The Alloy of Law

Brandon Sanderson has recently decided to embrace a direction that makes his books rather unappealing to me. I don't want to be constantly reminded of the raging culture war while reading a fantasy novel. Dawnshard may have been a watershed moment. However, I have yet to read many of his works published before 2020, like most of the second set of the Mistborn series.

Dawnshard

Dawnshard is the second "novella" (56k words) in Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive, set between the series' third and fourth volumes. Its protagonist is tradesmaster Rysn Ftori who sets out on an expedition to Akinah, a lost city on an island shrouded in storms.

Oathbringer

Like the second novel in The Stormlight Archive, took the third one too an enormously long time for me to get through. It didn't help that, unlike with the previous two, there was no 2-volume print of Oathbringer available: just holding a nearly 1300-page hardcover brick is unpleasant every time. It was mainly the content that made the book a struggle to read though.

Edgedancer

Edgedancer by Brandon Sanderson is a novella in the epic fantasy series The Stormlight Archive, set between its volumes two and three. Its protagonist is Lift who we already met in an interlude of Words of Radiance. Sanderson felt Lift needed a longer introduction before she becomes more important in the series.

Words of Radiance

It took me almost half a year to read Words of Radiance, the second book of The Stormlight Archive. That's not entirely because of the novel; I was simply doing other stuff for entertainment (mostly playing games). However, there is definitely a good two to three hundred page section that I found outright boring. Only when someone else reserved the library book (or books -- a two-volume Gollancz print again), meaning I had to return it finally, I managed to power through it.

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.

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.

Warbreaker

Since Mistborn's world was so bleak and gray, Brandon Sanderson wanted to write something more colorful after it and thus Warbreaker came to be. He also released the novel for free on his website much to his publisher's dismay. The novel's still there though now it's available as multiple webpages rather than a PDF file. Good thing I grabbed the latter when I first heard about it: I think it felt more proper to read something that looked like an actual, printed-on-paper book.

Mistborn: The Hero of Ages

The first Mistborn trilogy comes to an end with The Hero of Ages. I did not expect it to end like it did -- or at least not at the beginning of the novel. But then it started to seem there simply was no way for the characters to stop the end of the world without a divine intervention. The ending was like a second genesis for the world. It reminded me of Battlestar Galactica's finale.

Mistborn: The Well of Ascension

The Mistborn series continues with The Well of Ascension. Even if the world of Scadrial was already an unhappy place (for most) in the first volume, takes this it into an even darker and more desperate direction. The death of the Lord Ruler has created expected instability in the empire even if the crew's new noble-friend Elend of House Venture has managed to seize the control of the capital city, Luthadel.

Mistborn (The Final Empire)

While pondering what I should read next, I came upon the name of Brandon Sanderson, the man who finished The Wheel of Time series. I decided it was time to check his original work and bought the Mistborn trilogy boxed set. The trilogy -- and the following series -- starts with Mistborn: The Final Empire, although this set's print has only 'Mistborn' on its cover. Which kind of makes sense -- it marks it as the first volume.

The Wheel of Time: A Memory of Light

Over two decades in the making, The Wheel of Time finally sees its end. A book series so long that the original author died before completing it. So long that the cover artist too passed away before finishing the final piece. But finally, it ends.

The Wheel of Time: Towers of Midnight

My posts about books sometimes manage to gather a whole lot of plot synopsis in them. It's a silly thing to do, really, for Wikipedia already has quite accurate plot summaries for popular novels. From this post onwards, I will try to stick more to writing my thoughts and avoid recapping a novel's happenings at great length, if at all.

The Wheel of Time: The Gathering Storm

I very much gobbled up this one. I read the book just over two nights. I don't know if it was because the it was so good or what, but it certainly didn't take long for me to devour the thousand-page book.