What’s your favorite Fantasy book/ series?

I love WoT. Good luck!

man when i was younger i had a copy that never left my side i must’ve reread that book easily 20-30 times. Never read another in the series though

Trevor Derry i LOVE Kkc its my favorite story, but i resonate with Locke LaMora so much thats why its my favorite series. If the distinction between the two makes sense for anyone other than me

Trevor Derry i think it was mistborn?

I didn’t like the Jordan last book. So not a fan anymore

@Yaniv

Looking at him purely as a writer, this is why I dislike his work. But a few things to preface this: first, I do not hate comedy in books, and I’m not an “intellectual heavy weight” who only enjoys high-brow humour. In fact, I frequently find myself drawn to low-brow humour and vicious sarcasm. I also like absurdity. I also enjoy romance sub-plots unless they’re bad because I like multi-faceted books. (This is going to be a bit of a read, btw)

Why I hate Sanderson as a writer:

1: He uses the same archetypes. In every. Single. Book. You’ve got your marginalized POV character, then you’ve got your intellectual, problem-solving upper-crust insider who’s “different” from everyone else. The nobleman who goes against the grain and is in a position of power to basically drag everyone along with him, but with someone a bit higher at the top posing as an obstacle to some degree or another. He has the angst-ridden, near-anti-hero savior figures like Kaladin who, to a degree, are revenge driven. Outcast who saves the day after discovering they’re one of the few people who have access to a super-awesome power, and almost always against a cheesy “Oh, the villian is just misunderstood or compelled by something else” nonsense; or had some incredibly moronic motivation that got them to kill millions of people through their actions but then they can just get talked down, or in some cases they’re evil because they’re evil because they’re evil. It wouldn’t be so bad if his character arcs weren’t so predictable; but in one form or another his books always tend to follow this format. There’s always the “comic relief” idiot character and then there’s the “comic relief POV character” who just has terrible “witty” sarcastic phrases they’re constantly churning out. And the more I started to realize this, the more I started to notice it, the more I started to hate it.

2: His romance sub-plots are awful, and juvenile. The characters fall in love with little to-no exposure to each other, or with very little being shared between them that would actually make them become attracted to one another. His romance sub-plots are *never* enjoyable and I generally enjoy reading romance sub-plots.

3: His humour is the absolute worst. It’s so inorganic and forced compared to other authors, and out of place, ALL THE TIME. It’s like Sanderson enters the middle of a scene and pauses it, then says “Hello, I’m going to tell a joke now” and inserts wacky, substanceless humour that’s inappropriate. In one scene in Oathbringer for example, there’s a character who talks about “not being able to trust old people” because they don’t have nice butts. Yeah, that really fits with the rest of the scene and what’s happening at the time it’s said. And absurdity is good, but Sanderson just does it bad. An absurd situation in, say, Joe Abercrombies books is a bunch of inquisitors chasing the companion of a Magus into his apartments, the Magus hears the noise and busts out of the bath screaming “What the fuck is going on here?” completely naked, covered in soap, wrinkly as hell and with his weiner flopping around before killing them all. In Brandon Sanderson “absurd” it’s a character saying something completely out of place, doesn’t fit what’s happening in the scene, and clashes dramatically with the tone of the rest of the characters (not only what they’re talking about, but how they even speak). His humour brings good scenes to a screeching slow-down. If you read his Reckoners books be prepared for three books of awful analogy after awful analogy because that’s the POV characters shtick: he can’t make good analogies, so he makes analogies all the time and none of them make sense. Yeah, real hilarious Sanderson, as if your cliche analogies weren’t bland enough now you’re going to beat us in the face with intentionally bad ones for three books and call it “humour”. His humour is so stomach turningly cringy it makes me feel like I’m reading a Myspace page from one of those terrible “I’m so random XDDDD” people, all the while you know that Sanderson is patting himself on the back for being so hilarious.

4: I’m not a prose Nazi, but his prose is pretty ‘meh’ and it got stomach turningly dull after I was exposed to vastly more authors. I still adore people like Gemmel, who I’ve read longer than Sanderson, but Sanderson I actually just ended up disliking more every time I read someone else’s books. It doesn’t help that I read 3-4 books of his that suffered from a case of “where did the plot go?”

5: He treats the reader like they’re an idiot. There’s no real foreshadowing unless you’re bludgeoned in the face with it until you’re on the brink of a coma. There’s no subtlety and the only nuance in his books is spoon fed to you like you’re a vegetable. It’s not that every bit of a book has to be dripping with this kind of presentation.

6: He’s an author that has got too big for his britches. His editors are clearly afraid to tell him “no”. Using his most recent book, Oathbringer as an example, you could easily cut 200-250 pages from the book and literally lose nothing. There are so many pointless scenes that do nothing but detract from the actual story.

@Lucas I agree with almost all you stated in your post. Plus the fact that all of the above comes with 6 to 700 pages to get through.

@Lucas isn’t that totally undermining what you said previously?
You basically said he’s an under average auther and that you are unimpressed with his work for different reasons

@Lucas fair enough. If I were to ask you what is your favorite quality adult fantasy book/series what would you say?