The Shadow of What Was Lost discussion

The book only has a few thousand ratings and has been out over a year and is not yet well known. Yet, this is one of the best (top 10) books ever written in the fantasy genre. I've only read 4 other authors that can write equal or better books, those are: Brandon Sanderson, Patrick Rothfuss, Pierce Brown and Anthony Ryan. I've recommended this book to all my friends, but the books seriously needs to be marketed more!

It's decent and deserves a lot more attention than it's getting, but I do think there are a fair few books that are better around. For example, a couple of series that I think are a level or two above TSOWWL and are also underappreciated are Tales of the Ketty Jay (particularly the last three books), The Long Price Quartet, and arguably Riyria Revelations. Sad thing is that there are so many books around that people just don't have the time to read everything that deserves it. :/

I haven't heard about Tales of the Ketty Jay, so I'll check it out! :) However, I do not agree that The Long Price Quartet and Riyra Revelations match TSOWWL. Of those I liked the first one better while I found Riyria Revelation to be abit too simple&lighthearthed in it's dialog and story telling. But I guess it's a matter of preferences! :)

Ketty Jay is really unusual, the best way to describe the tone is an amazing mix of Star Wars/Indiana Jones/Pirates of the Caribbean - they're adventure books done brilliantly. I've seen a load of people say they hit the same spot as the tv show Firefly, but I never watched it so dunno about that. The setting is excellent, the characters good (less so in the first book, but they improve a fair bit), but the plot and action are just exceptional. They're best read when you want something exciting and vivid, rather than slow or epic. :)

Yeah it's definitely a personal preference thing - LPQ was exactly the kind of story I had been looking for so it really hit the spot. I do agree that Riyria is simple and lighthearted, but again I read them at a time when I wanted something like that. TSOWWL just didn't really catch me in the same way for some reason, I felt he was trying to cram too much into one book really.

LPQ was enjoyable to read, and the characters felt alive and well rounded. However, when comparing to TSOWWL, I think LPQ is more straightforward in it's worldbuilding and plot, while not giving so much room for mystery and reader deduction. TSOWWL I think is brilliant in the way it only gives bits of information here and there as the story unfolds, giving room for theory crafting and speculation. I'd say the biggest drawbacks in TSOWWL was character naming, physical worldbuilding and shallow military&combat narration.

Yeah I kinda agree, though I felt that the setting in LPQ was a strong point, whereas TSOWWL was much more cliché, so even though it was a bit more complex in how it was revealed, the ideas themselves didn't seem as interesting to me. I think it'll be one that can't really be judged until the series is complete though, not really a good time to compare the two I guess!

I agree. I've already recommended it to about 20 people here on GR.