About to reread Warbreaker, is reading Mythwalker first worth it?

[LewsTherinTelescope]

Curious if reading Mythwalker before a reread of Warbreaker adds anything. I expect it's not gonna add anything plotwise, considering that it was apparently extremely different, but idk if it might make it more enjoyable in some other way. Idk.

[Karger]

14 minutes ago, beewall said:

Curious if reading Mythwalker before a reread of Warbreaker adds anything. I expect it's not gonna add anything plotwise, considering that it was apparently extremely different, but idk if it might make it more enjoyable in some other way. Idk.

The short answer is no.  Mythwalker was never even completed.  It is not really going to leave you anything but curious and or frustrated unless you are interested in Brandon's writing process. 

[LewsTherinTelescope]

10 minutes ago, Karger said:

The short answer is no.  Mythwalker was never even completed.  It is not really going to leave you anything but curious and or frustrated unless you are interested in Brandon's writing process. 

Got it, thanks. (I know it wasn't finished, I just wanted to be sure, since I'm trying to reread pretty much everything right now.)

Edited August 3, 2020 by beewall

[Weltall]

If you enjoyed the 'what could have been' aspect of Way of Kings Prime and weren't bothered by the fact that we're never going to get answers to a lot of the questions it raised, you might find Mythwalker is worth a look despite its incomplete nature. It's not as polished as WoK Prime and suffers some of the same flaws as Merin's plot from that book, as Brandon twice tried writing the 'peasant boy stumbles into things way over his head and comes into his own with powerful magic' story and neither one really worked well though Mythwalker's flaws are more pronounced in that respect. Even so, it's interesting because you can see how Brandon combined elements from both of those stories (plus a bit of Dragonsteel) into the character that became Kaladin. Similarly you can see early hints of Mistborn's backstory which (based on the two chapters we have publicly) was later recycled into Final Empire Prime and then to its finished form in Mistborn: The Final Empire.

Also, while some specific applications of the magic simply don't work well, the idea of a bloodline-based magic is itself a neat idea that could probably be cannibalized for some future project if Brandon wanted to. And as Brandon himself would admit, the characters that became Warbreaker's Siri and Vivenna worked well even if everything else didn't. You're not going to learn anything new about Warbreaker's setting in the way that WoK Prime contains details that weren't in the published Way of Kings (but got woven in a book or two later) but if you're interested in the writing process it's a fairly quick read that's probably worth at least a cursory read.

[LewsTherinTelescope]

5 minutes ago, Weltall said:

If you enjoyed the 'what could have been' aspect of Way of Kings Prime and weren't bothered by the fact that we're never going to get answers to a lot of the questions it raised, you might find Mythwalker is worth a look despite its incomplete nature.

I will probably read it at some point then, thanks.

7 minutes ago, Weltall said:

Also, while some specific applications of the magic simply don't work well, the idea of a bloodline-based magic is itself a neat idea that could probably be cannibalized for some future project if Brandon wanted to.

I've read through the Coppermind article on Mythwalker, and while even in the article I can see some major differences, [Aether of Night]

Spoiler

 the bloodline-tied magic that doesn't actually require a blood relation reminds me of Aethers

(do I need to spoiler this since we're outside the Aether subforum?)

10 minutes ago, Weltall said:

You're not going to learn anything new about Warbreaker's setting in the way that WoK Prime contains details that weren't in the published Way of Kings (but got woven in a book or two later) but if you're interested in the writing process it's a fairly quick read that's probably worth at least a cursory read.

Thanks for this opinion on the book. Now that I actually look at it, it does look pretty short (unless the chapters are VERY long), so I'll probably read it and will be able to judge it myself lol.