Bugs were already freaky, that's just par for the course!
I will never forgive Brandon for making a bug crab monster so adorable
Defiant samples + audiobook
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson comes the final book in an epic series about a girl who will travel beyond the stars to save the world she loves from destruction. Spensa...
Prologue + first eight chapters are now available on Penguin Random House's website! Click "Look Inside" on the desktop site—NOT "Read an Excerpt", which is only Chapter 1.
As for the audiobook, it's now available for preorder on Audible in the US and the UK.
Painter's world for me. It's just such a vibe, I don't know what else to say.
Cautiously interested. Over time I've grown less concerned about accuracy in adaptations as long as the end result is good (look at how popular the MCU or How To Train Your Dragon series are, or the Spider-Verse films which are some of my favorite movies period), but Season 1 did have some big flaws and the final two episodes were... not great. I enjoyed the first six fine though, so I'm willing to give them a chance to show what they've learned. The trailer looks fine, but obviously that's not a lot to go off of.
Link preview, it's the first few lines of the video's description. Guess they're one of the growing number of channels that uses it to advertise rather than describe.
If I'm being honest I'm too stuck on Across the Spider-Verse to read anything besides Brandon Sanderson's Secret Project 3 right now, lol. There are many things I probably should be reading, but I'll get to those once the brainrot simmers down...
SP3 was pretty great, though, definitely recommend it. Didn't realize he could do romance like that, and it's still very much a solid Sanderson book in all the other ways you'd hope to see.
Ahh camping, that thing which my family greatly wishes I was more interested in... I'll take a nice air conditioned and bugless room instead please 😅
One of my favorite Sanderson books period. In fact, while I don't want to state it too definitively because recency bias is real, I think this may very well be his best individual book to date (it's hard to fairly compare a series to a single novel though). Everything about it was so well-done, I wish I knew more about the behind-the-scenes of storytelling so I could compliment it properly.
Which Cosmere project are you anticipating most?
Going by the sample chapters, are you more excited for Secret Project Three or Secret Project Four? Or does Tress of the Emerald Sea hold your heart too tightly for either to overtake?
(I'm using the codenames here because neither Lemmy nor Kbin supports labeling posts as spoilers and so the first line may show up in feeds, but shouldn't be a problem for the comments.)
There is one other story I know of which has been partially released, The Eyes (a precursor to Skyward), about fifteen pages of which were posted to the Writing Excuses Patreon. However, in addition to feeling kind of iffy about pointing people to paying $10 for a very small sample from a very rough draft, the tier the file was attached to does not actually exist anymore, so I'm not sure whether subscribing even will give it to you now or not. As such, I've left it off the list.
Publicly-Accessible Unpublished Novels
Note: Arcanum has a good list of all readings Brandon's done, and the 17th Shard has a good list of all samples of any of his works, so check them out if that's what you're after! The scope of this post is slightly different than either of those, as its goal is to be a list of all Brandon's unpublished books specifically without other things distracting from that aim (and admittedly also to give this instance some starter content :P).
Full Books
These are early works (mostly) from before Brandon got published that are available in their entirety.
- The Way of Kings Prime: Full novel with prose download, audio download, and audio streaming options.
- Mistborn Prime: Full novel you can request through Brandon's contact form. Fill it out and his team will email you a copy (can take a couple weeks depending on load).
- The Aether of Night: Full novel you can request from this 17th Shard thread. Leave a comment and the fine folks over there will DM you a copy (can take a couple weeks depending on load).
- Mythwalker (Warbreaker Prime): Unfinished novel posted to Brandon's blog.
- The Traveler: Short story read aloud in its entirety. (The only one on this sub-list written after he was published.)
- Centrifugal: Short story posted to Brandon's blog.
Samples of "Prime-era" Books
These are early works from before Brandon got published that are available in bits and pieces only.
- Dragonsteel Prime:
- Chapter 1
- Start of Chapter 14
- Bridge Four sequence (Chapters 25, 28, 30, 31, 33, 35, & 37)
- Technically the full novel can be found at Brigham Young University's library, but practically speaking most people can't just pop over there even if they do allow non-students to come in.
- The Liar of Partinel:
- The Final Empire Prime:
- The Sixth Incarnation of Pandora:
Samples of Upcoming/Potential Books
These are samples written after Brandon got published that have not themselves made it into any book as of yet. Most were simply individual test scenes, although a few have full stories attached that nonetheless haven't been released for a variety of reasons.
† marks works currently planned as part of the Cosmere.
- Sixth of the Dusk sequel†:
- Kingmaker†:
- The Silence Divine†:
- The Apocalypse Guard:
- Adamant:
- I Hate Dragons:
Full Drafts of Published Works
While Brandon does readings of a chapter or two for a lot of books, there are a few whose full rough drafts have been made available.
- White Sand: Original prose that adapted into the graphic novel. You can get it by signing up for Brandon's newsletter; once you confirm your email it will send you the latest edition, which includes the download link.
- Warbreaker: For this book, Brandon experimented with releasing each draft as he wrote it. You can find a list of all versions on his website.