Hey. Wondering if you actually felt much of what you said in the WoK review. I was taken aback by how different your view was though I’ll admit I have the rest of the series read and was willing to allow the story to unfold given certain rules. I could see why certain cultural artefacts were made especially going at it from the Veristitalian view Jasnah has towards Rosharan mythology. I found the series to be more self consistent and I feel like some of the criticism was wishful thinking like “you don’t need the same kind of stratified society as we see irl”.
Yeah the point is to outline how arbitrary those things are in our own world and that the power structure might’ve made sense at one point but at this stage it’s been morphed into something worse by the people in power who only want to retain said power. Dalinar learning to be benevolent as a tyrant was necessary for Roshar as a whole as it’s a planet constantly at war. I struggle to see genuine issues as so much is covered in later books.
-Kaz
Hey Kaz, thanks for writing in!
To answer your immediate question, yes, I absolutely believe everything I said in my Way of Kings worldbuilding article, both when I praised the book and when I critiqued it. Inventing opinions for an article sounds exhausting, and it’s thankfully not something I ever need to do, since posting honest critique is more than enough to generate controversy.
Now, let’s look at the deeper question: how can I critique the Way of Kings when I haven’t read the rest of the books? I’m glad you asked, as this is something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently. I might write a full post on it if there’s enough content, but for now I’ll try to give the short version.
What it all boils down to is that a book has to be able to stand on its own. That doesn’t mean everything needs to be explained in book one, but at the very least, it does need to be pitched as something that needs addressing. In some ways, Way of Kings does this very well, especially with classism.
A huge portion of the book is dedicated to showing the suffering of Kaladin and his bridgemen at the brightlords’ hands. Even without Dalinar and his philosophizing, this would be more than enough to demonstrate that in this book, classism is a problem. This is why I praised the book for its portrayal of classism in warfare, and why I’d be interested to see where that story goes.
The sexism, on the other hand, isn’t presented as a problem. Its portrayal is entirely neutral, just a fact of life. Of course, Sanderson could always change that in later books, but I have no reason to think he will. He could be like any number of other authors who open with a pointlessly sexist setting and then leave it unaddressed. If the later books do address this, then at best, we’ll have waited multiple books for the message that discriminating against people based on gender is wrong. That message is hardly so groundbreaking that it’s worth such a long wait.
At the same time, even if something will be addressed later, it should still be somewhat plausible in the moment. Roshar’s bizarre gender roles simply don’t make sense, and there’s no way to explain them without being extremely contrived. More broadly, a reader’s experience matters at every moment, not just at the end of the story. If 90% of the book is boring, the last 10% can’t magically go back and fix how bored the reader was earlier. It’s the same with worldbuilding. Leaving mysteries for later in the series is fine, but at the very least, they need to be marked as such.
Hope that answers your question, and I hope you enjoy the rest of the Stormlight Archives!
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More generally speaking (‘Do I need to read the latter books in a series before I speak about the first or an early one?’), I would say that, no, you cannot demand that someone reads a full series before criticising a book.
For one thing, a series doesn’t release in one go, there are often years between two books in a series, let alone more of them. Think of, for instance, how long “A Song of Ice and Fire” has been running (although that, of course, is an outlier, both in length and in the time it took to publish it).
When I read a book of series, that book must be able to stand on its own. All that ‘it gets better later’ or ‘it’s explained in a later book’ explanation which fans often give is not really helpful – I am reading this book. I am following the story this book is telling me. If this story isn’t interesting, if this story isn’t keeping me engaged, why should I wait three years until the next book is released just in hope for it to be better? Why should I read the 500 pages of this book which doesn’t speak out to me and then the 500 pages of the next one in hope that puts all into perspective? Of course, a series does normally have an overarching plot going through all of the books, but they also should all have a proper beginning, middle, and end.
Especially with things set up in one book to be negated later, like a sexist society which will be challenged in book four or so, it helps to suggest that there is resistance to that. That in-book, in this world, people are doubting that it’s right to do this. Even if the majority accepts it or just doesn’t care, if you want to change this aspect later, hint at it, give a foreshadowing that it’s not going to stay that way. Just as you shouldn’t introduce something too early, like books before it becomes important, you shouldn’t leave an aspect you want to challenge later unchallenged until that book.
It sounds like a lot of these fans are forgetting that it’s okay to critique a story while liking it at the same time. I doubt many of them realize that.
It’s like Chris said in the recent article about defensiveness. People tend to have a very binary way of thinking about media – everything is either flawless or garbage. Acknowledging criticism about something they like means it can’t be flawless, therefore it must be garbage. But if we like it, it can’t be garbage, therefore it must be flawless, therefore we can’t acknowledge any criticism of it.
People just need to realise that it’s okay, even beneficial, to find and acknowledge flaws in the things they like. There’s a huge gap between “Not perfect” and “terrible”, and just because something has faults, that doesn’t make it bad overall, and it certainly doesn’t mean they’re not allowed to like it.
The assertion that those critiques could be made up or wishful is just bizarre to me. You might disagree with the critiquer, but that doesn’t mean the critiquer is being dishonest! Assuming that seems rather bad faith, and it precludes the possibility of having an honest discussion about those points.
It’s very weird that some people think I’m making up opinions to be controversial when even the slightest deviation between common views is enough to start a flame war.
Hey, Oren, I heard you had some interesting take on the topic of people being oppressed because they have superpowers, and everyone hates those who are different…?
LOL! Yeah that’ll get em going.
Well said! The weird sexism thing in these books always gave the impression, to me, of something meant to make certain groups of people (mainly men who have never put thought into societal misogyny before) go “ohhh wow, gender roles are so arbitrary, aren’t they?!” I think anyone beyond that stage of the process will be like “well, duh…” I rolled my eyes at it the whole way. Especially given that it was not at all framed as something to be questioned or fixed as of book one. But I could see how it might set some younger people onto the right path, it just could have been done a lot better.
And seeing how I am a chronic first-book reader who often doesn’t continue with series, I definitely agree that books need to stand on their own. And if they want to drop threads and hints toward future development of unsolved problems, that’s a good way to entice people to read the next book, as long as the first book had its own problem resolved.
The main reason to critizicing ongoing works is for the author to be able to take them into consideration. You can’t bring Tolkien back to make him fix LOTR problems, but hopefully GRR Martin is listening to the people to fix AGOT convulted plotlines (he had a really valuable asset in the TV show, as he can evaluate if his ideas are working)
Also to provide lessons for any aspiring creators who might be looking, as well.
I agree to a point, but that isn’t linked to an ongoing or finished work specifically. A critic, even to other works is helpful, but it don’t “expire” so people can learn from LOTR criticism no matter when that critic was written.
I don’t agree that the main reason for a critique an ongoing work would be for the author. Critiques can be for any number of audiences and that includes critiques of unfinished media. Moreover, I don’t actually agree that a lot of authors look to their fanbases/the peanut gallery for the majority of their feedback. Like sure, they might get a general impression of the reception, but authors have editors, beta readers, and writing cricles for getting specific advice. People who’s opinion they trust, as opposed to a frequently contradictory Internet full of folks who may or may not be in a position to offer helpful advice.
Speaking about GRRM specifically, he wrote a pretty infamous blog post about how he’s not beholden to fans, and caring about reader feedback is his perogative. Moreover, he’s only publishing expansion books these days, so it is entirely possible that asoiaf will remain unfinished, making all comments critique on an unfinished work.
Personally, I think its better public critique of the sort published on Mythcreants to be aware that it’s not author feedback. Authors won’t be seeing it, and if they do they have no particular reason to take any advice. It’s a much more realistic, and in my opinion appropriate, goal for critique to be directed at fellow readers. Editorial comments would obviously be a completely different type of critique compared to this.
Yes, authors usually have a different cirlce to give them feedback on their books than their fans (or, at any rate, just their fans). Editors, beta readers, and fellow authors working in the same genre usually are also more professional about critique, which is good.
Critique here on the site is usually meant for authors who are looking for writing advice here. Oren and Chris use books to explain what could have been done better.
Yet, especially with popular series, there’s usually the fans turning up and saying ‘well, it might be bad in this one, but it gets better in the next.’ While that might be right in general, it’s not the best way to plot a book and that’s what critique here usually is about. That’s also where the question of whether you need to read the full series before criticising one book comes in.
If your point is not to get the things you critique fixed, then it don’t matter if the critic is about a finished or unfinished work.
The only difference is that in an unfinished work, the author still have a chance to fix it.
There is the famous case of Larry Niven being criticized after the first Ringworld book for a mathematical error in the alignment of the solar panels that would end up in them crashing with the planet. He acknowledge it and wrote a second book with that as the main plot point to solve it. So is not out of the realm of posibility.
People can learn from finished or unfinished works alike. Critizicing a first book in a series is the same as critizicing the first chapter of a book, if it is slow or have flaws don’t matter how you leverage it later, the book would be better with that flaw removed.
For the record, we don’t write Mythcreants articles for the published authors being critiqued. There are a number of reasons for this.
1. There’s no reason to think they’ll even see the article.
2. Our tone is way too snarky to make for effective feedback.
3. An unsolicited critique, no matter how polite, will rarely put the author in a good headspace to learn something.
This is also why we strongly discourage tagging authors in critiques of their work. It’s just a bruising experience for the author, and we’re not writing for them anyway.
Instead, we write for a number of reasons.
1: To educate other authors, who are our primary audience.
2: To entertain.
3: To advertise our paid editing cervices.
4: To educate audiences about what they might be in for if they read or watch something.
5: Most abstractly, in the hope that we can raise the general standards for fiction across the board by educating people on how it works. This is a very slow process and also basically impossible to measure.
I didn’t meant to imply that it was a critic to the author themselves. If my book ends up being a serie i would try to be aware of the real reception of my work and address any criticism to improve in the following books. Anyone that gets its works out in the public is open to be criticized and turning critizism away without even evaluate if it is a valid critic is dumb in my opinion.
Of course i’m talking about actual, well based critics and not just fanboyish flames.
If a hundred of people are getting “wrong” the message of my book, i’ll be glad if someone tell me. Because the author’s intent doesn’t matter if everyone else is interpreting it the other way around.
I feel like if the essence of this was articulated in critique posts there might actually be less angry people in the comments. Sets people up with the right frame of mind going in.
Also paid editing cervices, that’s just about the best spelling-related double take I’ve ever done. Perfect positioning ;)