I think he’s more than an intelligent enough man to recognize how impossible his situation is. His entire business and family have deep ties to the mormon faith. He teaches an incredibly high-demand course at BYU with what I can only imagine is the most flexible and understanding administrative agreement possible.

Have you ever had a look at /r/exmormon ? Leaving their faith as a regular person is just destroying for an individual. Overnight you lose most of your family. Most of your friends. If you’re in Utah you might end up losing your career. And it’s not necessarily malicious, it’s that all of these people value their inter-connectedness more than they value a relationship with you. That breaks something inside the people that leave.

There was a time I loved Brandon’s work, and I think it’s still great for people who are in a period of their life they can appreciate action, fantasy worlds and juvenile relationships. In the last 2 months I did a complete re-read of The Reckoners and when I closed the last page of Calamity I was left waiting for the great moments I’d remembered the first time I read through. David and Megan’s relationship shone a spotlight on just how much the author’s personal views affect his characters. You’ve got two attractive young twenty-somethings, constantly fighting for their lives, clearly deeply into each other and she’s teasing him about being a bad kisser… and his jokey, not jokey solution is more practice! and she blushes deeply… Yep. It just doesn’t line up with the realities of the situations. There’s like Doom videogame tier violence, and sunday-school relationships. In Stormlight it feels a little less out of place because of the fantasy setting, but it feels like this massive blind-spot where he won’t ever write a character’s romantic relationship that’s anything beyond hand-holding or if it’s incredibly specific consenting 50+ year olds, some fade-to-black.

Do I feel bad for him? Sort of? Maybe…? Not really? He’s somehow managed to escape criticism and hard questions around his mormonism most of his career as far as I can tell. Sure, there’s a large vocal group of Sanderson haters out there on reddit, but that’s going to be true of any author. I suspect as mormonism continues to struggle the way it is currently with retaining young people and growth in North America we may see him say some things about it once he retires from writing, the way so many people become activisits once they’ve safely completed their careers. It’s a shame, but I understand. When given the choice between completing the work you’ve devoted your entire life and career to, or throwing away your own personal dream to completely torpedo your life and try and fix a dying religion, which would you choose?