The Way of Kings

I enjoyed this book way more than I expected to! I picked this up semi-ironically after the big "Sanderson is a hack" article. I'd enjoyed reading The Final Empire and was ready for a fantasy doorstop. And Sanderson delivers!

Perhaps he delivers too much. Somewhere in this 1000 page book is a good 500 page book struggling to be seen. There's no specific pages I can point to as filler, no side plots that would be better off left out (hello, GRRM). It's just an awful lot of pages to communicate what in the end are some relatively simple plot points and character development.

I grew to like that. It's middle brow fantasy, meant to fill the hours, and it's kind of cozy for that. I came to like the very slow and obvious development of Kaladin and the bridge crew.

Also want to acknowledge the world building. There's a lot of fun ideas in here. Like the spren or the conceit of the safehand. I'm less excited with the Big Reveal for this book, particularly how interminably long it takes to get there. But all in all it satisfies.

(One structural problem with the book; that last section, the short final few chapters. It's like the author wrote a whole 900 page novel and then realized "wait I can get paid to write more of these" and so tacked on a bunch of Season 2 teasers.)