I first heard of Brandon Sanderson five and a half years ago. My favorite author, Robert Jordan, had just died, leaving his epic fantasy series (The Wheel of Time) unfinished forever, or so I thought. Sometime later, it was announced that his works would be completed by Brandon Sanderson, an author I had never heard of. I was cynical from day one.

It turned out that I couldn’t have been more wrong. The final three books had all of the flair and detail of the original 8 or 9. But more, they succeeded in a lot of ways that Robert Jordan’s books never had. Robert Jordan’s worldbuilding was spectacular, without a doubt. And because of that, his scenes are naturally brought to life. For the most part, this bleeds into every scene. His particularly defining scenes stand out strongly, and give you chills, between the leadup and the delivery. But (especially as the series goes on) you start to realize that he seems to feel more comfortable designing worlds and establishing plot than actually writing scenes.

Enter Brandon Sanderson. Brandon Sanderson’s books always seem, to me, to suffer from a lack of planning. But his scenes are packed with so much urgency I feel like I’ve forgotten to do something.

Reading his books after reading his WoT adaptations was a bit disappointing. Brandon Sanderson seems to suffer a bit from BSG syndrome; he’s not a finisher. His universes are all very interesting, his characters are great, and the way he writes scenes makes you want to keep turning pages long after you’ve fallen asleep. Each chapter brings new intrigue and drama to his world, as you, the reader, learn more and more about the world as his characters do as well, but every time they learn something, their situation seems worse (either because it gets worse or because they realize how bad it is) You start to wonder how he’s going to tie up all of the loose ends as things get worse and worse and worse and all of a sudden only 20 pages remain in the book and you think ‘is there going to be a sequel?’ and then — BAM! — somebody becomes a god/demigod/super hero and solves all of the problems with a few effortless strokes.

WARNING: The following reviews contain minor spoilers

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