Sixth of the Dusk (2015)

[Kitty G Books]

Hi everyone,
This is the discussion thread for Sixth of the Dusk by Brandon Sanderson, a short novella nominated in our Short Fiction category. This was originally collected into Shadows Beneath: The Writing Excuses Anthology as a story to illustrate how the writing process and editing/revising is done alongside the other authors from the Writing Excuses Podcast (a show Sanderson is on regularly) and so if you buy the anthology you will get all the backstory too, but equally it's a self contained Cosmere story and it's able to be read completely on its own!

The read-a-long for this book will be taking place in October. If you've already read the story, feel free to drop by and add your thoughts.

Please use spoiler tags to hide comments about material which happens later in Sixth of the Dusk. To make a spoiler tag remove the spaces after each < in the following line: < spoiler> Oh Noes! < /spoiler>. It's also helpful for others if you say what chapter or page the spoiler occurs on sometime before or after the tag.

Hopefully we'll have some great interaction and commenting taking place here :D

[Nicole]

I started reading this on my lunch break today. I think I must have listened to at least one of the podcasts where Sanderson talks about this idea... I think I listened to the one where they were like brainstorming ideas and came up with this one? Anyway, the idea sounds familiar. I'm curious to see where the story goes.

[Hanneke]

I finished this one to day. Feel a bit conflicted about it. The world building was great as I aspected from Sanderson, It sucked me into te world and story. But the story felt a bit unfinished and flat to me, maybe because it was such a short novella. Curieus to hear what you guys think!

[Cristal]

A very quick read, I loved the setting with lots of unique ideas.

[Krazyaboutbooks]

I enjoyed this novella and loved the setting. i agree with Hanneke that the story felt unfinished and quite honestly I wanted more from this novella.

[Nicole]

I finished this a few days back (maybe a week ago now, yikes time flies.) I had a similar reaction to Hanneke and Krazyaboutbooks, I really liked the world building and the magic was something unique even for Sanderson. I wasn't terribly impressed by the plot, however. If I compare "Sixth of the Dusk" to other Sanderson novellas I've read (like The Emperor's Soul, which if fabulous) I felt this one wasn't as well executed or developed.

[Maija]

I'd only read the first Mistborn book from Sanderson before reading this one, and I was a bit prejudiced going in. I thought Mistborn had been just ok, and quite slow to get started, so I wasn't expecting much from this novella, thinking the author might not be for me. But this turned out to be very readable, with some nice ideas.

Since it was a novella, it of course didn't suffer from the issue of taking too long to get started, and I was quite into learning about the world, and very fascinated by the magical birds. There were some sentences/parts that felt a bit clunky for me, but overall it was entertaining.

[Derek]

I just finished this today and thought this was really a very good read. The first half is definitely much more of a character piece and I was a little worried that there wouldn't be much of an actual plot to enjoy, but it did pick up for me and I thought everything wrapped up pretty nicely. I also liked how the scope of this was so small and focused, but also left some room for bigger ideas to live inside of it.

This was my first exposure to Sanderson, and for the most part I think I am now a fan of his writing. No one aspect of the story or his style was particularly revolutionary or otherwise exceptional (in my opinion), but it all just kind of works together and culminates into something that is genuinely memorable.