What can you guys tell me about this guy? I’ve heard that his books were like, amazing, and they all have absurdly high ratings on Goodreads, but I’m extremely skeptical. According to Wikipedia he’s written 13 novels in the last 7 years. That’s never a good sign. Apparently he’s also friends with Christopher Paolini.

Has anyone read his books? Are they actually good or are they as lame as I imagine them to be?

Apparently Orson Scott Card likes his books as well.

Probably because they’re Mormons. Orson Scott Card is a cunt.

I fairly recently read The Way of Kings by Sanderson, and I enjoyed it very much. The fantasy world, instead of having some sort of medieval/renaissance European setting, was set in a world more similar to the Middle East and it was pretty amazing. I thought the characters were very nicely fleshed out, too, which is surprising because it’s hard to find good fantasy (I think) with good world building and interesting characters. Anyway, I would definitely recommend it, if only to judge his work for yourself.

I’ve read his Mistborn series. It’s pretty good. It’s set in a more or less fantasy setting in a world after the Dark Lord won, and it does keep you guessing with what’s going to happen to the characters and what happened in the past. His magic system is cohesive and it makes sense, the characters are sympathetic for the most part, and there is actual development of them. He was a little too fond of character death in that one though, so be warned.

Oh, and the prose was, for the most part, normal. It wasn’t something I’d point out as amazing, but it was good, unobtrusive, and didn’t sound like Sanderson has delusions of his ability.

His Alcatraz books are, if really silly and frivolous, incredibly enjoyable reads. While I haven’t personally read any of his other stuff, a friend read and liked The Way of Kings and I read the very beginning of it (like, twenty pages) and it was pretty good.

He’s also a part of the Writing Excuses podcast, which the aforementioned friend listens to and likes and from what I’ve heard of it, it’s pretty good and he seems like a good writer.

^ That takes balls.

I haven’t ever read his stuff, but his podcasts are quite interesting as well as some of his talks he gives that can be found on youtube here and there.

As far as Paolini is concerned, he has made mention that Eragon was an example of following the archetypes too closely. So I don’t think he’s unaware of his limitations, but he doesn’t strike me as someone that would go super negative on another author.

They both have their potential faults, though: with the first, it can too easily become mundane; with the second, it can easily lead to becoming a deus ex machina.

You’re right. It also depends on who is doing the magic. If the main character is training to be a wizard, then there must be some concrete knowledge to be gained… however, if it’s too concrete then it isn’t magic anymore in my opinion, it’s just another form of natural science. The magic in Harry Potter is great. We’re never actually told how it works or why, or what even determines who can use it. And that’s a good thing, in my opinion, because magic is by definition supernatural. And if something is supernatural, then it does not necessarily have any laws governing it and if it does they certainly aren’t the physical laws we know of as science. You know what I mean?

If you try to explain it, you get Midichlorians.

I love the Mistborn books, as a near-lifelong fan of the WoT series I’ve been very pleased with his work wrapping that up, Warbreaker was also good and I’m working through TWoK now. Also, his podcast is great. Pretty sure he’s my favorite current writer. No, his prose isn’t anything fancy, but then neither is mine so that gives me hope :)

I’ve never read anything by the author in question, but I’m chiming in to say that I, too, hate the phrase “Magic System.” It’s become one of those words that amateur internet “authors” talk about instead actually doing any work, right up there with “worldbuilding.” If you can bloviate on the TVTropes boards about how cool your Magic System is, it saves you from having to do all the hard shit like making compelling characters and, you know, writing sentences and stuff.

I mean, it’s important that the magic in the story has some kind of internal consistency, but that’s primarily so the author can’t use it to cheat. Limits are helpful, but if you get into all kinds of pointless rules spergery, it really kills the magic of magic.

Anyway, yeah. I don’t really have anything to contribute to the actual discussion, other than to say that Orson Scott Card’s greatest crime is, in fact, Ultimate Iron Man. What a piece of shit that was.

Yeah, I see what you’re saying, but I’ve always thought that a story about someone trying to figure out how to use magic would be really awesome. It doesn’t necessarily have to be as systematic as science, but this stuff is always presented as being ‘known’- so how do you get there in the first place?

I was just thinking about that myself the other day, actually.

As a dedicated worldbuilder, I both agree and disagree with sansafro. People Who Want To Have Written are the kind of person a tired stereotype might place in a coffee shop, loudly contemplating (to anyone within hearing distance) their Great American Novel-In-Progress, but never actually write anything. Have-Writers will arse about with worldbuilding and ‘magic systems’ and and basically get into a big hugbox (thanks, fellow Imps, for teaching me that term) about how cool and awesome their worldbuilding is, basically as another source of attention-getting. To-Writers, on the other hand, are the people that actually write.

It’s all a bit grey and muddled, anyway, because we all know that some people who actually write stuff are doing so just to have written, and some people who world-build without any noticeable movement toward publishable content do so purely for the joy of worldbuilding. I think the problem is simply people who want to think themselves Special.

Anyway, it’s rather beside the point. I haven’t read of Sanderson, but from some of the comments here, I might just give him a try.

Yeah, I mean if making up settings and stuff is a hobby of yours that you do for your own enjoyment, there’s obviously nothing wrong with that. “Worldbuilding” is a useful term in discussing fiction elements, too, but like so many other useful terms, it gets co-opted by awful people on the internet.

Just to chime in on magic systems.

I like magic systems, and I like creating them to rather extensive depths, even with the knowledge that most of the details will never come up within the story I’m creating the system for. Having a cohesive magic system really helps me come up with ideas for events and actions in the story as it provides a nice framework to explore implications within. Combine it with a number of other frameworks (like characters, politics, religion, language, economics, geography, etc.) and the plot of a story becomes a product of the world rather than being transplanted in from somewhere else.

With that said, I also enjoy reading and writing stories without magic systems. In The Last Unicorn for instance, all we really know of magic is that it exists, and it is in some way tied to perception. And if the magic of the story were explained more in-depth or otherwise, I think it would seriously detract from the story as a whole as well as the magical atmosphere of the entire book.

Magic systems have their times and uses, and it really depends upon the type and focus of the story the author is trying to tell. Some stories work better with magic systems, while others don’t.

Yeah, we don’t hate Wagner because he was antisemitic. But we can hate Orson Scott Card because he’s homophobic AND a Mormon AND because he’s a mediocre writer.

As far as magic systems go… why do they need to be “consistent?” The supernatural is anything BUT consistent- that’s why it’s supernatural! It doesn’t conform to the “consistent” laws we know of in this banal universe of ours. If something is supernatural, then not only do we not understand it, but we are not even capable of understanding it. If magic isn’t supernatural then it isn’t magic.

It’s easy to treat magic this way and avoid deus ex machina as long as you’re aware that you need to avoid deus ex machina.

Re: Magic

From what I’ve read even with folklore, magic has rules. There are things that a magic item or spell can do, things it can’t and things that need certain things to happen. Supernatural things have weaknesses, ‘why’ isn’t usually explained. Oni in Japan have issues with onions, the Fair Folk can’t touch iron. Why? They’re magic. It’s about all the explanation you’re going to get. So, I’m kind of middle of the road. There is a vagueness that magic needs to be…well…magical, but at the same time, what is known about the practical use of it, if you’re going to be working with magic user needs to have rules around it or else you get a bit of a mess.

I’ve read some fantasy with very vague rules on magic, I think one was called City of Beasts when I was a kid and the magic was used so vague it was pretty much meaningless. There was one scene where I wasn’t sure if the kid was high or having a magic vision for some reason, and after a while, I stopped caring.

I guess it’s something of experience for me. I’ve seen so many people using magic without at least some interior rules so badly that even when they didn’t use it as a dues ex machina, it just felt meaningless.

The one person who did care

That’s a pretty loose definition of “magic system” you’re using.

EDIT: @Nossus – I’m assuming she’s referring to your use of a word for a part of female anatomy to describe Card.

Lol, not only was what I said not sexist in anyway, I also only said it once. “can you please stop that” is a pretty useless request when it happened ONE TIME 24 hours prior

@Nossus

The way I see it, how something works isn’t the same as why it works. You seem to have an issue with people attempting to explain why magic works, which makes it no longer magical, and in that, I agree with you. However, magic still has an effect on the world of the story, and how the magic affects the story and how the characters in the story can/do take advantage of magic are important issues to consider. This is where magic systems come into play. Magic needs to consistently be a part of the story, otherwise it becomes an asspull as the plot demands, and the author coming up with a magic system for their own reference can help act as a reminder that has these effects on the story world, and that these effects need to be shown outside of plot-demanded scenarios.

@Nossus – yeah, it is. I don’t think every magic system has to have a very specific set of rules and bylaws and whatnot and be all “you must be a virgin under the light of a winter full moon with three sprigs of henbane washed in running water”type magic. There is certainly room for vaguer and more “mystical” magic, just as there’s room for very rigid rule and spell-based magic. But I maintain that you as the author still need to know about the magic. One of the hallmarks of bad fantasy is that awful vague, kitchen sink sort of magic, where nothing fits together and it’s obvious they just made up new stuff as they went along. Even if you want to have magic that varies widely (controlling spirits side by side with herbal spells and mental magic, etc.), you still have to have some consistency. That’s all I ask, is that people think things through beforehand, and don’t just go “well, anything’s possible” and never give it a moment’s thought.

I mean, really. Name one well-written fantasy book where the magic system doesn’t have thought-out capabilities and limitations, even if they aren’t immediately apparent to the reader the first time through.

I’ll admit I’d love to see a truly random and unreliable magic system, though, where magic hinders you as often as it helps you (or does neutral things, like one morning you wake up and your boots are now black instead of brown) and the ramifications of unreliable magic are actually thought out. And the magic doesn’t conveniently solve all the problems despite supposedly being soooo unhelpful and random. But again, such a magic “system” would still have to have internal consistency. It shouldn’t suddenly start working every single time for the protagonists just because they’re so special, for example.

EDIT:

That is a very… very… dubious distinction

Not really. “How” and “why” are very different questions. How something (an object falling, say) is done (gravity attracts objects to one another, with more massive objects attracting less massive objects more strongly) and why (uh… God thought it’d be cool? Who knows?) are scarcely even related.

More specifically on the Harry Potter thing you can look at the time-turners. They show up once and then they’re all magically (no pun) destroyed.

I’d disagree about Harry Potter not having thought-out capabilities or limitations. Spell words and wands are required for general human wizards to control magic. Certain creatures possess magical properties and abilities intrinsic to their nature. Both act as limitations and capabilities for magic, even if they are rather broad. There are also other restrictions imposed upon the magic system that, while not necessarily limits of the magic itself, does limit what characters are able to do with magic.

For example, human wizards, unless they have been born with a non-standard magical ability, must use spell words and wands to cast their magic. This limits the abilities of a wizard to the what they know, which means one of the requirements for human wizardry is extensive study and memorization. Human wizards with non-standard magical abilities are, without training, limited in the magic they can perform strictly to those in-born magical abilities. The limitations of other creatures isn’t really touched upon as the focus of the story was on the human wizarding world, but it can be assumed that wands, at the very least, are human-specific tools of magic.

Every aspect of magic throughout the entire series falls within this magical framework, which was established in the first book.

No, actually, I don’t see any difference.

Why is generally more concerned with the ultimate cause or purpose of something. How is generally more concerned with the manner in and extent to which something occurs. They tend to be used interchangeably, even though it isn’t strictly correct, but that’s common usage for you.

So, really, the answer to “Why did the apple fall on Newton’s head?” would depend on how far back in the chain of causes you want to go. “The apple was ripe” would be a valid answer, as would be “And apple tree was there”. Also, technically-speaking, gravity does not strictly “cause” anything to fall. It acts upon an object that is already falling and just gives it a direction to fall towards.

Harry uses magic without intending or even realizing it many times.

I meant “use” in the sense of “consciously control”. It also doesn’t contradict the in-born magical abilities of magical creatures, if you consider human wizards to be a sort of magical creature where the magic is innate, but the control is not. Additionally, wandless magic still requires the wizard to have innate magical abilities that do not require learned control, and to use Parseltongue as an example, unless a person is born with it, he cannot speak the language of or control snakes.

Also while spells can be cast without speaking the incantation, the incantation must still be thought by the wizard in order to cast the spell.

Snape INVENTS his own spell (sectum sempra). We don’t know how the hell he did that.

But we don’t need to. It just confirms that spells can be invented (or discovered, depending on how you see magic working) since the spells everyone learned throughout the books had to come from somewhere.

It’s capable of doing anything if you know how to control it. So it’s not really a “system” of magic that creates limitations, but the knowledge of the characters. The magic is a vast and limitless resource.

Magic as a resource is different from the use and capabilities of magic. A magic system can have limitless magic as a resource, but have limitations on the uses and capabilities of that magic.

Ok, maybe I don’t know anything about science, but I’m pretty sure the apple fell because gravity was pulling it toward the earth. It didn’t fall and then gravity grabbed it- that doesn’t make sense. If not for gravity pulling on it it would never have fallen at all because it would be weightless.

All things are constantly falling. Weird concept, but that’s one of the most basic assumptions/principles in physics, and just how far things fall depends on your frame of reference. The direction of the fall and the distance traveled during falling are determined by the combination of various forces. For instance, the apple, before it became detached from the tree, was falling at the same rate and the same direction as the tree. Once it lost the attachment to the tree, it fell at a different rate than the tree and Newton, hitting Newton, until its rate of falling was slowed by the force of the ground.

Gravity is not a force. Gravity is an acceleration, and even when something is completely stationary relative to the surface of the Earth, it still has an acceleration. When you have an acceleration in conjunction with mass, you get a force, and forces are ultimately responsible for all the changes we see in motion in our frame of reference.

Basically, the reason why things aren’t constantly falling in our frame of reference is because mass blocks mass. Ground has too much stuff packed together to let people fall through gaps in the material, just like how a table is packed full of molecules that are close enough to be solid enough to support your computer. And when you have mass combined with acceleration, you have a force, which results in your computer exerting force on the table, and your table exerting equal force on your computer. The two forces are in different directions (computer to table versus table to computer) and equal magnitude, so they cancel out, which is why you don’t have computers or tables looking like they’re constantly falling, much less moving in random directions.

I hope that made sense.

We’re never really given a “system.”

I think we’re talking different shades of “system” here. Not all systems are complex or methodical. Some systems are made up of a few basic principles, and the magic system in Rowling’s world is one of them.

Broken down into the most basic principles, Rowling’s system comes to something like this:

1. Some creatures are inherently magical.

2. Not all magical creatures are equally able to use magic.

3. Not all magic is instinctively controlled.

4. Non-instinctive human magic requires wands and incantations to control.

It does if you make up your own definition of “falling.”

All I will say is that I didn’t make up that definition for falling.

#1, with definition #2 for gravity, and using a different point of reference than the ground = stationary, where even the ground is falling.

In relation to WHAT?

The center of the earth.

At a constant acceleration due to gravity. On Earth, the rate is roughly 9.8 m/(s ² ).

Just because something doesn’t appear to be falling in one frame of reference, doesn’t mean that it is not falling. The default is that ALL things are in a state of free fall, but it’s a pain to calculate things when everything is moving, so if you make it so that there are as few moving parts as possible (change your frame of reference), calculations become easier depending on what you want to calculate.

The apple with respect to (WRT) the ground fell when it broke off of the tree. The apple WRT the Earth was always falling towards the center of the Earth; it’s just that the tree was acting as an opposing force to hold the apple in a position higher than the ground.

and simply say that gravity is acting on everything, attracting every bit of mass in the universe toward one another. Your mass right now is attracting the Earth’s mass, even, it’s just that Earth’s mass is so immensely huger than yours, its force of attraction on you far overpowers your force of attraction on Earth.

But that’s NOT what Kyllorac said. What was said was that the ground is falling at 9.8 m/s^2 which is stupid. Yeah, it’s may be easier to remove the word “fall” because we’re using a definition of “fall” that I’m assuming was just made up because I can’t find it in any dictionary.

Anyway, back to magic?

wut about it.

I am so, so, so sorry all this.

On the upside, I can now say that I managed to completely derail a thread with a single comment.

On the upside, I can now say that I managed to completely derail a thread with a single comment.

I had to scroll all the way back up to see which comment you were talking about. XD

I think I’m going to read The Way of Kings

I liked Elantris. And bought the Mistborn trilogy a while ago.

I wasn’t complaining, just sparing Apep’s feelings. Also, this kinda is the Brandon Sanderson Thread (look, it even says it up the top, in bold red!)

Dude, ease off. It’s not Taku’s fault that you started a thread about something you don’t even care about. If you didn’t want to talk about Brandon Sanderson, then why did you make a thread about him in the first place?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwb7b9Ks0VE

Here, now we can talk about both and the Topic Nazis can leave

Are you for real? Seriously?

Are you? In every thread you misunderstand or misconstrue what I’ve said. Do you have trouble reading? That would be hilariously ironic on a site like Impish Idea.

Now, either leave me alone and take your comprehension deficiencies with you, or quote to me exactly where I said I didn’t want to talk about Brandon Sanderson. While you’re at it, you might try not to be a hypocrite and make an on-topic post for once.

God, you are an utter doofus.

EDIT: With apologies to Snow White Queen, I hadn’t seen her post before I sent this in. Should have refreshed the page!

As far as magic systems go… why do they need to be “consistent?” The supernatural is anything BUT consistent- that’s why it’s supernatural! It doesn’t conform to the “consistent” laws we know of in this banal universe of ours. If something is supernatural, then not only do we not understand it, but we are not even capable of understanding it. If magic isn’t supernatural then it isn’t magic.

Well, the supernatural doesn’t exist so it’s a bit difficult to say definitively whether it is consistent or not.

Anyway, magic certainly doesn’t have to be understood or systematized in the way that our natural sciences are—and shouldn’t be. As you said, that’s how we get midichlorians and other daft inventions. But you seem to be conflating “magic” with “supernatural”—they are not the same thing. Magic is a means by which humans—or whatever—harness supernatural forces to aid them. Look at any historical culture that uses magic and they do have rules and an understanding of their magic, despite that what they are grasping at is supernatural. Otherwise, magic would be worthless to them since there is no way to harness something which has absolutely no consistency. It would be like if burning wood was sometimes hot and sometimes sub-zero cold, with no predictable pattern—if you want to cook it’s useless and if you want to freeze it’s useless, although I guess if you don’t care it’d be worth it.

Imagine a wizard using magic that he does not understand and whose end effects he cannot predict, all of which comes because your version of the supernatural has no consistency—making the same motions and incantations would not reliably produce one effect. He could barely be called a wizard at all. That is what people should mean when they speak of a “magic system”. A certain level of consistency and comprehension which allows control (or some other kind of influence) over the supernatural is what magic is, no more and no less.

It’s the wrinkles that writers introduce to magic, within the context of their stories, that make it interesting. If a writer wants to treat magic as a kind of fantastic physics, then that could be great—so long as it informs and is informed by the book they’ve written. If a writer wants the supernatural to be ineffable, and for interactions with the supernatural pointless (i.e. magic does not work but the supernatural still exists—a broken system, I guess), then it could be a fascinating read about humans simply trying to get along without any kind of influence over the inscrutable, random gods or other forces that influence their world.