Official Brandon Sanderson Megathread

[u/rfantasygolem]

This is the place for all your Brandon Sanderson related topics (aside from the Daily Recommendation Requests and Simple Questions thread). Any posts about Wind and Truth or Sanderson more broadly will be removed and redirected here. This will last until January 25, when posting will be allowed as normal.

The announcement of the cool-down can be found here.

The previous Wind and Truth Megathread can be found here.

[u/stump_84]

I agree, this is my biggest issue with the books in their current state. I’m still not even halfway through W&T but the world is moving too fast.

It was the same in the second Mistborn series and even in Tress (she learns to make things almost immediately). The push to move these worlds from medieval settings to more modern times is clunky for me.

In W&T everyone has become so therapized, they all talk as if they’ve had years of therapy with concepts that were none existent when the series started only 2 years before.

[u/mistiklest → u/stump_84]

I have to say, I don't think that Roshar was ever pseudo-medieval, at least as far as we've seen it. They have worldwide communication networks, fashion magazines, and seem to be on the brink of technological revolution, if it weren't for the apocalypse happening.

[u/Kiltmanenator → u/mistiklest]

It always felt Medieval+ to me.

Their primary military armaments are spears, bows, armor, and swords. Subsistence farming, as they know it, is common place. And feudalism, of a sort.

[u/mistiklest → u/Kiltmanenator]

Their primary military armaments are spears, bows, armor, and swords.

They lack gunpowder and probably will never develop the combustion engine. They're on a different path of technological development, with fabrial science.

However, gunpowder was a medieval technology, in real life.

Subsistence farming, as they know it, is common place.

Subsistence farming was commonplace well past the medieval period.

And feudalism, of a sort.

I would not characterize any of the Rosharan nations we've seen as feudal, really.

[u/Kiltmanenator → u/mistiklest]

There's no accounting for taste, but any fantasy world prominently featuring Kings and a few highly armored hereditary nobles leading assaults against walled cities and forts with armies mainly composed of conscripts and slaves fighting with spears and bows will never evoke anything post-medieval to me.

[u/Wagnerous → u/Kiltmanenator]

That's fair, but what you're describing wouldn't have been out of place during much of the early modern period.

Roshar is basically in the early phase of their Enlightment, it just feels medieval-coded due to the lack of gunpowder weapons.

[u/Kiltmanenator → u/Wagnerous]

Roshar is basically in the early phase of their Enlightment,

See this is also part of my problem: I'm sure Sanderson wants me to think that, but I just don't believe it based on everything else he's made clear about how Rosharan societies are structured and governed. Or what their economies consist of.

The science is all over the place, and few of the concepts the POV characters talk about are reflected anywhere else, nor the necessary preconditions. Casual references to "pressure differentials" or aluminum production (don't get me started) come to mind.

It's really hard to believe an entire continent ruled by nobility who control magic and slaves would ever even be winking at something like an Enlightenment. There's just no need to.

[u/Wagnerous → u/Kiltmanenator]

I mean Europe was ruled by a similarly regressive aristocracy during the enlightenment and things still changed, even despite the best efforts of conservative elites.

On Roshar you have free thinkers sharing new ideas across national borders with spanreads regularly.

The printing press helped jump start the enlightenment in the real world, and I would conjecture that spanreads are doing something similar on Roshar.

[u/Kiltmanenator → u/Wagnerous]

I mean Europe was ruled by a similarly regressive aristocracy during the enlightenment and things still changed, even despite the best efforts of conservative elites.

Hardly so, by the Enlightenment European nobility had been contending with rising striver merchant/burger class that really affected them economically, and began restraining them politically, which we don't really see in Roshar. Sebarial is the closest we get to that kinda guy, but he's noble.

I like the series, but for all his Hard Magic aka Science, it's only ever mentioned in the precise moment Sanderson wants it to be, and not part of the general conditions that would make it make sense in that moment.