The Way of Kings

The Way of Kings begins Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic, The Stormlight Archive, which is currently at four published novels out of ten planned. The series has garnered a lot of praise but I personally went in with low expectations, kind of anticipating typical Sanderson cast of characters, same old traits shuffled around a bit.

I found the novel entertaining enough though: better than the standalone Sanderson books I previously read but still not quite as good as Mistborn. Mistborn's magic and twists were just so great.

The Way of Kings is a prime example of the epic fantasy genre: it's thousand pages in size and gains speed slowly, building its world in no hurry. The prologue and interludes also visit viewpoints of characters who are most likely part of the overarching plot of the series but in this first novel feel confusing, hard to follow, and quickly forgotten.

Not all of the novel's protagonists are as typical Sanderson as I had expected although Shallan Davar is definitely very much the standard female character for the author: young, naive, and a scion of a highborn family. She has her secrets though and it seems she will get very involved with magic usage so her viewpoint wasn't boring -- just fairly predictable.

Highprince Dalinar Kholin is an older protagonist, a brother to Alethar's recently assassinated king and an uncle to the current one. He worries about the divided, competitive nature of the realm and doubts the sensibility of their continuing war effort against the Parshendi who (presumably) were behind the regicide. Before his death, the late king directed Dalinar to the novel's titular tome. Dalinar hopes it reveals what's going on and has the book being read to him constantly -- Alethi men are illiterate as reading and writing are considered womanly arts. To me that feels highly impractical for various reasons, as if invented by Sanderson solely for the sake of making the world seem different to ours. There are few other such cultural oddities as well.

Dalinar is also one of the world's few full Shardbearers: he has a shardplate armor and a shardblade. A shardplate makes its wearer stronger, greatly softens received impacts, and can eventually regenerate all damage it has suffered. A shardblade is stored out of existence, summoned by its owner after a short (yet rather inconvenient) delay. The blade cuts through most substances easily while living matter struck is unharmed physically, instead getting severed from the rest of the body on some metaphysical level, instantly killing the target if hit to a vital area. Shardplates and blades are essentially fantasy equivalents to Warhammer 40,000's power armor and swords, making their users nigh invincible in combat against enemies in mundane equipment.

The novel's focus protagonist is Kaladin who is dubbed Stormblessed -- I guess for his success during his early military career. I don't think it was specifically stated who gave him the moniker but later on it turns out to have been prophetic.

Kaladin's story is sort of rags-to-riches type. A person's eye color indicates (or even determines?) their rank in society: the lighter they are, the higher their place. Kaladin is not a lighteyes, though not quite in the bottom tier of society either. He joins the army after his runt of a little brother gets drafted. Kaladin had been thinking of joining anyway, before he had decided to become a surgeon like his father. In Kaladin's opinion killing can be a way of saving people and he also revers lighteyed higher-ups, considering them heroic.

To his disappointment, the reality isn't so glamorous: the lighteyed officers Kaladin meets are not so noble after all. Kaladin is betrayed to hide a lighteyes' treachery and is send to slavery. Ironically he still ends up where he wanted originally his career to take him: in the front lines of the Alethi armies fighting the Parshendi in Shattered Plains.

The area consists of a myriad number of plateaus separated by chasms. In order to move between them, the Alethi use mobile bridges. One of the highprince armies uses slaves to move the bridges quickly. The slaves get no armor or any other kind of protection: that way they keep drawing Parshendi arrows and Alethi forces can then charge in relatively unscathed over the lain bridges.

The bridgemen obviously have a high mortality rate but Kaladin keeps on living. He manages to inspire his bridge crew to become a trained squad with hopes of an actual future. In the end their efforts pay off and they get into a much better position in the war effort -- which is hardly surprising given Kaladin is a main character.

One pretty cool feature of the book's world are its regular highstorms that shred to pieces everything not being able to take cover. Animals and even plants have adapted to the storms by either being able to hide or just being durable enough to weather them. Leaving gemstones outside during a highstorm charges them with stormlight, making them shed light and power magic. Magic users are not common though.

One such magic user, a surgebinder, is Szeth-son-son-Vallano, one more notable main character in the book. His viewpoint visits are brief but often full of action: he is the assassin that killed the Alethi king. With his magic and honorblade (a more powerful shardblade) he seems unstoppable. He also kills against his own volition: anyone possessing his oathstone is his master.

In all the Sanderson's original books I've read -- Mistborn, Warbreaker, Elantris, and this -- a common element is perusing old tomes for answers. My sister speculated that it's a Mormon thing but I don't know. Definitely a thing in Sanderson's books though.

There's also a minor meta character called Hoid who pretty much acknowledges Sanderson's books to exist in the same universe, even using the word cosmere. Hoid felt like a lite, more clear headed version of  Fizban/Zifnab from the novels of Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman.

Brandon Sanderson's works haven't (yet) been translated into Finnish outside the first Mistborn trilogy, so I read The Way of Kings in English. That's not an actual problem though as Sanderson's prose isn't difficult. The first two novels of the series have 2-part paperback prints which I appreciate: a 500-page book is a lot easier to handle physically than a 1000-page one.

Both parts of The Way of Kings prints had an author's foreword in which he informs -- unnecessarily, in my opinion -- that this Gollancz edition is one book despite being in two separate covers. I think Sanderson also mentioned that the division was needed to get the book published as a paperback. However, looking at my bookshelf, I see the paperback versions of volumes 12 and 13 of The Wheel of Time, both over 1000 pages long and both finished by Sanderson himself. Thus I don't think there were any physical limitations for The Way of Kings paperback to be published as one book.