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A review by josiahdegraaf
The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson
4.0
UPDATED REVIEW: After a second read-through almost exactly six years later, I can confirm that this book does even better the second time around. The characters of this book truly are fantastic--and this time there weren't any plotlines that I didn't like reading about. Perhaps it's just the benefits of knowing where all the characters are going in future books of the story. But there's also just a lot to appreciate in this book in-and-of itself. A great start to what is arguably the best fantasy series currently being published today.
ORIGINAL REVIEW: What a book.
While on the face of it, this book is a 1,000 page-long behemoth of a book, it really didn't feel all that long. Once it got going, it really got going and I read through most of it within a couple of days, and so it was short in that way. But, at the end of it, the story doesn't seem like a 1,000 page story either. Honestly, the story of this book COULD have been fit into a regular 250 page novel. It just would have lacked all the nuance and character depth that Sanderson was able to dive into when working with this sort of length.
Because this is the first book in a projected ten-book series, a lot of this novel is simply introducing the characters and the world for future books. But the characters. This was what really justified the 1,000 page length for me. Normally when a story features split plots between two characters, I care about one character much more than the other and skim past the more boring character. And to be fair, there was a storyline in this book that I didn't care as much about. But this was the first book I read to feature two main characters with different plot lines and scenes where both of them were just as interesting as the other.
I could talk a lot about the fantastic worldbuilding in this book, but I won't due to time, other than to say it's awesome. I will say something, though about how this book handles religions, because honestly, while this has always been one of Sanderson's strengths, it just gets better in this book. His ability to sympathetically portray both a reasonable atheist and a fundamentalist-esque, hard-lined theist is simply fantastic, and I wish that more Christian authors would follow his example in not needing to over-generalize religious beliefs in this regard.
Overall, this was a book that I very much enjoyed reading and that has very much peaked my interest in continuing on with this series. Due to the fact that it's mostly a set-up book for future epicness, I can't justify giving it more than four stars. But it does earn itself a very solid 4 stars. And if future books in the series build off of this book well (as I expect they will), this is definitely a series for the avid fantasy reader to pay attention to.
Rating: 4-4.5 Stars (Very Good).
ORIGINAL REVIEW: What a book.
While on the face of it, this book is a 1,000 page-long behemoth of a book, it really didn't feel all that long. Once it got going, it really got going and I read through most of it within a couple of days, and so it was short in that way. But, at the end of it, the story doesn't seem like a 1,000 page story either. Honestly, the story of this book COULD have been fit into a regular 250 page novel. It just would have lacked all the nuance and character depth that Sanderson was able to dive into when working with this sort of length.
Because this is the first book in a projected ten-book series, a lot of this novel is simply introducing the characters and the world for future books. But the characters. This was what really justified the 1,000 page length for me. Normally when a story features split plots between two characters, I care about one character much more than the other and skim past the more boring character. And to be fair, there was a storyline in this book that I didn't care as much about. But this was the first book I read to feature two main characters with different plot lines and scenes where both of them were just as interesting as the other.
I could talk a lot about the fantastic worldbuilding in this book, but I won't due to time, other than to say it's awesome. I will say something, though about how this book handles religions, because honestly, while this has always been one of Sanderson's strengths, it just gets better in this book. His ability to sympathetically portray both a reasonable atheist and a fundamentalist-esque, hard-lined theist is simply fantastic, and I wish that more Christian authors would follow his example in not needing to over-generalize religious beliefs in this regard.
Overall, this was a book that I very much enjoyed reading and that has very much peaked my interest in continuing on with this series. Due to the fact that it's mostly a set-up book for future epicness, I can't justify giving it more than four stars. But it does earn itself a very solid 4 stars. And if future books in the series build off of this book well (as I expect they will), this is definitely a series for the avid fantasy reader to pay attention to.
Rating: 4-4.5 Stars (Very Good).