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The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive, #1)

Brandon Sanderson

Start date: February 1, 2013

Finish date: February 28, 2013

Discussion: Book Discussions

Why we're reading this: This is our February, 2013, Contemporary Novel choice for group read & discussion
#71 on NPR's Top 100 SF/…more
[close] This is our February, 2013, Contemporary Novel choice for group read & discussion
#71 on NPR's Top 100 SF/F novels of all time (2011 poll) http://www.npr.org/2011/08/11/1390858...
#20 on Locus Magazines Best Fantasy novels of the 21st century http://www.locusmag.com/2012/AllCentu...

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Jan 18, 2022 Alex rated it liked it

Shelves: fantasy

I'm speaking up loudly for all you people out there - you know who you are - who think that The Way of Kings was ... Ok. Pretty good. Not bad. An entertaining read.

This book, this author, this man over the last 10-15 years has been connecting with fans and making a name for himself as *the* go-to fantasy author, the top recommendation, the guy who is propelling fantasy literature well into the 21st century and beyond with his visionary hard-magic systems and his 10 book epics, his 30 book interc I'm speaking up loudly for all you people out there - you know who you are - who think that The Way of Kings was ... Ok. Pretty good. Not bad. An entertaining read.

This book, this author, this man over the last 10-15 years has been connecting with fans and making a name for himself as *the* go-to fantasy author, the top recommendation, the guy who is propelling fantasy literature well into the 21st century and beyond with his visionary hard-magic systems and his 10 book epics, his 30 book interconnected Cosmere universes, his Sanderlanches, his ... his ... his all round niceness and being a decent bloke and his crazy ability to write 15 novels every quarter and still find time to satisfy his wife every evening. This guy is the real deal isn't he, and all the fans idolise him, and for that reason I stalled on reading this book for as long as I humanly could because me being me I knew I'd end up hating it and then I'd be cast out of all respectable fantasy literature loving circles.

It's a bit of a relief, then, that I didn't hate it. I thought that I might at one point. Things were looking dicey. Shallan had concocted a plan to steal a soulcaster by ... get this ... becoming the ward of one of the most important people in the country who is notoriously picky and doesn't generally take wards ... and she has absolutely nothing to recommend her. Top plan, I thought. The author is really taking this seriously. And that was it for her story for about 500 pages. Meanwhile Kaladin the slave was bonding with his Bridge team. Bridge 4. Like, a real lads moment. They'd been through hard times together, nearly died so they sat and drink beer like men. Real men don't drink beer -they are far too poor). You see, men in Sanderson's world are into military stuff whilst girls are into books ... real Gender subversion here, people, I don't know how he came up with that.

Because the problem with Sanderson, ultimately, is that he's not a man of ideas. His die-hard fans think he's the smartest person in the universe because he creates hard magic systems and this, apparently, amounts to *great world-building*. All I got from 1000 pages, personally, was that there's this magic dust in the air and you need gems to activate it with your magic swords and armour that turns you into a superhero. Unless you're super special like the main characters who are... superheroes. I mean, fair enough, top marks for being 100% fantasy book, but let's not get carried away with it being a thing of genius. In truth, worldbuilding is not really Sanderson's strong point at all, the problem being, I think , that his world doesn't feel lived-in or alive and he never truly feels fascinated by it. I can only compare Sanderson's work to authors like Tolkien or Donaldson who, whilst they both clearly did immense background work on cultures, languages, mythology etc relating to their world, the passion for what they created comes through in the textual narrative as heroes (or anti-heroes) travel across the world meeting people and peoples and discovering the wonder and immensity of the world they're caught up in. narrative devices help, of course since in both cases part of the point of the story is to take main characters who haven't been exposed to the immensity of life and place them into an alien situation whereby they have to learn and act accordingly. In the Way of Kings, conversely, the characters are mostly trapped and feel trapped and the reader feels trapped along with them. Interesting to compare that with Piranesi (a book I just read) in which a man is literally held prisoner in a house, but the wonderousness and strangeness of the house and events around him bleed through every page, whereas here Kaladin's narrative in particular feels like as hard work sometimes as actually being a slave along with him, only opening up during the flashback sections which at least add a little to his psychology.

Neither is Sanderson that brilliant at characterisation. I don't fault him so much for this as others sometimes do. The character stories presented here are slight - very slight for stories that span a massive 1000 page tome. But there is an A-B style journey featuring some kind of progression in each case. Dalinar learns about trust, love and ruling and what he needs to do in order to bring a people together (Unite them. Unite them, Unite them). Kalidan, likewise, discovers about being a leader of his ragtag bag and the trust and honour that develops with being a good, and that path of discovery is one that goes through much perpetual suffering and failure. Whilst Shallan... well, Shallan ... yeah Ok, maybe Sanderson's characterisation is quite basic and poor often. It's notable, again, that female characters gets shortchanged on any interesting develop (I use the term interesting advisedly)

So why do people like Sanderson so much? And what compelled me to read this book in just ten days, and to feel at the end of it that I'd enjoyed the experience, despite its glaring faults? Well, frankly, Sanderson's biggest problem is that he's standing on the shoulders of giants and just keeps slipping off. His influences are obvious; Tad Williams, and GRR Martin stylistically mastered the epic narrative/POV writing style, the only trouble being that those authors are now quickly going out of style - Martin deconstructed the epic quest fantasy Wiliams perfected (but also pushed forward into kingdomly politics) and Martin's writing is ultimately just too bleak to remain a dominant popular style (and his tardiness has taken its toll and affected his reputation with fans, of course). It's clear to me that Sanderson looked at what these authors done (I leave Jordan out of this, who I've no doubt influenced Sanderson, since I haven't read him) and saw that he could adapt that style, along with its massive scope and ambition into something upbeat, optimistic and to his mind more *thrilling* (and if you like action sequences, there are a plethora of them here and they are lengthy. For me, they are a bit too videogame-esque in style and lacking in real grit). And he uses the style very well, creating disparate elements, disconnected narratives that slowly build into something more coherent and then eventually segue together into a larger picture universe.

And what I did love about Sanderson, more than anything, was his scope and ambition. His ideas might not be new and they might not be clever and yeah, I've read dozens of books with heaps more *imagination* (and, eh, generally better prose too) but reading his work you really do get this sense of "when this all comes together it's going to be really .... cool". It's nice to feel that the author is there with you, holding your hand through an epic story of good vs evil that spans generations, has ancient mysteries and things to discover and will probably balloon in scope as the books progress. it's nice to feel that someone really cares about this type of grandiose storytelling and, in truth, Sanderson is pretty good at handling that side of it, I *did* finish this book and nodded - and probably grunted - in a satisfied way that I liked where this was heading and I wanted to know what further adventures were in store for our characters. On the other hand, I also acknowledged to myself that I felt frustrated with just how long it took for this thing to become satisfying and that book 2 actually has its work cut out to keep me enthused - but then, I felt similarly midway through Stone of Farewell too! I'm not *always* the most patient person with epic epic epic fantasy. I like my fantasy epic but with a sidehelping of brevity sometimes.

Ultimately, I'm going with mixed bag then. This series could get better or it could get worse from here. From everything that I've read about Sanderson my suspicion is my view won't change considerably over the course of the following books, and that he's going to remain an action heavy, plot-heavy author with obvious weaknesses but is probably a lot of fun to read. The thing with epic fantasy series of this nature is that they do become more fun the more you invest in them, so it's also likely my tune will change and be more melodic by the time I'm done with book 5 - the first half/section of the projected ten. What can I say, I'm on board for more of this, it's a whole lot of fun in an "epic fantasy should be fun like this" kind of a way. As long as you can get through those longeurs, at least. Hey, I didn't make it to this age without developing a little patience. ...more

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Jun 18, 2013 Hutch Morzaria rated it it was amazing

Brandon Sanderson seemed to come out of nowhere, but is now one of the most prolific writers around. His Mistborn series by itself were excellent and outstanding and his work to complete the Wheel of Time ... well that goes without saying really.

With the Way of Kings however, he's created (or at least started) an epic that is set to rival the Wheel of Time in its breadth and overall scope. Considering how quickly he churns out books also (I really do not know how he does it?!) there is hope that ...more

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