I was writing a review for The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson, an epic fantasy series set in the world of Roshar. Three paragraphs in, I realized that I was just raving about how great it was, so I decided to make that list of awesomeness instead.
1. The characters.
Sanderson has a knack to create characters you would not only root for, but also love or hate passionately. And it’s not limited to the main characters. In fact, many people, including me, have secondary character as their favourite.
2. The number of pages.
If the earlier books in Game of Thrones series felt too short for you, or if you’re unfazed by the number of pages in the whole Lord of The Rings series, good news! Each book in this series (there are two books out so far) has over 1000 pages. ONE THOUSANDS. Even better news? There’ll be 10 books in the overall series, which means we could expect over 10.000 pages of awesomeness. *cries tears of joy*
But, if the number of pages seem scary to you, please do not let it stop you. You wouldn’t even realize that you’ve read that much, it’s THAT good.
3. The secret. The revelation.
Sanderson drops secret on you casually. Fall asleep on one paragraph and you might miss it until you encounter it again 500 pages later. Casual, sneaky revelations that blew people minds were revealed passingly. Good news is there are many of those. Good luck spotting all of them.
4. The theories.
How do fabrials work? How does one bond with a shardblade? If you like discussing theories and plot twists, you’re in luck. There are many Sanderson fans out there, and they even have an online forum where you can discuss plot twists and characters, and found answers to many of your questions. And believe me, you’ll have many of those when you finished reading the first two books.
5. The rating on goodreads.
I don’t know about you, but I tend to trust my fellow goodreads-er (goodreader? goodreadser?). Currently, the first book is sitting comfortably sipping wine on its shelf with 4.61 stars rating from over 100.000 votes, while the second one is a 4.76 star book from over 60.000 ratings. Sure, not all the reviews are positive, as in all things in life.
6. The multiple POVs.
Multiple POVs is definitely not a new thing, but rarely it’s executed as well as in this series. Besides the main characters, you also get interludes from other characters’ POVs. It’s said that these interludes provide introduction to characters that will play major roles in upcoming books.
7. The flashbacks.
In the beginning of every chapter, Brandon inserted a short paragraph which acts as citation from references in the series. Through these citations, you could learn a lot of things not mentioned in the main story, such as the different types of knights radiant (if you’re not interested to know about this, it’s because you haven’t read the book *winks*)
8. R.A.F.O.
a.k.a Read and Find Out
On the other hand, I must warn you. The first couple of chapters might daunt you. There are so many new terms you have no idea of and these are just mentioned passingly without any explanation. My suggestion: keep calm and read on, you’ll understand these in time (or not. I still haven’t understood much of it, but it doesn’t make the series any less awesome).