First of all, I don’t pretend to start a war here, just explain my situation.
I normally read history books and last year was pretty intense with “Civil War: A Narrative”. With the change of the year I started a new job, more technical, and I decided to expend this year with some other relaxing lectures. So I compiled some books and lists about sci-fi, epic fantasy, dystopia, comics, manga…etc.
So I read “The final empire” and it was alright, 2 stars in GoodReads. Ok, let’s move on. I’m half the way in “The well of Ascension” and I’m not just completely bored with it, I hate Vin already and I feel that a lot of the paragraphs are written for children/teenagers.
So it’s when I started to think those are for Young Adults/Teenagers/First fantasy readers. My plan was to read everything about Cosmere but right now I think I will just finish the first trilogy and move on to another thing.
Thanks for your comments.
by RinosPolvo
25 Comments
Brandon Sanderson did an AMA here [you might want to take a look](http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/) 🙂 [Here’s a link to all of our upcoming AMAs](http://www.reddit.com/r/books/wiki/amafullschedule)
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Mistborn has at various points in time and in varying editions been marketed to adults and to young adults.
Plenty of adults like him. Plenty of teenagers like him. Sounds like you’re not one of them, and that’s okay.
I believe that mistborn is the only cosmere book that has had some editions marketed to young adults, but honestly I’d make decision about whether to read his other stuff based on the fact that you don’t seem to like the author rather than over-indexing on whether some marketer thought an adult or YA label would sell better.
If you’re coming to fantasy from the perspective of liking history, I might check out Guy Gavriel Kay, he writes very historical-inspired fantasy.
Some of them explicitly yeah. But in general kinda. I’ve seen a lot of people call him the mcu of fantasy and I think that’s a reasonable comparison. They’re reasonable quality popcorn fantasy that come out at a dependable rate. Honestly his writing speed has been maybe the big source of his success, with fantasy having many big name series writers struggling or failing to finish their series he popped up on the scene like the exact opposite.
Not everything is high lit. Not everything has to have ten layers.
Some people work hard and a lot of overtime and want a book that’s easy to slip into.
He writes YA but with adult characters. I tend to think the YA vs Fantasy section to be mostly arbitrary but what I mean is that he writes novels that are easy to read and that have themes and emotions that appeal to younger people.
Way of Kings is much less so than Final Empire, but yes they’re bordering on YA. I’d give Way of Kings a try before ruling him out. And if you want fantasy with historical flair, I’d suggest Game of Thrones if you can tolerate it being incomplete (books go way more into coat of arms and lore than TV show, influenced by War of Roses) or Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell, off the top of my head. If you want to deviate into sci-fi, you might like Connie Willis or Phillip K Dick’s Man in the High Castle.
lol whether you wanted a war or not doesn’t matter to the Brando Sando Fandos. Question their dear leader and they will come for you and then cry about/completely misunderstand ‘flowery’ prose on their subreddit.
Era 1 Mistborn was ok. Era 2 was unreadable to me. I’ll probably start Stormlight 5. It’s like Marvel but less self aware.
I think Sanderson writes for a very broad audience, and part of his success is that his stuff definitely appeals to teens. But I don’t think Mistborn was written specifically *for* the YA demographic.
I listened to most of his books with my daughters while they were in Elementary and Middle school. Now that they’re in High School, they say he’s too childish for them. Specifically, Wayne from Mistborn was just too silly and they were just done.
The best way I ever saw it put was “If YA is diapers, Sanderson is Huggies.”
It might not ***be*** YA but it still has almost all the trappings of it.
I would try Abercrombie instead. Very, very character driven fantasy but definitely not YA.
Obviously. And his love triangles are cringe at best and written for young girls.
TFE/WOA are a bit YA. They’re also some of his older work.
He has actual YA work. It’s not like TFE.
>I normally read history books and last year was pretty intense with “Civil War: A Narrative”.
The First Law is adult fantasy that was inspired by Civil War: A Narrative, especially The Heroes.
I would classify the mistborn books as young adult, maybe slightly skewed to the most mature age in that demographic. Or maybe like a bridge between ya and fantasy targeted at older people. Don’t know much about his other works.
I feel like his prose is dry as fuck. Don’t know if that makes it YA or not.
A lot of people say that most of his books are YA, but I just don’t see it. What parameters is young adult even based off of? If people consider complexity of writing/prose/whether people in the books say fuck or get fucked in graphic scenes in the book as main qualifiers then sure, it’s YA, but I think themes and storytelling are more appropriate ways to categorize books.
The part that irks me is that people that don’t like Sanderson instantly use YA in a derogatory/negative way.
I’m 39, recently read Tress of the Emerald Sea, and loved it. /shrug
YA is an arbitrary category. If a young person wants to read a book, they should be able to and encouraged to.
I would say this applies to other historically popular fantasy titles too. For instance, The Hobbit, at different points, has been labeled children’s fiction, teen fiction, and “adult” fiction.
Things like Skyward are specifically targeting the YA market. Others target… everyone – YA and adults.
I’m definitely in the latter category (have kids in the former category) and have friends (both male and female) in the 35-55 age group who LOVE Sanderson. They start reading the day a book is released.
Personally I found Skyward to be good background listening (while commuting) on audiobooks, but his “adult-targeted” fantasy stuff just isn’t for me.
He does write YA deliberately, but as far as the Cosmere books go, I would say those are *not* YA genre, but young adults could handle reading them and are part of the intended audience.
>Is Brandon Sanderson for Young Adults?
Yep, Sanderson is for young adults, teens, and middle grade. Also, middle adults and old adults. Pretty much the entire human age range from about 9 to 99. He has written well over 50 novels, novellas, and short stories that run the gamut of styles, topics, and age ranges. Putting such a prolific and diverse author into a single YA box is as simplistic as people claim his writing is.
A better way to ask this is if The Final Empire is an accurate representation of Sanderson’s style. The answer to that is yes and no. His very easy and accessible writing style doesn’t change, but his skill in utilizing that style does improve over the years. He also likes to experiment with different styles, most notably in his short stories and novellas, so those are often more appealing to people who prefer a more complex or whimsical style.
He still may not be the author for you, it sounds like simple writing style isn’t your thing and most of his works are written in that way, and that’s perfectly fine. There are a lot more authors out there to enjoy!
I’m just finishing his skyward series and I’m throughly enjoying it.
If his name were Brandy Sanderson Mistborn would unquestionably be young adult.