to do with pacing. If you compare it to SoIF for example, there's two big differences. Jordan tends to spend a long time with a character before switching to another view point, while Martin tends to hop around more quickly. Secondly, Jordan tends to cover every minute of every character's life... so that when you return to them you are pretty much where the last section of that character ended. Martin on the other hand will leave a character and time will continue to progress while we follow others, which works as he tends to come back to characters often enough that we don't forget what had previously happened to them.
I feel that both these things combined really slowed Jordan's story telling down when the protagonists split up, as he now had to cover the same time period multiple times from multiple perspectives, etc. And it frustrated a lot of readers (myself included) when we were stuck following a character we didn't particularly care for for a third of the book.
As far as Deus Ex... I did not have any feelings of that in the later books. I'm still a little anxious about the end game, as Sanderson ended Mistborn with
, but I hope he doesn't pull that shit again.
