This is the second of Brandon Sanderson's "Secret Projects" that's part of his record-setting Kickstarter campaign (the first was "Tress of the Emerald Sea"  ). I really liked the premise of this one, but I'm beginning to sense a common theme to these books, and I have a theory.

First, the premise. Sanderson admits that this was an idea he had based on the title and basic idea which he had been thinking about for a while and finally developed a story around. The idea is that a man from a future time purchases his own alternate reality dimension (which is a world approximating medieval England) and travels there... but something goes wrong and the manual to the travel "package" he purchased is largely destroyed during transit, so he has to piece things together, living in ancient times with the advantage of certain advanced technologies that make him seem like a wizard to the locals. Honestly, it's a pretty cool idea.

Here's the common theme, though... this book is annoying A.F. and the jokes in the book repeat ad nauseam. For example, the protagonist (being from the future) is used to rating and reviewing things. So when he very first arrives in his new dimension, he seeks shelter behind a tree and then jokes, "four stars, good concealment... would hide there again" like he's reviewing a restaurant. Which is, admittedly, amusing... the first time. But the protagonist then repeats that same joke at least half a dozen times in the first hundred pages. Everything the protagonist does gets one of his custom ratings and reviews. Similarly, there are some interstitial "advertisements" from the company that sold the package to him, and it's kind of fun at first... but we don't need another seemingly unrelated advertisement between every chapter of plot just to liven things up.

Which brings me to my theory. Supposedly, Sanderson wrote these without his publisher's knowledge and is releasing them independently... which presumably means he hasn't been able to avail himself of his publisher's resources. Like, oh, say editing. And, sure, he has other people to do his editing for him, but those people seem to be either (a) friends/family, or (b) employees. And Sanderson is the most successful author in their orbit... so my theory is that he doesn't have anyone editing these books who will tell him honestly that these books need work. It's just, "OMG you wrote four books during the pandemic and they're all aMaZeBaLLs!!! My only notes are a few small typos and minor tweaks." Rather than, "Hey dude, you really overdid it with this aspect of the story. You need to do some serious work on this and reign in the amount of times you overuse this element of the story."

So, yeah, even though I really loved the premise, the actual execution of this book means I'm two-for-two in terms of DNF'ing Sanderson's "secret projects." I'm curious to see if my theory bears out for the third and fourth novels he wrote in this manner... in which case going forward I might limit myself to things he's worked on that his actual publisher helped guide and finesse.

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Created Mar 24, 2024 at 9:26pm • Submit your own review...