Cosmere picked up by Apple TV

[Parmandur]

Ya, I think I've been looking at that thick book for five years now.....and haven't opened it yet.

I recommend trying to get to the end of Part 1 (of 5): by then you will be invested or uninterested.

 

[Retros_x]

Great news, I think apple is the best pick! I think Sandersons work is perfect for TV adaption because his strengths can shine (plotting, action, character interactions) while his weaknesses are mainly of literate nature IMO (I really dislike his prose, especially the internal monologues of his characters). I also hope that we see more of the world in SA than in the first book. I really disliked that we see so little of the world in Way of Kings. Felt not epic at all.

I'm actually more excited for a Mistborn movie than for the Stormlight TV show.

Same here. While reading Mistborn I already had movie scenes in my mind - the action scenes are just too good. Mistborn fights with good fx and good action direction gould become so amazing.

Try reading The Emperor's Soul: very short novella, self-contained and standalone award winning story.

+1! The only Sanderson work I gave over 4,0 on storygraph. One of my main criticsm of him is his bloated writing, but when he forces himself to be concise like in his novel his true strength emerge IMO.

I recommend trying to get to the end of Part 1 (of 5): by then you will be invested or uninterested.

Hm, not sure. I read The Way of Kings last year and I am neither invested nor completely uninterested. I definitely want to continue at one point, but Wheel of Time comes first, much more invested in that series by now

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I'm very interested in how these turn out. Adaptations have a nasty habit of being bad/disappointing, but with Sanderson having this much influence I am less worried than I normally would be.

In some ways, I'm interested to see how the adaptations could improve on the source material. Through their very nature, TV/movie adaptations of novels have to cut out a lot of stuff and make the story tighter. I love Sanderson's stories, but the last few of his I read felt like they desperately needed to be shorter. I hope that the trimming that the adaptations will bring will make the stories more concise. With all affection, Sanderson is pretty much the definition of "should have taken more time to write a shorter book."

 

[Cergorach]

Through their very nature, TV/movie adaptations of novels have to cut out a lot of stuff and make the story tighter.

Did the (extended) LotR trilogy?

I'm not looking for 'improvements' in TV/movie adaptions, I'm looking for a different medium for the story to be told in. And with books to TV/Movie that change is generally in the audio/visual realm.

 

[Parmandur]

Did the (extended) LotR trilogy?

I'm not looking for 'improvements' in TV/movie adaptions, I'm looking for a different medium for the story to be told in. And with books to TV/Movie that change is generally in the audio/visual realm.

Yes, even the extended movies cut a huge amount of important material and took shortcuts.

The Lord of the Rings would be better off as a six season TV show, to properly draw out everything.

 

[Parmandur]

Great news, I think apple is the best pick! I think Sandersons work is perfect for TV adaption because his strengths can shine (plotting, action, character interactions) while his weaknesses are mainly of literate nature IMO (I really dislike his prose, especially the internal monologues of his characters). I also hope that we see more of the world in SA than in the first book. I really disliked that we see so little of the world in Way of Kings. Felt not epic at all.


Same here. While reading Mistborn I already had movie scenes in my mind - the action scenes are just too good. Mistborn fights with good fx and good action direction gould become so amazing.

+1! The only Sanderson work I gave over 4,0 on storygraph. One of my main criticsm of him is his bloated writing, but when he forces himself to be concise like in his novel his true strength emerge IMO.

Hm, not sure. I read The Way of Kings last year and I am neither invested nor completely uninterested. I definitely want to continue at one point, but Wheel of Time comes first, much more invested in that series by now

Robert Jordan had a much stronger prose style than Sanderson, for sure. For me, even in the stretches where Jordan loses the plot, his prose styling and attention to detail carry it through. I swear you can write a 120 page thesis on how the Wheel of Time achieves world building through in-depth restaurant reviews of the 90-some named Inns that characters visit.

Though one thing I have noticed that Robert Jordan, George R. R. Martin, Terry Pratchett (the three major writers I have seen speak on person) share as does Sanderson: they write the same way that they speak. To a large extent, I think Sanderson's plain prose is partly just his Omaha, Nebraska speech patterns being, well...plain and straightforward. There is also an element of intentionality: the Stormlight Archives has such a complex plot, told over such a large spread, with such a weird Setting...he is on record of wanting the reading process to be straightforward and not an additional barrier to entry.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Yes, even the extended movies cut a huge amount of important material and took shortcuts.

The Lord of the Rings would be better off as a six season TV show, to properly draw out everything.

Yeah, it’s a matter of pacing and rhythm as well as content. The BBC radio version picked that up better than the movies.

 

[Parmandur]

Yeah, it’s a matter of pacing and rhythm as well as content. The BBC radio version picked that up better than the movies.

Indeed! Frankly I would love it if someone did a long form TV version someday that has all the songs, Tom Bombadil, the Scouring and all the walking not simply montages away.

On the other hand, to tie the LOTR films back to the topic, Sanderson has apparently been re-reading the Lord of the Rings and watching the movies to see how he envisions the Stormlight Archives TV show, since a single season would be about the same screen time as the Extended Editions and each Stormlight book is more or less a single Metric Lord of the Rings Trilogy in length:

"There is a reason I've been studying Tolkien lately. Peter Jackson and his team did a brilliant job on that and if you look at the special editions, they are roughly about the length of a season of a show together covering about the same wordcount as a stormlight book... It feels like they knew exactly what to keep and cut."

And that approach may fit Stormlight better than it did Tolkien.

 

[Retros_x]

I swear you can write a 120 page thesis on how the Wheel of Time achieves world building through in-depth restaurant reviews of the 90-some named Inns that characters visit.

you already show hints of that in the book megathread 2025 and if you'd decide to do that, I sign up as a feedback reader haha!

share as does Sanderson: they write the same way that they speak.

Interestingly one of my main critiques of his prose is that his voice of character feel not unique, most of his characters talk the same. Although I wouldn't say the same about GRRM. Jordan is on the brink for me up until now (in the middle of vol 3).

.he is on record of wanting the reading process to be straightforward and not an additional barrier to entry.

I think its not the clarity that annoys me. I definitely can appreciate straightforward prose. But Jordan is also quite straight forward, at least in the first books. Somehow it works better for me - Sanderson just repeats too much words and phrases for my taste and has no feel for pacing and rythm. It feels quite dry and soulless to me. There is no vivid imagery pop up in my mind when reading Sanderson. And Jordan for example is quite good in immersing me in the world with simple means, meanwhile I have the opposite effect with Sanderson: I feel distanced, having no good grasp about the world, everything feels artificial. His approach works really good with action scenes - if a scene has a complex setup and sequence of action beats, you don't want complex prose or distracting choice of words or too much metaphors etc. But outside of action scenes his scenes fall flat to me.

But my biggest gripe with Sanderson: the internal monologues of his characters are driving me insane. I swear to god, all the middle parts of his books are stretched to hell with internal meanderings "why did X happen? How does X work? What could be behind X? Why is it X? Why why why why why why why why why...." without ever actually doing something and than in the finale the big reveal is "omg it was actually Y!!" I like character-driven stories in general where we experience the internal state of mind of the protagonists - but Sanderson is not good at it. He is plot-driven through and through, but dresses it up with these horrid thought spirals that lead to nowhere.

Ands that a big reason I am excited for the TV adaptions: no matter the freedom apple gives him, there is no way a good TV producer would allow for some voiceover narrator doing endless repetitions of character internal monologues.

 

[Parmandur]

you already show hints of that in the book megathread 2025 and if you'd decide to do that, I sign up as a feedback reader haha!

LOL, don't have the time these days to go that deep, but thanks!

Interestingly one of my main critiques of his prose is that his voice of character feel not unique, most of his characters talk the same. Although I wouldn't say the same about GRRM. Jordan is on the brink for me up until now (in the middle of vol 3).

Sanderson does not have the strongest writing on that front, voice wise, I would agree, though I think he does a good job drawing out different characters personalities and motivations. When he gets to write Wheel of Time, he nails Rand and Perrin, but boy is his Mat rough...

Jordan gets a lot more diverse in viewpoints starting in book 4 and 5, as the Two Rivers kdks become somewhat de-centered as the viewpoints.

I think its not the clarity that annoys me. I definitely can appreciate straightforward prose. But Jordan is also quite straight forward, at least in the first books. Somehow it works better for me - Sanderson just repeats too much words and phrases for my taste and has no feel for pacing and rythm. It feels quite dry and soulless to me. There is no vivid imagery pop up in my mind when reading Sanderson. And Jordan for example is quite good in immersing me in the world with simple means, meanwhile I have the opposite effect with Sanderson: I feel distanced, having no good grasp about the world, everything feels artificial. His approach works really good with action scenes - if a scene has a complex setup and sequence of action beats, you don't want complex prose or distracting choice of words or too much metaphors etc. But outside of action scenes his scenes fall flat to me.

Yeah, his world building approach is somewhat shallow and improvisational: he builds on what he does, but he starts with some basic facts and then builds on those pretty much as the plot demands rather than beforehand. It works, but it is not on the level of Frank Herbert or J. R. R. Tolkien for sure. And he often puts abstract ideas, like "The Way of Kings is The Mighty Ducks" as central

But my biggest gripe with Sanderson: the internal monologues of his characters are driving me insane. I swear to god, all the middle parts of his books are stretched to hell with internal meanderings "why did X happen? How does X work? What could be behind X? Why is it X? Why why why why why why why why why...." without ever actually doing something and than in the finale the big reveal is "omg it was actually Y!!" I like character-driven stories in general where we experience the internal state of mind of the protagonists - but Sanderson is not good at it. He is plot-driven through and through, but dresses it up with these horrid thought spirals that lead to nowhere.

The internal monologues don't really bother me, since that is pretty much how I think myself.

Ands that a big reason I am excited for the TV adaptions: no matter the freedom apple gives him, there is no way a good TV producer would allow for some voiceover narrator doing endless repetitions of character internal monologues.

For sure, and I know because Sanderson has been talking about his adaptation philosophy that he wants any film project to be a film or TV show first, and use that art form rather than try to be lavish to literary details. He wants a lot of control, but he has a healthy detachment from specific details that this may just work.