The Way of Kings: Book One of the Stormlight Archive
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings, Book One of the Stormlight Archive, begins an incredible new saga of epic proportion.
Roshar is a world of stone and storms. Uncanny tempests of incredible power sweep across the rocky terrain so frequently that they have shaped ecology and civilization alike. Animals hide in shells, trees pull in branches, and grass retracts into the soilless ground. Cities are built only where the topography offers shelter.
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.
The result of over ten years of planning, writing, and world-building, The Way of Kings is but the opening movement of the Stormlight Archive, a bold masterpiece in the making.
Speak again the ancient oaths:
Life before death.
Strength before weakness.
Journey before Destination.
and return to men the Shards they once bore.
The Knights Radiant must stand again.
Other Tor books by Brandon Sanderson
The Cosmere
The Stormlight Archive
● The Way of Kings
● Words of Radiance
● Edgedancer (novella)
● Oathbringer
● Dawnshard (novella)
● Rhythm of War
The Mistborn Saga
The Original Trilogy
● Mistborn
● The Well of Ascension
● The Hero of Ages
Wax and Wayne
● The Alloy of Law
● Shadows of Self
● The Bands of Mourning
● The Lost Metal
Other Cosmere novels
● Elantris
● Warbreaker
● Tress of the Emerald Sea
● Yumi and the Nightmare Painter
● The Sunlit Man
Collection
● Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection
The Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians series
● Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians
● The Scrivener's Bones
● The Knights of Crystallia
● The Shattered Lens
● The Dark Talent
● Bastille vs. the Evil Librarians (with Janci Patterson)
Other novels
● The Rithmatist
● Legion: The Many Lives of Stephen Leeds
● The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England
Other books by Brandon Sanderson
The Reckoners
● Steelheart
● Firefight
● Calamity
Skyward
● Skyward
● Starsight
● Cytonic
● Skyward Flight (with Janci Patterson)
● Defiant
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Community Reviews
What Bookclubbers are saying about this book
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Readers say *The Way of Kings* offers phenomenal worldbuilding, a unique magic system, and deeply inspiring characters like Kaladin, drawing readers i...
It took me a SIGNIFICANT amount of time to work my way through this one. Oh boy. I want to have some fun with this, so I'm going to rank my favorite characters who had their perspectives featured throughout the 1000+ pages of war that I just read.
1. Shallan
2. Szeth
3. Dalinar
4. Kaladin
If I'm being completely honest, I probably would have been fine with Dalinar and Kaladin's sections not being included whatsoever, but by the time I finally got to the ending I'm realizing they must have incredible significance to the rest of the series. There was a LOT of repetitiveness with these portions, moments where Sanderson would just verbatim repeat things that had already been said that weren't particularly useful (though, maybe it is helpful when your book is so long and you keep rapidly changing perspectives between like 5 different guys that people start forgetting what happened at the beginning?), and so much Male Brooding. Think Robert Pattinson's Batman or something. The vibes were definitely... interesting. I don't really know what I'm trying to say with this. Szeth's parts were super brutal and it was basically a shock every time he reappeared, making him one of the most exciting and impactful characters. Shallan's parts carried a lot of intrigue and mystery that it seems like any reader might still be wondering about, and may continue to for several more books. Some might argue that Kaladin carried more intrigue, but I read way too many pages of him complaining about his relationship with his father to care as much as I probably would have if it was shorter.
In truth, I don't truly feel like I can give a solid, legitimate rating of this book until I've seen the content of the rest of them. Which is crazy, because, again, it was over 1,000 pages. In those pages, I mostly gathered that this Sanderson guy is so invested in worldbuilding. He might actually live in the Shattered Plains? Not sure yet. I know the backstories of what feels like about 50 different side characters and half of them might already be dead. This book might be most impressive in the way that so little manages to happen in the SEVERAL HOURS I spent poring over it, trying to understand any of the strange events that were happening.
This is definitely not the type of book I'd normally gravitate towards. I have been spending this year delving into new genres and finding enjoyment in almost all of them, but much of Way of Kings was quite frustrating to me. This one I would honestly have a hard time recommending to MOST people because it is not very enjoyable, sometimes exactly the opposite, and the constant namedropping of new things I've never heard of before was really fatiguing. There was some sunk cost fallacy at work here in the joy I felt when getting to that last page. I convinced myself that the ending was going to HAVE to be worth it to balance out the amount of time I spent learning the entire lives of these people since the day they were born, basically. Unfortunately I'm still not 100% sure if any of that knowledge had purpose and I'm going to have to keep reading to find out.
I would say the boring and depressing parts of this book get overshadowed by the excitement of the ending, so that's good! At times I was super absorbed into the world but at other times the sheer "high fantasy" of it all was overbearing. I do appreciate how making up everything the story is based on gives you the ability to just make anything happen all of the time. There are basically infinite curveballs you can throw at a reader when they know absolutely nothing about what is going on. I also asked myself many times throughout this how it might be adapted into a series of some kind, and if I would watch it. So far, the answer to that one is also going to depend on the remaining books. My hopes for book 2 are: more Shallan, more Szeth, and less battle strategy. I also predict that Dalinar or Szeth are going to die. It just HAS to be one of the two. The ending of Way of Kings has brought me more questions than answers, but I do know that I am starting the next book as soon as I finish this review. Hopefully it's a little shorter!!! (it's probably not lol)
3.5/5 for now, but we'll see if it changes based on the rest of the series!
One note: I do think perhaps the enslavement of the Parshmen could have been handled better; it feels a bit lacking in this current climate and probably should be explored more (with some sensitivity readers helping out.) But for now, with ~7000 more pages of book to come I’ll wait and withhold full judgement on that.
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