Argent

Martin has said he won't let people finish his work. Because he is a @#$% presumably.

GRRM did say it should come out before season 6. I am about 70% inclined to believe him at this point.

A quick search inside the Stormlight Archive forum brought up this recent thread. A few posts into it WeiryWriter links a few others.

Congratulations, it's a popular and decently well supported theory Look around the forums for Shardpools, it's what we believe those lakes to be.

We know GRRM gave HBO green light to finish the show before him if necessary. Given how long Winds of Winter has taken is taking, I think this is inevitable. It is possible that season 6 will play with characters we thought would be missing completely (e.g. the Greyjoys), but I doubt they can fill an entire season with those, which means they will have to pull at least some of the content from Winds of Winter. Which suggests that season 7 will either deal with the rest of book 6 and a little of 7, or jump into 7 big time.

Adonalsium shattered into all the Minecraft blocks.

Sam Green, the artist whose style has become iconic for Brandon's books in the UK, has produced another piece of art, this one for Shadows of Self. While Wax looks appropriately dashing, I wonder who the man in the mirror is... Check it out on Gollancz's website.

Technically, he said he is not coming back for next season. The Law of Irrational Fanboyism implies that he might skip a season and come back in 7.

Now I am imagining Hoid, in Shadesmar, in the middle of this vast plain, nothing in sight, only a small house, with a garden and a well, maybe a small fishing pond, sitting there and waiting for something interesting to start happening on some distant Shardworld.

Judging from the list in your original post, it looks like you are mostly looking for good authors, not necessarily authors similar to Brandon. Because half of those are only tangentially similar to him. So, if we are going for good authors... Brian McClellan - a student of Brandon himself, he's been a published author for couple of years and already with a trilogy (and a few novellas and short stories) behind his back. I would rate his quality of writing just a tad below Elantris or Warbreaker. Stories are solid though, as is his improvement between books. Brent Weeks - one of my favorites, author of the Night Angel and Lightbringer series. Night Angel is alright, but Lightbringer is where he shines. It's big, it has beautiful and clever magic, and is just all around great. Scott Lynch and his Gentleman Bastard is another great choice. The series is mostly fantasy heists, well written and featuring an overarching plot. Jim Butcher and his Dresden Files is really a must. Urban fantasy, set (usually) in Chicago, where wizard and private investigator Harry Dresden helps the police, fights crime, solves mysteries, has sex with vampires and fairies, and acquires a personal army of pixies whom he feeds with pizza. Other highlights feature a zombie T-Rex, a "Polka will never die!" war cry, and the following lines of dialogue: Brian Staveley is one of those authors that showed up out of nowhere and stole the show. His Chronicles of the Unhewn Throne are books about three siblings, heirs to the Unhewn Throne, and how they apply their unique talents and training (one is ascet monk, one is the equivalent of special operative, and one is a politician) to some pretty nasty situations. My description is bland and vague because I find it hard to tell what's really going on lest I spoil something interesting. It's a very well written series though. I'll stop here though. There are some others I would recommend, but you have plenty of authors already.

Skaa... Though you must admit, we've been pestering Brandon for so long, and he has given us so much information, there is no way for people who don't visit this forum to match this level of discussion. There is just too much information out there, if "out there" means "in here".

I feel similarly about The Lord of the Rings these days, but this is largely because I have read Brandon's Cosmere novels and know how much better books can be. Most of those I find better than the Reckoners series. Really can't go wrong here.

As with almost binary question, the answers lies in the middle. Perhaps not the exact middle, but somewhere between the two extremes. In my - rather extensive - experience, assuming that Brandon has made a mistake in his worldbuilding is almost always going to result in an incorrect assumption. I've done it before. Usually my first read of a book is exegetical - I take almost everything for face value. My belief is so suspended, it might as well be frozen. During my first reread, however, I am more critical, I know where things are leading, I can recognize foreshadowing, the big reveals are known to me. It is here that I start doubting some things - not many, because I've found that the logic Brandon applies to his worldbuilding is very similar to how I myself think, so the connections he makes are logical in my mind. But some things don't necessarily click, there are effects whose causes I find either contradictory or entirely missing. And this is where I've been burned on the metaphorical fire - almost every single one of those contradiction candidates had been shown to actually have very logical causes, just not necessarily ones known to me at the time. Questions during events, annotations, future books, and even unreliable narrators have all proven me wrong in the past. So these days I still note those irregularities, but assume it is I who is wrong, not Brandon, at least until further information makes itself present.

My Facebook timeline has been a sadistic delight all morning. This finale wasn't as bad as the Red Wedding (judging from the Internet's reactions), but I suppose there are only so many times you can kill a fan favorite before even the show watchers (them being exposed to a few number of deaths and gore in general) realize that nobody is safe. Myrcella though. Man. I was seriously bummed out, she had such a beautiful scene with Jaime, I knew she was doomed. This is what this show has done to me - whenever I see a beautiful scene, I hold my breath and wait for something to break it. I don't often have to wait long.

Brent Weeks' Lightbringer series is almost as clean. Language is, I think, the only significant difference. Good series too.

She ends up being 21 or 22, actually. I've been going through The Hero of Ages lately and just before they get to Fadrex City she remarks that she is 21.

This AMA has gone for so long, we've gotten so many answers, I am legitimately struggling coming up with questions lately. At least ones we have chance getting answers to.

Which is absolutely bonkers.

Ah, forgot to update this. Again. Finished The Skull Throne by Peter V. Brett a few days ago. I thought it was an improvement over The Daylight War, but not as much as I wanted it to be. There are still characters and events I barely care about taking up precious pages. Still, I feel better about the series now than I felt when I finished The Daylight War. With the setup we have right now I expect The Core to have an actual chance at a 5-star rating by me. Reading Mark Lawrence's The Liar's Key now. I find The Red Queen's War easier to read than The Broken Empire, but I don't know if I'll be able to endure another several hundred pages of Jalan's whining. Making a main character a coward is not a bad thing on its own, but when virtual every action this character takes is justified along the lines of "I was terrified to act, but I was more terrified not to act, so I acted" it starts to get annoying. Hopefully we'll see an arc that fixes this a little bit.

http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/cs3lj3i?context=10000 http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/cs3ljr7?context=10000

Grimdark is very much what it sounds like - a subgenre of fantasy usually classified by darker and grittier style, characters, events, and worldbuilding. Rape, massacre, torture, gore, described in different levels of details are often featured in grimdark (though some are lighter than others). I think Peter V. Brett's Demon Cycle series is considered grimdark, but it's pretty light on those things - they are mostly mentioned or suggested, but rarely described in detail or for long. Definitely lighter than Joe Abercrombie, George Martin, or Mawk Lawrence.

http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/cs2aqs1?context=10000 *squeee* pre-Shards Roshar! http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/cs2dqep?context=10000

As Weiry pointed out in the AMA, Brandon's store refers to the "Windrunners glyph" as jeseh. So either there is a hiccup somewhere, or that's the word for Windrunner, or possibly Windrunners. Can someone check if this transliteration could match what we see in the glyph itself?

http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/cs1kk85?context=10000