For fans of The Night Angel Trilogy and fantasy author Brent Weeks
Questions about Plot
I've noticed similarities to history X or author Y, were you influenced by that?
I spent a little time in Wales and loved it. I also was a huge fan of the books Taliesin and Merlin by Stephen Lawhead when I was growing up--and he uses Welsh properly in his books. I went to Caernarfon, toured the castle, and spent an evening being regaled with stories by an old, real-life spy. I thought the word was so cool that I had to use it someday. So I tweaked it a little to make it different and easier to pronounce correctly--substituting the f with a v. Dang, I swear I never saw that town's name written in English. So this is how a clever nod to something cool in real life goes from clever nod to straight ripoff. Oh well, I made worse mistakes.
Actually, I made a similar mistake with Sa'kage'. I meant Kage to evoke something dark or shadowy, because to me, it felt dark and shadowy ("Sa" simply being a contraction of an Old Jaeran term meaning "Lord.") Yeah, cool, except that--as someone pointed out--Kage actually does mean shadow in Japanese. Since most of the little Japanese I know has to do with sushi ("More gari?" "Domo arigato!"), this was just a mistake. Maybe not one that will ruin anything for the vast majority of people, but if I'd become aware of it, I probably would have changed it a little. I generally want connotation, not translation. But I'm a writer, not a philosopher, so expect some inconsistencies.
The other word is indeed Waeddryn, and I'm not talking about that one. :)
I was playing off the archaic meanings of Azoth referred to by that Wikipedia article, but not the occult ones. I don't think Azoth is God or something, although it is kind of cool how they came up with that. Funny thing is, I even did Google Azoth at some point, but I don't think that Wikipedia article existed at the time.
As for similarities to other authors or series here is my well thought out response to that question….CONTIANS SPOILERS!So, first to take your questions at face value: are there similarities? Sure. Jordan was a favorite of mine. I didn’t love everything he did, and I haven’t read any of his books for eight (?) years, but those first books wowed me as much as Tolkien's books did. Jordan rocks.
For my Sethi islanders, I had people who were sailors in a very hot climate--so I looked to Polynesians, whose women never wore tops. Don’t really remember much else about Jordan’s Sea Folk except blue fingernails (?), Windseekers and a regimented society, but whatever. The Sethi islanders, so yes, they're skilled sailors.
Lae’knaught and the Children of the Light. Think of the Knights Templar, about whom (contrary to Dan Brown) very little is known except that they were an ideologically-founded society of knights who were rich, kicked butt on the battlefield, and drew recruits from all over Christendom. That scared the hell out of regular kings, because your own people might decide their loyalty was first to this group, rather than to you. But because Knights Templar held no land, they couldn't be opposed in traditional ways. They were on your own side…sort of. I decided to put a rationalist spin on these guys because I've seen the "religious zealot" stereotype way too many times in fantasy. Didn't remember that the Children used the Sun symbol, though. I used that for the "pure light of reason, beating back the darkness of ignorance." So it worked within their rationalist beliefs. If I had actually studied Jordan or remembered that he used that, I probably would have changed it. (By the way, Jordan "borrowed" that title "Children of the Light" from 1 Thessalonians 5 in the New Testament. Just looked it up. Knew it was from somewhere.)
Curoch/Callandor--come on, you can’t think of ONE other magic sword that’s intended for a once and future king? Here’s a hint: it starts with Ex- and ends with -calibur. Jordan even has his buried in a stone or crystal or something no one else but the appointed guy can touch. The Sword in the Stone? Did anyone accuse him of ripping off the Disney cartoon?
Sorry, that came out kind of snarky. I’m not going to go through them all your examples because of space. Some are really pretty different, or conversely quite common to the genre. The one that IS quite similar is that the women have a unified school and the men don’t. I’d do that differently if I had it to do again. It’s not essential to my world and it IS too similar. My bad. (That's part of the reason that I immediately threatened that pillar of their beliefs--the exclusion of men--in book 3 once we actually spent some time there.) But physically, the Chantry is a floating island that's a statue of a woman holding a sword in one hand and scales in the other, the scales behind her back holding a heart on one side and a feather on the other. If you really want to try to draw direct influences, I guess you could play the game like this: woman holding sword and scales--Justice from Greek mythology (except not blind), heart and feather on scales--Egyptian mythology (except not half animal), floating island--um, the Coeur d'Alene golf course floating green (except not golf). And what other color could it be but white? A big purple statue? That just doesn't make sense.
I was reticent to answer this question not because I’m embarrassed about my influences or how my world came together, but because when you dissect literature, it can die. If you say, “Oh, George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire is just a retelling of the War of the Roses,” you make it seem smaller. Or you say, “Robert Jordan’s Children of the Light are just an amalgam of the Knights Templar and the Spanish Inquisition.” Oh, well that makes them seem less creepy. “Oh, Trollocs? Troll-orcs. Rip-off from Tolkien.” See what I mean?
I think that’s sad and unfair, and stems from a mistaken notion of what fantasy writers (or maybe all writers) do. Everyone used to talk about whether writer X or Y was just another rip-off of Tolkien. But that was because Tolkien was as far back as they’d read. But Tolkien’s Ring of Power, the One Ring that gave invisibility, first showed up in Plato, who used the story of Gyges’ Ring as a morality tale. (What would YOU do if you could be invisible?) That was in like 450 B.C.! Similarly, Aragorn going through the underworld is straight from numerous Greek myths. And Aragorn coming back with the ships with black sails--thus causing the Steward of Gondor’s despair and suicide--was taken directly from Theseus and the Minotaur. (Theseus is supposed to hoist white sails if he survives his encounter with the minotaur, but he’s so eager to get home, he sails immediately. His father the king sees the black sails, thinks his son is dead, and kills himself.)
Or take some of those Greek myths themselves. Aeschylus and Euripides took stories their audiences knew and spun them differently--sometimes to make political comments against current wars. (Hollywood was a pain in the butt long before Hollywood.) :-)
Or look at the Aeneid (meh, 20 BC?). Virgil took Homer's characters (850BC) and the real Trojan War (1100BC), and told it from a different POV, with different objectives.
Or guess who originally wrote Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Hamlet, and King Lear? In none of those cases did Shakespeare make up the story. He took existing stories and made them his own.
When you’re talking about elements of stories that get repeated, and whether they’re rip-offs, you have to decide how specific or general you’re going to be. In the Night Angel Trilogy, Kylar’s an orphan. Wait, not just an orphan, a poor orphan. (Oh, rip-off of Charles Dickens.) Wait, not just an orphan, an orphan who can use magic. (Oh, rip-off of Harry Potter.) Wait, not just an orphan, an orphan who’s smart. (Rip-off of Orson Card.) Wait, not just an orphan, an orphan whose master teaches him to fight. (Rip-off of Star Wars…or whatever.)
Or maybe there’s just something intriguing about orphans. Orphans face an amplified form of the same question that bothers all of us as we grow up: who am I? Where did I come from? Who are my people, and how much does that matter? Plus, orphans are underdogs, so it’s easier to care about them.
So I guess what I consider a more fair question than “aren’t there elements from author X in your books?" is, “Does this book feel like fan fiction, or has Brent Weeks made something here that could only be a Brent Weeks book?” Shakespeare’s work is Shakespeare (and it's better than his sources, even if he stole their ideas). Tolkien uses Greek thinkers and writers, but his work is clearly Tolkien. Jordan is Jordan, Martin is Martin. Now, obviously, there’s a line, and some novels ARE rip-offs--but rip-offs are boring. It happens in every genre, not just fantasy. (Think thrillers. How many suitcase nukes there have been, or viruses that will wipe out the world.)
All this to say, but I just think they come from a misunderstanding of what fantasy novelists do. We try to tell great stories. The materials we use are influenced by our culture and our times. Tolkien's stoic, laconic men could only be English--and the women hardly ever appear at all. (Just try to find fantasy now without some major female characters.) Early sci-fi was all about the triumphs of technology (and saving hot chicks). If something has been done too much, even though it works, it will feel stale. (Take something like a guy rescuing a girl. Generally, guys like the idea and girls like the idea--until you've seen it twelve hundred times. Then, suddenly, in every book and every movie, it's the girl who rescues the guy. Wow, original--until you see THAT five hundred times.) So we challenge certain stereotypes and play with others. Take Vi--she's a busty assassin chick. It's like she walked right out of a video game! But she becomes intriguing (I hope) because I take her so far from that. Or Kylar coming back to life--it's Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1300's)! Wait, you guys don't know SGGK? j/k All I'm saying is that authors react to our culture and to what we read, and when we have a story problem or even a story blank, we fill then in from our repertoire, and then tweak that. I have a huge, sprawling, intricate world, and for some of the outlying blanks, I penciled in some things similar to Robert Jordan. He and I draw from some of the same cultural wells, and we both love history. I LOVED it when I saw him use a bee in some ancient dude's coat of arms. A bee, that's Napoleon! The Companions, that's Alexander the Great! Jordan even came up with a plot device to justify his stealing: oh, the Wheel turns--this stuff happens over and over, THAT'S why there are similarities to every big Earth myth. Rrrriight. Well, I don't need a plot device to enjoy well-used stolen history. In George Martin: Khal Drogo, that's Ghengis Khan! The Red Wedding, that's the Black Dinner! The warrior-slaves who are unquestioningly obedient, that's the Blackguard! These might not be well known, but they're our common heritage--and for those of us who write big fantasy that has multiple cultures within it, those are our tools.
Those guys each have a couple of decades of writing experience on me, so if you think they do it better than I do, that's fine. My work is definitely influenced by them, and it's influenced by Tolkien, and it's influenced by a bunch of other writers both famous and gifted and not-so-much. At the end of the day, I think if you tore off the cover and read any of my books without seeing who wrote it, you wouldn't say "Hmm, seems like a pale Robert Jordan. Maybe something from early in his career?" I think you'd say, "That's a Brent Weeks book. Definitely."
p.s. I was doing this mostly off the top of my head, so I may have goofed some dates or author minutiae
Was book 3 rushed? UNDER CONSTRUCTION
I spent a little time in Wales and loved it. I also was a huge fan of the books Taliesin and Merlin by Stephen Lawhead when I was growing up--and he uses Welsh properly in his books. I went to Caernarfon, toured the castle, and spent an evening being regaled with stories by an old, real-life spy. I thought the word was so cool that I had to use it someday. So I tweaked it a little to make it different and easier to pronounce correctly--substituting the f with a v. Dang, I swear I never saw that town's name written in English. So this is how a clever nod to something cool in real life goes from clever nod to straight ripoff. Oh well, I made worse mistakes.
Actually, I made a similar mistake with Sa'kage'. I meant Kage to evoke something dark or shadowy, because to me, it felt dark and shadowy ("Sa" simply being a contraction of an Old Jaeran term meaning "Lord.") Yeah, cool, except that--as someone pointed out--Kage actually does mean shadow in Japanese. Since most of the little Japanese I know has to do with sushi ("More gari?" "Domo arigato!"), this was just a mistake. Maybe not one that will ruin anything for the vast majority of people, but if I'd become aware of it, I probably would have changed it a little. I generally want connotation, not translation. But I'm a writer, not a philosopher, so expect some inconsistencies.
The other word is indeed Waeddryn, and I'm not talking about that one. :)
I was playing off the archaic meanings of Azoth referred to by that Wikipedia article, but not the occult ones. I don't think Azoth is God or something, although it is kind of cool how they came up with that. Funny thing is, I even did Google Azoth at some point, but I don't think that Wikipedia article existed at the time.
As for similarities to other authors or series here is my well thought out response to that question….CONTIANS SPOILERS!So, first to take your questions at face value: are there similarities? Sure. Jordan was a favorite of mine. I didn’t love everything he did, and I haven’t read any of his books for eight (?) years, but those first books wowed me as much as Tolkien's books did. Jordan rocks.
For my Sethi islanders, I had people who were sailors in a very hot climate--so I looked to Polynesians, whose women never wore tops. Don’t really remember much else about Jordan’s Sea Folk except blue fingernails (?), Windseekers and a regimented society, but whatever. The Sethi islanders, so yes, they're skilled sailors.
Lae’knaught and the Children of the Light. Think of the Knights Templar, about whom (contrary to Dan Brown) very little is known except that they were an ideologically-founded society of knights who were rich, kicked butt on the battlefield, and drew recruits from all over Christendom. That scared the hell out of regular kings, because your own people might decide their loyalty was first to this group, rather than to you. But because Knights Templar held no land, they couldn't be opposed in traditional ways. They were on your own side…sort of. I decided to put a rationalist spin on these guys because I've seen the "religious zealot" stereotype way too many times in fantasy. Didn't remember that the Children used the Sun symbol, though. I used that for the "pure light of reason, beating back the darkness of ignorance." So it worked within their rationalist beliefs. If I had actually studied Jordan or remembered that he used that, I probably would have changed it. (By the way, Jordan "borrowed" that title "Children of the Light" from 1 Thessalonians 5 in the New Testament. Just looked it up. Knew it was from somewhere.)
Curoch/Callandor--come on, you can’t think of ONE other magic sword that’s intended for a once and future king? Here’s a hint: it starts with Ex- and ends with -calibur. Jordan even has his buried in a stone or crystal or something no one else but the appointed guy can touch. The Sword in the Stone? Did anyone accuse him of ripping off the Disney cartoon?
Sorry, that came out kind of snarky. I’m not going to go through them all your examples because of space. Some are really pretty different, or conversely quite common to the genre. The one that IS quite similar is that the women have a unified school and the men don’t. I’d do that differently if I had it to do again. It’s not essential to my world and it IS too similar. My bad. (That's part of the reason that I immediately threatened that pillar of their beliefs--the exclusion of men--in book 3 once we actually spent some time there.) But physically, the Chantry is a floating island that's a statue of a woman holding a sword in one hand and scales in the other, the scales behind her back holding a heart on one side and a feather on the other. If you really want to try to draw direct influences, I guess you could play the game like this: woman holding sword and scales--Justice from Greek mythology (except not blind), heart and feather on scales--Egyptian mythology (except not half animal), floating island--um, the Coeur d'Alene golf course floating green (except not golf). And what other color could it be but white? A big purple statue? That just doesn't make sense.
I was reticent to answer this question not because I’m embarrassed about my influences or how my world came together, but because when you dissect literature, it can die. If you say, “Oh, George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire is just a retelling of the War of the Roses,” you make it seem smaller. Or you say, “Robert Jordan’s Children of the Light are just an amalgam of the Knights Templar and the Spanish Inquisition.” Oh, well that makes them seem less creepy. “Oh, Trollocs? Troll-orcs. Rip-off from Tolkien.” See what I mean?
I think that’s sad and unfair, and stems from a mistaken notion of what fantasy writers (or maybe all writers) do. Everyone used to talk about whether writer X or Y was just another rip-off of Tolkien. But that was because Tolkien was as far back as they’d read. But Tolkien’s Ring of Power, the One Ring that gave invisibility, first showed up in Plato, who used the story of Gyges’ Ring as a morality tale. (What would YOU do if you could be invisible?) That was in like 450 B.C.! Similarly, Aragorn going through the underworld is straight from numerous Greek myths. And Aragorn coming back with the ships with black sails--thus causing the Steward of Gondor’s despair and suicide--was taken directly from Theseus and the Minotaur. (Theseus is supposed to hoist white sails if he survives his encounter with the minotaur, but he’s so eager to get home, he sails immediately. His father the king sees the black sails, thinks his son is dead, and kills himself.)
Or take some of those Greek myths themselves. Aeschylus and Euripides took stories their audiences knew and spun them differently--sometimes to make political comments against current wars. (Hollywood was a pain in the butt long before Hollywood.) :-)
Or look at the Aeneid (meh, 20 BC?). Virgil took Homer's characters (850BC) and the real Trojan War (1100BC), and told it from a different POV, with different objectives.
Or guess who originally wrote Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Hamlet, and King Lear? In none of those cases did Shakespeare make up the story. He took existing stories and made them his own.
When you’re talking about elements of stories that get repeated, and whether they’re rip-offs, you have to decide how specific or general you’re going to be. In the Night Angel Trilogy, Kylar’s an orphan. Wait, not just an orphan, a poor orphan. (Oh, rip-off of Charles Dickens.) Wait, not just an orphan, an orphan who can use magic. (Oh, rip-off of Harry Potter.) Wait, not just an orphan, an orphan who’s smart. (Rip-off of Orson Card.) Wait, not just an orphan, an orphan whose master teaches him to fight. (Rip-off of Star Wars…or whatever.)
Or maybe there’s just something intriguing about orphans. Orphans face an amplified form of the same question that bothers all of us as we grow up: who am I? Where did I come from? Who are my people, and how much does that matter? Plus, orphans are underdogs, so it’s easier to care about them.
So I guess what I consider a more fair question than “aren’t there elements from author X in your books?" is, “Does this book feel like fan fiction, or has Brent Weeks made something here that could only be a Brent Weeks book?” Shakespeare’s work is Shakespeare (and it's better than his sources, even if he stole their ideas). Tolkien uses Greek thinkers and writers, but his work is clearly Tolkien. Jordan is Jordan, Martin is Martin. Now, obviously, there’s a line, and some novels ARE rip-offs--but rip-offs are boring. It happens in every genre, not just fantasy. (Think thrillers. How many suitcase nukes there have been, or viruses that will wipe out the world.)
All this to say, but I just think they come from a misunderstanding of what fantasy novelists do. We try to tell great stories. The materials we use are influenced by our culture and our times. Tolkien's stoic, laconic men could only be English--and the women hardly ever appear at all. (Just try to find fantasy now without some major female characters.) Early sci-fi was all about the triumphs of technology (and saving hot chicks). If something has been done too much, even though it works, it will feel stale. (Take something like a guy rescuing a girl. Generally, guys like the idea and girls like the idea--until you've seen it twelve hundred times. Then, suddenly, in every book and every movie, it's the girl who rescues the guy. Wow, original--until you see THAT five hundred times.) So we challenge certain stereotypes and play with others. Take Vi--she's a busty assassin chick. It's like she walked right out of a video game! But she becomes intriguing (I hope) because I take her so far from that. Or Kylar coming back to life--it's Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1300's)! Wait, you guys don't know SGGK? j/k All I'm saying is that authors react to our culture and to what we read, and when we have a story problem or even a story blank, we fill then in from our repertoire, and then tweak that. I have a huge, sprawling, intricate world, and for some of the outlying blanks, I penciled in some things similar to Robert Jordan. He and I draw from some of the same cultural wells, and we both love history. I LOVED it when I saw him use a bee in some ancient dude's coat of arms. A bee, that's Napoleon! The Companions, that's Alexander the Great! Jordan even came up with a plot device to justify his stealing: oh, the Wheel turns--this stuff happens over and over, THAT'S why there are similarities to every big Earth myth. Rrrriight. Well, I don't need a plot device to enjoy well-used stolen history. In George Martin: Khal Drogo, that's Ghengis Khan! The Red Wedding, that's the Black Dinner! The warrior-slaves who are unquestioningly obedient, that's the Blackguard! These might not be well known, but they're our common heritage--and for those of us who write big fantasy that has multiple cultures within it, those are our tools.
Those guys each have a couple of decades of writing experience on me, so if you think they do it better than I do, that's fine. My work is definitely influenced by them, and it's influenced by Tolkien, and it's influenced by a bunch of other writers both famous and gifted and not-so-much. At the end of the day, I think if you tore off the cover and read any of my books without seeing who wrote it, you wouldn't say "Hmm, seems like a pale Robert Jordan. Maybe something from early in his career?" I think you'd say, "That's a Brent Weeks book. Definitely."
p.s. I was doing this mostly off the top of my head, so I may have goofed some dates or author minutiae
Was book 3 rushed? UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Rev. Zen on -
Is your plot for the Night Angel Trilogy one that was conceived as a whole from the beginning to end or did it evolve as you went from the first book to the second to the third?
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Permalink Reply by Kurt on -
Wow, Brent, kind of a rant on that last one. Good stuff, and I get where you're coming from, but simmer down a bit? I read that and pictured smoke coming out of your ears. Stressing over people saying things of that sort will give you ulcers, sir.
Of COURSE there are parallels that can be drawn between your work and that of other authors. Hell, you and I have even discussed such a concept in the Garuwashi character. The trap that you've seemed to fall into with the aforementioned diatribe, however, and indeed that many authors and book critics seem to aspire to, is that this is a bad thing. To speak for my own discernment, though, I didn't like your books because all of the ideas therein were completely original - far from it. Indeed, my own enjoyment of your work stems from the realization that such similarities are very often employed, but far more rarely employed as well as you have done. With the Night Angel trilogy you've taken these basic pillars of the genre and molded a world of your own imaginings, and by their use given your readers a framework upon which to paint their own pictures. I say well done.
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Permalink Reply by Brynweir on -
It didn't sound like a rant to me, just an explanation. It actually kind of makes me examine my own writing and go "Oh, yeah. That's where I got that idea." It also didn't sound like he was implying it was a bad thing, just that it really can't be helped, but that so long as you take the idea and make it your own, then it's actually good. I'm glad that, unlike some others whom I won't mention, he actually admits to where the ideas came from. And the historical references (especially the obscure ones) are super cool!
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Permalink Reply by Judge on -
I think what he is saying is while he may borrow a "theme" from history etc, he turns this theme into his own idea. Furthermore his style of writing makes the idea that much more his. While it seems you also understand this, I think Brent's comments were more for people who mistakenly think books etc have to be 100% original in everyway (which no book is) and no similarities should ever be drawn to another author/story/idea/location etc. Finally, it certainly isn't like the regurgitated trash they pass off as stories we see in TV/movies etc, these days.
"At the end of the day, I think if you tore off the cover and read any of my books without seeing who wrote it, you wouldn't say "Hmm, seems like a pale Robert Jordan. Maybe something from early in his career?" I think you'd say, "That's a Brent Weeks book. Definitely.""
I would agree.
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Permalink Reply by Brynweir on
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Why would Caernarvon throw you off? Because he used a real world name... a name that's been used in dozens of places and could have even been created by accident... and Rhyl....
Are you familiar with the places? Do they bug you personally or something? I've seen lots of places in novels that resemble rw places and it doesn't do anything to dispell my fantasy.
Sorry if that sounds a bit harsh - I really am just trying to understand what it was in particular about the place name....
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Permalink Reply by ashley on -
im only gonna comment :)
Dorians a Guienious in a Madmans Disguise (spell check?)
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Permalink Reply by Brynweir on
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I agree with the genius part, but I'm not so sure about the disguise part...
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Permalink Reply by ender on -
I was wondering how far it is possible to push the concept of a world from the core of what we currently know and experiece in our lives whilst still retaining something that is both interesting and logical to read? I was thinking that in the books (as in many in this area of writing) there are concepts such as magic but at the same time people ride horses, swords are made of iron and the guards in the hole pissing on your bread doesn't make it very nice to eat. These are all rooted in our world, possibly making it easier to embellish the setup with summoning Gods, invisibility, etc (?) If an author dispensed with such 'normal' concepts - people riding say giant white mice whilst eating sugar plums and soil - would this make people have complete switch off to the really cool stuff you want to get across? (I guess a lot depends on the execution?)
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Permalink Reply by zeddicus on -
Must addmit that I enjoy very much how straight you are.
Feel good to have a such a writer of your frame saying those things that somhow answer embarassing questions adressed to fantasy fans by supposed to be historians.
Loved that part "All this to say, but I just think they come from a misunderstanding of what fantasy novelists do. We try to tell great stories"
Carry on!
even if Martin rules,
You Rocks!
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Permalink Reply by gburkettsr on -
Don't ever let whiny forumers ruin a good thing.
I've read Tolkien, Jordan, Eddings, Salvatore, and authors too many and varied to list.
Certain topics are going to be familiar, regardless of the author, because the human experience is limited in its function.
Seafaring men and women are going to be similar in descriptions author to author, because function dictates certain characteristics. Dark skin, topless in hot weather, and piercings or tattoos signifying rank/status are all conditions of seafaring cultures.
Fantasy, as a whole, has certain factors involved that make it 'Fantasy'. Almost every fantasy author has to use at least a few items listed above in their material. It's not those elements that define individual authors. They are tools of the trade, and a good author knows how to use them.
You have mastered these elements and used them in ways no one else has. I applaud your ingenuity, and am extremely happy that you didn't try to twist them in absurd ways. Fantasy without some familiar notes is called science -fiction. Not. The. Same. Keep up the good work, and I look forward to reading more of your stories.
K
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Permalink Reply by rogue411 on
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Robert Jordan's is just leaving behind an epically huge footprint in the fantasy genre. I most certainly noticed the influences throughout the NA trilogy. Those influences were also woven by Mr. Weeks through some kick ass storytelling with gritty real world dark themes. I look forward to future works.
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Permalink Reply by Myra.D on -
We are all influenced by what we read, see, experience... and in some way, some of it will reflect in what we do, our work, our behaviour, etc. We can read a book, and pick up similarities to other books. The more stories you have read, the more similar aspects one will pick up. We can go in circles here... With regards to the Night Angel Trilogy, there may be similarities to Wheel of Time, but those are just a few concepts, emphasise on just a few! At the end of the day, Night Angel and Wheel of Time have a whole bunch of concepts which are in no way similar to one another (when one follows the biger picture). The two stories are so completely different and Brent Weeks' writing style is unique and his own - which I found original, entertaining and thoroughly enjoyable. It definitely feels like a "Brent Weeks" book, and his alone. I'm sure in a few years from now, we will read some new authors work and pick up on Brent Weeks' influence in their books!
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