Elantris by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I will restate that I really like this author’s work. I have a bias, know this going in.
At first glance more than 600 pages looked daunting. Then I remembered who wrote it. I’ve plunged through some of his other works at very rapid pace. Then I hit right about the 40% mark of this one and it really slowed down. It was all politics and wrangling of people and just slow. It was all part of building to an ending that made sense and it all fit, but I struggled. I know I generally like what he writes, so I pushed through. I’m glad I pushed ahead. Once I got past the slow bit I dashed across the finish line.
I enjoyed the characters in this story. The world building and magic system was a very big deal in this and it came through. I am still chewing on implications in my head for various aspects of the world.
Was there negative stuff? Yeah, actually there was. This was his first book and there were aspects of the flow and the narrative that felt that way. Perhaps it’s unfair to say that, but I’ve read a number of his other works first so coming back to this made the small things stand out more. One thing that I always find a bit… I don’t know if ‘cringy’ is the right word, but it seems to fit, is when authors give numbers to troops. There’s a non zero number of authors I’ve read where it just doesn’t feel like they’ve got a good handle on how big the army of an entire nation should be. This is one of those books. It’s generally vague, but there are a few mentions in there about troop numbers and they feel like they were just made up. I chalk that one up to my own pet peeve.
This book does a lot of good things too. It avoids certain tropes, and gives real thought to what variations in magic and politics do to the people in the world. The hero isn’t “the chosen one” or “destined to be” or anything like that. He’s a guy that gets handed crap circumstances. The other characters are a priest who questions his faith and a woman that doesn’t like being told what role she’s allowed to have in society. In general I would recommend reading this book if you’re into fantasy. Very enjoyable!
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