Any recommendation on unpublished works

[Arash.F he/him]

  Does Brandon recommend reading unpublished works? is there a possibility that some details change later?

[RShara she/her]

It's up to you whether you want to read unpublished stuff.  Some of them will likely change quite a bit before they're published (Aether of Night, Dragonsteel, Liar of Partinel), some not as much (White Sand).  None of them are technically canon until they're published, though, so no guarantees.  I found them quite interesting and worth reading, myself.

[Weltall]

Things can change dramatically between 'Prime' and 'published'. If you check out the posted samples of Way of Kings Prime and Dragonsteel Prime and then compare both of those to Kaladin's chapters in the published Way of Kings, you'll see exactly what I mean.

That said, I found all of them interesting reads and quite enjoyable in their own right, even if nothing in them is canon and a lot of it never will be. Aether of Night in particular I had a lot of fun with, even though it's readily apparent why he didn't think it was good enough to publish as-is, and even though it's going to have to be massively rewritten since a huge part of it's 'A-Plot' was cannibalized for Mistborn. White Sand (prose) isn't likely to be changed too much (based on the current state of the graphic novel adaptation) and makes a good read on its own. Those are the complete unpublished works you can easily get your hands on; apparently some readers have also asked for and gotten copies of Mistborn Prime (which has the magic system but not the story) but I can't comment on its readability. In the incomplete side, there's Mythwalker, aka Warbreaker Prime. It's right up there on Brandon's website and while it's really obvious why it was never finished, it's got some neat ideas in there which Brandon might cannibalize one day, and it's a cool look inside his writing process and development as a writer.

The one unpublished work that we have samples of but which Brandon does discourage fans from reading is The Liar of Partinel. He wasn't happy with how it turned out and described the process of writing it as a chore. He's particularly mentioned not wanting people to read it and get a mistaken idea about certain characters in it. We know this is going to be massively revised and Brandon is still deciding how best to eventually tell Hoid's origin story. One example of things we know will change, just from existing WoBs, is the presence of Aethers. When Brandon wrote the LoP draft, he tried cannibalizing the magic system from Aether of Night, hoping it would work as well as the combination of systems did in Mistborn: The Final Empire. It didn't, and since then Brandon has announced an intention to rewrite Aether so there's no longer any need to use that magic system in Liar. Which means that everything to do with them in the existing draft goes away.

And lastly, there's Dragonsteel Prime... this is one that you can read samples of from the website and if you're interested in Brandon's development as a writer I highly recommend them. Specifically, the ones he's shared are the chapters that included the Shattered Plains setting and Bridge Four, which he cannibalized for Way of Kings. In addition to this neat 'look inside' there are tantalizing hints of plot elements that may play a role in the Dragonsteel series when it's eventually revised and published, but as with Aether of Night everything is subject to revision. It's theoretically possible to read the complete book, if you go to BYU's library. Brandon can't prevent anyone from doing it (it was his master's thesis, so it's part of the school's archive) but he does mention that he's not entirely comfortable as it's not his best work and as with Liar, so much of it is going to be changed. Here's a recent WoB on the topic.

Quote

Brandon Sanderson

I don't like emailing out this book [Dragonsteel] because of things /u/JawKneePawLick talks about. All the good things in it have been done better in later books--there isn't a single character attribute or theme by this point that hasn't been repurposed better in Stormlight.

You can glean some little things about the cosmere, but not much. I didn't start cannonizing real cosmere elements until Mistborn. The book just isn't great, and what it does contain in regards to the cosmere has either been changed or will be changed.

 

[Dunkum he/him]

1 hour ago, Weltall said:

In the incomplete side, there's Mythwalker, aka Warbreaker Prime. It's right up there on Brandon's website and while it's really obvious why it was never finished, it's got some neat ideas in there which Brandon might cannibalize one day, and it's a cool look inside his writing process and development as a writer.

I can't speak to most of the unpublished works, but I will second this bit.  Mythwalker itself celarly has some problems but it is cool to see which pieces were taken and used elsewhere, and how they changed in the process.