Guest Post | Mieneke of A Fantastical Librarian Reviews The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson

I may have wondered a bit beforehand, but once the emails went out to all the folks I hoped would help keep The Speculative Scotsman awesome whilst I sunned myself in the States, and the guest blogs started trickling in, there was never any question whose post was going to lead the pack.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the marvelous Mieneke of A Fantastic Librarian!

To begin with, she was the first to submit a something. And this in spite of the fact that her extenuating circumstances were surely amongst the worst: at the time, she was mere days away from having this beautiful baby girl.

I am of course immensely grateful to everyone who took a little time - or indeed a lot - to help a brother blogger out, but I expect we can agree that Mieneke went above and beyond to inform and entertain and I don't doubt delight you all in my absence.

In the following review, she offers her unique perspective on the vast first volume of The Stormlight Archive, which - as she generously mentions - I also reviewed way back when. Actually, it was one of the first, if not THE first review someone paid me actual money to publish.

But I digress... from America!

Over to you, Mieneke. :)

***

Buy this book from:

Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com

IndieBound / The Book Depository

"According to mythology mankind used to live in The Tranquiline Halls. Heaven. But then the Voidbringers assaulted and captured heaven, casting out God and men. Men took root on Roshar, the world of storms. And the Voidbringers followed...

"They came against man ten thousand times. To help them cope, the Almighty gave men powerful suits of armor and mystical weapons, known as Shardblades. Led by ten angelic Heralds and ten orders of knights known as Radiants, mankind finally won.

"Or so the legends say. Today, the only remnants of those supposed battles are the Shardblades, the possession of which makes a man nearly invincible on the battlefield. The entire world is at war with itself - and has been for centuries since the Radiants turned against mankind. Kings strive to win more Shardblades, each secretly wishing to be the one who will finally unite all of mankind under a single throne.

"On a world scoured down to the rock by terrifying hurricanes that blow through every few days young spearman forced into the army of a Shardbearer, led to war against an enemy he doesn't understand and doesn't really want to fight.

"What happened deep in mankind's past?

"Why did the Radiants turn against mankind, and what happened to the magic they used to wield?"

***

One of the most buzzed about releases of 2010, The Way of Kings is the first in a projected ten book series called The Stormlight Archive. And to be honest, I wasn't planning on starting this series, not until there were at least several installments of the book out and a reasonable chance of the series being finished. Because, let's face it, big name epic fantasy series running over a trilogy are challenged these days – *cough* George R.R. Martin *cough* Peter V. Brett *cough* Scott Lynch *cough* – not the least of which is The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan, which Sanderson is finishing after Jordan's far-too-early passing. In fact, the only series of the same door-stopper scope and number finished in recent years is Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen. So, no wonder I was hesitant to start another series, no? And then we visited London last year and, completely unexpectedly, had the chance to attend a signing by Sanderson for the paperback edition of The Way of Kings at Forbidden Planet.

And having gotten the paperbacks signed and at home, of course I had to read them, regardless of any reservations. And I read both parts of the paperbacks back to back over the course of five days, so that should be an indication of how much I enjoyed this book. 

The Way of Kings is a fascinating work, mixing several different viewpoints into a whole that reads like the epic fantasy of old. Combine this with some excellent battle scenes, political intrigue and an interesting magic system and Sanderson definitely had my attention. Before I turn my attention to the story, a bit about the physical copies themselves. The original hardback has been split into two paperbacks, due to length. All the chapter headings are illuminated with lovely headers and each has a sort of badge with identifies from whose perspective this chapter is written. Interspersed throughout the book are illustrations of sketches, purportedly taken from Shallan's sketchbook, maps and other relevant documents which enrich the story and were very pretty to boot.

Sanderson is known for his world building chops. It is no wonder then that The Way of Kings is filled to the brim with world building, without being overtly info-dumped. From the little epigraphs at the start of most chapters, to Shallan's research into the origins of the Plains war, to Kaladin's flashback chapters, Sanderson manages to give us a grounding in the history of Roshar. One of the world building aspects that garners Sanderson a lot of praise is his magic system. However, it doesn't take so much of a front seat in The Way of Kings as I'd expected. Yes, there are some magic workers, such as the White assassin, who can defy gravity, and the Princess Jasnah, who works a magic named Soulcasting and of course there's the magic of the ancients that produced the artifacts called Shardblades and Shardplates. But none of these is actually explained.

There are seven viewpoints throughout the five parts that make up the book. Four of these are the main points of view: Kaladin, a slave/soldier who is leader of one of the bridge crews in Dalinar's army, Shallan, a young girl seeking to learn at Princess Jasnah's feet, Dalinar, uncle to the king and one of his main commanders and Adolin, Dalinar's son. The three others only have a few chapters to their names: Navani, the Dowager Queen, Szeth, the White assassin and Wit, the King's jester. In addition there are several characters who have points of view only once in the interludes. While I found all four of the main point of view characters sympathetic, my favourite has to be Kaladin. He's the one we spend the most time with and I'd argue he's was the true heart of at least this first book of The Stormlight Archive. He's clever, resourceful and a consummate soldier, who cares deeply for the welfare of his men, even if they are considered nothing but the lowest rabble in the army and plain cannon fodder during plateau assaults.

I really enjoyed The Way of Kings, admittedly more than I'd expected to. I know this isn't a very in-depth review for the very hefty tome that these two paperbacks make up, but a combination of pregnancy brain and having read this book over six months ago – it's one of the first backlogged books due to my being sick in the early part of my pregnancy – mean that I don't really feel qualified to say more on this book. If you'd like to read some more in-depth reviews, you can find some at The Wertzone, Stomping on Yeti or The Speculative Scotsman's review at Strange Horizons.

[So you were saving the best for last, then? :P - Niall]

All that is left for me to say is that I'll definitely be around to see where Sanderson takes Kaladin, Shallan and the rest in the next book, which is tentatively scheduled for early 2013. Let's hope that after Sanderson finishes A Memory of Light, the final Wheel of Time book, he'll be able to dedicate himself fully to The Stormlight Archive and we won't have to wait as long between books, as we know that he's a very quick and prolific writer.

*** 

From the bottom of my heart, Mieneke: thank you for getting this whole thing off to such a great start. Here's hoping life with bookish baby the second is going absolutely fabulously for you, and that one day in the not-too-distant you'll have time to read another book! :)

Remember, you can find Mieneke blogging over at A Fantastical Librarian, and you damn well should, too. She's tremendously talented, and without doubt one of the very loveliest of us. And to my mind that counts for a lot in this day of faceless blog conglomerates along the lines of io9.

That's it from me and Mieneke for the day, anyway, but do drop in on The Speculative Scotsman and Friends again tomorrow for another something special!

The Way of Things

That sound you hear? Or rather, the sound you don't; the absence, let us say, of the one-man hubbub-band you'll find here on The Speculative Scotsman most days - well. It isn't radio silence. It's the sound of me being published.

Can I hear a hell yeah? :D

Now the canny amongst you may have spotted my review of The Way of Kings already. It went up yesterday, over at Strange Horizons, an online magazine I've been reading for years. Years! The notion that one day the esteemed editors might see fit to publish a review of mine alongside criticism from the likes of Yellow Blue Tibia author Adam Roberts and fiction from (this week alone) Lavie Tidhar... well, it was an idle one at best.

But there I am, right there on the front page of Strange Horizons, and damn it all, I couldn't be happier. So it's a pleasure to break the news to those of you who've been tolerating my burbling since I kicked TSS off on new year's day, eight months ago. The latecomers, too. I couldn't - I wouldn't - have thought to submit a thing to professional forum I hold in such high regard (and I'm hardly alone in that) were it not for your support. So thank you.

Now then. Clicky here, if you will, and see what I had to say about Brandon Sanderson's designs on The Wheel of Time. You might need snacks; it's a long 'un.

Excerpt Emporium: More Free Brandon Sanderson

An except of the prologue through to the third chapter of The Way of Kings marked my first taste of Brandon Sanderson's fiction - read about my experiences here if you missed them first time out. In short, I had a fine time. I don't know that I yet love Sanderson's work, but I certainly came away from the excerpt over at Tor.com hungry for more.

My proof - one of but a few to have made it all the way across the Atlantic, I'm given to understand - arrived in the mail a few days after I put up the aforementioned post. I still haven't picked it up.

I think that might be symptomatic of the book malaise I've been suffering from these past few weeks. I've read little of note since The Passage, to be perfectly honest. Johannes Cabal the Necromancer left me largely nonplussed; I didn't love The Holy Machine as much as I'd expected to; and my current read, The Unit, is (in the early-going at least) a bit too gun-porn for my liking.

It's nothing to stress about, mind you. The best and the worst of us feel this kind of fatigue once in a while. The Speculative Scotsman won't be taking a sabbatical, my stubborness alone will see to that - reviews of each and every one of those books will make it onto the blog shortly, have no fear. For the last little while I've feeling a bit meh about reading; it's as simple as that.

So let me tell you what perked me up. Following in the footsteps of the excerpt of The Way of Kings that graced Tor.com a few weeks yonder, a second selection from Brandon Sanderson's mammoth new novel just appeared on the site. This time in audio form. It's Kate Reading and Michael Kramer starting where the last except left off, narrating chapters four through six of The Way of Kings, and their reading got this bookworm's blood pumping all over again. I'm particularly enjoying Kalladin's perspective on the slave caravan.

There doesn't seem to have been half such a hew and cry over the audio excerpt as accompanied the release of the first selection, so consider yourself well and truly on notice, ladies and gentlemen. The Way of Kings only gets better. If you haven't already, read the first three chapters here - you only need register at Tor.com - and then go listen to the second excerpt. Doctor's orders, you hear?

How I Lost My Brandon Sanderson Virginity

Brandon Sanderson is a name that's been gaining traction in fantasy circles for years now, like a pebble let loose down a slope quilted in soft snow: the further he's travelled, the bigger he's gotten. Exponentially so. He's accumulated such staggering momentum going from Elantris in 2005 through to Warbreaker and the much ballyhooed-about Mistborn trilogy... and it wouldn't do to forget his contribution to the last movements of The Wheel of Time, would it? In terms of awareness - and no doubt sales - that latter alone has seen Sanderson accelerate from mach five to faster than light in such a short space of time that he has to be the envy of every gradually rising genre author on the face of the planet.

Now I tend to read all the big genre releases - just to keep up with the scene, such as it is. But... I really don't care for The Wheel of Time. I'm sorry, guys; nothing the late and oft-lamented Robert Jordan wrote in his lifetime spoke to me at all. And though I'm more interested in the series now that Sanderson has taken the reins than I ever have been before, I'm not one to jump into a multi-volume epic fantasy on book twelve, nor can I foresee an occasion when I have the time to catch up on the multitude of doorstoppers before it, so I passed on The Gathering Storm, as I'll skip Towers of Midnight and A Memory of Light. I mean no slight on either author in so doing, but The Wheel of Time just isn't for me.

Sanderson's original work, however, is another thing entirely, though I'll 'fess up here and now: despite owning a complete set of the beautifully rejacketed Mistborn trilogy, he's another of the long list of prolific fantasy authors I've somehow managed to miss. Courtesy of #bookfail, a new feature I'm working on for The Speculative Scotsman about the gaping holes in my own experience of genre fiction, you'll soon have the opportunity to learn which other speculative greats I am ignorant of. George R. R. Martin, anyone? Richard Morgan?

But let's not get ahead of ourselves just yet.

Because over the weekend, I made a move towards remedying one such glaring oversight: with the generous excerpt of The Way of Kings posted on tor.com - the equivalent of 50 pages in length - I finally popped my Brandon Sanderson cherry. You'll know about this promotional blitz already, I'm sure. Aidan covered it on A Dribble of Ink; as did Patrick, Werthead and everyone's favourite albino carebear, along with near enough every other blogger. And don't think I wouldn't have too, had it not been for Mark Charan Newton week.

As is, I'm coming late to the party, but I'm coming armed to the teeth. See, I've actually read the excerpt - and this, I would add, isn't something I usually do. The sheer frustration of starting a story via such a thing and then having to wait months to read the rest of it usually wins out, in my case. But I'm told there's a galley of The Way of Kings winging its way to me as I write this, and so I thought, what the hell, and dug in.

And it's a curious thing, this excerpt. It's taken from the very beginning of the book - indeed, from the very beginning of a series that Sanderson has said could last for ten volumes - and it's a huge book at that, clocking in at just shy of 400,000 words. Suffice it say, then, that it's all about introductions. In the prelude to The Stormlight Archive, we meet Kalak, one of ten immortal men caught in a seemingly endless cycle of death and destruction. In the aftermath of an horrendous battle with a thunderclast, an "enormous stone beast... with unnaturally long limbs that sprouted from granite shoulder," another of the immortals informs Kalak that they have decided to end the centuries-old Oathpact that binds them together. They go on their way, vowing not to seek one another out...

And from prelude to prologue, set 4500 years later. In To Kill, Sanderson introduces us to Szeth, a Truthless, which is to say an assassin, tasked by the Parshendi with the murder of Gavilar, the Alethi King. There's talk of stormlight, shardblades, magic, culture and uprising, and then there's a huge fight during which gravity takes a backseat.

In the three brief chapters which follow, three more narrators: Cenn, an anxious and inexperienced new recruit caught in a brutal border skirmish; Kaladin, Cenn's former commander, now a particularly dangerous slave with designs on his freedom; and Shallan, the last hope of a once-great family, who hopes to become the ward of a heretic Princess.

It's a lot to take in, all told, and without the context of what comes after, I fatigued a little each time Sanderson introduced a new perspective to the narrative. And yet each of the tale-tellers holds their own. Each serves to illuminate a different aspect of the world of The Stormlight Archive, and though, come to that, there's a fair amount of worldbuilding, Sanderson filters it well. Shallan's arrival in Kharbranth, after following in the wake of the Princess for six months, is as good a reason as any to show off the so-called City of Bells, just as Cenn's recruitment is an ideal means to introduce the reader to the wars which rage to this day.

And there's nary a lull in the action. From the prelude through to the first chapter, there's no short supply of fights and flights, adeptly told and brutal in their way without ever erring on the war-porn that's come to be so prevalent in modern fantasy - Sanderson even dispatches a major character in that time, though I won't say who. Kaladin and Shallan's chapters, meanwhile, are less literally action-packed, but even in these sequences there's movement, a sense of purposefulness that keep you interested. And hardly a page goes by without Sanderson introduction one fascinating new aspect of his world or another: from sprens, tiny creatures that are essentially externalisations of elements and emotions, as the daemons were to the soul in His Dark Materials, to marble-skinned parshmen and the aforementioned thunderclasts, the flora and fauna of The Stormlight Archive appear by all accounts rich, detailed, and moreover, intriguing.

The word on the street is that Tor will make more excerpts from The Way of Kings available as we close in on the release date in late August, and were it not for the ARC I have on the way - you do not need to tell me how lucky I am, incidentally - you could be sure I'd read them as and when they appear. This excerpt mightn't have been the best introduction to the work of Brandon Sanderson, what with all the (mostly necessary) scene-setting and the lack of any further context against which to measure the (somewhat overwhelming) cast of characters introduced herein, but I can say with certainly that I'm desperate to read more of The Way of Kings.

And isn't that exactly what excerpts such as this are supposed to achieve?

And Unto All Good Things, An End

From the reviews of Nights of Villjamur on Monday and City of Ruin on Friday through the behemoth of an interview than ran in two parts across Tuesday and Thursday, not forgetting Mark's guest post on six of his literary influences and the giveaway of a signed proof, it's been quite a week, hasn't it?

I tend to suspect there've been a good few new visitors to The Speculative Scotsman in the interim, too. Well... I say suspect, I do have Google Analytics you know, and the hits - shall we just say the click-through rate has been astonishing? I don't suppose it's such a great surprise. Mark's been pimping the articles every which way, gentleman scholar that he is; near-enough every article has been retweeted to hell and back (thanks guys!); Pat from the ubiquitous Fantasy Hotlist posted a link, much to my surprise; and the interview made it into SF Signal's daily tidbits round-up.

So to all those of you who've just now found the blog, a very warm welcome; it's a pleasure to have you here. I do hope you'll stay a while. And in case you're wondering, I do write about other stuff too. Next week, for instance: video games (one in particular), Seamus Cooper's dead dog blues, my thoughts on Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings excerpt, and more. Yes, more! What a busy little blogger I am...

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. I hope you'll agree, the first themed week on TSS has been a huge success - so much so that I'm tempted to make it a themed month, but alas, Mark has only written so many books. Speaking of whom, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the man. Let's be honest here: what with the interview, the giveaway and the guest post, he did a whole lot of the heavy lifting. So thanks, Mark. Same bat-time, same bat-place next year, when book three of The Legends of the Red Sun comes out, alright?

In case you missed any of the shenanigans, here's a handy little collection of links to all the stories from the past week:

A Whole Week of Mark Charan Newton

Book Review: Nights of Villjamur by Mark Charan Newton

The Speculative Spotlight on Mark Charan Newton (Part 1)

Mark Charan Newton on Six Influences on The Legends of the Red Sun Series

The Speculative Spotlight on Mark Charan Newton (Part 2)

Book Review: City of Ruin by Mark Charan Newton

And that's not even including the giveaway posts - nor this little round-up!

Sadly, though, that's that. But it's been heaps of fun, hasn't it?

So who's up for another themed thingummy? What with The Passage coming out shortly, I'm rather of a mind to get a bit of a vampire weekend on the go. All I have to do is get through the rest of that beast of a book first...