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YOFR: Way of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson

This month’s category for the Year of Fun Reading Challenge was to read a book you don’t want to admit you’re dying to read. I was a bit stumped by that one, so I decided to tackle a different challenge off of the Reading for Growth list: a book that has more than 600 pages. The Way of Kings (published in 2010), by Brandon Sanderson, certainly fits that bill, with 1584 pages!

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I’ve been wanting to read this one for a long time, so this gave me a good reason to dive in. I hoped that I would have more reading time to get this done, especially during my vacation. Unfortunately (or fortunately) we spent a lot of time walking around Montreal and Old Quebec City and visiting with friends in Ontario and I had hardly any time to read.  I had only made it to about half way through by three days before this review was to go live. Yikes!

So…I had to give up my end-of-month deadline and give myself some grace. Sorry I didn’t have anything up on the blog last week, things got a bit hectic and I just ran out of time.

Anyhow, September is here (!) and it’s a new start. Onward and upward! I’ve powered through and got the book done.

For those of you who don’t know, Brandon Sanderson is a mega-best seller fantasy author, who was picked by Robert Jordan’s widow and editor to finish the Wheel of Time series that was incomplete because of Jordan’s death. They picked him because they were very impressed with his first novel, Elantris, also an epic fantasy. Sanderson is a prolific writer, known for his long epic fantasy books,  but also writes shorter fantasy novels and novellas.

I have never read any of his books, but I really wanted to, as he writes the kinds of books I enjoy. He also is one of the hosts of the Writing Excuses podcast, which has been really good for me as a writer.

An epic fantasy (some use the term “high fantasy” interchangeably)  is generally a fantasy book set in a world not our own, with a hero  who usually begins the story young and matures throughout the novel; has some kind of magical power or extraordinary ability;  has a mentor/teacher; and is fighting against some powerful “dark lord” or force. This is a swords and sorcery type book, often with a vaguely medieval-ish setting. Very much a traditional type of fantasy novel. Think Lord of the Rings and you are on target.

I love big books with a long, drawn-out story line. And Sanderson certainly delivers that in this book. This is a sprawling epic focussed on Kaladin, a young man from a backwater town who becomes a surgeon and then a warrior, a bit of a reluctant hero but a hero all the same.

I will admit, however, that I struggled at the beginning of this book. It’s been a long time since I read an epic fantasy, because I just don’t have as much time to read as I used to. And I found the beginning difficult to get into. It’s confusing because there are many point of view characters, and chapters that switch back and forth between characters, settings, and timelines. It’s hard to keep up. The chapters are all headed by seemingly random quotes from books that one supposes are part of the culture Sanderson is building for us, along with notes that comment on the quotes. But I couldn’t figure out what they had to do with anything or how it was supposed to enhance the story.

So until I got a handle on who was who and what they were doing, the story line was very disconnected and distracting for me, and I honestly had to plow through about a third of the book before I began to really get interested in it.

However, once I finally began to see how the characters were related to one another and to settle into the world that Sanderson built for us, the book started to take off for me.

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One of the cool drawings included in the book. One of the drawbacks of reading it on my Kindle was that I had a hard time seeing the details in these drawings, and the map was also too small to make out details. But a small price to pay for not having to lug a huge book around! Illustrations in the book, as well as the cover, are done by the talented Michael Whelan.

I had heard that one of the strengths of a Sanderson novel is the world-building, and I certainly saw that here. His world of Roshar is a detailed one, including many cultures and people-groups, all with varied religions and appearance. The world is scoured by highstorms, which shape the landscape and the flora and fauna that populate it, as well as the architecture and culture of the people who live there. The magic system is based on “stormlight”, a force that infuses gemstones during a highstorm. This stormlight can power mundane objects such as lights or more dramatic objects such as the Shardplate that only a few high-ranking soldiers wear, which make them much stronger and more agile than other men, along with the Shardblades that kill with merely a touch.

Kaladin begins the novel as a young darkeyed son of a small village’s surgeon, and through the course of the book we see him mature, eventually going against his father’s wishes and becoming a spearman in the army of a lighteyed noble (the lighteyes are the upper class of nobility), whom he had idolized as being honourable but in reality turns out far from it. He joins the army to protect his younger brother, who is soon killed through a callous decision of the lighteyed commander, and Kaladin finds himself becoming more and more disillusioned by the lighteyes who pretend to be honourable but in reality are not.

Kaladin eventually finds himself in the lowest of the low positions in the army, that of a bridgeman, who along with a crew of about thirty others are responsible for carrying and setting the heavy bridges that the armies cross over between high plateaus on the Shattered Plains, where a long, pointless war has been raging for over a decade.

Dalinar Kholin is a lighteyed commander who seeks to be the honourable man the ancient book, called The Way of Kings, encourages them to be, but faces betrayal both within and without, for he begins to have disturbing visions during every highstorm that puzzle him, causing him to question his sanity.

On a different continent, a young woman named Shallan is plotting to steal a device called a Soulcaster which enables the wearer to transform and shape objects, such as to cut stone in order to build a fortress or even to change rocks into food. Shallan needs the device to help her family restore their lost wealth, which her now dead father had mismanaged.

Sanderson’s characters are interesting. He resists the temptation to people his book with stock fantasy characters with one-dimensional personalities (although there is a little of that here and there. With so many characters it’s hard to avoid that all together). His main characters feel like real people, and he explores themes of power and honour, religion and faith, with more depth than I was expecting, which made the book all the more satisfying.

The Way of Kings consists of  one prelude, one prologue, 75 chapters, an epilogue and nine interludes (you see what I mean about finding it hard to get into?). The three characters above had the most space in the book, but there are three more main viewpoint characters and nine minor viewpoint characters who also get some of their story included.

So a lot going on in the book, suffice to say!

I enjoyed Way of Kings, once I got into it, but that initial part was pretty daunting to tell you the truth. I’m not sure that I would have kept going except for the fact that I knew I was going to be writing this review. However, I am glad I did. The story was a good one, and it reminded me why I enjoy epic fantasy. There’s something about getting totally immersed in a world and taking a long time to get to know the characters and watch them grow that is satisfying to me.

The Way of Kings  is the first of ten books in the Stormlight Archive series (!). Only one other has been released,  Words of Radiance, in 2014. Oathbringer, the third book, is to be released in November of 2017. I liked Kings well enough that I would definitely like to read the others. But seeing as they all clock in at over 1000 pages, I’ll have to pick my reading time carefully.

I often find that authors who try to write that many books in one series can get bogged down, with the latter books not being nearly as good as the first two or three (Game of Thrones, anyone….?) So it remains to be seen if Sanderson can buck that trend.

Maybe over Christmas I can read the second one? We’ll see…


My rating: 4 stars out of 5. Just because the beginning was a bit painful. But worth it to keep going!