A post I've been meaning to make

Ever since I read The Way of Kings earlier this summer I've been wanting to make this post, and I have no idea why I haven't.  It's a bit of a continuation of my comment on Kirsten's latest post.

So here's the deal.  About 2.5 years ago, while I was in Baltimore, I picked up my first book by Brandon Sanderson, Elantris.  I immediately fell in love, seriously, almost as much as I love LotR (yeah, fantasy geek, I know).  I read the Mistborn Trilogy, which was AMAZING and Warbreaker, which was slightly less amazing, but still very good (also, you can read it free online). 

Sidenote:  I just checked Sanderson's website and apparently another Mistborn book is in final revisions.  There was much squealing and waving of arms.

Sanderson has also taken over Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time (WoT) series, and is working on his own epics series, The Stormlight Archive.  The first book in Stormlight is The Way of Kings, which I read this summer.

I think Sanderson is an amazingly talented writer, but I have not read the conclusion for WoT, I was extremely reluctant to pick up Way of Kings, and I was very distressed to hear that he wanted to write an epic.  Why?  Because after reading all of WoT including the last book that Jordan wrote, I'm completely burned out from long, epic stories.  I much prefer stand-alones, trilogies, or other shorter series.  Thinks like Brian Jaques' Redwall or Mercedes Lackey's Heralds of Vlademar, with many books set in the same world, but each is a stand-alone, are okay.

I know many people love epics, Sanderson himself sites WoT and A Game of Thrones as his influences to write Stormlight, so why don't I like them?  I don't know.  One reason might be that, growing up in the age of instant gratification I can't commit to one story of such a length.  Another, perhaps more compelling reason, is that  I don't think I really liked WoT.  It's well written and terribly interesting, but the characters in it kind of terrified me.  They all seem to have so much anger toward everyone else, everyone is trying to control each other, no one trusts anyone, especially men vs women.  I find it to be terribly sad.  And then, I tried to read Game of Thrones, but it looked like it was going to be much the same way, so I only read the first one.

Btw, even though I didn't really want to read Way of Kings, and was a bit bored throughout most of the book (which insisted on switching characters when there was only one that I really wanted to read about-seriously, every night I was like "I'm going to read until I get to the next chapter this person is in"), the last couple chapters completely hooked me, and I will probably read the next book to come out.

So that's my little story about epics. 

Recently, I've been reading some Japanese fairy tales and various other free kindle downloads.  Did you know you can get Jane Austen and Dostoyevsky for free?  It's pretty exciting.