Elantris

Elantris is the 6th novel Brandon Sanderson wrote and the first one he got published. Sanderson had written 16 novels in total before that in fact, or so I've learned from watching his Youtube videos. Elantris is not his best work, I have to say. Sanderson's beloved magic systems don't come into play until very late and plot twists were kind of predictable, or at least didn't evoke a similar sense of astonishment like in the Mistborn books.

Sanderson has apparently intended all of his novels to be set in the same universe called Cosmere. It was his plan from the beginning but selling such an idea to a publisher would have been hopeless from a budding author. Even now as an established writer, from what I understand, he has not yet written anything that solidly ties everything together: Cosmere is yet far from something like the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But each of his novels does apparently have a minor reference, same character that briefly appears, sometimes not even saying anything.

I think Sanderson got the idea from Isaac Asimov whose later works linked his Robot and Foundation series together. I got a hint of Asimov influence from Elantris as its introduction ends in words "Eternity ended ten years ago." -- one of Asimov's novels is called The End of Eternity.

The eternity that ended in this novel refers to the book's titular city, Elantris. It was a wondrous place that suddenly lost all its magic and became covered in black slime. Its previously silver-skinned people still seemingly stayed immortal but as pitiful rotten undead creatures. Before the cataclysm anyone in the realm of Arelon could become an Elantrian through a transformation called Shaod. Shaod didn't stop with the curse and still claims random people who are then exiled into the closed Elantris.

I'm starting to see patterns in Sanderson's writing. He uses similar main characters and traits in his later novels for instance: a noble highborn man and a naive young woman in particular as both appear in Mistborn and Warbreaker too. At least the naive young woman of this novel, Sarene, isn't as clueless as the two in Warbreaker. Otherwise Elantris reminded me a lot of Warbreaker with its general feel. The ending had a lot of similarities too.