Review: "Brandon Sanderson Is Your God" by Wired

defense of fantasy i haven't read

I read a lot of YA fantasy as a kid, and have been writing about fantasy a lot on this Substack, but I’ve never read the current most prolific and popular adult fantasy writer in America. I have many normal people friends who find out I “read books”, and often they'll steer the conversation to fantasy to Brandon Sanderson because he’s written books they've read and loved. I care about fantasy, and I think books as community are important too, but the second world fantasy stories of Brandon Sanderson built around “magic systems” sound boring to me so I haven't read them despite their relevance.

While I’m a believer in fantasy’s artistic merit, there's criticism to be made of fantasy in that it's often very escapist, built on hierarchical rules, and intentionally not challenging to its readers. Those are the reasons that I haven't read Brandon Sanderson, and the angle that this Wired profile on him purports to take, with its prying title “Brandon Sanderson Is Your God”. It promises to connect Sanderson’s Mormonism to his false and hollow fantasy worlds. 

In reality the piece is embarrassing overwrought ad hominem attacks against Brandon Sanderson that try to make him look like a dork for benign things. The author spends some time with Sanderson at his house and at a convention, and the main thrust is how lame and weird he is. It mocks the way he dresses, the way he eats his food, the way he compulsively writes, that he doesn't need painkillers when he's at the dentist. Very rarely does it engage with his books, besides to say that the sentences are bad. It ends with a couple paragraphs that quickly try to connect what Sanderson writes to Mormonism not through the religion’s charlatan fantasies or through its strict moral rules but through Sanderson’s false perception of himself as a god. That comes off as a stretch, and also like projection, in a piece that feels like it was written by a self-ordained judge. As Bladee says, “if you look at me and don’t like me what does that say about you?” 

If it’s written this way on purpose to make the author into a villain character, this piece is pretty good art. It’s compelling and some of the anecdotes about Sanderson are humanizing when told through the voice of a pretentious coastal elite who can't understand Utah. But I don't think that's the case, it feels to me more as if Wired asked him to play up the provocativity for clicks. I guess that's art that creates a character. 

Brandon Sanderson wrote a response on Reddit where he forgives the author as a “fellow writer trying to find truth in the world”. I hope the author feels it as the neg that it is that Sanderson brings him down to the level of a fellow Reddit commenter. 

Again, I think pretension can be good when it comes to examining a fantasy as widespread as Sanderson’s. More interesting than his superfans are his minor fans, the people who pull out a few Sanderson books as light reading in the way Americans used to read Stephen King. There is a huge difference between Sanderson and Stephen King, so what does it mean that America has shifted its long book light reading towards second world fantasy? I still don't know, this piece doesn't get to that question, it’s busy talking about how Sanderson eats his chinese food. 

The article has creative ideas and observation, but no empathy and insight. It’s a ragebait piece, vitriolically cruel and so totally missing any of its purported critique of Sanderson’s fantasy, a depressing reminder at the state of “journalism” as it grovels for clicks. Mormonism is the eternal easy mockery target, which I’m guilty of too. More often a piece like this lands its mockery more gracefully and gets quietly read and forgotten by a few Gen-Xers looking for some interesting words on their phone between Zoom calls. I don't know if I like Sanderson, but if the choice is between him and dying internet magazines that masquerade mockery as social commentary and parasitically feast on clicks from people who get mad at being mocked, I have to pick Sanderson, and it's not that hard. 

The piece briefly mentions Evermore, a theme park near Provo where guests larp as magical medieval townspeople. The author quickly dismisses it as “Sandersonian” and mentions a “four-hour YouTube video” about it a mocking way, as if that’s impossibly long and below him to watch. That YouTube video, by Jenny Nicholson, is far superior journalism and artistic exploration of the state of Utah than anything this piece does. It comes with real passion for theme parks, thorough research of the park’s history, empathy for why someone might want to engage in a fantasy like this, and well-articulated criticism of its actual sinister elements like harassment of park workers by guests. I mention it because it’s a shining example of the real power of empathetic journalism. I recommend it.