Price: $8 At Barnes And Noble, $6.50 At Amazon
Length: 1280 Pages

“The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon.”

Brandon Sanderson’s The Way Of Kings is a book in the great tradition of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time, J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord Of The Rings, and George R. R. Martin’s A Song Of Ice and Fire. A great epic story told over the course of thousands of years, The Way Of Kings covers everything from socio-racial class tension and warfare, to the ideologies and philosophies of a hierocratic-turned servant religion following a slain god. The book, while it seems like a long, slow, block of prose, has fantastic and engulfing characters, plot threads, action scenes, and most of all, a wondrous, and well built mythology and world.

The storm-torn world of Roshar, the setting of the book is as intricately just as built as the world of Arrakis, Middle-Earth, and Jordan’s Quadruple Post-apocalypse. From its ecology of plants and animals that are pressure sensitive and retract themselves into shells and crops that grow rinds to its highstorms, massive, hugely destructive continent-wide storms that come multiple times a month. Highstorms create stormlight, the magic system of Roshar. Stormlight is a magical form of glowing white energy stored in gemstones. It can seemingly power machines called fabrials and create light, but as we soon discover, it has a secret, and powerful use to a certain special subset of Roshar-born human.

Another phenomena that occurs all across Roshar are the spren, mysterious creatures of light that appear in response to actions and emotions. Specific types of spren are named after their attributes: painspren appear near wounds, creativityspren appear near great works of art, logic spren near great debates. These spren, while they may seem animalistic in nature, have hidden secrets that even the people of Roshar are slowly discovering.

One of the greatest parts about it all, all this lore and mythology and world, it’s learned. You have little to none of the meaningless exposition meant only for the reader. You learn as the characters learn, and that makes them characters seem all the more real.

Speaking of characters, there are 3 main protagonists. Kaladin was once a soldier in a brightlord’s army, and he has now been branded a traitor and made a slave. He serves as a carrier for bridges and a meat shield in the catastrophic atmosphere of Roshar. “Authority doesn’t come from a rank,” Kaladin said, fingering the spheres in his pocket.
“Where does it come from?”
“From the men who give it to you. That’s the only way to get it.”

Shallan Davar is a noble, or highlady from the empire of Jah Khaved. She is the child of a minor noble who has never left her fief until now. She must sail the ocean to the intellectual city-state of Kharbranth to attempt to steal a set of gems from the princess of all Alethkar, the ruling faction of the continent. “Brightness…I believe you stray into sarcasm.”
“Funny. I thought I’d run straight into it, screaming at the top of my lungs.”

The 3rd and final character is Dalinar Kholin. Dalinar was once a bloody and powerful warlord who, with his brother Gavilar, united all Alethkar and made it the most powerful empire of Roshar. Now, he is tired of war; he is old and the wisest of the 10 highprinces. “Sometimes the prize isn’t worth the costs. The means by which we achieve victory are as important as the victory itself.”

The book tells an intricate and powerful story of these three characters that drives us to finish it. If you have loved the works of Robert Jordan, Tolkien, Or Herbert, you will love this book.