Thursday, October 10 is World Mental Health Day, and to commemorate the day, Brandon Sanderson beta readers Paige Vest and Ross Newberry are revisiting the author’s work to explore mental illness in comparison to the Hoed, the fallen Elantrians from Brandon’s first published work, Elantris. [Read more]
Lyn: Well… Ross and I are here again, brightlords and ladies, with—brace yourselves—another Dalinar flashback chapter. Strap yourselves in for a good Blackthorn-ing, because boy does Dalinar ever deliver on the death and destruction in this one (though not as much so, of course, as he will later on ::shudder::).
Ross: Yeah, I’d say things are smoldering right now, but later on, they really catch fire.
Lyn: Plays, pernicious polymorphs, and Patterns abound on this week’s installment of the Oathbringer reread! Ross is joining me again this week, as Alice is still on vacation.
Ross: Hi again, my Radiant friends! I’m glad I got to sit in on this chapter, as I feel it’s the hub about which the entirety of the Urithiru plot in Part One turns.
Lyn: Greetings and welcome back to another installment of the Oathbringer reread! Alice is taking a much-needed vacation, so I’ll be joined for a few weeks by our resident Stormwarden and Lift super-fan Ross Newberry! Hiya, Ross! Want to introduce yourself?
Ross: Hi, all! I’ve been a Sanderson beta reader for a couple of years, and Lyn’s calling me a Stormwarden because, during the Oathbringer beta process, I built a spreadsheet to help calculate Highstorm and Everstorm transit times across Roshar. That stuff got…
L: Complicated?
When you hear the word “hero”, what’s the first image that comes to mind? Someone big and strong and confident and perfect? Well, in Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive novels, the heroes aren’t quite what you’d expect.
In the following conversation, Sanderson beta readers Paige Vest and Ross Newberry take an in-depth look at these less-than-ideal heroes and how reading about their exploits has inspired more than one “broken” person to keep up their own fight. Please be aware that this article includes frank and deeply personal discussion of mental illness and touches on depression, anxiety, trauma, suicidal ideations, and self-harm, in terms of both fiction and personal experience—addressed with the intention of illuminating the experiences of the characters and the perspective of readers who see their own struggles reflected in the series.
We’re summarizing Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive series so far, for those who don’t have the time to re-read a couple of thousand-page books and a novella before the release of the third book, Oathbringer, on November 14th (tomorrow!). It should go without saying that this article contains thorough spoilers for the series to date so if you haven’t yet read the books, nope out of here pronto. After all, a good story is more about the Journey than the Destination.
SPOILER ALERT: This article contains worldbuilding spoilers for The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, Edgedancer, and the currently-released preview chapters for Oathbringer (If you’re skipping the Oathbringer chapters, but have read the rest of The Stormlight Archive, you can safely read everything except the Everstorm section).
In 166 years of recorded weather data, more than one Category 4+ hurricane has never made landfall in the United States in the same year. Until this year. This year, American territory has borne the brunt of three. But it could be a whole lot worse.
We’re summarizing Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive series so far, for those who don’t have the time to re-read a couple of thousand-page books and a novella before the release of the third book, Oathbringer, this fall. It should go without saying that this article contains thorough spoilers for the series to date so if you haven’t yet read the books, nope out of here pronto. After all, a good story is more about the Journey than the Destination.
‘Tis the season… for Sanderson dream-casts and releases! What better gift could we ask for under the tree than our very own copies of the Mistborn 10th anniversary leather-bound edition? Well… how about a Mistborn dream-cast? (Okay, so maybe the dream-cast’s not as good as full-color endpages and ribbon book-marks and smyth-sewn pages. But if you can’t afford that steep price-tag, a dream-cast is a nice consolation prize—a free way to spend some more time in Scadrial.)
Last month the Sanderson beta reader crew discussed our picks for the possibility of a The Way of Kings film adaptation in the wake of the announcement that Sanderson had sold film rights to his Cosmere universe. Well, this month we’re back (plus special guest braid_tug) with another round-table dream-casting session, this time for Mistborn: The Final Empire. After several weeks of suggestions, debates, and voting, Ross and I are here to present the beta readers’ choices and to talk a bit about the group’s reasons for coming to the decisions we did. There may be some mild spoilers for Mistborn included in our comments here, so be forewarned. If you haven’t read the book yet, it may be best to steer clear of this article until you have.
