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A review by nooralshanti
The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson
2.0
I wasn't going to finish this book, but since I didn't finish the last two books I tried reading I decided to give it a chance and get through it. It wasn't too bad, but it was kind of pointless. So many pages, so many words, but so little story. I had several problems with this book, but I think the main problems all come from the fact that the author was trying to stretch it out as much as possible so he could get 10 books out of one story.
Many are saying that it has great world-building. I disagree. I've read Sanderson's Mistborn and the two books that followed it and they had much better world-building than this. Instead of world-building this book had so many names and descriptions that didn't make sense so they ended up being meaningless. I was going to quit at the first scene because it was describing the aftermath of a battle with words like "surgebinders" and "thundresclasts" and so on without explaining what they were. I hung on, but the descriptions didn't get any better. By the way, I still haven't figured out what those things are after reading the entire book! Instead of slowly revealing his world and explaining it, he resorted to describing hundreds of minute and pointless details like what everyone was wearing and so on.
I have to admit, I ended up skimming some of the lengthy descriptions (and some entire scenes from the "5 years ago" timeline). It became much easier to get through after this, but there was so little story that I feel like I wasted my time.
The "current" Kaladin storyline was interesting, the Dalinar and Adloin story was somewhat interesting too, and the Shallan stuff could have worked, but it was all stretched so thin and nothing was actually happening for hundreds of pages at a time that by the time their stories moved an inch forward I no longer cared.
Also, without spoiling the ending I found the "twist" about the voidbrinders at the end to be a huge letdown.
If you're interested in reading some fantasy I'd recommend you try something else. Try Mistborn if you want to read something by Brandon Sanderson that's not too bad, but skip this one. It had potential, but maybe if an abridged version of all ten books comes out once they're all released that is only 600 words long it might be worth reading. Needless to say, I'm not going to read the rest of this series.
Many are saying that it has great world-building. I disagree. I've read Sanderson's Mistborn and the two books that followed it and they had much better world-building than this. Instead of world-building this book had so many names and descriptions that didn't make sense so they ended up being meaningless. I was going to quit at the first scene because it was describing the aftermath of a battle with words like "surgebinders" and "thundresclasts" and so on without explaining what they were. I hung on, but the descriptions didn't get any better. By the way, I still haven't figured out what those things are after reading the entire book! Instead of slowly revealing his world and explaining it, he resorted to describing hundreds of minute and pointless details like what everyone was wearing and so on.
I have to admit, I ended up skimming some of the lengthy descriptions (and some entire scenes from the "5 years ago" timeline). It became much easier to get through after this, but there was so little story that I feel like I wasted my time.
The "current" Kaladin storyline was interesting, the Dalinar and Adloin story was somewhat interesting too, and the Shallan stuff could have worked, but it was all stretched so thin and nothing was actually happening for hundreds of pages at a time that by the time their stories moved an inch forward I no longer cared.
Also, without spoiling the ending I found the "twist" about the voidbrinders at the end to be a huge letdown.
If you're interested in reading some fantasy I'd recommend you try something else. Try Mistborn if you want to read something by Brandon Sanderson that's not too bad, but skip this one. It had potential, but maybe if an abridged version of all ten books comes out once they're all released that is only 600 words long it might be worth reading. Needless to say, I'm not going to read the rest of this series.