Are You Meandering Around a Castle for 200 Pages? Well, Stop That, Suckah!

I find this Brandon Sanderson quote from Shaken and Stirred’s Thursday Hangovers somewhat fascinating, about “how SFF YA might have influenced epic or high fantasy”:

“I think it made the genre better. I think we’ve had to look at our sluggish beginnings in epic, and realize that two hundred pages of wandering around a castle before conflict appears may not be the best way to begin a story. We’ve had to become more creative in our worldbuilding, partially (I think) to compete with the elegance of