The Cosmere is the big huge super-project Basically all the adult fantasy books of Sanderson tie into this. The early books of Mistborn (first trilogy) did not have any mention of this–although I believe he had already planned for the whole universe–but it would have been a hard sell for the publisher. Stormlight Archive is 4 books of 10 now and it’s been quite awesome.
For more Cosmere that is quicker to read than the big series you could try Warbreaker or Elantris both of which I enjoyed.
3 of the “Secret Novels” project tie into Cosmere as well, as does White Sand (comic books) and a bunch of short stories and novellas.
Also there is at least 1 Stormlight Archive Novella that has been published separately.
In any case if you like Sanderson’s writing in general–which if you liked Mistborn I guess you do–I’d recommend the rest.
I am on Toll the Hounds for my Malazan read at the moment and from this reread it’s been the slowest book of the first 8. I am halfway through and while some appearances by Karsa have made up for a few of the book’s failings, it feels there are too many separate threads, new characters and not enough old ones… after Reaper’s Gale this is rather anti-climactic. It probably had to be. And my colleague reminded me the pay-off at the end was pretty good (as it has been 10 years since my previous read, I really don’t remember). I have been skipping or skimming whole passages.
here are some of my complaints:
Mappo is taking too long to get where he is going.
Rallick is back but not really.
Torvald is boring without Karsa.
Cotillion and Shadowthrone have been pretty scarce.
The Traveller reveal was too obvious
Letheras is done. So the immediate threat has been reduced.
And the whole storyline around Nimander and the other Tiste Andii is … soooo slow to unfold. And none of the characters are especially likable or interesting. Except Rake himself and he doesn’t do much for the first half of the book.
I don’t really want more Bridgeburners dead. That was a real bummer.
The Bonehunters seem to have vanished after being a major presence for such a long time.
No Kalam, no Quickben, nobody…
Too many dead at the end of Reaper’s Gale. I am still miffed.
Funnily enough I am also reading Toll the Hounds. I thought it was pure coincidence that upon starting this book I stopped reading for ages, but perhaps I lost interest for some of the reasons you listed.
Well, I’ve finished Red Mars. I read it before, long ago, and was unimpressed. I can’t quite remember why but I think I felt it was boring and disjointed. Not so here, I was fascinated and gripped. There’s some pretty racist stuff early on but it turns out that’s mainly from the character’s viewpoint. Regardless, I hugely enjoyed it this time and am moving on to Green Mars now.
(I’m on a bit of a Mars trip in general - see also ‘What are you playing?’)
I’m past halfway in my re-read, so as I’ve got further than you did, I feel able to comment…
‘Boring’ and ‘predictable?’ Well, I guess they’re fairly subjective judgements. I can’t claim that it’s suprising me much, but it is a children’s book, and was written nearly sixty years ago. I’m certainly not bored, but as I say, that’s a very subjective thing.
However - I’ve come across absolutely nothing that I can see as racist. It’s very white (all the characters are white), but most of England was very white in the 1960s, and most English children’s literature simply reflected that. So this book is surely only racist in the sense that non-white people simply don’t exist - it’s not Roald Dahl…!
As for classist - again, only in the sense that it’s clearly written by a ‘middle-class’ writer for an expected audience of ‘middle-class’ children. But, again, that was true of most books of the time. I haven’t found that people from any social group are specifically portrayed either negatively or positively, or in an especially stereotypical way.
However - there may easily be things you picked up on that I’m oblivious to, so this is very much only my opinion!
Ahh, I love Bryan Talbot’s stuff. I was very fortunate that he came to do a couple of talks at our local library back around when the first volume of Grandville came out, so I was able to get it signed/sketched by him (along with a couple of other things).
The second time he came to do a talk, I actually ran into him while I was at the library earlier in the day and he asked if I was coming to the talk. I don’t know what tipped him off that I might be interested. Possibly that I was wearing an X-Men hat and checking out a stack of graphic novels …
London has a comic/cartoon museum near Oxford Street, and a while ago they had half of it dedicated to a big Bryan Talbot / Luther Arkwright exhibition.
I have actually been reading quite a bit lately. After the first book of GammaLAW, I decided to swap over to the next book in Timothy Zahn’s Icarus series, Icarus Twin, which came out in December.
After that, I re-read Jim Butcher’s The Aeronaut’s Windlass so that I could then go into the sequel, The Olympian Affair with a fresh memory. Both very good steampunk style books.
Now I am reading The Road to Neverwinter, the tie-in prequel novel to the D&D: Honor Among Thieves film. Enjoying it so far, and the characters presented so far do feel like the characters from the movie.
Next up will be the third book in the Icarus series, The Icarus Job, which I picked up last week, and was rather shocked to see since the previous novel came out in December.
Having finished Susan Cooper’s Over Sea, Under Stone (I enjoyed it as much as a middle-aged person probably should enjoy what is very much a children’s adventure story; I’ll certainly carry on with the Dark is Rising…), I was inspired to finally read the Stone Book Quartet by Alan Garner. Which is… utterly superb. A fantastic set of stories about the interweaving of time and place and family.
Recently also have read, among others:
Assassin’s Fate by Robin Hobb, finishing my re-read of the entire series of Fitz/Fool/Elderlings books. Enjoyed them even more than the first time, if possible! Already looking forward to reading them all again, probably starting in a year or two…!
King Leopold’s Ghost - superb (but horribly grim) book about colonial Belgium.
Always by Morris Gleitzman. The last in the Once, Then, Now… etc kids books, and disappointingly a load of old rubbish. The earlier ones are superb, so this was a massive let down!
Bournville by Jonathan Coe. It was ok, but it’s no Rotters Club.
Michael Gray’s Outtakes on Bob Dylan - a collection of selected writings. Of interest very much only to Bobcats. I enjoyed it a lot.
I re-read the Dark is Rising sequence about a decade ago, I think. I enjoyed it more when I was younger (no great surprise), and I concluded afterwards that I probably wouldn’t read it again. As an adult I think I appreciated the concept (or aspects of it) more than the specifics of the execution. I still think of it as a bit special, but would probably only recommend it to children.
That seems a fair assessment. And after all, they were written for children.
I’d never realised before that the first one was written so long before the others. It was first published only fifteen years after the first Narnia book, and while the social background of the protagonists (and of the expected audience) is quite similar, the feel of the book is much more modern than the Narnia books.
Basically all the adult fantasy books of Sanderson tie into this. The early books of Mistborn (first trilogy) did not have any mention of this–although I believe he had already planned for the whole universe–but it would have been a hard sell for the publisher. Stormlight Archive is 4 books of 10 now and it’s been quite awesome.
