The Way of Kings

The Stormlight Archive #1 - "The Way of Kings" by Brandon Sanderson

 

I suppose this is me having another crack at trying to delve into a large fantasy series. Something I can really lose myself in. A capsule I can swallow every day and be entire submerged inside a world where the escapism on offer leaves me blind to the reality of my own life. That's the attraction. After GRRM's failure the deliver further story to his magnum opus, in the span of 15 years since his last entry, I and perhaps numerous other fans looked for a new home and a younger more proflific horse to back.

Sanderson looked the part. He'd won respect in the fantasy world for at least going out there and finishing off Jordan's Wheel of Time. He'd created a heuristic guide for magic systems in fantasy works. Within the field of the 'modern' fantasy author having found success, his writing ability and prose could have, possibly, been adjacent to GRRM, at least that's what I'd hoped and speculated. I thought the narrative here was that the genre had indeed matured and started to embrace higher literary standards, even if that was as fundamental as avoiding tropes and stereotypical hero characters. 

After all, if you want to make it big, you want to start rubbing shoulders with the world of TV and turning the right heads. You'd want to convince that world that your work isn't ripe for saturday morning cartoons, but a gritty adult TV series full of political scheming and devoid of juvenile Disney wizards and caped heroes. That you'd of course respect Tolkien from an academic perspective, yet were very much part of the evolotion of fantasy and were lightning years away from sons of blacksmiths on quests to destroy ancient, evil rings and swords and nasty goblins! 

I like my dragons and I like my dungeons. If an author wishing to write fantasy feels that these bastions of post-Tolkien fantasy are weathered relics best left in low budget 80s movies, and wants to work with more 'mature' material (I've heard incest is all the rage nowadays), I'll buy into that as well.  

This review encompasses the first couple books of this series. Technically, this meant that I had read 4 published books that are split into respective parts 1 & 2, totalling over 2000 pages which each 'tome' approx. 500-700pgs.

Sanderson's prose is functional. There's nothing fantastical or poetic here. This choice (or dare I say limitation of the author) does however offer an impressive amount of clarity and accessibility to the reader. After all, this isn't writing to fawn or marvel over from an academic, wine-tasting position. These are tomes to plough through half-asleep before bed or on your daily commute. The world building and plot were also serviceable, yet after hundreds of pages you might find, like myself, that this wasn't time well spent, and perhaps a false investment.

Moden day fantasy authors like Sanderson seem to be far more interested in finding the longest possible way to tell their stories and build the worlds these characters live in, a lá R. Jordan. A modest trilogy just doesn't cut it when you and your publisher can print a 14-part series, breaking down each entry into several volumes.

The introduction of further POV characters isn't irksome in itself, but seemed to provide Sanderson with another trick to prolong any sense of urgency in driving home any cohesive narrative, to the point that different character arcs predominated in existence only to deny the reader a sense of progress and very much a 'two steps back' reining in of the plot.

There also lacks any sense of intrigue or mystery, with rudimentary flashbacks showcasing an order of soldiers; forshadowing where our POV characters are going to end up; a glimpse of where the plot will inevitably go, but barred off until you've read another thousand pages or purchased sufficient amount of volumes.

Of course, fans that have handed over hours of their reading quota to Sanderson will no doubt cry 'just keep going, it gets good by book 7!' (or is that 3-4 1000 page books?) and for most of us, this isn't a marriage we're willing to enter. Hopefully my review helps the reader make an informed decision so that said marriage might come across as more consensual.

The Stormlight Archive currently sits at a total of 5 books and 3 novellas. Sanderson's said the 'latter half' of this series is still to come, so there will be at least another 5 novels (or 5000 pages). Of course, if this wasn't enough commitment for the reader -- Sanderson's "Cosmere" universe now spans across several series which no doubt are all (perhaps gently) interconnected.

This is very much a 'turn back, dragons ahead' response from me.