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Nerdforge makes absurdly large Stormlight leatherbounds and delivers them to Brandon Sanderson
(youtu.be)
I'm not a big YouTube guy, but this is interesting, and I know a lot of people in here are reading/looking forward to reading Wind and Truth. Her end result is some beautiful (obviously impractical) books that make the regular giant hardcovers look like little baby books.
If you ignore the handful of YouTube-isms it's a pretty cool video.
edit: adding screenshot of the books compared to the regular ones.
I struggle to enjoy what YouTube has become and as a result don't follow much anything anymore... But I do want to thank you for sharing this video!
The amount of skill and creativity and love that went into these books was absolutely incredible to watch. I'm going to show my family. Seriously, this was such a pleasure.
And while I have read Brandon Sanderson books (introduced to him through the WoT), I haven't actually read the Stormlight Archive. My partner has though and they are really excited about the latest book. I think I know what my next series will be.
Incredible! ๐
It's weird, because they're absurdly long, but the moment to moment and scene to scene writing never makes it feel that way.
But they are for sure seriously long. (The audiobooks are 45, 48, 55, 57, 63 hours.) And by the end there are probably at least a dozen characters that I really care about, and many more that played crucial roles. Some of them feel like just names early, but a lot get built out into people that feel real.
It was already my favorite series once I powered through the first 4, but Wind and Truth went above and beyond and re-defined what I consider epic fantasy to be with the paths it opened up.
So I have to correct my previous statement about my partner reading through the series. Apparently they read through Oathbringer but it dragged on so long that by the time book 4 came out they felt burnt out. "Remember how you felt with WoT 10? That's how I felt with Oathbringer." With the fifth book out though, they're interested in perhaps restarting the series.
I like Sanderson. I really enjoyed Mistborn, for instance. I really don't want to get into another situation where I'm hundreds of hours into something and only continuing out of stubbornness. I don't like to leave things unfinished, but pressing forward can sometimes make me no longer like an author. Truth is, some series pick up after a slog and could even become my very favorite (as was the case with WoT). Ah, how epics can go so very right or so very wrong. Haha.
Sounds like your opinion is that book 5 makes it all worth it though.
With all that said, I think I might actually read Mistborn era 2 books first. I only just realized that they were out. I've been reading so many other authors that I haven't paid much attention to Sanderson for a while. I only heard the occasional, "My god this book is never going to end" from my partner. ๐
For me thats actually a big plus because its like, I'll be on page 300 and loving it, and I look and I still have 900 to go! Often I'm saddened by being at an awesome part of a book, looking and seeing its only got like 50 pages left
I thought each book was better than the last. I like the length, because almost every scene is at least one meaningful character being developed, and there are very few scenes I would cut if given the chance. After finishing (as an audiobook), I pretty much immediately started Way of Kings over as a physical read to see what extra details I can pick up knowing where the first half finishes.
Mistborn is significantly shorter, but I felt more (not awful, but there) slog in The Well of Ascension than I did anywhere in Stormlight. I thought he was stuck moving from the Final Empire into a trilogy for a bit.
Everyone is going to experience things differently, so I can't say if you'll be as hooked on Stormlight as I was. I'd say there are probably close to double digit characters as fleshed out as Vin (with very different struggles and very different emotional paths) by the end of the first arc, though. That's what really captures me more than the big picture arc (though that's also spectacular).
World building and character development will always draw me in. And Sanderson is a good writer. I wonder if audiobooks are something I should try. Now that I'm forced to commute for work again, it might be fun to give it a try.
Micheal Kramer and Kate Reading do an excellent job for most Sanderson stuff. I'm not super picky about quality of narration (outside of "full cast" and "sound effects" being a dealbreaker), but there are some who do a particularly good job and enhance the experience, and those two are really good.