Book #53: The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson

Fantasy is obviously not my main genre. In all the years I've been keeping track of what I read here on this blog, I've only read six "fantasy" genre books--and four of those are the LOTR series and prequel. And the other two are basically kids' books. But I've been meaning to read some Brandon Sanderson for a LONG time--he's a BYU professor (or at least he was when I was there) in creative writing, and all I ever hear about him is that his books are SO GOOD. But I finally was convinced by my friend Amanda to pick up this book and I am so glad I finally did. It's something like 1000 pages long (I'm not sure because I read it on my Kindle) but it was OH MY GOSH so good. I couldn't stop reading it and I couldn't get over it and I can't stop thinking about it! It's everything a fantasy epic novel should be--and the beginning of what will supposedly be a TEN-BOOK series, although only two have come out yet (which is super disappointing, like starting a TV show only to catch up to where it is already in real life--I hate having to wait).

Clearly from my numerous all-caps words here you can tell I am enthusiastic about this book. Basically everything was fantastic--from the way the world was built, to the quality of the writing (I loved that there weren't any boring or obvious moments where he slid in explanations for things--he built the world without any explicit explaining to the reader), to the characterization and the characters themselves. There's a number of main characters who we switch between their points of view throughout the book, and you get to know each of them fairly well through their perspective and through what they do. The story is set in Alethkar, a country built up of independent nations in the midst of a war against a country that assassinated their previous king. One main character is Dalinar, the brother of the murdered king and uncle to the current one. He is an honorable leader and one who cares about his men and the means before the end--and he's having crazy visions and dreams that he's worried about driving him mad. Another character is Kaladin, a soldier reduced to a slave after some horrible treachery done to him in war--he is almost driven to suicide before trying one more time to help himself escape, along with those suffering around him. You also follow Shallan, a would-be scholar who wants to apprentice herself to a powerful woman leader, and also has the goal to steal that woman's source of power and bring it home to save her family. All of these plots seem distinct and unrelated, but as the story goes on you begin to find out the connections between all of these characters and how their goals and struggles are all interconnected in the greater fight to keep Alethkar united--and to survive before the great Desolation comes.

I can't wait to read the next book in the series--and to hopefully check out some more Brandon Sanderson books soon too!