“Szeth-son-son-Vallano, Truthless of Shinovar, wore white on the day he was to kill a king… White to be bold. White to not blend into the night. White to give warning. For if you were going to assassinate a man, he was entitled to see you coming.”
“They were not demons, they were just men who had too much power and not enough sense.”
“The name of someone I should have loved. Once again, this is a thing I stole. It is something thieves do.”
Confession time: I avoided Brandon Sanderson in part because of the sheer volume of his catalog, but mostly because I first knew of him when he was tapped to complete Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. Here’s the confession – I didn’t like the first half of the first book of series, and I stopped my journey after book one. Second confession – I DNF’d the first book in the Game of Thrones series; I didn’t like the storytelling style or the character building, particularly the female character building, but I DNF’d simply because of one phrase. (And I don’t DNF!) All that to say, I decided male authored epic fantasy just wasn’t my thing.
When I’m wrong, I’m wrong.
Because Brandon Sanderson writes epic fantasy in a way that reminds me of finding a book in the library, dropping to crisscross apple sauce right in the aisle, and starting right then and there. Of reading while walking and eating. Of staying up late and waking up early, a book under the covers. Of becoming head over heels invested in a world and a cast of characters. Of an untethered imagination.
I started my Sanderson journey with The Stormlight Archive, and I have zero regrets. Every word in this 1001-page novel served a purpose. The character building is phenomenal as is the world building. A lot of times in fantasy, there is an information dump that slogs everything down. I was told The Way of Kings starts off slowly but is steamrolling along by page 800ish, and I was prepared for a slog of a dump. There’s no dump. No slog. It’s not all sword-clashing action, but it is most definitely action-packed. I will admit to being least drawn to Dalinar at the beginning and more to Kal, but that shifted toward the end as we started on the so-called Sanderlanche. With Shallan, I wanted both more and less of her. And Wit, well, I have a feeling Wit is a bit of Sanderson that is going to show up in everything he writes.
There are a lot of gems in the novel – one of my favorites being the notes women write in the books they scribe to “correct” the men who are dictating the words. (Most men can’t read or write because it’s a feminine endeavor.)
There’s a lot more I can say, but since 2025 is going to be my year of Sanderson, I’m sure I’ll get to saying it eventually. The Way of Kings is near perfect, and I’m very excited for my Cosmere journey.
Come to the Sanderson side. It has jam.
Read this book.
A Girl Named Tommi 