The Way of Kings: Stormlight Archives Book 1 by Brandon Sanderson
Well, did a 4 hour marathon last night and finished this 1,000 page book up. Been running on 3 hours sleep because of that and looking up stuff afterwards. Going to pass out soon, but time to write about it!
It was good, not great imo. I've been reading Sanderson's Cosmere universe stuff in release order and this is like book 6 of 11 (and then there's a short story collection & a 3 volume graphic novel series). His other stuff is like half this length and I felt like less stuff happened in this book than the other ones I've read.
For being the first book of a large scope fantasy epic (10 books total, 2 arcs of 5 books with book #4 out this fall and book #5 planned for fall 2023 ending the first arc), the scope feels pretty small. There's only really 3 viewpoints and coming from GRRM's ASOIAF with a dozen viewpoints it feels kinda restricted, especially because I don't feel the extra time spent with these characters really developed them and progressed their storylines more than a character would in a GRRM book. For everyone involved it's still basically the intro chapter of introducing the characters, introducing the world lore and world building and then ending after the intro chapter. If this was a TV show, this would be a 2 hour premiere movie or maybe 4 eps max.
Then again, ASOIAF didn't need a ton of world building early on since it was a fairly realistic medieval england warfare world. Stormlight is a sci-fi fantasy world that's very diverged from our reality so there's more to explain and set up.
That being said, the world isn't that interesting so far and the characters aren't as good as some of Sanderson's previous characters in his earlier books. There's a lot of combat (maybe too much) and the best character point of view is essentially a clone of Stannis (which I mean I'm all for since Stannis is awesome). 50+ year old stoic integrity military commander with zero people skills and even also a brother of a dead king!
At the end of the day, the book was
fine and when things finally started coming together in the last couple hundred pages it was satisfying. That said I really hope book #2 is much better and story-focused since all the setup was done here (and so.many.flashbacks).
Fwiw, I've only read two large scope epic series in my life. ASOIAF and The Dark Tower. So I'm totally comparing this to both of those and it's not as good in book #1. Also Sanderson's stuff is a bit too pg-13 happy, as this was his big fantasy epic start I was expecting it to go a lot darker by the end of the book to setup the story, but things never happened as bad as I expected coming from GRRM or even King.
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But yeah, since there's not gonna be an arc conclusion until 2023 I'm in no rush to jump into the next one and will take my time. Not sure what I'll read next. I want to finish Stephen King's "On Writing" which I started on a flight last fall. But after that need something new that's not King or Sanderson. I want to read some great classics. I never read Fantasy novels until like 8 years ago when Game of Thrones TV started so I have a lot to catch up on, mostly read sci-fi and horror my whole life.
Thinking about reading Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic next. I think I maaay have read it as a kid, but I also think I only played some of the Discworld games and read Good Omens in terms of Pratchett's stuff. Always kinda associated him with Douglas Adams and I read all the Douglas Adam's books, so I might've read some Discworld. Maybe. But I'm always up for good satire/comedy, so that seems like it'd be a fun pick up.
Otherwise, I saw a thread last night on Dan Simmon's Hyperion and looked it up and apparently it's a pretty famous and well regarded sci-fi fantasy book. So maybe I'll read that.
Also feel like maybe I should read Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time?
I've never read Ender's Game because Orson Scott Card always seemed like a shitty person so I avoided his stuff. But people seem to think real highly of that as a sci-fi book.
Although both of those are starts of series and I kind of just want to read standalone books while I'm reading through all this Cosmere stuff. Any recommendations? The types of books I like besides Stephen King/Sanderson/GRRM are stuff like Neil Gaiman, Douglas Adam, I liked Ready Player One.
Things I'm not into anymore/right now is high-brow lit stuff like Pychon and Vonnegut, non-fiction. I just want my horror/fantasy/sci-fi videogame junk food fiction books. The more interesting lore and stuff the better.