Pages: 1007
Genres: Fantasy, High Fantasy
The book/series fits in the genre of fantasy (high fantasy at that). It will fancy anybody who is interested in deep character-development, elaborate world building and war-politics strategies.
The first three quarteres of the book are dedicated to world building and the plot moves at a tardy pace. The plot takes place in the world called Roshar which is not the most friendly place in the world. There are highstorms which make it impossible to venture out. The world itself is rocky thanks to the highstorms. The plants and animals have adapted to the highstorms. When the highstorms arrive, the plants hide in the crevices whereas the animals are huge and tough skinned.
The narrative is written from points of view of four characters - Szeth, Dalinar, Kaladin, and Shallan and guess what - none of these characters is a king.
Szeth is an assassin who is merely a weapon waiting to be used by his master. He is unquestioning in his approach and obeys anybody who possesses the Oathstone. Though he is extremely powerful and sorcerous in his fighting skills, his intentions behind accepting every order of his master are unclear. In a way, he is the beginner of the plot. He kills the Alethi king Gavilar quite early and kicks off an unending war between the Alethi and the Parshendi.
The most intriguing of these characters is Dalinar. He is the brother of King Gavilar who has been murdered for reasons unknown by Szeth, who is a professional assassin. Gavilar's son is now the king and Dalinar serves as his advisor and chief warrior. Dalinar plays the perfect imperfect character in the book - torn between his ideals and his duties - towards his king, towards his sons, and his feelings towards the ex-king's wife. He is also the warrior supreme. He can fight as his Thrill (the high energy) runs through his body while he runs through the enemy's army. Dalinar's visions add to his ageing woes and to the gossips among his ranks that he is losing his strength as well as his sanity. They (the visions) keep pulling him towards establishing peace rather than adding on fights and battles. The visions are from another world - probably from the Knight Radiants' age. The Knight Radiants are supposed to be these mythical ultra powerful warriors in the long past who have for some reason deserted humanity and are not protecting them anymore from "Voidbringers". This happens about 4,500 years before the main plot that begins with the assassination of Gavilar.
Kaladin is an ex-warrior who is now serving as a bridgeman (which is far worse than being a mere slave) in the camp of Sadeas (who is Dalinar's co-advisor to the present king). The description of bridgemen and their duties (which are mostly comprised of 'running' a bridge' and setting it across chasms) is extremely ornate. By the middle of the book, it was terribly saddening to read more about the woes of the bridgemen as each of their masters was hell bent on seeing them hurt in the worst possible way. The narrative also presents a point of view of the child Kaladin who was all set to be a surgeon under the tutelage of his father but destiny made him a spearman and finally a slave.
Shallan is a girl who is on a family-sent mission to steal a "Soulcaster" from the scholar Jasnah under the pretext of being her ward. Shallan is exceptionally talented at drawing. Jasnah herself is quite learned in her studies and is like a powerful wizard owing to possessing the "Soulcaster". Jasnah is also the daughter of the murdered ex-king Gavilar and sister of the current king. The interactions between Shallan and Jasnah make for an interesting read. Both the women are witty and have strong notions about religion, history, and philosophy. They also seem to have murky pasts and twists in their otherwise straightforward stories.
The book has many heavy fighting scenes. Pages and pages are dedicated to describing movements of Parshendi and Alethi forces. I must thank Steven Erikson and his "Malazan Book of the Fallen" series for teaching me to be patient with dense books. I have read that "The Stormlight Archive" series also has a span of ten books each of around thousand pages. The journey is going to be a long one and I am sure that I am going to enjoy it - especially because Sanderson seems to invest heavily in characters. The high fantasy nature of the plot makes all the events seem magical and worth a careful read. The subplots are interesting and the only parts that could be skipped are the very-descriptive fighting scenes since most of the central characters seem so highly talented that nothing seems to be threatening to them.
The way this book differed from most other fantasy books is how there was no major travels involved. Besides, there was no start contrast among the characters to distinguish evil from good. Overall, it was a wonderful read. I love how immense the scope of this plot is - there are going to be more characters, subplots, back stories and revelations. In the next book, I hope to see answers for Shallan's surprise plot revelation, what happens to Kaladin next, what is the story of the Wit, what happens to Szeth and other mysteries! As I usually do with high fantasy, I'll take a break and read something else before jumping on to the next book in the series.
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