Brandon Sanderson/Cosmere Thread!

Liking Elantris a lot but the way the Aonic names are handled is proving to annoy me a lot because there are so many things that could have been done better. As is the system isn't brought up at all at the start. Its particulars of pronunciation vary heavily from how English speakers assume certain graphs are pronounced and this is a problem. Not because they are pronounced weirdly, but because we make no effort to teach that from the get go. As a result people see Raoden's name and presume that the ao is a diphthong, when it's really not.

There's a variety of ways this could have been solved. Kiin's name could have brought up the necessity of needing diacritics. Diacritics can help differentiate between what gets sounded, as well as what is stressed. Maybe stick a grave on the second i to at least give the reader the idea that, hey, maybe this will sounded too. Or I suppose, less messily, mention somewhere very early on that Raoden's name is weird and all the vowels are sounded out long. Perhaps not go into the exact specifics of it, but do at least let the reader know this early on. Then when Hrathen shows up make it a point to mention that these people speak two different languages. That could solve the issue of the reader trying to pronounce everything as an Aon. The idea's nice and I think it could even be done using the orthographical method he came up with. But he really needed to get that out of the way immediately as it came up if he was going to use an atypical way of transcribing sounds.

And then for the love of god have a pronunciation guide in the back. Not just a list of the things and their pictures and meanings. The pronunciations must be there. We can say a lot about Tolkien and criticize how he writes quite a bit, but what we can't say is that the man didn't do his damnedest to ensure that his names were said correctly. He used clever use of diacritics, charts and writing on the particulars of how things are said in the back, and the knowledge of how English speakers assume pronunciation based on shape. The end result is that while not everyone will be stressing Sauron perfectly at least everyone has a generally ok idea of how it's said.

fantasy languages always make me cry because tolkien set the bar way too fucking high

 

I'm also so bothered by how confusingly/poorly the Aon list is sorted. You want to find one in particular to see what it means or looks like? Good friggin' luck.

 

why this

 

Because it was his first published book and it's rough around the edges in a number of places, I guess.

Apparently so many people complained about how unintuitive the names in Elantris were that that was a contributing factor in him making the names in Mistborn as comparatively simple as they were.

 

Thank fuck. I would like him to play with names again, but he either needs to do a LOT OF RESEARCH and practice with linguistics himself or work closely with someone who can help him with that.

 

From my limited knowledge of the subject, he seems to be doing better in Warbreaker and Stormlight. If nothing else, the only sound that's pronounced too unlike how it's spelled is the J in "Jasnah" and "Jah Keved" sounding like a Y, and you can still recognize naming traditions more than you could in Mistborn.

(I also appreciated the discussion in Oathbringer of the fact that one character's name is actually really weird gibberish, because his poor mom tried to name him according to a mixture of her cultural traditions and her absent-at-the-time husband's, while not entirely understanding how names worked in her husband's culture. Result: nonsense syllable with two random suffixes tacked on.)

 

That's actually one of the very common readings of that letter in languages thankfully. Whereas the Aon system doesn't really match up with anything that I know of.

 

Spoiler: Good lord

welp. I can't say that this is completely unsurprising but.

Y'all are fuckin' Voidbringers, guys.

MmmmmmmmmMmMmmmmm. Makes sense, given that soft and squishy things don't seem at home on Roshar. Things with shells, things that have protection, things that can withdraw into themselves: those things belong. Did they bring the pigs and horses and chickens too? What the heck is up with Ryshadium (spelling might be wrong b/c I've only listened recently)?

Wow. Things are falling apart so quickly right now. How are you gonna handle this, Dalinar? Hooboy, this isn't gonna end well.

 

@Saro FTR, I called it. :::PPP

Spoiler

Well, not the bit about the term "Voidbringers" originally meaning humans, but the part about humans coming from offworld and displacing the native Dawnsingers/parsh. Though I suspect there's still more to that whole thing, both because a) we're still on book 3 of 10, b) there was no explanation given for the history of how the word shifted in meaning, and c) I highly doubt something like that would make 9 orders of hundreds or thousands of knights who we spent half the epigraphs establishing bickered about everything universally and simultaneously break their oaths and kill their spren (like, not even "stop recruiting so we all die of old age") unless there was more to it.

 

Spoiler: GOOD LORD

everything is happening too much and all at once

And there's still like 9 hours left

Hhhhhhhhgggggghhh

Eta fuck yeah sad dad! You tell im!

 

The "end of a Sanderson novel" experience, right there. :::PPP

 

Crossposted from my tumblr are my overall thoughts on Elantris. Ok book. Annoyed me in several ways but I'll read this again over reading Well of Ascension again. That book is the one thing keeping me from rereading Mistborn.


It is done. I liked it overall but feel dissatisfied with the ending going “LOOK AT THESE POTENTIAL PROBLEMS” and then it not having a fucking sequel. I suppose perhaps that will happen at some point but at least Mistborn seemed more of an open and shut case upon the first read through. Getting to the other two novels it was very clear this wasn’t the case but had he ended it there for some reason I think I would have been satisfied. Elantris is just kind of unsubtly going SEQUEL HOOOOOK and I’m kind of pissed about that. I am somewhat annoyed at how little explanation the Fjordel magic system got and how what explanation AonDor got was handled. The entire fucking way it is pronounced and the lack of ANY explanation as to how it is done in the book, be it in the index or somewhere in the middle of the novel, is probably the most grating of the issues I have with that. The pronunciation of Aons could work with this ass backwards fucking orthography. You just had to actually fucking introduce it to the reader or at the very least include it in the Aon listing in the back.



I got neither of these things and instead have to use an explanation from the website.



This is deeply upsetting to me. Almost as upsetting as the entirely, with the exception of one word, untranslated Dula language. Yes I suppose most of the meanings were intuitively graspable but I’m still pissed at this. It just kind of looked like the fantasy language version of that crap where fanfic writers add in anime character’s verbal tics, and without the author’s note explaining what the fuck it meant.



That out of the way though I did like how most of the conflict in the plot wasn’t physically oriented. There wasn’t like war and shit constantly or even some sort of swashbuckling adventure. I like my violence as much as any woman does, but I do have a fondness for people fucking talking and politically maneuvering. And by god there was a lot of that in Elantris. It was most of the book in fact. Also my issues with how Aons were explained aside I did like the system a lot. I also liked the way the reveal towards the end was handled. That sort of shit has clearly been a strength of Sanderson’s from the get go and I’m happy to know that. The cast of characters I mostly liked, though Raoden was probably the least interesting for being so…good? Like the people liked him and they liked him because he was super good. And that’s kind of dull compared to Hrathen’s struggles with faith and a boner and to Sarene’s being a loud, pushy bitch who wants to be accepted. I know Raoden had like problems and stuff but he just felt too goody goody to be truly engaging. I liked Raoden but he was the least interesting of the main view point characters and certainly when compared to Mistborn’s characters. Hrathen was also obviously my favorite because I have a boner for religious people and their struggles. Overall I’m happy with his arc and its conclusion.



Really coming away from it I just feel that’s kind of strikingly obvious that this was his first novel when compared to Mistborn. I have my share of problems with Mistborn but a lot of my little complaints with Elantris were either fixed or, via the sheer power of people bitching, cut out entirely. There’s a lot of improvements between Elantris and the first Mistborn novel. Enough so that Elantris was kind of hard for me to read at times. But at the very least it didn’t have “BUT YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO SAVE ME” like Well of Ascension did.

 

Apparently Elantris happened because at the time he'd been writing tons of stuff about war and murder and postapocalypticness and violence and somebody in his writing group challenged him to write a story that was NOT about fighting.

This explains almost as much as the fact that Warbreaker happened because after writing Elantris and the Mistborn trilogy, somebody suggested he write something "more colorful."

 

oh goody

that sounds interesting

First Stormlight though. At least the first book. For now though no more reading. I will simply be grumpy about various things and wanting Hrathen/Sarene fic because that dynamic was interesting. NOT LIKE YOU RAODEN.

 

i just finished book 2 of the stormlight archive after a week-long marathon of warbreaker-book 1-book 2. (i read elantris and the emperor's soul years ago, and I.... started the mistborn series. SOMEDAY I'LL FINISH IT.....) i am DELIGHTED to see my goodbad swordboy again, and if kaladin, adolin, and shallan don't end up in a triad then i DONT WANT TO HEAR ABT IT. and now i will ignore this thread until i get my hands on oathbringer (that is to say: tomorrow)

(BUT RLY. LET MY KIDS FALL IN LOVE WITH EACH OTHER PROPERLY..... NO NEED FOR LOVE TRIANGLES!!!! ASK YOUR DOCTOR ABOUT TRIADS TODAY)

(why does Brandon Sanderson have to write such great but tragically heterosexual stories......)

 

For whatever it's worth, he's getting slightly better about that (there are minor characters in same-sex relationships in both the most recent Mistborn Series 2 book and Oathbringer), and has confirmed that Shallan is bi.

 

GIANT CRABS

 

Also I'm torn between Kaladin's army shit and Shallan's Shallanish for fav. Adolin and Dalinar are ok so far. Haven't grabbed at me like Shallan or Kaladin have.

 

I LOVE ROSHAR'S ECOLOGY SO MUCH, YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW

 

LOBSTER DRAGONS. MAGIC-EATING FLYING CRAB-BUGS. CORAL GARDENS. CRABS THE SIZE OF ISLANDS. EVERY SINGLE KIND OF BIRD, WITHOUT EXCEPTION, IS CALLED A CHICKEN.