The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive #1) by Brandon Sanderson

This was quite the introduction to The Stormlight Archive series. Most of this book was world building and at times it made parts a bit slower. But overall, there were amazing action scenes, gut-wrenching realizations, clever decisions, and such intriguing plots that I was hooked.

Here are some the aspects of this fantasy world;

Highstorms and Stormlight – Highstorms are magical and highly intense storms that create stormlight which is a form of energy everyone stores in gemstones to use in different ways.

Spren – little magical beings that come out due to certain situations or elements. For example, fearspren (when someone is scared) hover around that person. Or rotspren appear when food or wounds are rotting.

Shardblades and Shardplates – Armor that protects the wearer and gives him enhanced fighting capabilities. Both are nearly impossible to break and once a wearer bonds with these items, they can only be taken if that person willingly gives them up or dies.

Women vs Men – Women are taught to read and write as it is beneath men to do so. Men must have women on their councils or be married in order to receive and send any missives. Also, women are supposed to hide their left hands, their “safehand” and it is obscene for women to have it uncovered. High-born women have it hidden completely in a sleeve, and low-born women wear a glove so they can more easily work with both hands. I found many of the reactions to a women’s safehand to be quite amusing.

We are introduced to some main characters - Kaladin, Dalinar, Shallan, Szeth. My favorite POVs in this book were hands down Kaladin and Dalinar. This book was mostly focused on Kaladin’s story arc; giving us his past and how he starts to come back alive in certain ways after his past knocked him down. Some of his sections are heartbreaking and anxiety ridden and I needed to know what would happen with him as soon as possible. He is a slave given to a bridge crew which is supposed to equate to a quick death, however he seems to keep making it through the bridge runs. He is a natural born leader and as much as he wants to, he can’t stop himself from trying to save everyone around him in the war. We slowly learn his past and why he came to be a slave and see him fight with everything he has.

Dalinar is a highprince, the brother of the most recent King who was murdered by the Parshendis and now Uncle and advisor to the current King. Dalinar helped orchestrate the war against the Parshendis for revenge but is starting to regret his choice and is receiving visions about uniting the country in a different way. He struggles to get the other highprinces to listen to him with his differing morals, but he is seeing things in a different light and finding out more about their true past.

The sections of Shallan were mostly boring other than a few clever moments. Although it seemed interesting that she was planning on stealing something from her mentor, a lot of her sections felt a little flat. The ending made things a bit more exciting for her storyline, but I found myself less interested when I got to chapters of her POV. There is a still a lot of mystery surrounding Szeth’s background and what it really means to be “truthless” in his culture, but he had abilities with a Shardblade that seem unknown to everyone else. So I believe this added some foreshadowing for the rest of the series.

Synopsis: It has been centuries since the fall of the ten consecrated orders known as the Knights Radiant, but their Shardblades and Shardplate remain: mystical swords and suits of armor that transform ordinary men into near-invincible warriors. Men trade kingdoms for Shardblades. Wars were fought for them, and won by them.

One such war rages on a ruined landscape called the Shattered Plains. There, Kaladin, who traded his medical apprenticeship for a spear to protect his little brother, has been reduced to slavery. In a war that makes no sense, where ten armies fight separately against a single foe, he struggles to save his men and to fathom the leaders who consider them expendable.

Brightlord Dalinar Kholin commands one of those other armies. Like his brother, the late king, he is fascinated by an ancient text called The Way of Kings. Troubled by over-powering visions of ancient times and the Knights Radiant, he has begun to doubt his own sanity.

Across the ocean, an untried young woman named Shallan seeks to train under an eminent scholar and notorious heretic, Dalinar's niece, Jasnah. Though she genuinely loves learning, Shallan's motives are less than pure. As she plans a daring theft, her research for Jasnah hints at secrets of the Knights Radiant and the true cause of the war.