Review of "Way of Kings"

I am currently listening to the audio-book of Brandon Sanderson's "The Way of Kings." I've read the book before, and I have at least a hundred other new books to read so I shouldn't be spending my reading time listening to it, but I can't help myself. It's really good. Plus, I just moved and I don't have most of my books (that's mostly true).

So while I am listening to it, I thought I would write up a book review and post it. I don't know how well this will go, as I am extremely biased because this book is just that good and I love Brandon Sanderson('s writing). But I will do my best to not just gush over the book.

The first thing I should say about Way of Kings is that it is ungodly long. Like really long. Longer than Game of Thrones. It is a massive novel and it is the first in a series that is still in-progress. Last I checked, Sanderson was planning to write ten books in the series. So yeah...there's that. It's also high fantasy, but that's kinda my thing. It's what I'm into.

Way of Kings is about two main characters: Kaladin and Shallan. It starts off, however, with a prologue featuring an assassin named Szeth (after a seperate prologue for the series as a whole). Szeth is really cool, but we get very little from him beyond the opening chapter and a few others. The story is really about the other characters.

Sanderson takes a very interesting approach in that he introduces both characters (separately) at a point in time and over the course of the books tells their relevant backstories. With Kaladin, we meet him for a chapter and then immediately jump forward several years following a significant and life changing event. The story continues from this point in time, hinting at what happened to him but focusing initially only on flashbacks to his youth that lead up to where we first saw him. This can be quite frustrating at time because you want to know what happened, but Sanderson does a great job of keeping the story interesting and never leaving out details that you need to know. His pacing is well done, if incredibly long, and his word-building is amazing. In fact, that is probably what I enjoyed the most about the book.

The world in which this story takes place is incredibly well fleshed out, and that is very apparent. We see multiple countries and cultures with numerous races. There are entire belief systems that are well defined and interesting. Culturally, people with light eyes are the nobility (an interesting concept). What I appreciate the most is that you never feel like you are just being told about the world because you need to know. There isn't any needless exposition and there isn't some foreign character who is there just to receive detailed explanations about culture, history, and other stuff. You just sort of pick up the details as you read.

Overall, I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who enjoys fantasy books and isn't daunted by the size of the book. It is definitely a long one, but if you are able and willing to work your way through it the story is worth it. I also recommend the audio-book for this series, as it is very well read (though it is 45 hours long).