Sarcasm she/her Posted July 10, 2015 Posted July 10, 2015 Okay, my friend and I are locked in a heated debate on the better author: Brandon Sanderson, or Orson Scott Card. The stakes are high, and losing would bring dishonor and shame to all of the 17th Shard. My friend has read only WOK, and is near the beginning of WOR. Will everybody help brainstorm some points that I can use to bring victory and glory to the Shard? Thanks, 3
Bort he/him Posted July 10, 2015 Posted July 10, 2015 As each author released new books, OSC's quality went down, and BS's quality went up. Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow were both great, but I've heard that the quality of the other sequels drops significantly. Elantris is arguably Brandon's worst book, and it's still excellent. All others he has published since then have only gotten better, 5
Argent he/him Posted July 10, 2015 Posted July 10, 2015 I can't even imagine a debate like this. OSC is a decent author, but that's about it. Brandon is literally revolutionizing the genre. Tell your friend you'll get back to them when they've read more of Brandon's works, starting with The Stormlight Archive doesn't give you enough to fall in love with Brandon, you need the context. 3
Blaze1616 he/him Posted July 10, 2015 Posted July 10, 2015 (edited) None of Brandon's endings have ever dripped as much Deus Ex Machina as the ending of Ender's Game. That's like, the end of the debate. Right there. Edited July 10, 2015 by Blaze1616 1
Sarcasm she/her Posted July 10, 2015 Author Posted July 10, 2015 Thanks, guys. But be warned, my friend is a stubborn and obstinate, and she won't listen to anything opinionated. And she's refusing to read anything other than the Stormlight Archive. 1
TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her Posted July 10, 2015 Posted July 10, 2015 Well, I haven't read anything by OSC, so I can't make comparisons, but I have been consistently impressed by Sanderson's strong female characters. And I'm the sort of reader who rolled her eyes at Tris Prior's "LOOK AT ME I AM FEMINISM" characterization and stopped reading when a legitimately strong female character was made into a villain while yet another kick-every-guy's-butt female protagonist was held up as a strong female character in another series. 2
Blaze1616 he/him Posted July 10, 2015 Posted July 10, 2015 Thanks, guys. But be warned, my friend is a stubborn and obstinate, and she won't listen to anything opinionated. And she's refusing to read anything other than the Stormlight Archive. That kind of makes the discussion pointless, then. You can't make true comparisons between OSC and BS when only using SA because SA isn't finished. The resolution isn't there. That's an unfair, and biased comparison, so what would be the point of bothering to compare them? 3
ThirdGen Posted July 10, 2015 Posted July 10, 2015 Thanks, guys. But be warned, my friend is a stubborn and obstinate, and she won't listen to anything opinionated. And she's refusing to read anything other than the Stormlight Archive. 4
Guest Posted July 10, 2015 Posted July 10, 2015 Idk, they're good for different things. I'm reading Pathfinder by OSC right now, and I'm once again impressed by his skill in writing of human interactions and their psychology. It's a joy to read most of his work.
king of nowhere Posted July 10, 2015 Posted July 10, 2015 i haven't read osc, but there is one thing i like aboout sanderson that is lacking elsewhere and is keeping me away from most fantasy. brandon's book are well planned, welll researched, and well consistent. for all the people looking into the tiniest details in this forum, i don't remember any serious inconsistency being spotted (a few really, really minor). you take all the minutiae in his worldbuilding, do the calculations, and the numbers add up. the attention to detils, and the ramifications explored, are excellent. he can realistically portray a large array of personaities, without ever falling into strawman territory - unless it's intentional, and even then, most of the time the character is faking. atheists praise him for how he wrote jasnah, depressed people praise him for how he wrote kaladin, soldiers praised him for how he wrote about the army, people suffering from post traumatic stress disorder praised him for how he wrote people with that condition. if you are the kind of guy who won't care about the details, who will cruise through a book for a quick aand forgettable fun before throwing it away, then you won't even notice all that stuff. if you are the kind of guy who likes to think when he read a book, and to consider it in depth, and read it over and over in the future, than sanderson is your author of choice. If your friend doesn't appreciate all that stuff, you can subtly insinuate she's a literary mass consumer, the reader equivalent of homer simpson, going through scores of low quality books like he goes through cheap, industrial-made donughts (ok, I have no idea if they are good or not, but I've never seen homer refuse one, from any source, so I'd assume he's not a refined customer). Keep in mind that discriminating people for their taste or what they choose to value in entertainment is wrong, but what the hell, no one is perfect, you may as well do it 5
Orlion Blight he/him Posted July 11, 2015 Posted July 11, 2015 Hey, even Orson Scott Card praises Sanderson. I've never heard Brandon praise Card. Which makes since, because OSC is garbage Seriously there's this one short story with the worst characterizations ever...Eumenidies in the Bathroom, or something like that... and the novel Wyrms! Talk about strange! And if you really want to yank your friend's chain... possibly to the point of ending the friendship... there's a theory out there that Ender's Game is just a fictionalized account of Hitler where Hitler's genocidal actions are justified. Sanderson has Nightblood. Set. Game. Match. 1
Bort he/him Posted July 11, 2015 Posted July 11, 2015 Sanderson has Nightblood. Set. Game. Match. I think you mean game, set, match 2
Elsecaller3414 she/her Posted July 13, 2015 Posted July 13, 2015 I have read some OSC stuff, and I cannot get through anything more than the first in a series. The Ender's game series? During Speaker for the Dead (2nd book): *bang* there goes my head on the desk, and now I am snoring. The kind of parallel series that follows Bean? Couldn't get even two chapters through Shadow of the Hegemon. I have never had this problem with Sanderson's books. Hey, even Orson Scott Card praises Sanderson. I've never heard Brandon praise Card. Orlion, I never thought about it that way, but now I am, and I realize it is true. 1
Kestrel she/her Posted July 13, 2015 Posted July 13, 2015 Sanderson has diverse characters Card (at least in Ender's Game) did not boom.
Blaze1616 he/him Posted July 13, 2015 Posted July 13, 2015 Hey, even Orson Scott Card praises Sanderson. I've never heard Brandon praise Card. The gang praises OSC during Writing Excuses, I'm pretty sure.
Emerald101 he/him Posted July 13, 2015 Posted July 13, 2015 Idk, they're good for different things. I'm reading Pathfinder by OSC right now, and I'm once again impressed by his skill in writing of human interactions and their psychology. It's a joy to read most of his work. I read Pathfinder and rather enjoyed it, but the sequel is trash.
Sarcasm she/her Posted July 13, 2015 Author Posted July 13, 2015 It's all good now, my friend read the first few pages of WOR and sucummbed to the first stages of Sanderson obsession. Thanks for all the help! 12
Blaze1616 he/him Posted July 13, 2015 Posted July 13, 2015 It's all good now, my friend read the first few pages of WOR and sucummbed to the first stages of Sanderson obsession. Thanks for all the help! I'm not sure whether to be happy that you've convinced her, or sad that we've begun treating our fandom like a drug addiction... 7
Delightful Posted July 13, 2015 Posted July 13, 2015 I'm not sure whether to be happy that you've convinced her, or sad that we've begun treating our fandom like a drug addiction...Begun? 5
king of nowhere Posted July 13, 2015 Posted July 13, 2015 It's all good now, my friend read the first few pages of WOR and sucummbed to the first stages of Sanderson obsession. Thanks for all the help! ah, there's yet hope for humankind. I'm not sure whether to be happy that you've convinced her, or sad that we've begun treating our fandom like a drug addiction... nah, they are totally unrelated things. for example, sanderson books don't fry your brain. except for the part were we spend all the time reading books, maybe, and I'm sure most people would have some choice words for those putting real effort into learning aons or making cosplay, and the psychologists may find interesting the cases of those whose social life is curtailed as a result of sanderson's books. okk, so the brain fry area is a bit of a grey zone. other differences are... they are... huh, i'm not really sure right now. then there is the fact that a dose of drug, you take it, you get high for a few minutes/hours, then the dose is spent. instead you get a sanderson book (which i suppose is cheaper than most drugs, but i admit not being informed in that particular field, and most drug addicts don't seem the rich kind of people so maybe drugs are cheaper than i assumme), you get high for several days, then you put it into the shelf and you can still use it later. so sanderson books 1 - drugs 0. doing a recap, sanderson books are somewhat similar to drugs, but they are significantly better, and they are more environmental friendly. 1
Orlion Blight he/him Posted July 14, 2015 Posted July 14, 2015 I think you mean game, set, match Egads! I believe you are right! How embarrassing... The gang praises OSC during Writing Excuses, I'm pretty sure. Pfft, mere Excuses
Dark_Eyes_12 Posted October 23, 2015 Posted October 23, 2015 I read Ender's Game, and personally, I disliked it. Brandon is soooo much better!
vineyarddawg Posted October 26, 2015 Posted October 26, 2015 I was an OSC fan long before I found any of Sanderson's work, and I simply cannot fathom how I would make an argument that OSC is a better writer. I will say this, though: I think his earlier work is much better than his most recent stuff. The Alvin Maker series, for example, is first-rate alternate history/fantasy. I also think the biggest problem is that OSC is much better at beginning stories than ending them. The first half of a story arc is usually pretty gripping, and then he kind of gets lost somewhere in the 3rd quarter of the story... and then once the end of the story arc rolls around (usually the 3rd book in a trilogy), you're left wondering what the heck just happened, and why you feel so dissatisfied. The Enderverse is a great example of this to me. Unlike some folks in this thread, I loved Ender's Game, and I loved the way it ended. So open-ended... so full of possibilities and promise. I also really loved Speaker for the Dead, and I enjoyed Xenocide. By the time Children of the Mind ended, though, I had mentally checked out about 100-200 pages earlier. I was just reading to see how the story ended. It was incredibly unfulfilling to me. (Can't get into too many specifics without spoilers, I guess.) Same thing with the Bean storyline. I couldn't put down Ender's Shadow, but by the time I got to the end of Shadows in Flight, I thought to myself, "Well, that was a complete waste of my time." I guess that's actually a step up from the book before it, though (Ender in Exile), where I was actively angry at the author for publishing something that was a waste of my money to buy, a waste of my time to read, and destroyed part of the canon he'd written in his first two Ender books. (And which he acknowledged that he did willingly, essentially giving ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ as an explanation for why it was done.) That goes for the Pathfinder series, too. It took me a little while to get into Pathfinder, but I did end up really liking it. The third book in that trilogy, though (Visitors), was borderline-unreadable to me. I literally almost set the book down at about the 50% point and just stopped reading. In retrospect, I probably would have been happier if I had. (I'm probably not even going to buy the third book in the Mithermages series for this reason.) So OSC is really good at starting stories, but is really bad at finishing them. I think Brandon is really good at both, but he's especially good at finishing both a book and an epic arc in a really fulfilling way, which is even more important than starting well.
Fatebreaker he/him Posted October 27, 2015 Posted October 27, 2015 How to WIN this argument in two easy steps: Step 1: Hoid Step 2: Gloat
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