I have actually managed to finish The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. Although, I don’t think I would’ve managed it without the audiobook…
I loved the world-building and the diverse array of cultures and people we get to experience through many perspectives.
The characters are deeply flawed in the best way. They have great inner character development and you clearly see their growth from beginning to end. Every one of their stories ends differently than how you thought they would. I won’t spoil it but he ending had me rooting for them and so excited.
That being said…. I have nitpicks
Possibly the biggest nitpick is some of the dialogue is just laughable. Particularly Shallan’s early conversations which were supposed to be witty just felt childish and awkward. her character I found to be a bit annoying because of this but I don’t think it’s the actual character, but the dialogue I didn’t like. There were other instances with Dalinar and Kaladin which also had some unnatural and awkward dialogue.
The “interludes” were a bit jarring the first time reading this. They felt completely unnecessary and you never revisited the characters shown in one chapter. I’m partway listening to this a second time and now I can connect the dots and see how SOME of these flow to the current story. I’m sure they will be more relevant in later books.
The story itself I didn’t find all that interesting. The Alethi culture I find confusing and annoying to be honest. That is the point of them but why would a group of people who have a great many ardents that study history, philosophy and everything else not look into the Parshendi?? Why would they not discover more about their battle tactics and how their culture works?
A huge point of Dalinar’s character is that he is apparently the ONLY one who realizes the war has to end at some point. Not one other person does anything to help this war to end. I still don’t understand how Brandon managed to make 60% of this story about going and getting gem hearts because it’s not that interesting… at all. We don’t know if there are any true consequences if they don’t have enough. They are living in wealth and comfort… the only reason they are doing “battle” for these gem hearts is because of status. It’s dumb.
The beginning and middle of the story I begrudgingly listened through but the ending made me want to read the second book. It all came together but I don’t think it needed 45 hours (or 1000 pages) to get there.
Okay girlies Sanderson crit moment. I’ve been making jokes about comparing the Stormlight characters to superheroes, but I realized that the fundamental conflict between Kaladin and Moash in Words of Radiance would be more compelling and make more narrative sense if it took place in a superhero setting. Kaladin’s “No… I can’t kill… it’s not who I am… this isn’t justice” just doesn’t work when sandwiched between his butchering hundreds of listeners and singers. He cuts through singers like it’s nothing, and he only ever feels bad about it once, in Oathbringer, and then I guess just resolves that guilt and decides to keep killing them, telling himself he’s honorable because he doesn’t kill the Fused fliers. Literally if you put them in a setting where Kaladin refused to kill, and Moash proffered the idea of killing Elhokar as their one exception, and that created a schism between them, that would be so much more compelling than what we got, which was a handwave when Kaladin brought up that he’s killed a lot of more innocent people. You could even incorporate his time as a soldier and having killed then, in a Rurouni Kenshin type “the man so good at killing, so skilled with a spear, refuses to kill again.” Instead, Kaladin’s nonviolent ethos comes up with the people in positions of power and the literal single white character in the story.
windrunners are not skybreakers. they’re not bound by law; they’re bound by their own internal moral code. you could argue desertion from the army is illegal and violates the oath you make upon enlisting, but so long as the windrunner believes it to be morally wrong to continue serving that oath, they may break it. kaladin made a promise to graves and moash that he broke because he determined it was morally wrong to adhere to it. he could just as easily have decided it was morally wrong to adhere to his oath to dalinar and followed through on the oath to assist in the assassination. the problem was that he’d sworn two conflicting oaths, not that one was objectively wrong and one objectively right. he just had to decide which aligned with his worldview.
[Image description: a digital drawing of Kaladin and Adolin from the Stormlight Archive, facing each other. They’re seen from mid-torso up. On the left, Adolin is depicted as a young man with brown skin and mixed blonde and black hair. He wears a white shirt with gold embroidery. His eyes are mostly closed as he smiles, and his hands are on either side of Kaladin’s head. On the right, Kaladin mirrors his expression and posture. He has curly black hair pulled back into a tail, and he wears a blue uniform coat with gold braiding. The background is a dark blue. End ID.]
like idk guys i know i sound increasingly like im lying/joking/doing a bit by posting stuff like this and saying the artistic intent wasnt “ship art” but youre really gonna have to trust me here
[Image description: a digital drawing of Kaladin and Adolin from the Stormlight Archive, facing each other. They’re seen from mid-torso up. On the left, Adolin is depicted as a young man with brown skin and mixed blonde and black hair. He wears a white shirt with gold embroidery. His eyes are mostly closed as he smiles, and his hands are on either side of Kaladin’s head. On the right, Kaladin mirrors his expression and posture. He has curly black hair pulled back into a tail, and he wears a blue uniform coat with gold braiding. The background is a dark blue. End ID.]
like idk guys i know i sound increasingly like im lying/joking/doing a bit by posting stuff like this and saying the artistic intent wasnt “ship art” but youre really gonna have to trust me here
A ship drawing request from my Bf of Kaladin, Shallan and Adolin from the Stormlight Archives :) I have not read the series yet myself so I really hope I did them justice! He finds such comfort in these stories and it’s characters
If you lined up Kaladin, Shallan and Adolin, and then asked someone “guess which of these people is not okay with killing in cold blood”, I don’t think they’d expect the answer.
ALT
