Tuesday, April 3, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Way of Kings (Stormlight Archive #1) by Brandon Sanderson





Despite having read over 250 books in the past 3 years, I've somehow never gotten to reading the works of Brandon Sanderson.  But in June of last year, Tor.com gave away a free copy of The Way of Kings, the first book in his Epic Fantasy Series the Stormlight Archive, so I've been meaning to rectify that in a timespan when I had a gap between when library books are due.  And when I finally had one, I decided to power through this 1000+ page book in order to see how I'd like a Sanderson series.

And I found that I enjoyed The Way of Kings but didn't really love it.  This is the first 1000 page book I've read since maybe The Dance With Dragons (there's been a few books close to 800 pages), and it really felt its length, taking a long time for events to play out as they were inevitably going to.  It also made a habit of ditching certain characters for long periods of time, which I'd forgotten how much I found annoying.  In that vein, it also goes long stretches of time - sometimes over 200 pages - with nary a female character to be found (something I've really noticed after all the other books I've read).  The end result is that I'm not sure I'll be continuing with the series even though I enjoyed this book overall.

More after the Jump:


------------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------
In the distant past on the world of Roshar, humankind was led by men and women known as the Knights Radiant, who wielded the legendary Shardblades and Shardplates (Armor) in their defense of humanity.  And then, according to legend, the Knights Radiant betrayed and turned their backs on humanity, and left their weapons and armor behind.

Five Years Ago, an alliance between the powerful human nation of Alethkar and the strange non-human people known as the Parshendi is shattered when an assassin in Parshendi colors, wielding a Shardblade and strange magic kills the King of Alethkar.  The result was to start a multi year long between the Alethi and the Parshendi on the shattered plains.

Now, in the wake of these events, several people around this world start to realize something deeper is going on:

Dalinar Kholin - the brother of the assassinated king and uncle of the new Alethi King - was once a feared warrior, but now is seeing visions whenever it storms, visions that tell him to unite the Alethi people.  But the new king, his nephew, is paranoid and weak and the other highprinces are all angling for their own gain.

Shallan - a woman who seeks to apprentice with the King's sister Jasnah Kholin, a heretic scholar of the past, to learn knowledge....and to steal Jasnah's magic soulcaster to save her family.  But in her studies as Jasnah's ward, she will discover that the truth behind magic, and the history of the world, is far from what she thought.

Kaladin - the son of a surgeon who was first a member of a local brightlord's army but was then sold into slavery.  Everyone he's ever tried to save and protect has died, while he has survived.  But when he's approached by a spren (a magical spirit of a type of nature) that speaks to him, he begins to try one last time to protect the Bridge crew he is part of on the Shattered Plains.  And in doing so, he discovers he might have a greater power than he ever thought possible.

In this world, where humans think Parshmen are inferior, where the Alethi believe that light-eyed people are superior to those with dark colored eyes, a greater darkness, the mythological Desolation, may be coming soon....and these individuals may be the only ones who can begin to take actions to stop it.
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The Way of Kings is a LONG book - it's over a thousand pages - and like many other epic fantasies it alternates between various characters' points of view over the course of the story (usually sticking with one or two POVs per chapter).  An interesting difference about how the book does though is that the book is split up into five parts with 3 chapter interludes between each part, and before each section of the book, the book tells you which character POVs are going to be included in each part.  So you'll know going in whether or not a character's story will appear in each part of the book (until basically the end, none of the main POV characters essentially share screentime).

This is both good and bad.  On one hand, it's nice to know ahead of time who each part is going to focus on; on the other hand, this system inevitably results in some characters disappearing from the narrative for LONG (hundreds of pages) spans of time, since characters aren't mixed in - the only character whose narrative never disappears is that of Kaladin, who is essentially our main protagonist.  It's hard not to get annoyed at that - I enjoyed Shallan the most, but she is only in Parts 1 3 and 5, and part 4 is LONG.  This also results in our only female characters of note disappearing from the book for large stretches, which again is not ideal.

The good news is that all of the main narratives are compelling in some way.  They may all be based upon pretty classic genre tropes (Dalinar is the warrior searching for an honorable path (think Ned Stark), Kaladin is the down on his luck fighter who discovers a hidden magic and might be destined for greatness, and Shallan as the scholar with a dark past who discovers devastating truths), but they're all done very well.  Shallan again was my favorite character, conflicted in ways that made complete sense, but whose changes and growth made it easy to root for her, and her plot is the one I'd most be looking forward to in a subsequent book.  Kaladin is solid as our essentially main protagonist hero, even if his story takes too long to get going (the reader will figure out he has a special power way earlier than he and others figure it out, and it gets annoying).  And while Dalinar's naivete will be annoying to readers, his visions are extremely good at teasing what's coming in a way that always interests and even his dumb decisions seem understandable.

The interludes don't quite work as well - they're dedicated to exploring other things happening in this world for the most part, but the only parts of them that directly connect to the storyline are the ones dedicated to Szeth, the stormlight (magic) wielding assassin from the prologue.  The others essentially either are devoted to worldbuilding or to making connections/winks to characters from other works of Sanderson (this book is set in the same over-arching universe, the Cosmere, as all of Sanderson's works).  As someone who hasn't read those other books, they're kind of wasted on me.

Apparently this is planned as a ten book series, which should be a major warning sign to new readers (I've yet to see a book series planned for over 5 books that doesn't wind up growing), so if you aren't willing to possibly commit to a long series, don't start here.  As you might expect, despite 1000 pages, we don't get anything resembling a conclusion in this novel, with everyone ending in cliffhangers.  These cliffhangers are in varying effectiveness, and really the book probably could've gotten to them in about 200-300 less pages since well, some of them seem pretty obvious from the start.

I don't mean to sound too negative - Sanderson's writing here is very effective and the book WORKS overall as a package - it just didn't inspire me with a "MUST READ" the sequel mentality that i once had when say reading "A Game of Thrones."  If you like epic fantasy, you'll probably like this book, while if you don't like it, this won't change your mind.  In no way is this book something that exceeds the bounds of the genre.  But if you like the genre, it's a solid choice to start, even if it wouldn't be my first pick. 

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