#disclaimer i like sandersons books but am well aware of his flaws

[sealwithfeels]

honestly I don't know why so many fantasy readers get on Brandon Sanderson's case about shit like bland prose, flat characters and bad humour, and then turn around and praise Martha Wells, who is far worse at all of those things.

Sanderson at least admits to making his prose simple for a reason, while Wells' prose is painfully amateur and constantly repeats the exact same phrases in quick succession - I can only take 'I would rather be watching my downloaded human media' so many times. Sanderson can construct a compelling plot and the pacing makes sense, while I don't know what the hell is going on with Wells' inability to write an interesting climax without the protagonist getting knocked unconscious and why random pace-killing bullshit got tacked onto the end of The Serpent Sea.

Not all of Sanderson's characters work for everyone, and some of supporting cast are pretty flat but he tries to keep the main characters varied and attempts to give them some memorable personality trait and doesn't treat them as more important than they should be, unlike Wells who reuses the same stock archetypes for major characters and forgets to give anyone a personality outside the few mains and then for some reason expects you to give a shit about these personalityless nobodies and gives them critical roles in the plot (seriously what the fuck is Chime's personality and why is he treated as so important to Moon when Moon spends the whole time finding him annoying, and why the hell was the critical traitor plot given to Jade's nobody sister who has no presence before or after)

I at least get the impression that Sanderson is trying, and you can see improvement with his books over time, while with Wells it feels like she's lazy and coasting on having found a way to appeal to the 'it literally me, so relatable' crowd to her books' detriment. Sanderson at least in theory understands character arcs and tries to make his characters different, while Wells just uses the same 'awkward woobie who everyone bad is mean to and needs a bland worshipful found family to soothe away all their pain, while they're kind of entitled dicks about it' main character.

Please at least be consistent when criticising authors.