If you are one to only read reviews from people who have actually finished the book you might want to move along because, in this case, I certainly am not one of them.

Overhyped, overwrought, and overrated. What a colossal waste of time this book is. I got a third of the way through it and realized it for what it was: a 1000-page, jumbled, meandering prologue to a 10 book fantasy "epic". Ooooh no you don't, Sanderson! I learned that painful lesson with The Wheel of Time books even before you were [coincidentally] enlisted to finish that series. I got 8 books into that wretched, braid-pulling catastrophe before finally coming to my senses -- getting off in-between stops as it were.

Along comes this thing. Now, I am a sucker for long books. I guess I like a really involved but well-written story with nicely fleshed out characters. I loved a lot of Stephenson books, Tolkien, some early Shannara books, [insert more long book credentials no reader of this review cares a whit about]. This book seems to bask in the glow of its ambition. Sanderson is so into world building, getting down to the plant life for Crissakes, that he forgets to put, you know, an interesting story arc in there for us. We get a multitude of false starts, a dozen or so introductions, characters we are led to believe are important but only end up dying pages later, and a real live MacGuffin called The Way of Kings. That's what it was, right? I didn't finish the book, as I've said.

So, in the interest of not writing a bloated review of a bloated novel I must rein myself in. If you have lots of time on your hands and like plodding through boring fantasy epics without much direction, sure, this might your elixir. And, who knows, there might even be a payoff in future books of the series that warrant fighting your way through this primer. I won't be in line to find out. Maybe you can let me know.