“The Way of Kings” by Brandon Sanderson, published by TOR, 0765326353, August 2010. To buy the book click here. To read an excerpt, click here. To follow the book’s Facebook page, click here

Plot Description:
The result of over ten years of planning, writing, and world-building, The Way of Kings is but the opening movement of the Stormlight Archive, a bold masterpiece in the making.

Speak again the ancient oaths,

Life before death.
Strength before weakness.
Journey before Destination.

and return to men the Shards they once bore.

The Knights Radiant must stand again.

Review: Clocking in at just over 1,000 pages, Brandon Sanderon’s newest novel, the first in a planned series, is being touted as the next defining epic fantasy series, drawing comparisons to books like Lord of the Rings, Dune, and Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series, which Sanderson is also working on.

Before you even read the first page, what you’re expecting is an epic in the real sense of the word–something timeless, something captivating, and something universal. And that’s precisely what you get, told through the lenses of multiple characters, chief among them Dalinar, who is uncle to the new king; Kadalid, a highborn bloke who becomes a slave; and Shallan, a young royal woman who wants to save her noble house. The best thing is that the setting is as much a character as the actual characters in an all important triumvirate:

Once the preliminary storyline, which takes place 4,500 years before the current timeline, gets underway, we switch to the present day and start things off with one of the most interesting, complex assassin characters I’ve met, a guy named Szeth, who is dressed in white on purpose, because he’s trying to get noticed.

We get our first glimpse of what Stormlight is very soon after. It’s almost like the magic ability to suck up all the nearby light in a place and using light as a weapon that can bind people or objects to different surfaces–or put them in a different direction. But of course, as with all magic, light can’t be contained for too long by a human vessel (only Voidbringers, who may or may not have existed, can hold it in perfectly), a good limitation that makes sense.
Peoples’ eye colours also seem to be indicative of rank with light eyes being more honourable and darker eyes looked down upon.

I think it was a very smart move to start off with Szeth, not only because he’s my favourite character and because he’s the coolest, but because it’s a very intense, high-flying action scene that grabs your attention and holds it, and the kinds of attacks that are introduced are things that any video game would be jealous of, like summoning a Shardblade and doing “lashings” onto enemies.

The Shardblade actually reminded me very much of The Soul Reaver from the Legacy of Kain video game series, because it’s designed to sever a person’s soul and doesn’t cut living flesh (whereas the Soul Reaver can and does cut through flesh and devours a soul to feed itself).
Thankfully, Szeth demonstrates the 3 types of lashing without them coming off as expository or overly explanatory prose.

The fight scene action reads like something out of Inception–it was freakin’ awesome, especially with the Stormlight concept, which is gravity-defying.

However, the addition of a dramatis personae would have enhanced the book. Sanderson scores multiple bonus points for the artwork, which makes the tome itself look like an illuminated manuscript, and for the use of glyph languages.

Things really start to pick up when Shallan, the main female character, meets the princess, Jasnah, who is hilarious but also very good in that she’s not the stereotype of her character (old, matronly sarcastic woman who relentlessly pokes fun at the other characters). When the reader finds out what Shallan is up to and that in order to restore her family’s royal house she is going to steal Jasnah’s soul caster, things really get interesting.

However, in a book like this with multiple storylines, characters, and plot threads, not all of which can intersect all the time, the reader inevitably finds some storylines more interesting than others: my top picks were Szeth and Shallan’s stories. Another reason that Szeth is my favourite is because we learn that he’s a slave to anyone who holds his Oathstone, because he has to obey them (sort of like a golem, except they can make him do physical labour and other slave tasks, but his chief use is for assassinating diplomats and royals).

The core strength of this book lies in its worldbuildling. Sanderson has set up a unique, fully fleshed out world with its own rules, races, magic system, and much more, and it’s fascinating to experience the land throughout this novel.
Because of the nature of this novel and its sheer length, it’s also an inevitability that some parts will be more exciting than others, and that’s definitely the case with Way of Kings. Once most of the storylines come to a close and others get set up for books two and three, that’s when the sense of resolution kicks in, it’s good.

One of the novel’s other strengths was the fight scenes (not to be confused with the battle scenes, which are very long and drawn out). I think that this book also has high potential to be adapted as a graphic novel, video game, and even a miniseries a la the Dune remake that came out with James Macavoy a few years ago.

Dalinar’s parts, which I initially couldn’t really get into, become more interesting as you find out that he has a very important decision ahead of him, weighed down by his brother, the king’s, decisions before him, and the concern for his son, Adolin, is also complicated, which ratchets up the tension.

Sometimes, the going back and forth between the present day and “five years ago” or “one year ago” was sort of jarring and on the irksome side, like the Seinfeld Indian wedding episode where everything keeps flashing further back and forward. Shallan’s storyline was particularly compelling as I mentioned above, and just when you think she’s done for, she makes some very startling discoveries which should make quite an impact in the future volumes of this series.

Overall, I enjoyed reading The Way of Kings, and I will say that, like Sanderson’s previous works, including Elantris, this book is an epic fantasy but it’s not in the high fantasy tradition, which is a good thing. When there is sorcery involved, it’s not an old man with long fingernails and a hideous beard who looks into a glass ball and murmurs evil things giddily (no offense to Saruman). This volume presents compelling characters who we get to know over the course of a thousand or so pages, but whose stories ultimately make the book. Their struggles are well-chronicled, and Sanderson does a fantastic job making the setting come alive. I highly recommend this book if you’re a fan of Sanderson’s previous work, or of Brent Weeks (The Night Angel Trilogy), Tom Lloyd, Patrick Rothfuss, S.M. Stirling, Peter V. Brett, and Stephen R. Donaldson.

There’s something in here for every type of fantasy reader. If you like Marion Zimmer Bradley, Mercedes Lackey, Anne Bishop, and Sara Douglass, you’ll thoroughly enjoy Shallan’s storyline. If you’re into epic huge battle scenes similar to George R.R. Martin’s and Gail Z. Martin’s, you’ll enjoy the battle bits and the Dalinar/Kaladin storylines. And if you’re fierce into assassins like I am, you’ll love Szeth. He kicks some serious ass. And if you’re really into your worldbuilding, you’ll love getting to know the landscape in this book. Here’s to hoping that Szeth gets his own spinoff.

Happy Reading!