When you talk about mainstream fantasy, one of the first names you have to mention is Brandon Sanderson. Making his debut with the interesting Elantris in 2005, before going on to his first trilogy in 2006, Mistborn, Brandon’s name was quickly put forward to finish the Wheel of Time series following the loss of Robert Jordan. During the five years Sanderson worked on these projects people quickly recognised his skill as an author. But it was with the release of The Way of Kings in 2010, that Brandon really cemented his name in fantasy. The book, which is one of the longest first installments to a series ever, went on to win a David Gemmell award and became recognised throughout the blogging community as one of the finest fantasy books of the decade. If we take a walk over to Goodreads.com we can also see that it averages a 4.6/5 from readers, therefore outscoring the likes of A Game of Thrones, Wheel of Time and yes, even Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter!
The following video interview with Brandon is split into three parts and will cover: The Way of Kings, The Alloy of Law, Mistborn as a series, Brandon’s writing process, The Wheel of Time, the fantasy genre and Twitter!
I hope you enjoyed the interview!
I want to leave you now by sharing my thoughts on how Brandon sees his role. Brandon Sanderson loves you as a community and he feels that he has a responsibility to you as members of that community.
That sounds pretty deep, and it is. When I asked Brandon what hurts him, he told me disappointing fans, and I could really sense the pain there as he reflected on that. I get the sense that because he is so emotionally attached to his writing, we are in really safe hands in regards to his future work. People ask if he can keep putting books out at the speed he does and the answer is yes, because he does it for us.
So finally, a big thank you to Brandon, not only for the interview, but for the gifts you give to the fantasy genre and the promise that you will continue to give them willingly.
Jennie Ivins
Geoff Matthews
A. M. Justice
Great interview! It looked like he was having a good time answering the questions. 🙂 And he seems like he’d be a lot of fun to hang out with. 🙂 I liked the editing too. Clarifying the questions in-between some of the answers was a great idea. 🙂 Good job Marc! 😀
Also I love your accent. 😉
[…] Faction has recorded a half-hour video interview with Brandon Sanderson while he was in Europe recently. The interview has some interesting […]
Great Interview. Brandon looked like he enjoyed the questions and did not seem put off by any of them. Good job Marc. Hoping to see more of interviews.
Fantastic interview, Overlord – I haven’t seen the last third yet, but I’m planning to do so later. Definitely some interesting stuff about Alloy of Law!
Thanks everyone! Keep the comments coming 😀
Brandon really did seem to enjoy the questions. I can’t take credit for them all though, 50% were mine and 50% were from the forums and Twitter! 🙂 I thought that method worked really well because it wasn’t just what ‘I’ wanted to know 🙂
Would love to listen to this but haven’t read his work and am curious about how spoilerish the questions and answers may be.
Thanks for the time. 🙂
Spoiler free Carl 🙂
Awesome job, Marc!!!
[…] Faction interviews Brandon Sanderson […]
Very cool series of videos. By the way – I must say I really like the covers for these books. Aren’t the same here in the states.
Agreed! The covers are amazing, they are the UK ones 🙂 Mistborn ones are done in the same style too. I think they are re-releasing Warbreaker and Elantris with these style covers too (check out amazon UK)
Amazing interview!!! I really admire Brandon and his answers to your questions show the kind of person he is.
I couldn’t fully understand all of the books/authors that Brandon mentioned in video 2. Anybody got links that understood them all?
I’m almost positive these are what he said
Taigana by Guy Gavriel Kay
Sunrunner by Melanie Rawn
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin
The Codex Alera series by Jim Butcher
Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly
They seemed to make sense. I think I’m going took forward to reading them
[…] can pretty much guarantee that Sanderson will bring a book out about once a year. As we said in our interview with him, he doesn’t get writer’s block and he is a consistent writer. This is a series that I truly […]
[…] You can watch the video interview with Brandon here. […]
[…] nervous me interviewed Brandon Sanderson about his first book, Way of Kings. You can check that out here if you’ve never seen […]
The interview was awesome! Thanks a lot for it! 😀