Just finished Isle of the Emberdark by Brandon Sanderson. Took a few hours to really get into it but once I did it was another enjoyable Sanderson book with lots of cosmere goodness throughout.

I then started book 141 of Deathlands today.

I did some more reading up about the history of Deathlands recently and think I found the reason why I think the writing has gotten better / more interesting recently.

The original author wrote up to book 33 (and the one final book at number 44) and these were all great. Then books 34 - 125 were written by a series of different authors and I think this is why those books are pretty inconsistent in terms of how good the writing was. In general it wasn’t bad otherwise I wouldn’t have carried on but there were definitely a few in that lot that were considerably less interesting. In this time as well there were never any real changes to the overall cast and by 125 the story as a whole definitely felt like it had started to stagnate some what.

After 125 however Graphic Audio (the company who produce the fully voiced audiobooks adaptations I have been listening to) acquired the rights to continue the story. It was after 125 that I found things to be getting considerably more interesting again, there were a lot more significant advancements in terms of the story or back story and in general I think the writing has been better.

So that kind of answered and unasked question in my mind in terms of the ups and downs in quality of the writing and I’m looking forward to these last 15 or so books knowing it is Graphic Audio at the helm now and that they are willing to push things forward and change things up. It does also answer why there were some slight changes in the way some of the characters presented over time, most of them were subtle but now I have a reasoning. One bad thing is they seem to be making the doctor more insufferable in my opinion but you can’t love every character!