Warbreaker
This book was fantastic. I shouldn't have expected anything less from Sanderson, of course. He always does an amazing job of creating intricate world, captivating magic systems, and complex characters with conflicting motives and goals. Even though he writes incredibly long books, I always get sucked in and finish them much faster than I expect to (which is saying something for me).
Warbreaker is a bit of an anomaly. At least, I expected it to be. While you can buy a physical copy, the entire book is available for free, online. Indeed, every draft from the roughest first draft through the first printed edition is available in full, as part of an attempt by Sanderson to connect with his fans. As such, I sort of expected a less-than-stellar book. Why else would it still be free five years after it was published?
It also doesn't help that the cover is truly awful. I've come around on it a little bit, but I still can't figure out whether it's supposed to be depicting Siri or Vivenna. The two seem to have been conflated into a single woman.
At any rate, the book surprised me. It pulled me in immediately, which is actually a bit surprising for a Sanderson novel. It usually takes me a while to settle into one of his worlds. But this one felt immediately accessible. It's possible that I was starting to recognize some of his tropes - there are definite similarities to both Mistborn: The Final Empire and Elantris. It helped me get my bearings a bit quicker, because I had some sense of what to expect from the various characters.
This book also feels more balanced than some of Sanderson's other work. He usually has more male characters than female characters (most authors do), but they felt more even here. It helped that there were two female POVs and two male POVs, so if the background was still a bit unbalanced, the foreground helped distract from that.
My only real complaint is the ending, which felt a bit abrupt. I think the book could have used another 50 pages or so to bring it to a more elegant conclusion. Although it's possible that I just wanted to spend more time in this world. It's not often that I feel like a 600 page book ought to have been longer. There are still a lot of unanswered questions and possibilities for future stories. Sanderson has hinted that there will be a sequel, but not for a long time. Still, I may now be anticipating this forthcoming sequel even more than the Elantris sequel. Then again, that could just be because this one is fresher in my mind.
I'm beginning to think that my retirement is just going to be consumed by the Cosmere. It should be finished by then, I should finally have time to really dig in to all the theories surrounding these books. There are worse ways to spend my golden years.
Warbreaker is a bit of an anomaly. At least, I expected it to be. While you can buy a physical copy, the entire book is available for free, online. Indeed, every draft from the roughest first draft through the first printed edition is available in full, as part of an attempt by Sanderson to connect with his fans. As such, I sort of expected a less-than-stellar book. Why else would it still be free five years after it was published?
It also doesn't help that the cover is truly awful. I've come around on it a little bit, but I still can't figure out whether it's supposed to be depicting Siri or Vivenna. The two seem to have been conflated into a single woman.
At any rate, the book surprised me. It pulled me in immediately, which is actually a bit surprising for a Sanderson novel. It usually takes me a while to settle into one of his worlds. But this one felt immediately accessible. It's possible that I was starting to recognize some of his tropes - there are definite similarities to both Mistborn: The Final Empire and Elantris. It helped me get my bearings a bit quicker, because I had some sense of what to expect from the various characters.
This book also feels more balanced than some of Sanderson's other work. He usually has more male characters than female characters (most authors do), but they felt more even here. It helped that there were two female POVs and two male POVs, so if the background was still a bit unbalanced, the foreground helped distract from that.
My only real complaint is the ending, which felt a bit abrupt. I think the book could have used another 50 pages or so to bring it to a more elegant conclusion. Although it's possible that I just wanted to spend more time in this world. It's not often that I feel like a 600 page book ought to have been longer. There are still a lot of unanswered questions and possibilities for future stories. Sanderson has hinted that there will be a sequel, but not for a long time. Still, I may now be anticipating this forthcoming sequel even more than the Elantris sequel. Then again, that could just be because this one is fresher in my mind.
I'm beginning to think that my retirement is just going to be consumed by the Cosmere. It should be finished by then, I should finally have time to really dig in to all the theories surrounding these books. There are worse ways to spend my golden years.
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