Sanderson got too big too fast to develop a relationship with an editor who could say "no" to him. He's built fascinating worlds and interesting characters, but his later writing is full of the kinds of tropes and flaws that an empowered editor would be pushing him hard to streamline:
- Dialogue from adults that has the emotional intelligence of a 12-year old
- Lots of telling, almost no showing. So much "X, the kind of person who takes no bullshit from anyone, says, 'hi'".
- Huge, dragging, Return-of-the-Jedi-style setpiece battles and fights that have no bearing on the plot outcome
- Plots that just repeat on a larger scale with every book in a series.
Dude needs someone who has the ability to say no to him. With the amount he writes though, I have to imagine it's basically a DDOS for anyone tasked with editing his work.
Well, he did a decent job ending Wheel of Time which had that problem but much worse, since it was edited by the guy's wife. Unlike RJ, Sanderson actually knows where he's going and tries to get there on schedule.
It was only decent though. I thought he made some very artificial uses of the magic system that didn't seem to fit in the world but just let him keep the series on track. Also, RJ wasn't the best at writing women but Sanderson is a total square and so the romantic/personal relationships were not really there.
Interestingly, the part of his books I liked the most was entirely original (Aviendha's future vision), and the one I thought was the worst written (Tower of Ghenjei) was an attempt to keep an RJ alpha plot that RJ probably would've abandoned.
RJ thought of himself as a "Southern gentleman" and so he had critical levels of boomer gender politics in all his dialogue, essentially 1000 pages of "I hate my wife" jokes and braid tugging. Also, not sure how many people noticed but more than a few plot points and things like Compulsion weaves in his books are clearly just his sexual fetishes.
But yes, there was a lot of depth and the women were always strong characters and seemed to be having fun, whereas Sanderson writes like he hasn't gone through puberty yet.
As a lifelong video game player, I get a strong video game vibe from his works. I think he tells engaging/energetic stories, he makes some nice complex systems and worlds, but the writing isn't particularly well structured, can drag on, and has some characters who definitely seem designed to appeal to teenage boys. Which all in all I don't mind, when I'm tired sometimes I just want a nice story where I never have to read a page twice.
- Dialogue from adults that has the emotional intelligence of a 12-year old
- Lots of telling, almost no showing. So much "X, the kind of person who takes no bullshit from anyone, says, 'hi'".
- Huge, dragging, Return-of-the-Jedi-style setpiece battles and fights that have no bearing on the plot outcome
- Plots that just repeat on a larger scale with every book in a series.
Dude needs someone who has the ability to say no to him. With the amount he writes though, I have to imagine it's basically a DDOS for anyone tasked with editing his work.