I've just finished listening to The Sunlit Man by Brandon Sanderson, the last of his Kickstarter book series. Out of the four novels released, this was definitely in the bottom 50% for me, as while some of the content content was interesting in the grander scheme of his "Cosmere" universe, the book on its own was fairly bland.
Now, that's not to say there wasn't any action, interesting settings, or tearjerking moments in The Sunlit Man; when I say bland I mean this entirely in the context of "within Sanderson's novels". And he's got a lot of them -- by his own estimation this is his 50th novel.
Mild Spoilers after the jump.
-The book follows "Nomad" (who is a returning character from another book) as he planet-hops around to get away from some scary interstellar baddies. The planet in question in this story is one where the people fly around on ships to continuously avoid the sun, which will burn them to ashes and melt the ground beneath them. There's some magic technology and stuff in there that fits perfectly, and I really liked the visuals Sanderson brought forth with "the Charred" and the floating modular cities. I always appreciate the work Sanderson puts into the (sometimes literal) world building within his stories.
The whole tone of the book, though, was so cliche. I'm not one for the "grizzled cynical guy comes and reluctantly saves the day and gets soft by the end" trope, and that's this whole book. It's been done so many times, and while Sanderson claims it's a new trope for him to explore, there's been plenty of grizzled cynical types in his other stories. Outside of the revelations that pertain to the magic, workings of the world, or special events within the Cosmere, every interaction and action was predictable.
As for the "Cosmere stuff" that went on -- as I mentioned it was pretty interesting, but I'm honestly unsure about the whole "Cosmere goes to space" direction things appear to be taking. As someone who's caught up on the entire Stormlight and Mistborn series (plus a bunch of other smaller series), it's starting to feel like we might be getting "Star Wars with magic" in the upcoming novel. On one hand, that doesn't sound super appealing, but on the other hand the man's written 50 novels (and I've read at least half of them) and I'm sure a little bit of genre blend will help him keep stuff fresh.
All said and done, I've got to hand it to him with this Kickstarter -- while I only loved 2 of the 4 books, I did enjoy all 4 and I like that Sanderson took time as an author to explore things (slightly) out of his comfort zone. Minor complaints aside, I can't say that I've read 4 whole novels from any other author this year.