This Is The Way (Of Kings)

I never understood the hype for Brandon Sanderson. He's a fine writer. He's a better writing teacher than he is a writer, in my opinion, but either way he's a fine writer. I just never understood the craze.

Then again, who am I to judge? I've been crazy about Star Wars for the better part of 30 years, there was a time where I was absolutely obsessed with Tolkien (I still love Tolkien; just not 'obsessed' anymore), and fairly recently I've had a similar relationship with Marvel, too. It doesn't have to make sense, you can be the fan of whomever you wish.

I was just always baffled about the hype around Sanderson.

I enjoyed the Mistborn trilogy just fine. I actually loved the Wax & Wayne series. And now that I read The Way of Kings, I'm starting to see a pattern emerge.

I've seen critics complain about how Neal Stephenson "grew too big" and nobody dares to edit him anymore. They say his books are getting longer because he's becoming self-indulgent. I think there's some truth in that, even though I usually enjoy Stephenson's indulgence. (And often I don't understand it. I mean I get it, but it's way over my head intellectually. That's not a bad thing, not when it spurs me to read up on things so I can actually understand the things he's indulging himself with. But I digress.)

Reading 'The Way of Kings' brought to mind those complaints. The Mistborn books were similarly indulgent but edited tighter. Not perfectly, but a hell of a lot tighter than this 1297 pages of a monster tome. (Or somewhere in that ballpark.) The Wax & Wayne books were mostly rapid-fire fun rides, with the occasional lore indulgence here and there. But this book was so often a slog I had time to think, and not in a good way.

The pacing felt off, I could sense that he was building towards something, but the payoff to only be concentrated to the last 200 or so pages? Not cool. I mean sure, create a memorable climax, but throw me a bone, man, if you want me to stick it out to that point. I finished the book a little bit out of spite, not so much because I was compelled.

But credit where credit's due: the last 200(-ish) pages were worth it. The threads finally met. And Sanderson is scary good at making things make sense, even when he puts in a plot twist that leaves your mouth agape. And in this book I think he did it something like three times in the span of less then a hundred pages.

As much as I love huge books, this one was not my jam for a good part of the way.

Beyond the pacing, the one thing that annoys me about Sanderson's writing is the way he often overdescribes and repeats the magical action. It annoyed me in Mistborn: yes, I get how Pulling and Pushing works, no need to repeat it every single time. (And there were a lot of Pulling and Pushing in those books.) Yes, I get it that Shardblades disappear into mist when dropped, and it takes 10 heartbeats to summon them. Yes, I get it that Shardplates are the power armor of Roshan. Yet Sanderson felt the need to repeat it over and over and over and over again. I found myself starting to skip sections, which was bad because I had to go back and re-read a plot point or dialogue I missed while doing it. But if not lessening the frequency, at least he could edit them more for showing and not telling.

Another thing. Brandon Sanderson loves his worldbuilding, and he loves his magic systems. As evidenced by the almost scientific writeup of the relevant bits at the end of the book. And I love worldbuilding more than most, and can forgive a lot more in books, because I love when authors get clever. And Sanderson is clever and he's certainly imaginative. But 'The Way of Kings' a lot of times felt less of a character-driven fantasy epic and more of an exercise in "look how different I'm being." Sometimes I felt the "show don't tell" principle was more like "here's a bunch of words I'm not going to explain." Which can be used quite well, inviting the reader to an intellectual exercise of figuring it out. Which I love. I love it when an author is clever and they're inviting me to be clever with them. This book felt more like an inside joke that I was not privy to.

It certainly is epic. And Brandon Sanderson can write with the best of them (Elantris should be taught in schools, quite honestly, in how to write a standalone fantasy novel that's unique and gripping), make no mistake about that. The last 200 pages really took my breath away, no question. When he picked up the pace and started bringing the threads together, now that was the Thrill, not Dalinar's combat craze.

This book easily could've been 600 or so pages, and be better for it. Yes the last 200 pages were fireworks, but we didn't necessarily need all of the thousand before that. I've read somewhere that the idea behind the Cosmere was Sanderson's desire to create a sprawling fantasy epic that didn't require people having to read a dozen books to get into. Which is ironic, because this book alone is a sprawling fantasy epic of about 200 pages that people need to read 1000 pages to get into.

Anyway. I think I'll be off of Sanderson's books for a while. This one was exhausting. Good fun, especially the end of it, but exhausting. I've given it 3.5 stars and I think it's fair. I will read the rest of the Stormlight Archive, not because of the 1000 pages but because of the 200.

Much like the slightly nonsensical "This is the way" of The Mandalorian, this is The Way of Kings.

some highlights from 'The Way of Kings'

But expectations were like fine pottery. The harder you held them, the more likely they were to crack.

“You learned this,” Kabsal said, lifting up her drawing of Jasnah, “from a book.”
“Er … yes?”
He looked back at the picture. “I need to read more.”

“When we are young,” Jasnah said, “we want simple answers. There is no greater indication of youth, perhaps, than the desire for everything to be as it should. As it has ever been.”
Shallan frowned, still watching the men by the tavern over her shoulder.
“The older we grow,” Jasnah said, “the more we question. We begin to ask why. And yet, we still want the answers to be simple. We assume that the people around us—adults, leaders—will have those answers. Whatever they give often satisfies us.”
“I was never satisfied,” Shallan said softly. “I wanted more.”
“You were mature,” Jasnah said. “What you describe happens to most of us, as we age. Indeed, it seems to me that aging, wisdom, and wondering are synonymous. The older we grow, the more likely we are to reject the simple answers. Unless someone gets in our way and demands they be accepted regardless.” Jasnah’s eyes narrowed. “You wonder why I reject the devotaries.”
“I do.”
“Most of them seek to stop the questions.”

“What you saw belongs to you. A story doesn’t live until it is imagined in someone’s mind.”