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Did anyone else hate Warbreaker at first?


AngelDeath

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9 hours ago, Odeem said:

 

@Iarwainiel

I'm not the type to just skim something usually, unfortunately. Even on audiobooks I rewind even if I only miss one word lol. I've not read White Sand yet, but I had plans to go through it later this year. I'm hoping I won't have this issue with that one.

I totally understand - I am the same way with skimming. I did the Harry Potter books via audio, and I was replaying bits all the time to catch things I missed.

Re: White Sand - I know the graphic novels are canon, but reading the non-canon prose version was IMO really worthwhile & helped me get more of an idea of who was who, character-wise. Just a tip in case you do find the graphic version to be an issue.

Press on! You WILL finish Warbreaker!:)

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 7/15/2019 at 7:26 PM, Elegy said:

It admittedly gave me a good chuckle to read people criticize a Brandon Sanderson book for being too "sexual".

I'm almost halfway through Warbreaker and there's nothing sexual yet?   At least if there was it might get more interesting..!

I'm liking the Siri, Lightsong and Vasher bits but Vivenna is really a pain to read.  Glad I'm not alone in this opinion and have decided to start skimming her parts.

At which point can I expect things to pick up?

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On 2020/8/19 at 8:43 AM, little-green-man said:

I'm almost halfway through Warbreaker and there's nothing sexual yet?   At least if there was it might get more interesting..!

I'm liking the Siri, Lightsong and Vasher bits but Vivenna is really a pain to read.  Glad I'm not alone in this opinion and have decided to start skimming her parts.

At which point can I expect things to pick up?

No sure what you mean by sexual (do you mean a real sex scene, or just reference?:))

Annotation--Warbreaker Chapter 6 https://www.brandonsanderson.com/annotation-warbreaker-chapter-six/

Spoiler

Brandon said he himself is perhaps more conservative than most of his readers in this area. so... you could kind of guess what you can expect.

Yeah, Vivenna was my least favorite POV character, too.(try not to skip too much from chapter 35 might be a good idea, she is kinda important)

That really depends on your definition of things speeding up, but for me things got better from chapter 35 or so.

Edited by The One Ring
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  • 3 weeks later...
On 8/20/2020 at 1:28 PM, Sixth said:

I always loved it from the start, but it is one of those books that you need to just keep on going until you get to the twist. Once you make it there, you're hooked. 

Maybe part of my problem myself is that I already know the twist and general outlines of the plot? Well. Thinking about it that might not help - but that generally does not deter me from a book.

I find myself rolling my eyes every single time I read a Vivenna point of view, and Siri only mildly less so. The only one I really enjoy is Lightsong, but Vasher holds my interest pretty good. I particularly liked the squirrel. That had me laughing more than was probably appropriate lol.

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  • 3 months later...
  • 1 year later...

I had a very similar reaction. I was interested in Vasher right off the bat. As a reader I’m very character driven, and I couldn’t find a character to latch onto that got me to dive in until Vasher started to get some development. The Vasher/Nightblood relationship is so complex and so good!

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  • 4 weeks later...

I hated Vivenna at the beginning—I thought she was somehow jealous of Siri for going and being the God King’s bride. Then as the story progressed, I liked her more and more as she became less... ignorant. Overall it was a really good book. Up to my very high standards of a Branderson book. 

Spoiler

I have to say though... I honestly thought Denth and Vivenna would end up together... and then he betrayed her! Biggest plot twist in the book, in my opinion. Anyone else with me? I was sad to see Denth be evil. Getting to know more of Vasher was nice, however.

Spoiler

I sort of ship Vasher and Vivenna? I feel like that will be an unpopular ship, though, considering the hate for 

Spoiler

Jasnahoid.

 

 

That was a lot of spoilers. 

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  • 3 months later...

I didn't hate it, but I thought it was pretty badly written. If it was a standalone non-cosmere novel, even if it was still by BrandoSando, I think it would've been much more poorly received. It reminds me a lot of bad YA fantasy, like something James Tullos would review.

The redeeming factor for the book, the main reason I don't regret reading it, is the repeated idea that people betray others' expectations of them and their own expectations of themselves. This applies to every significant character and didn't feel at all tacked on. I also found it to be the best cosmere book in terms of humor, mostly because of Denth, though that's a low bar. Other than that, most of my reflections are just criticisms.

Everything Vasher does, until kidnapping Vivenna, is entirely pointless and only serves to hook the reader, which feels cheap. I would have kept his whereabouts a mystery, described by Denth and the others as dangerous and unpredictable, until he appears unexpectedly to kidnap Vivenna. That would make it much easier to assume that he's a villain and Denth is a hero, and it takes out the prologue, which just distracts from everything more relevant that happens at the start of the book - we wouldn't see Awakening yet, but this lets us learn about it with Vivenna, a lá Vin in Mistborn. The Mercystar break-in is also virtually useless, and only kickstarts Lightsong's role in the plot, which could have been done by something else. It's also needlessly confusing, as we never explicitly find out what Vasher was doing (though it's easy enough to guess), nor do we find out who followed him (the annotations reveal it to be Denth, if anyone's wondering).

The fact that Awakening uses color seems to have no purpose beyond fulfilling a joke. It's a pointless complication in the name of worldbuilding. I'd keep it as a tie to differing religious beliefs, but I wouldn't make it part of the magic system. Considering a hugely significant part of the city is probably a Drab if Breath is that important to the economy, I wish we'd seen more about Drabs, as most of the interesting stuff about them - depression, disease - is only mentioned in the annotations. And the ability to change your appearance a little probably wasn't hinted at enough, unless I missed something. Other than that, the magic system is probably my second favorite in the cosmere after the Scadrial stuff with metals (though don't get me started on the names 'Misting' and 'Ferring').

The Five Scholars lore should have been more of a focus, seeing as it's the primary motivation for both Denth and Vasher; the two most interesting characters are held back because we barely understand why they're doing what they're doing. We never really understand what Denth has done that haunts him, or why Vasher killed Arsteel and Shashara, and though we have a rough idea, we shouldn't have to guess the reasoning behind their primary motivations. There are also a lot of unexplained connections that kept distracting me - there's a reference to Vasher's current name being a joke but that's never explained, the last part of Denth's real name VaraTreledees is shared with a priest, a few others. The only one I thought was a good sequel hook was Denth having the Royal Locks, although every time I read 'the Royal Locks' I feel like laughing. Probably most egregiously, we only know from annotations that Arsteel is Clod, which definitely should have been a bigger part of the book. You could argue that all of this could be explored in a sequel, but Denth's character arc is already over, an Arsteel/Clod reveal has been spoiled by the annotations, and any new information about Shashara is less poignant now that the villain most motivated by it is dead.

According to the annotations, the stuff with Siri and Susebron was inspired by BrandoSando's wedding night and honeymoon, but it feels like something out of Twilight. I still can't believe that Susebron is fifty, and I don't see why all the nudity was necessary. I'm not opposed to nudity in books and I thought the scenes felt a lot more natural once they actually started banging, but the earlier scenes read like a preteen's smut on DeviantArt. I also feel like the priests should have explained sex to Susebron if they wanted him to have a kid, but apparently this sweet buff fifty-year-old who looks twenty and only sees the beauty within, who definitely isn't ripped from a bad YA novel, is too pure for that. I can't take any of Siri and Susebron's scenes seriously until about halfway through the book.

Nightblood is fun, but underwhelming when he's finally drawn. I didn't dislike early Vivenna as much as most of you guys seemed to, honestly I was just glad that she felt like a real person and not a caricature like I was expecting. Lightsong and Llarimar are good, and Blushweaver is fine, but as with everyone else, they're too stagnant in the first half of the book. Very little actually happens until the Denth twist. The opening is messy. The ending is very rushed and very open, and tonally it reminds me of the end of a show's first episode, rather than a show's first season, if that makes any sense to anyone.

I like the cosmere much more than I like BrandoSando's books, so I guess the lack of cosmere connections in Warbreaker made me less engaged. But if this had been put out under a pen name, with no cosmere connections, I really doubt it would have been warmly received. But hey, I read it fairly recently, maybe it'll grow on me.

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  • 1 month later...

I actually very much enjoyed the plot and characters. The reason I stopped reading the book for a few weeks was just Brandon's emphasis on sex. Since I had just gotten into adult novels I was trying to avoid all that, and I was really happy to find Brandon who was a "clean author". I thought he would be better and was quite disappointed with the content in this book. But when I picked it up again I found I quite enjoyed the book itself.

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Warbreaker is my favorite Cosmere book. I had trouble getting into it until Vivenna got to Hallendren. But, I struggled with the beginnings of all of the first few Cosmere books I read. I eventually started going back and forth between reading and listening to the audiobooks. It is a lot easier for me to listen to a few hundred pages of setup than to read it. 

I liked all the characters. I think Siri and Lightsong are fun to read, and the court intrigue/mystery is fun.

I also liked Vivenna. She went to save her sister, and it was only crazy luck that Siri's marriage worked out so well. Neither Siri nor Vivenna had any reason to believe it would be a good thing. I think Vivenna is right that the economic system of Hallendren is exploitative, even if she is a little naive in her thinking about it. It does need to change, but her approach wasn't going to work.

As for the sex thing, I was surprised how central sex was to the plot, but it didn't bother me. It seemed like Brandon was trying to stretch his ability to write situations like that with out doing anything he thought was personally wrong. I think it was an important thing for him to try.

I've also heard people dislike that the battle at the end isn't shown, but I don't think that matters. Once the phantoms are activated, the end of the battle is a forgone conclusion.The politics, the love story, and the personal level combat are the real conclusion of the story.

Also, I always assumed that Vasher and Vivenna ended up as a couple, so I was surprised that they didn't seem to be when we see them later. But, on a reread, that was my assumption, the text does not say it.

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I actually enjoyed it a lot and I came in with no expectations. It is true that it starts a little slow, but I am a fast reader so it usually doesn't bother me.

I didn't hate Vivenna, she is stupid and entitled, but that doesn't make me hate her POV (which is weird since I dislike Shallan's POV just because I don't like her). The plot was really nicely done, most twists caught me unaware like the priests actually being devout. Lightsongs POV was great from the beginning and his story was heartwarming. Also I felt satisfied when I guessed he was going to heal Susebron. Susebron was also great for me a sheltered 7 year old in the body of an adult learning about the world is a compelling concept to me.

Siri was alright. And I didn't dislike the sex, it was all pretty implicit and plot relevant. It didn't feel like most sex-scenes in books like A Song of Ice and Fire, where it usually feels like obsecenity for obscenities sake. It doesn't feel that much different from Sarene looking forward to her wedding night.

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On 11/11/2017 at 7:56 PM, AnonymousFan said:

Honestly, yeah this happened to me. I kept skimming over Vivienna chapters and trying to get to Siri or Lightsong chapters.

yep. 

Also, the Deux ex machina is the only nessecary deus ex machina ive ever read. 

Gwammer good. 

Speleng gud

Edited by Flaming Coinshot
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