We primarily follow the story of three people in this book, with occasional points of view from others to further shed light on goings on. The first (and in my opinion, most interesting) of our protagonists is Kaladin Stormblessed, a surgeon’s son, turned army spearman turned slave. After numerous escape attempts, he ends up at the long-running war on the Shattered Plains, a desolate landscape made up of numerous rocky plateaus, requiring the fighting armies to have bridges to get across the chasms. Kaladin becomes part of the bridge crew of bridge four, and discovers that being a bridgeman is a near-certain death sentence, and bridge four is probably the place you’ll get killed the fastest. But whether he is in fact Stormblessed, or perhaps cursed, Kaladin’s experience is that those around him, the ones he gets attached to and tries to protect, die around him, while Kaladin is left, pondering his failures.
Our second protagonist is Shallan Davar, is a young noblewoman from a small estate whose lived a sheltered life and now needs to persuade the king’s sister, notorious heretic Jasnah Kholin, to take her on as a ward. Shallan claims she wants to learn from Jasnah and become a scholar of renown like the older woman, but she’s secretly planning an audacious theft, to save the fortunes and reputation of her entire family.
The third protagonist (and by far my least favourite, until 95% into the book when things turned considerably) is the king’s uncle, Dalinar Kholin, one of the most famed warriors of his generation. He’s been fighting the war on the Shattered Plains for six long years, trying to avenge the death of his brother, the former king, who was spectacularly assassinated after signing a peace treaty with the strange and savage Pashendi people. As the Pashendi claimed responsibility, the twelve brightlords of Alethkar have been fighting a war made up of countless minor battles against these people they barely understand, with twelve separate forces and strategies. With each new highstorm, Dalinar has visions, where he hears voices admonishing him and sees scenes from Roshar’s past. He believes that their tactics are wrong, and that a change needs to be implemented. His nephew is young and relatively inexperienced and convinced that assassins lurk around every corner trying to kill him. But what if the visions are just delusions, and Dalinar is actually going insane?
About six years after I first put it on my TBR list and around five years after I bought the book (having first heard Mr. Sanderson talk about it at a signing at my local fantasy/comic book store way back in 2010), I decided to start off my reading year by reading The Way of Kings. A veritable brick of a book, it has taken me more than two weeks and I’m not going to lie, there were times when I questioned my choice. Sanderson’s fantasy epic the Stormlight Archive is apparently going to be ten whole books long. Each of the books are also about three times the length of a normal novel, so there’s going to be a lot of pages devoted to this story, and the page count here is not necessarily an advantage.
I really did like a lot of things about this book. I’m giving it four stars. I did, however, remember why I read maybe one or two epic fantasy books every few years now, rather than all the time, like I used to when I was a teenager. The massive page count is one of the things I did not like. It takes something like 500 pages for things to even start getting beyond the setting up stages. The book has three prologues, although my book twin on the internet, Narfna, has pointed out that at least one of them is clearly the prologue to the series as a whole and we therefore cannot expect to understand it at the end of the first book. Once upon a time, I used to love these intricately plotted, slow and dense stories, generally thinking the more pages, the better. The longer I got to spend in one world with the characters, the happier I was. Now I get impatient, and would very much like it if there is significant plot development before I’ve read more than a standard paperback novel’s worth of pages.
Full review on my blog.
For what ever reason, I don’t feel like CBR has really started until we get our first Malin review. I feel the same way about those bricks of novels. I think it’s because I have so many other things demanding my headspace that I want a story that moves along at a good pace.
Thank you. I decided to try something radically different this year, by starting with one of the biggest books on my shelf. I have been thinking about picking it up for years, but kept making excuses, because it was so long. I really liked the book, but it feels bad to not have my first review posted until mid-January. Probably going to be reading a lot of comic books to try to catch up a bit. 🙂
I somehow managed to rip through 11 reviews in the first two weeks. That pace has come to a screeching halt. I’ve got a romance I’m not really enjoying, John Lewis’ March graphic novel, and an audiobook I can only listen to for short periods. March is very good, but dense.
I’ve been so impressed with your work ethic!
Agreed. Malin reviews make it official.
*blushes*
I’m so glad you read this finally! You’re right that this book takes a bit to get going, but I love worldbuilding, so I didn’t mind it. My recollection of Words of Radiance is that it’s pretty much non-stop excitement from the first page, so I think you’ll be fine. Sanderson has said that he structures these books very carefully, both within each book, and with each book as a piece of the whole.
Each book is really structured as a trilogy, with novellas or short story interludes in between, so not only does each “book” have an arc, but so does the book as a whole, and on top of that each book fits into an arc as well. The first five books are one arc, and the last five will be another. As well as the whole series having an arc. So it makes sense to me that he’d need to take some time to set up all that story, and to acclimate readers to the world.
Does it make me a bad friend that I like it when you are annoyed at book characters? You’re just so cutting and dry (and funny) when you are annoyed with them. It’s delicious.
(I’m glad that you like him now, and yes, he gets pretty great in the next one, too.)
Kaladin is my favorite, too.
Ha! It doesn’t make you a bad friend at all to be amused at my getting annoyed at fictional characters – I’m glad I can be entertaining in my little rants. After I finished my review, I considered going back to edit it to add something referencing the Beavis and Butthead thing of “It has to have the bit that sucks, or the bits that rock won’t rock so hard”. If Dalinar hadn’t been quite so boring for much of the book, it wouldn’t have been quite so exhilarating to see him start kicking ass towards the end.
My husband, the English Lit graduate, is very big on his Doylist vs Watsonian theory. He’s pretty much exclusively a Doylist, while I’m almost always Watsonian in my reading, and consumption of popular culture in general. He’s a very analytical reader/watcher, I’m pretty much exclusively emotional. It’s how he figured out that Ned Stark was going to croak about a fifth of a way into A Game of Thrones (I quote: “His character had served its purpose and had nowhere left to go”) , while I was aghast (he didn’t see Bran’s accident coming, though).
I guess that would make me a Watsonian, too. Perhaps this is why we are book twins.
Although, sometimes I get a bit feisty and decide to exercise my logic. It’s pretty rare, though. The ideal book for me is one that does both. One of the reasons I like sci-fi so much.
Malin is back to tell me which books to buy – YAY!
Of course I already own and love this one. These bricks are an enormous commitment. Worse, often there is so many characters/locations you actually have to pay attention which rarely happens as most of my reading occurs half-asleep in bed. So deciding to commit the time and brain power to a huge book is practically a “getting a tattoo” level of commitment.
But I think Sanderson nails it (have read this and book #2). It’s so fresh and rich and engaging, the 400 pages of setup are worth the effort. I hope we can convince you to read book #2 and that you feel it was worth it too 🙂
Thank you, there was never any doubt that I would go on to read Words of Radiance, and I doubt that I’ll wait longer than until later this year. But having started with a massive brick, I’m now going to finish my first Cannonball before I read another.
I like this series a lot more then most of Sanderson’s other works. However, my bigest complaint is that I was TOTALLY LOST when I picked up the second book. I read this one when it first came out, and read the second when it came out and yea… just completely lost. I needed some kind of plot refresher before starting and I suspect I’ll need another one when the third book comes out.
The Coppermind is a lovely thing, if you can’t re-read: I totally got myself all up in there before I read Words of Radiance, and it made things so much easier.
http://coppermind.net/wiki/Coppermind:Welcome
OH, that’s amazing. Thank you. I like these books, but not really enough to re-read them when the next comes out (it’s far too much of a time comitiment). So this will definitely be helpful.