Ok, I’m going to get this out of the way first: I love Brandon Sanderson’s work and the Cosmere is epic and awesome.
It took me some time to warm up to Secret Project #3. My biggest gripe is once again Kate Reading. This time it wasn’t pronunciation or tempo, it was her reading in Hoid’s voice. Nails on a freaking chalkboard.
The “Hoid-isms” are reduced as the book goes, so there are fewer occurrences of her mangling the Hoid I’ve grown to love (Michael Kramer) as the book goes. But holy crap that was jarring.
My unsolicited and unprofessional advice to Brandon for the next book that switches gendered perspectives is to have a different voice handling the narration during the female perspective.
I feel it would have been far improved to have the female perspective covered by Pattern Design / Kate with the male perspective being handled by Hoid / Michael.
- Edit: I keep mixing up Pattern and Design. I swear I’m not racist, some of my best friends are cryptics.
I disagree tbh. I find that if they read something together I much prefer her parts. It’s still fine of course but it always makes me feel it would be even better with just her reading everything.
Fair opinion. I prefaced the post with “whining” because it’s mild complaint from one fan. I’m not sure how I would have felt with just Michael Kramer or Kate Reading doing 100% of the narration. I do truly enjoy the different voices for the different perspectives. It just really threw me to hear Hoid in Kate’s voice.
Oh, I didn’t interpret your opinion as hateful. In the end it is art and everyone is allowed to have feelings and opinions about that, no?
And I do get it. Getting used to a character’s voice and it changing can be very jarring. With Malazan they switched narrators after the third book and while you know the new one, who was kept for the last seven, is also excellent. It is like a fork on a chalkboard to your ears at first.