Title: The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive, #1) Author: Brandon Sanderson Published by: Tor Books Published on: 31 Agustus 2010 Pages: 1007
Life before Death. Strength before Weakness. Journey before Destination.
Welcome to Brandon Sanderson's magnum opus: The Stormlight Archive!
If you're new to this blog, or maybe new to the fantasy genre in general, the name Brandon Sanderson might not ring any bell. I was first introduced to him almost a decade ago by a very good friend of mine, telling me that Brandon created a universe called Cosmere, in which each of his fantasy books and series take place. If that isn't amazing enough for you, there's a bigger plot happening in this universe which Brandon is brilliant enough to subtly insert. Basically, behind every epic fantasy book you read, there's another epic story unfolding right underneath your nose.
IKNOWRIGHT!!!
Let me try to explain Cosmere in the simplest way possible. Thousands of years ago, a powerful being named Adonalsium created Cosmere and every living thing there. But he was later killed and his power (or force) called Shards was shattered into 16 pieces. These pieces contain Investiture, or basically the power of a god. The people responsible for this shattering each took a piece and became gods to each planet in the Cosmere. Not all of them, tho. At least 2 rejected the privilege: Hoid and a dragon named Frost. Now here's the interesting part: Hoid can worldhop. He always makes an appearance in every book, be it under disguise, a different name, or simply is. Even Hoid is just an alias.
These gods are basically Vessels of Power. For a time, they were content ruling in their own planets. Until the Power starts to corrupt the Vessel. See, just like in our world we have yin and yang, left and right, good and bad, etc... so is in Cosmere. For example, the gods in Mistborn were Ruin and Preservation. While Ati, the Vessel to Ruin, had been a kind-hearted and overall good guy, the power of Ruin finally corrupted him. But at least Ruin only wreaked havoc in his own planet, Scadrial. One that every Vessel in Cosmere should worry about is Odium.
With that in mind, on with The Way of Kings, then!
The story takes place in a planet called Roshar, where storms (commonly referred to as highstorm) frequently come with its destructive force, with spren which are small pieces of Investiture (for example, when you're in pain you get painspren, when there's a fire you get flamespren, etc), and the humans who can bond with them. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
In the prologue, we meet the Heralds, or basically mortals who bound themselves to each other through an Oathpact in order to protect Roshar from the Voidbringers adamant on destroying the humans. These Heralds, there were 10 of them, were tired. Because to defeat the Voidbringers, they had to repeat the same cycle over and over again. See, the Oathpact bound them in Damnation with the Voidbringers, wherein they would be tortured until one gave in. Then, the Voidbringers would return to Roshar to wreak havoc and destroy humanity. Thankfully, the spren would choose the humans worthy of being Knights Radiant, who would then be given help by the Heralds to prepare for the Desolation. Once the Voidbringers were defeated, they would be sent back to Damnation along with the Heralds. And the same cycle was repeated.
No wonder they were exhausted. So, these Heralds decided to give up after finding a loophole in the Oathpact. That not all 10 of them had to return to Damnation; they could simply let one of them hold himself there until he broke. Not the most cheerful way to start a book, let alone a 10-book series, no? After the Heralds left, the Knights Radiant followed, and soon humanity had no protection nor preparation to face the Last Desolation.
Then, the stage was set to 6 years prior to present book time!
Source: Map by Stoneward13 from 17th Shard
Arguably the largest and most influential kingdom, Alethkar consists of 10 princedoms, each led by a Highprince. A few years ago, Gavilar Kholin, with the help of his brother, Dalinar, and their best friend, Torol Sadeas, managed to conquer and unite them into one kingdom. Gavilar was crowned King, with Dalinar named the Highprince of Kholin. Everything went swimmingly and smoothly, until one day when Gavilar went on a hunting trip with his crew. There, he met an oddity: a group of people who looked so much like parshmen (a certain race being treated as slaves since they had no inclination to think nor take care of themselves), yet these people thrived on their own. Gavilar named them Parshendi, and was so intrigued by them that he decided to draft a treaty between the Alethi and Parshendi.
On the night of the signing, though, Gavilar was murdered by the Assassin in White. Named Szeth, Truthless of Shinovar (another country in Roshar), he was hired by the Parshendi. Before his death, Gavilar handed Szeth a pouch containing strange black spheres and asked him to tell his brother to 'know the most important words a man can say'. Szeth left soon after leaving that writing next to Gavilar's body, which became quite a scandal as writing wasn't considered a masculine skill in Vorin tradition (Vorin is the religion adopted by the majority of Alethkar). The Parshendi leaders came clean about their assassination attempt, and they were soon executed. Elhokar, Gavilar's son, declared war on the Parshendi and the whole ten princedoms built a warcamp in the Shattered Plains, home of the Parshendi, which in turn became the ground zero of war.
Six years had passed, and what was originally a war of vengeance turned into a war of inner-politicking and petty ambition among the ten princedoms. Dalinar lived in perpetual regret, as he'd been blackout drunk during Gavilar's assassination. Taking his brother's death message to heart, Dalinar soon poured himself into studying The Way of Kings, an ancient book on kingship/leadership written by a king named Nohadon. The more he listened to its reading (again, reading isn't considered a masculine skill), the more he questioned on the Alethi lifestyle. He began to perpetuate the Codes to his princedom, much to the chagrin of his older son, Adolin (who liked to partayyy), though his younger, Renarin, didn't really seem to mind. He wasn't as extroverted as Adolin anyways. This became quite the talk of the warcamps, since the Codes seemed so out of place to the Alethi lifestyle and Dalinar's transformation into a more thoughtful man became a subject of ridicule. See, these Alethi prefer aggressive, kick your arse in the face sort of guy.
That wasn't the only thing, though. See, Dalinar began to receive visions every highstorm. These visions often transported him to thousands of years ago, during the Desolation brought on by Voidbringers, and at the end he often heard a voice telling him to, 'Unite them'.
Another important character, if not THE most important, our main protagonist, is Kaladin Stormblessed. When we first met him, he was a slave branded dangerous, on his way to the Shattered Plains. He was included as a new pool of slaves in Sadeas' warcamp, as fresh recruit for the bridgemen. Remember when I told ya that this war had become a petty infighting? Well, creatures called Chasmfiend in the Shattered Plains, with monstrous size and super dangerous characteristics, became the new target. See, these creatures have gemhearts, which could be sold to fund the war for years. And the highprinces were competing with each other to get it. With this in mind, Sadeas developed a new tactic: since the Parshendi were also after the gemhearts, he had slaves carrying bridges for his soldiers to pass through the Plains. These slaves were unarmoured to make them easy target by Parshendi archers. This way, Sadeas didn't have to risk injuring or losing his trained soldiers, and these bridgemen/slaves were easily replaced. The only thing he had to lose was conscience at having the blood of so many innocent people on his hands, but I doubt he still had it by then.
Aanyway, Kaladin wasn't your typical slaves. Other than being s̶u̶p̶e̶r̶h̶o̶t̶ an extremely talented soldier, he was actually trained as a surgeon. Young Kal was born and raised in Hearthstone. Due to a petty mayor having a dislike towards his father, his younger brother Tien was sent into the war in Sadeas' princedom territory, under the leadership of Amaram. Quite reminiscent of Katniss Everdeen's act of big sisterly in The Hunger Games, Kal volunteered to accompany Tien just so he wasn't alone. He promised his parents that he would bring back Tien. In the camp, Kal rose through the rank quite prominently and word spread that his troop had the least fatalistic. Yet someone betrayed him so that he got branded as a slave and sold away. This event was a major turn of event in Kal's life, as he then had a deep hatred towards lighteyes.
What are lighteyes? See, in Alethkar, the society is divided into 2 main caste system: lighteyes and darkeyes. Lighteyes are sort of your typical nobility, while darkeyes are the peasant. The class system for lighteyes are called dahn, while darkeyes nahn. People like Gavilar and Dalinar are most certainly lighteyes, while Kaladin and his family are darkeyes.
Back in Sadeas' warcamp, Kaladin got assigned to Bridge Four, the one with the highest casualties. By this point, Kaladin had become a husk of himself and he was mostly functioning to live barely. At the end of his first run as bridgemen, only about 2-4 people that he ran with were still alive. The rest, even the only one who showed him kindness, immediately killed. Yet in a place as repressive as this, Kaladin managed to find hope. And that he didn't sink into further depression was mostly thanks to a spren who never gave up on him, one named Syl -- short for Sylphrena.
Our third main character is Shallan Davar. While Kaladin and Dalinar are both Alethi, Shallan is a Veden from Jah Keved. From a minor noble house of Davar, she was on a journey to convince Jasnah Kholin, Gavilar's only daughter and Elhokar's sister, to take her as a ward. See, Jasnah was quite a controversial figure as she was a proclaimed atheist and also a very prominent historian. Though her intention seemed noble, there's a catch: actually, House Davar was on the brink of bankruptcy and the only way Shallan saw she could help her family was by stealing Jasnah's Soulcaster (an extremely valuable fabrials that could transform things) and swapping it with her father's broken ones. Because her father died and she, with his brothers, tried to cover this up so as not to have House Davar be brought down.
Source: Botanica
But could Shallan betray her thirst for knowledge, especially under Jasnah's tutelage? What is the meaning behind Dalinar's visions? Would Kaladin be able to protect the men of Bridge Four, ones who'd lost the will to live? All in the face of the upcoming Desolation.
EGGLYSIS
Brando Sando left such a huge impression on me after reading Mistborn, that I immediately became a believer by devouring his other books, such as Elantris, Warbreaker, his novellas, even Mistborn Gen 2. So the moment my good, good friend told me to immediately read The Stormlight Archive, I didn't need further encouragement. At 1000-ish pages, it didn't even intimidate me; rather, it invigorated me.
The world building itself is massive. Did you notice how many times I had to backtrack a moment to explain something else in the summary above? And I believe I still missed so, so much and that there are still unexplored stuff to be discovered in the following books. Brando Sando has shown his meticuluous world building in other books, but in TSA he's just in another level. I also love how diverse his characters in TSA are. He is often quoted referencing the Alethi people as resembling Arabic/Japanese. The closest thing to Caucasian is Veden, e.g. Shallan, even they're mostly like Uzbek or Mongol instead of purely Caucasian.
Which explains my massive fictional crush towards Kaladin. <3
Character-wise, Brando has this tendency of creating fan favourite characters. When I first read Mistborn, I was still haunted by all the morally grey characters written by GRRM. It took me quite some time to believe that in an epic fantasy such as this, a group of people can be just good and loving and still have hope eventhough the situation is severely depressing. Yet as much as I love Mistborn, gots to admit the characters aren't as developed as the ones in GRRM's ASoIaF. Again, Brando upped his game in TSA, and it becomes an intriguing point throughout the whole series. You get these lot who you love, who at the same time are extremely flawed, but you just can't absolutely hate them. Kaladin, Shallan, Dalinar, even Szeth have something to say that makes readers just want to dig deep into their psyche.
Have you heard of Sanderlanche? Short for Brandon Sanderson Avalanche, it's a term most Brando fans coined due to his action-packed climaxes and endings. Each of TSA books consists of 5 parts, and the Sanderlanche in TWoK begins by Part 4. The moment I started Part 4, I couldn't stop. My eyes were simply glued to the pages because the build-up to the climax got my heart racing. And the moment it happened, I got chills and wanted to cry. Brando is one of those authors who could blast my tearduct off with a simple sentence. BECAUSE ALL THE FEEEEEELS, OH MY.
And once I got to the end, my jaw simply dropped. After that superb climax, he gave us a plot twist that would mindfuck anyone because BRANDO HOW DOES YOUR MIND WORK. I had to put off my ebook reader (Egg! :D) for a moment to stare at the wall and just rattle incoherently for 2-3 minutes max.
Well, that's Brando Sando for you.
Overall, The Way of Kings...
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