firegazer

You may agree to disagree, but please be aware that I have further thoughts on all of these comments and why they are not logical rebuttals. If you ever want to discuss more in-depth, I am here by PMs.

You seriously don't see the difference between Sadeas (a villain) doing a villainous deed that the author makes clear is TOTALLY VILLAINOUS and Shallan -- a main character we are supposed to root for -- happily embracing the concept of teenage marriage (and possibly teenage motherhood), with language and themes that the author has chosen which implicitly suggest he thinks it's a good thing for the character? Sanderson has gone out of his way in every way to portray how awful slavery and the caste system are in this world, and to have the main characters think nuanced thoughts about them. The sole thing he DOESN'T seem interested in overthrowing is the patriarchal system. Why is that the ONLY thing he's totally okay with keeping the same and having the main characters accept without much critical thought?

The huge, huge, huge difference is making the main character HAPPY about it and implying that it's great. If Kaladin had spent his entire time being like "you know, being a slave isn't so bad, I bet it's better for me in the long run," I figure we all would have had issues with that too?

I apply modern standards to modern books. This setting doesn't exist. It's not a real historical period. The author could have easily chosen not to write a society where women get married and/or pregnant at 17 years old. He did not. He further made the conscious decision to force his only main character female into the same role, in spite of the fact that she could have evaded it. If she ends up pregnant, I'm done, mostly because I myself do not want, and have never wanted, to read about teenage pregnancy in a lovely, positive light. It doesn't belong in my own choices of fantasy novel. I do not enjoy it. And I hate that authors get away with doing it because "it was a different (nonexistent, totally fantasy) time period."

At the risk of repeating myself on this thread: a woman can raise a child and do something else too. A 17-year old girl doesn't need to be raising a child (or getting married either, but WHATEVER), no matter how the author justifies it happening in his society. As a reader, I am SO not here for reading that, and I will drop this series like a hot rock if it happens.

Even as a relative non-shipper, I... feel like this says about all that needs to be said about how some people enjoyed this plot and others did not. There is, to be fair, an entire meme on the internet right now based solely on how many people think that Twilight is a terribly-written love story.

I don't think that "couldn't we just guess at the character's point of view on the matter based on one scene from the previous book while in a moment of passion" is sufficient for us to glean the basis of this conflict or its potential consequences. We don't live in this world of Sanderson's -- if the consequences of a straight-up murder are different there than they are here, whether for setting reasons or for plot reasons, he HAS to explain that to us somehow, or else we are likely to misinterpret. Even just a few lines in Adolin's head to the tune of "I don't regret I did it, and I don't think anyone's going to court martial me over it, but it could be really bad news for my father's current negotiations" would give us what we need to adjust our expectations to the context of the plot and explain why he is uneasy in all of these scenes where people are talking about the murder in front of him.

A point I feel needs to be considered here: if there weren't the possibility of consequences for Adolin's murder of Sadeas, there would be no tension involved in him being assigned to investigate his own murder. If it wasn't important, I don't see why Sanderson bothered raising the stakes at all, so to speak. At the very least, we could have benefitted from him taking a few lines in Adolin's head to lay out the actual conflict: that Adolin didn't feel guilty, but that he knew it could have political consequences. Even if that's the case -- if the only consequences are political -- then the plot still falls flat. No one ever proved that Adolin did it, and yet all the same consequences unfolded anyway just because people assumed that someone in Dalinar's camp did it. Adolin could have never been assigned to investigate his own murder, and all the same things would have happened. We didn't even get any good character development out of Adolin thinking about WHY he didn't feel guilty, or how the murder affected him as a character. *grump, grump, grumble, grumble*

My goodness this thread is prolific. I’ll be honest, I’m almost to the point where I can’t keep up for work, but I’ll probably stick around at least a bit longer. I can feel some of my discussions with people heading off track, but I simply can’t resist responding to one last tangent. In particular, allow me to address what I consider to be one of the queer sacred cows of writing: organic writing. Yes, it’s fantastic to be able to get so into your character’s headspace that they start seemingly making decisions on their own. That doesn’t make the decisions they make the best decisions for your plot, for their character development, or for the society in which you’re releasing this story. Good authors don’t just enter a flow state, write their entire story organically, and call it a day — otherwise there would be no need for editors or beta readers! Moreover, when I say something like “all character choices are authorial choices,” I am not suggesting that the author cannot write organically or that they are somehow a bad person for deciding to have a villain make an evil choice, for instance. What I am saying is that at the end of the day, it is their book and therefore their responsibility. They wrote it — not some figment of their imagination divorced from their body. As Sanderson just spent an ENTIRE book exploring, you may be able to pretend to be someone else fantastically well, but that doesn’t mean that they are actually a separate person from the whole you, or that you should be able to claim that they are. This is easier for readers to grasp when they are critiquing work they don’t like or else when there’s an egregious example of “goodness, THAT was a poor choice in the current environment,” but harder to do when it’s a favourite author or genre. A book without a single female character in it can be “organically” written, but that doesn’t make it any less a weird and criticism-worthy authorial choice. “Hey, where are all the mothers in this fantasy world where kids clearly exist?” has embarrassed more than one author at this point. And identity of an author DOES matter because of this. However well I might pretend to be Veil, I’m still not actually Veil — I’m Shallan. I haven’t actually had the experiences I am pretending to have, and it will come through in ways I may not expect. Sanderson may be quite good at pretending to be a woman. That doesn’t make him a woman, and it does not, in my view, give him the unqualified right to have a female character decide to embrace a traditional female role wholeheartedly without some amount of criticism. We’ve barely started letting female characters choose AGAINST tradition. It’s not neat or subversive to me as a reader for a male author to suddenly say “yes, but what if a woman WANTS to be traditional?” I’m going to try to leave it at that, as this is quite a divergence from the thread title. If anyone wants to discuss philosophy and ethics of writing with me, please feel free to PM. Otherwise, I think it’s just safe for people to assume that I remain sceptical of some of Sanderson’s authorial choices, and I am hoping that in the next book he does not pursue a young mother Shallan, even if he has already chosen to repeat his arranged marriage trope.

So, I cannot quote from my phone, but I wanted very much to make a point about a previous post very quickly which referenced the fact that a woman should be able to make the conscious choice to conform to societal expectations and still be considered feminist. I agree that this is the case! But here’s the oddity to me: in this case, it is a male author MAKING a female character make this decision. It is not a real, live woman making this decision. I am not saying that it’s impossible for a male author to do right, but that surely complicates the heck out of things, doesn’t it? It’s a constant strangeness to me that other people can conceive of characters as being separate entities from their author, but it actually seems to be the norm. I think I might be missing some cultural circuit in my brain that normally makes that possible. In general, it’s good shorthand to assume that whenever I am discussing matters of writing, I am coming at it from the perspective of authorial choices, rather than “in-world” character choices... which I basically consider to be authorial choices anyway. I’m not sure if that makes sense. It’s awfully late at night, and I’ve had an awful lot of tea.

In which case, Jasnah is a fan of Thaylenah in some respects. I hope she decides to emulate their method of choosing succession based on merit rather than based on blood. This is another one of those situations where I feel there are a million other alternatives than just twisting Jasnah's characterization and forcing her into having a child for the sake of societal norms which the author himself chose and can therefore decide to change.

I am hoping that Sanderson keeps her as steward, rather than queen proper. In that respect, she's only standing in for the king-to-be, which would be Gavinor when he is old enough.

The issue here is broader than that. In a society where an arranged marriage is seen as a viable way out of the troubles which Shallan was having, there's an element of coercion that has less to do with specific characters doing the coercion and more to do with the society and her circumstances doing it. That's part of what deeply bothered me about it. I understand it's not as bad, but it's still a squick. I would have much preferred to see her realize that she has a rare opportunity within this society to gain what she needs for herself and her family without the need for a marriage. Instead, she decided "well, I like him, I'll marry him anyway." I'm not sure I have the energy left tonight to get into all the weird implications of this, but I hope this gives some minor sense of where the problems start.

I think that's where we differ. It's because of the Sadeas sub-plot and some of the other sub-plots which we have had mostly confirmed as non-explorable in future books (scenes utterly skipped, entire sub-plots wrapped up with an unsatisfactory line or two), that I have solid reason to worry that this IS the resolution of Shallan's plot. That is exactly why I think people here are uneasy. There is good textual evidence to make a SOLID argument that Sanderson might well have ended Shallan's plot with a single, unsatisfactory scene. "I am getting married, and things are now better" could well be the resolution, in the greater context of the rest of the book. I am not, as a result, expressing that I am dropping this series right here and now. I am already disappointed with many of the choices he has made as an author, but I am hanging on because the rest of the elements in the series are quite good. I AM expressing a certain uneasiness with the idea that the next book may upset the last bit of my sensibilities and MAY force me to drop the series.

Ah. I think I see what you mean. To some extent, I am a minority within the literary community. I actually do believe that there is such a thing as objectively good writing and objectively bad writing. I have had long arguments with other readers and writers about it. If we don't believe that there is such a thing as objectively bad writing, then how are we able to say things like "this author has gotten better"? I sometimes fear that we take ourselves entirely too liberally in this way, which diminishes how seriously people take literature in turn. I have an actual list of criteria I use when I am editing work. It's how I'm able to do it in the first place. In general, though not 100% of the time, I have found this list to be true to how well readers enjoy the work. I have absolutely no problem with the idea of using tropes in writing. Tropes generally become tropes for a reason, and it would be impossible to write a book without using them. But some tropes have better foundations than others, and others have a greater meaning within the context of the society in which they developed, and within their CURRENT society. The arranged marriage trope is a literary crime at this point, in my opinion, especially from male authors. There's no need for it. There are a hundred other tropes you could choose as an author which would not bring up very thorny issues as a reflection on current society. We have only just (relatively speaking) gotten to the point where women have more freedom and more ability to advocate for themselves. Traditionally, arranged marriage WAS an example of the commoditization of women and the devaluing of their worth to society as quite literally a vessel to make heirs and represent family alliances. It still IS an example of this in many areas of the world. We are not free of its negative connotations, and I am therefore getting tired of seeing male authors get away with using it as a trope when they should certainly know better by now -- especially when I know that said authors are creative enough to make different choices. In short, while I am sure that Sanderson has the ability to write out certain conflicts in a satisfying manner, I am tired enough of these conflicts that I don't see the need for them to be written AT ALL, and certainly not through the lens of a male author. Even the placement of Shallan into a commoditized situation bothered me -- the decision to make that commoditization bloom into a relationship bothers me more. The fact that the character progression leading up to this resolution seemed poorly written was icing on the cake. It's a layered problem. Sanderson displayed other issues in his writing of this book which were not related to Shallan -- he dropped the plot thread of Adolin killing Sadeas, when his writing in the last book gave that conflict a place of prominence and heavily hinted through context that it would be important. He skipped emotionally heavy scenes, like Jasnah returning from the dead and Navani's reaction to Elhokar's death. I found a lot of this to be sloppy writing, which is where I think the big lack of trust is coming from in readers. Because this sloppiness wasn't entirely restricted to Shallan's scenes, there is a lot of questioning going on in people's heads about whether Sanderson has just dropped yet another thread at the very end with Shallan.

Except that I found the craftsmanship on these developments so poorly crafted and confusing that I wasn't sure they needed to be there at all. Sanderson normally has an ability to give you a clear idea of what happened emotionally in a scene and what the concrete results are and why. I didn't find that to be the case with any of these scenes -- I came out of each of them feeling like he wasn't sure where he was going with them, and the entire arc felt much less 1 + 1 = 2 than he normally manages with character development. As some people have noted, there were large jumps in emotion from Shallan in particular, with little basis in real scenes. I don't feel that's because he hasn't gotten there yet. I honestly believe, based on his previous work, that he simply has a perspective issue with romance, where he doesn't believe his usual techniques apply, and he therefore misses the mark. I could be totally wrong -- it's simply a guess on my part, based on the evidence I've seen. I'm trying to take this in an optimistic way, since you've stated it's not your intention to tell me my opinion is invalid. But you have followed that up very quickly with the statement that I want the author to satisfy me, and that this opinion is invalid. Perhaps you might try rewording it so that I better understand what you mean. But to comment on the author's job -- that depends entirely on what you define as a "job." If you are defining "job" in an economic way, then it is the author's job to satisfy the most readers possible, such that they continue to sell books. In this case, he's almost certainly doing his job, given that I'm a minority in the things that I like. If you are defining "job" as a responsibility to society, I would suggest that the author has a responsibility to break societal expectations and challenge beliefs -- something he isn't doing very well here. If you are defining "job" as his responsibility as an artist, he has a responsibility to create something meaningful and unique, and to challenge himself to improve his craft with each book. He has done this very well in some ways in this book, and not very well in others. In all cases, I think I can make a philosophical argument here, but that seems beyond the scope of this thread.

I must admit to being terribly confused at all of the “I trust Sanderson” talk. I trust him to be a fantastic author on metaplot, internal consistency, and plot twist moments. His combat scenes are generally well-written. I do not under any circumstances trust him to write: romance, female characters, or the relationships that female characters share with their society and other characters within it. He has definitely made progress on all of these scores, and I can tell he wants to work on these things; he talks about it openly, in fact. The first two books of the Stormlight Archive had me reconsidering my opinion of his skills here and thinking that he might have overcome these issues he’s had as an author. This book has convinced me I’m not yet ready to trust him implicitly in these areas, however. I wouldn’t call myself a shipper of any kind, exactly. I’ve never particularly had a preference for who should end up with whom, given that I read books a bit more objectively than most people I know — I’m generally more cognizant of characters as ideas expressed by the author than I am “immersed” in them and thinking of them as people. Given my literary background, however, I tend to be good at picking out story flow and character building. By book two, I got the distinct impression that Sanderson was leading up to a relationship between Shallan and Kaladin, which surprised me given his past treatment of arranged marriages. Due to the way the books read, I gained a pleasant expectation that he might subvert himself here and break with past boxes he’s put himself into. This book annoyed me mostly because he seemed to reverse himself on that and regress back to old habits — he also did so in a way that seemed a bit of a muddled mess of setting up reader expectations and failing to fulfill them. As a reader, you may appreciate the idea of a story where not everything has a meaning, but most readers simply are not like that. I myself don’t enjoy wasting time reading scenes that don’t contribute to the overall story in some way, especially when I feel that space could have been better used to develop other underdeveloped storylines or characters. I will, however, admit that I get unreasonably irritated by poor craftsmanship, even and especially if the author has shown they are capable in other ways. That is fully on me. I suppose what I’m saying is that this entire thing felt to me unnecessary. I also felt baited into thinking Sanderson was going to try something outside his usual box, and was disappointed when he pulled back from the edge for no discernible reason. He has often displayed a lack of focus and direction with romantic plots which doesn’t show up in the rest of his writing, such that I generally end up wishing he hadn’t tried to insert romance at all. I suspect that some people here are in fact just upset that their favoured ship did not “win,” which is natural and fairly common judging from other fandoms. I suspect the real angst here is coming from a sudden lack of trust in the author, however, given that his writing up until now on this particular series has been very tight and careful, and it has now gone in strangely undisciplined directions all at once. Readers are now no longer sure that anything in the text has meaning in the way they once assumed that everything did — Sanderson has dropped too many foreshadowing hints now that failed to come to fruition. Thus everyone here is even more upset and talking themselves in circles, and I suspect unwilling to admit that all of their careful speculations due to text analysis are useless because of Sanderson’s struggles with romance coming to the forefront. To be clear to anyone reading this: I recommend that you stop trying to predict where he is going to go with anything romance related, as he often departs from his usual techniques and flails a bit when it comes to romance. Techniques that work to help you understand where he is going with metaplot WILL fail when it comes to romance. You may as well be rolling dice. As I said, I am perhaps unnecessarily harsh when it comes to this aspect of Sanderson’s writing. He really is my favourite author for a lot of things, and I always recommend him to aspiring fantasy authors for worldbuilding and plot twists. He normally builds arcs fantastically well, and he plans very far ahead. But I always have to caution women I know that they will find his ideas about arranged marriage annoying and perhaps even mildly creepy. Siri’s relationship with a much older, developmentally stunted man is one of these issues, and that something the author made a conscious choice to explore. Similarly, in a pure fantasy novel where he has complete control over the society, he once again CHOSE to push a patriarchal, primogeniture based society which pushes arranged marriages and the disempowerment of women. I’ve read enough of this from male authors to last me a lifetime. I would be happy to read a female perspective on it, but other than that, I could do without ever reading another “but it’s based on the real medieval ages I just HAD to do it!” from a male author ever again. Yawn. Double yawn, with a healthy side of irritation at the lack of creativity. Similarly, I don’t want to read a male author writing main female character as young mother in a patriarchal society, whether he subverts expectations or not. I would rather see him subvert expectations by having the female main character not be pushed into motherhood at all. That would be much more creative, unprecedented, and outside of the boxes he created for himself when he arbitrarily decided to write Yet Another Patriarchal Fantasy Society in the first place. Unforunately, all signs I see so far point to Sanderson blithely continuing in the direction he seems to be going in this book. Which is sad, because I now intend to wait on buying the next book. If I hear that Shallan is now a mother from first readers after it’s released, I’ll be dropping him as an author. I’m simply not interested in it as a plot line for all kinds of reasons, mostly meta in nature. I am not saying that I expect many other readers to do this as well, or even that they should. I’m just getting persnickety in my old age and less patient with outdated authorial choices. I’d rather spend my time looking for gems from less refined but more unique female authors if this is going to be a constant battle with my current favourite.

Oddly, I think Adolin would be just fine as a Dad. In fact, given how physically affectionate, emotional, and attached he’s been described — the idea that he takes after his mother instead of his father in a lot of ways — I think he would end up in a more active parenting role than whatever woman he had a kid with. But I don’t want to read mother Shallan. At all. It actually gives me a cold sweat just thinking about all the ways that could go horribly wrong.

Somewhere up in that long thread, I passed over the utterly h-o-r-r-i-f-y-i-n-g suggestion that Shallan might become a mother by next book. God please NO. If there is any sense in BS at all, I hope he doesn’t touch this idea with a ten foot pole, for so many reasons. 1) She’s BROKEN by DEFINITION. Her current state of mind is not conducive to parenting, which means there would either have to be a deeply uncomfortable glossing over that which makes zero sense or an in-depth plot involving her feeling/being screwed up toward her kid which I do not want to read done by a male author, with all due respect. I say this as someone with bipolar people in my family, who DID have complicated relationships with us. Do not. 2) Had you asked me after book 2 whether I would trust BS to write a young woman transitioning into motherhood, I would have done an iffy “ehhhh” based on how well he has handled Navani and Jasnah (an established mother who still has real character and interests outside her motherhood and a female character with zero sexuality). After this book, though, his habit of twisting character arcs and forcing them toward happy arranged marriage tropes has convinced me that he’s not yet able to separate himself from certain overly-cheerful religious(?) attitudes toward arranged marriage that do a disservice to his characters — especially the women. I do not trust that this will not show itself again with regard to pregnancy/motherhood, forcing Shallan — a character I really find fascinating and complicated — into a flat interpretation of blossoming motherhood where the child takes over her character and “saves” her from things she should be sorting out herself. Lastly, if Shallan gets a kid and suddenly stops heroing because “oh no what about my child at home” — a not uncommon trope for both male AND female authors — I will throw the no doubt brick of a book at the wall and I will then have a hole in my wall. 3) She’s what, 20? I get that this is high fantasy, but guess what? No part of me fantasizes about being forced to have a kid at twenty due to primogeniture laws. It’s not fun for me. I understand that some women may disagree, but damnation, at least let her have a few more years of being an awesome Knight Radiant before hobbling her like that. Basically the only Shallan with kid I would accept is Adolin in the mother role, full stop, with Shallan showing obvious signs of mental problems over the whole thing, which are not forced to be solved and are accepted as part of the character and her relationship with her kid. As much as I would hazard to call BS my favourite author, for a whole slew of reasons, I do not think I trust him enough yet in this particular area of writing to want to read his version of that, so I’d rather he err on the side of not giving Shallan a kid, unless it happens between books 5-6. Pregnancy and motherhood are MUCH more difficult, complicated subjects than most authors acknowledge, and I honestly wish more of them would give those character aspects the respect and gravity they deserve, especially when you’re dealing with characters currently going through mental health issues. Off soapbox. Please god don’t let this happen. That is all.

That's all I really mean. Taken on its own, I would have appreciated the agency Shallan shows, for sure. But the sheer frequency of this 'arranged marriages always work out if you just put in the work' trope is starting to grate on me in its totality. That said, I deeply appreciate the richness Sanderson has shown in his female characters in this series. Jasnah is badass, I just plain like Navani, and Lift is probably one of my favourite characters at this point. I wish this one thing didn't bother me so deeply, because I so enjoy those other bits.

I really liked the book, but the romance stuff felt off to me, and it took me a while to really chew on why. This is not the first, the second, or even the third time that Sanderson has done the exact same romantic plotline: boy meets girl, they enter into an arranged marriage, there are potential troubles in there, but in the end they both discover the arranged marriage unexpectedly works perfectly for them. In point of fact, we got the same thing from Laral in this book too, so that's TWICE that female characters have decided they actually like their situation IN ONE BOOK. The first time I read it, I thought it was a refreshingly different take than what you normally see in the media -- i.e. asking the question 'in societies where marriages are based on factors other than love, can you still make them positive relationships.' But at this point, the feminist in me is honestly starting to get deeply irritated with this weird idealization of arranged marriages. Once was interesting. This many times is really starting to bother me as a female reader. It takes me out of immersion because I have such a distasteful knee-jerk backlash to it that colours the way I feel about all characters involved, no matter how much I otherwise like them as characters. I don't know if that makes sense, or even if it's a feeling that extends to other readers at all (I might well be unique and everyone else has zero problems with this).