The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson

[Gormenghast]

I have only started to read the book and I also am slightly annoyed at certain writing habits. See the infodump example I put in the malazan thread:

He hit the ground in the midst of the soldiers. Completely surrounded, but holding a Shardblade.

According to legend, the Shardblades were first carried by the Knights Radiant uncounted ages ago. Gifts of their god, granted to allow them to fight horrors of rock and flame, dozens of feet tall, foes whose eyes burned with hatred. The Voidbringers. When your foe had skin as hard as stone itself, steel was useless. Something supernatural was required.

Szeth rose from his crouch, loose white clothes rippling [...]

Extraneous infos dumped by an omniscient narrator solely for the reader and unrelated to the PoV or context. Right in the middle of an action scene.

Other things I have to digest are the insane number of compounded words and some redundancy of prose. Like:

As always, the Shardblade killed oddly; though it cut easily through stone, steel, or anything inanimate [...]

Two pages later:

The rock sliced easily; a Shardblade could cut any inanimate object.

Turn another page:

When your foe had skin as hard as stone itself, steel was useless. Something supernatural was required.

And it even ends with a rather weird and clunky - yet again off context - consideration:

When one killed with a Blade, there was no blood. That seemed like a sign. The Shardblade was just a tool; it could be not be blamed for the murders.

While all this belongs to a style that is not my favorite, I guess it makes the book far more readable and accessible.

[MattL86]

So what, you're finding random books to gripe about because of things said in another thread? You even used the same example twice in one post. :s

Anyway, I had no problem with how he gets his info to the reader. If a guy pulls out a shardblade that's a pretty good time to let me know what the hell a shardblade is. And the first infodump you mentioned is barely noticeable. Not even a full paragraph. The majority of the things he needed to explain were done so gradually over the book. Really, there's not much an author can do when it comes to dumping info. As long as the infodumps are short and spaced and not aggregiously out of place you have to live with them.

The problem with infordumps is getting useless information piled on you. Stuff like the culture of the Aiel for hundreds of pages in the Wheel of Time. Not necessary to understand what's going on, and distracting to the story. If a story is about shardblades, you need to make their function really clear early on.

Also:

"When one killed with a Blade, there was no blood. That seemed like a sign. The Shardblade was just a tool; it could be not be blamed for the murders."

This is not out of context. It's completely in Szeth's character to think something like that. He has an odd relationship with his blade and his job. The sentence flows naturally to me.

[fionwe1987]

So what, you're finding random books to gripe about because of things said in another thread? You even used the same example twice in one post. :s

Anyway, I had no problem with how he gets his info to the reader. If a guy pulls out a shardblade that's a pretty good time to let me know what the hell a shardblade is. And the first infodump you mentioned is barely noticeable. Not even a full paragraph. The majority of the things he needed to explain were done so gradually over the book. Really, there's not much an author can do when it comes to dumping info. As long as the infodumps are short and spaced and not aggregiously out of place you have to live with them.

The problem with infordumps is getting useless information piled on you. Stuff like the culture of the Aiel for hundreds of pages in the Wheel of Time. Not necessary to understand what's going on, and distracting to the story. If a story is about shardblades, you need to make their function really clear early on.

Also:

"When one killed with a Blade, there was no blood. That seemed like a sign. The Shardblade was just a tool; it could be not be blamed for the murders."

This is not out of context. It's completely in Szeth's character to think something like that. He has an odd relationship with his blade and his job. The sentence flows naturally to me.

Didn't you know? Only pseudo-philosopy dumps are allowed.

[nickg]

The only one I had a problem with was the semi infodump in the middle of what seemed to be an action scene. Haven't read the book yet but I'm excited by what I have seen so far

[BlueRose]

I finally finished this today, and I absolutely loved it. Brandon is one of my very favourite authors, in my top 3. This was his best yet, and its so nice to know we wont wait years and years for book 2.

I was surprised at

The prominence of Hoid as a character, he seems to be much more involved in this book than any of Brandon's others. I was waiting for Hoid, and was pleasantly surprised that he was Wit

Shallan's wit didn't bother me except for a few lines here and there. I think Dalinar/Adolin was actually my favorite viewpoint though.

I'm really interested to see where the series will go. And I have to say, this is one hell of a beautiful book. All the art, the maps, everything. I hope the rest of the series are as nice looking as the first one.

[MattL86]

Sorry to bear bad news Bluerose, but the wait IS going to be fairly long it appears. Sanderson plans to take a bit of a break until after Towers of Midnight is released. Can't blame the guy, he's been a machine for a good stretch now. After that, he's promised WoT fans to complete MoL next, so best case scenario is probably November of 2011 for MoL. Which means I'd not expect the second book of The stormlight archive until at best the end of 2012. And that's if everything goes on schedule. Very possible and maybe more likely it comes in 2013. Which isn't long for ASOIAF fans, but it's a lifetime compared to the way Sanderson's been operating recently.

[nickg]

Finally received my copy and I have to agree with BlueRose. I would love to see more books like this.

[Migey]

Bluerose and MattL86 are both sort of right.

Book 2 wont come out until 2012, or, if we are unlucky, 2013. So there will be a wait for that. But the wait from book 2 to book 3 will only be about a year, then about 2 years to book 4, then another year to book 5, etc.

His plans, he's stated, are to finish WoT, take a bit of a break, then publish 2 SA books in 2 years, take 1 year to write somryhing else (Mistborn sequel trilogy, Elantris/Warbreaker sequels, whatevs)

So, assuming book 1 doesnt count, because hes only going to start writing it in earnest after WoT, so 9 books, it should take about... anything between 12 and 14 years? Which seems alot. But considering thats 9 books O_o

And hey, we might get a both aSoIaF and SA books 7/10 out in the same year O_O Now that would be nice. Sort of.

[Humble Asskicker]

It's been a hectic month, so I didn't finish this as quickly as I thought I would. But I finally did, and what a fantastic book. People are right in stating that this one is Sanderson's best yet, and after The Gathering Storm, that's saying a lot. I'm really thrilled about this new series.

The criticisms I pointed out with my early impressions start to pale later on in the book, and really are such a small point. It's unfortunate that they are so prominent at the beginning, because it could turn people off; however, I barely noticed any of those flaws after a while. It was mostly Shallan and Wit who were annoying - the humor of everyone else was just fine, and sometimes even clever.

1001 pages and I want more!

Although...was it just me, or did anyone else find it disturbing that at around the 300 page point everyone started...sniffing. A lot. I guess one thing that could be said for Sanderson over RJ is that at least he made it a gender indiscriminate activity, but it's fucking annoying. Who sniffs? I mean, really?

People weren't spending their time chronically smoothing their clothes, though. So I guess there's that. I'm just baffled as to why on earth anyone would allow themselves to be influenced by habit for which people gave RJ no end of shit.

[Character Zero]

I didn't notice the sniffing but there seemed to be a hell of a lot of eyebrow raising.

[Mathis Waters]

People weren't spending their time chronically smoothing their clothes, though. So I guess there's that. I'm just baffled as to why on earth anyone would allow themselves to be influenced by habit for which people gave RJ no end of shit.

He was commissioned to write literally thousands of pages in Jordan's style. Something's going to rub off.

[The Evil Hat]

Actually didn't notice the sniffing. As for the humor, I found the majority of it passably clever in a mildly amusing way - though that didn't help make it feel any less odd when people started guffawing.

[AverageGuy]

But, in English, at least, there are a two main templates for cursing at people that I have experienced.

In most any language, cursing tends to be related to cultural taboos. The pretty much universal one's blasphemy, "damn," "hell," etc. In WOT, there's "The Light burn my bones to ash," with its obvious real world derivation, and it's presumably the original phrase that turns "burn me" and "ashes" into curses; in WOK, we can assume "storm" is blasphemous. I actually agree with whoever thought "Storm me" is a little unwieldy, but I get the reasoning behind it what with the role of Highstorms and the Stormfather in the world.

Body parts and functions are big ones: things meant to be private or done in private, "jerk," "shit," etc. (I've heard that "bloody" is a shortening of "By our Lord," falling under blasphemy, but as far as I know there's no real evidence, and I think a reference to menstruation is just as likely, falling under bodily functions). At the least, it's like TMI, and at worst saying something is equivalent to doing it (which is related to why we call them "curse" words). Again with WOT, RJ's "mother's milk in a cup" is actually a pretty good example. Much is made of Elayne using curses without understanding them, and in that case she, and probably most readers, is just picturing a cup full of breast milk sitting there. Not all that shocking. But when you start thinking about saying something publicly being equivalent to doing it publicly, you suddenly start getting a couple colorful images of how the mother's milk actually got in the cup-- we've never heard of breast pumps in Randland. Anyway, if we see curses referring to women's safehands later in the series, "your left-handed mother" or something, I won't be surprised.

The last one I can think of is bigotry. There was a sentence that might have touched on this in the second? prologue, when Szeth mentions something about how neither side seems to worry about the Parshendi being called "Parshendi," though I was a little surprised we didn't see any derogatory nicknames for them later. Then again, we mostly see from the viewpoints of Dalinar and Adolin or Kaladin, and I can see them not using the terms.

It was mostly Shallan and Wit who were annoying - the humor of everyone else was just fine, and sometimes even clever.

I didn't mind it with Wit so much. When your entire purpose is to provide one-liners to make fun of people, a lot of them are bound to fall flat (although I'm less sure how I feel about the whole metatextual "began as words on a page"). With Shallan, however, even when I tried to put it in the context of women meant to be demure (which I have trouble buying given the other major examples of women we get in Jasnah and her mother) and thus her outspokenness shocking, it still seemed a little much. The main problem was that the jokes often went on too long. For instance, early on the captain says to her (I'm paraphrasing, going from memory here), "Keep your wits about you," and Shallan replies, "I'd rather keep them in my head." Well, okay, maybe not the greatest joke ever, but as a quick response, off-the-modesty-cuff, you could do worse. Whatever, it's fine. But then: "If I keep my wits 'about me' someone has gotten entirely too close to me with a cudgel." What the hell, Shallan?! You just explained your punchline! I'm not funny, but even I know that's the one thing you don't do. If she had just stopped earlier... There's another example with Wit and Sadeas. Sadeas says something about how often Wit mocks him, Wit makes a joke about how easy he is to insult, which would seem again to be the punchline... but then Wit follows it up and runs with it for a little too long. This may be personal preference, the jokes may not feel played out for other people, but I guess I just like my humor brief. Thankfully later in the book it got toned down, especially after the one scene where Jasnah told Shallan to knock it off.

That was one of my few complaints. The other main one was that I'm another who had a little trouble getting into the early chapters; without much reason to care, I wasn't particularly interested in the info getting thrown at us. A little dense for the beginning, slowing down the pace a bit. On the other hand, it probably did help later when we didn't have worry so much about explanations whenever the Shards and Stormlight and Windrunning were referenced.

As for what I did like,

Kaladin jumping off the bridge at the end, then crouching with Stormlight smoking off of him was awesome. Total Sue moment, but that was just so clear in my head, a vivid image. His story in general was good; it was fun to see him turn Bridge Four into a close group. Dalinar's struggle with his guilt and fears and honor was some of the best characterization I've seen from Sanderson.

I feel like I should justify that. Sanderson often uses characters who can fit into archetypes. Rebel, rogue, etc. I actually imagine intentional, that it allows him to create distinct temperaments that his audience will instantly recognize, so the reader can separate his characters from each other by personality. The downside is that many characters can seem one-note, little more than their character type (in the first Mistborn book, Ham, Clubs, and Breeze). Anyway, Dalinar's the honorable old general. And the truth is there's not much you can do with those types of characters as there are inherently certain limits to the ways they'll act. However, the first time we see Dalinar, he's passed out drunk while his brother's being killed. It's such a brief scene many readers may miss it, but it is there, so that the next time we see him there is a noticeable change-- he wasn't always the honorable old general. More than anyone else, he seems to have agency, to be making decisions based on who he wants to be. And later, as his visions cause him to doubt his decisions, that doubt lets him more or less play against his character type. Finally, at the end, when he learns some hard truths about his visions and his supposed allies and himself, he's more willing to compromise his beliefs. Decent character arc. Now, it's not like Sanderson's never done a character arc before, but it usually dovetails neatly with his plot (I'm thinking of Kelsier in particular, but also many of the changes to Elend, Spook, and Vin). With Dalinar, I feel like he's still evolving at the end, while I still have some idea of what lines he won't cross but less of an idea of which he'll smudge a bit, and he seems more real to me because of that. On top of all that, Sanderson spends more time on the supporting casts than he has in the past, giving us what I believe is a stronger picture of them, and has added a little more complexity to them than usual. We actually know a bit about the personalities, the strengths and flaws, of his sons and his new lover and Sadeas and the king (I feel this was also true of the main Bridgerunners in Kaladin's story and of the three main players -- Jasnah, the king, and the priest -- in Shallan's story). I feel like there are fewer cyphers in his story, leading to overall better interaction with the main characters.

All in all, I'm looking forward to seeing what happens to Dalinar and Kaladin, as well as Dalinar's sons. Shallan... it didn't seem like a lot happened to her main-plot-wise, but barring the "clever" bits, I did tend to enjoy reading about her. It does seem like she'll play a more central role in the future.

Speculation time. Spren can create links to people to give certain abilities, but the abilities still require Stormlight. So I guess spren get Stormlight out of the whole thing, but they can't feed off Stormlight themselves. Dawnshards, Shardplate, Shardblades... I wonder what they're all Shards of? Are the Heralds Shards, or just the Almighty and Odium? And anyone else think the Heralds and the Voidbringers might have a space travel origin, shades of Anne McCaffrey and Tad Williams, or was that just me?

[Werthead]

UK readers holding off for the mass-market paperback should be warned that Gollancz have confirmed that the book will be published in two volumes in mmpb. Frankly, it would be more economical to get the tradeback now.

[Mjolnir]

Least we now know GRRM novels aren't the only ones this happens to, and that it's not something unique to Voyager.

[delete this account pls]

Bumping the thread because I just finished this. First gripe out of the way, I read this on a Kindle app on my PC, and it was well below par. There were two to three spelling errors in every chapter, and formatting mistakes on nearly every page/screen/whatever. None of this is the fault of the book itself, but it pissed me off. It was an inferior product.

As for the novel, I liked it well enough, but for me Sanderson is still a ways behind the top tier of fantasy authors. The dialogue can be a little stilted at times, and the humour was usually downright painful. I also kind of agree that the exposition is a little unwieldy at times. I understand that it's difficult getting these descriptions across at times, but I think Sanderson can try a little harder. If he's going to use the third-person limited POV style, then he has to play by those rules. A character who is about to go into battle isn't going to pause to recite the origin and history of the conflict to himself. I do cut him some slack on this because it's a very hard thing to do, and I feel a bit like GRRM has spoiled me, because he's so damn good at it.

The PG-13 approach to sex can also be a little annoying at times. I don't want or need to see characters fucking in every chapter (if I never have to read a description of Samwell Tarly's cock again, I'll die a happy man), but the complete absence of it is telling. Take the character of Adolin for example. He must be the most chaste playboy I've ever seen. We did get a blatantly post-coital scene towards the end there though, so I guess he's trying?

I'll spoiler the rest because I'm getting into specifics;

For a while there, I was hoping Kaladin was going to go all Spartacus on everyones ass and spark a massive slave revolt, so I couldn't help but feel a little dissapointed at the way his storyline went. But that's my own fault really. But still, how cool would that have been? There ain't enough peasant revolts in fantasy if you ask me... Anyway, overall, I thought Kaladin was the most fleshed out character. I give Sanderson props for making the standard fantasy archetype of the "chosen one" into a fully developed human being.

The flood of plot twists at the end kept me on my toes. From Sadeas' betrayal onwards, it felt like the rug was continually pulled out from under me. Very well done.

Some intriguing plot threads set up. Obviously the next book will build to a showdown between Szeth and Kaladin. Kaladin and Amaran will also probably face each other at some point. I also thought the various mentions of Old magic and the Nightwatcher very interesting, and I'd like to know exactly what the boon is that Dalinar was granted.

The world itself is fascinating. There's a lot to explore here.

Anyway, despite my gripes, I did enjoy it. I'll be checking out the next one.

[Bronn is God]

I am nearly halfway through this monster of a book, and its good - but a story is yet to develop. I mean, 400 pages in and we are still dealing with Parshmen vs Alth's on the plains. Absolutely nothing has developed.

It is frustrating. I do fear that this book will end up disappointing me, but hopefully Sanderson will pull a Deadhouse Gates out of his ass for book 2 and mind rape me.

Dalinar thusfar has been a bore. The Szeth-son-son interludes have been more interesting than his whole story. The writing is also... childish - but then again, the only other fantasy I have read is GRRM, who is simply a god at writing and SE, who's writing is so convoluted it looks well written. Sanderson's writing is very simplistic, a good thing about it is that it managed to keep me hooked for a good period of time. Were this a more difficult novel, I would have read it at a snails pace.

Planning to finish this in 2 months max.

[Kosciuszko]

I'm about 90% sure the next book focuses on Shallan (I think that's her name?) as opposed to Kaladin and a showdown with Szeth next-book. I read this from several sources, though originally it was meant to be a Dalinar-centric book.

I think its too soon to really pronounce Kaladin a Chosen One or the main character as well. He was the main character of the first book but I'm around 85% sure the other two primary characters of the book are just as important to the overall plot as him.

[Jerec]

I think we're going to get an ensemble cast of Chosen Ones. Kaladin, Dalinar, Shallan... others.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Wert,

This one is waiting for the release date to make it's way to my house. Then again I really liked the LPQ. Hope this is Abraham's breakout book.