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TGRF Reviews - The Way of Kings (Part 1)

Posted March 21st, 2023 at 07:01 PM by TGRF
After a rocky opening, I have returned to reading The Way of Kings. I have started over, in an attempt to be sure I'm viewing everything in an even light. And now the time has come to review the first two parts.

Now this isn't going to be a normal review. Usually, I would read an entire story, then review it. I could do that with Way of Kings, but honestly I'm finding my thoughts congealing after just reading each part, and it will be easier to break things up that way.

After I've read the entire book, I will likely review it in it's entirety. But I think a lot can be gained from hearing the perspective of readers while they are actually reading, so on the off-chance that Brandon Sanderson ever finds his way to the forum for an obscure discontinued game, here they are.

Title: The Way of Kings (Part 1)
Author: Brandon Sanderson
I'll reserve my rating until I've read the whole thing. I will avoid spoilers.

Now I've already written about my thoughts on the first few chapters, so I won't harp on about that again. These are just my thoughts after completing part one.

This section focuses on two main characters, Kaladin and Shallan. Overall my impressions of the section were lackluster.

Things aren't helped by the rocky opening. There is a prelude to the series as a whole, which takes place ten thousand years before the events of the story (or was it a thousand?). Following that is another introductory chapter, following the events which spark what I'm guessing is to be the main conflict in the book. I obviously didn't know this at the time of reading, and coupled with an absolute firehose of fictional characters, races, traditions, religions, creatures, and magical powers - none of which are explained through anything other than observation - I was left on pretty unsteady ground. I didn't know what was going on or even why I was reading what I was reading. I knew that the two characters whose PoV I had read so far weren't the main character, so I was left hoping that the next chapter would finally introduce someone I could sink my teeth into.

It did not. In true Sanderson style, the next cahpter, while it contained who was to become the main character (which of course I didn't know while reading), was related from the pov of a random soldier. This soldier dies by the end of the chapter. There's certainly something to be said for Sanderson's style of using different povs to show how characters appear to different people, but he has to be more careful around opening chapters and introductions. The reader can only take so many disconnected (or seemingly so) povs before giving up.

Things do finally settle down though, with our main character, Kaladin. But now we have the opposite problem. Where in the opening chapters there was an absolute firehose of information and I had no idea what was going on, now there was a distinct lack of ANYTHING going on.

I feel like - with some tweaks - this would have made a much better opening for the story. The events of the first chapter - which starts the conflict - are related and reflected on plenty, and I'm left thinking that we didn't really need that chapter at all.

Before I could properly get invested in Kaladin however, Sanderson switches to Shallan, a character who is - as far as I know - on the other side of the world, undergoing her own personal quest, and about as unrelated to Kaladin's troubles as is possible.

Shallan has a perfectly fine introduction. Her conflict is well developed and easy to sympathize with. Her character is easily likable, but also shows subtle strength. While reading, I had no idea what part she played in the story, and that sense only increased as the story did. Any sort of connection I might have been waiting for never showed up, and I increasingly began to wonder why her story was included.

Meanwhile, Kaladin was doing himself no favors. After the action-packed first chapters, he now spends a fair few chapters doing quite literally nothing. He's depressed, defeated, and doesn't really care about much of anything. There are flickers of empathy, anger, and resistance, but that's all they are: flickers. They serve to keep me reading, hoping that Kaladin will get up off his behind and actually do something, but he never does.

I feel like if Shallan had been introduced first, I would have easily liked her better than Kaladin. However, Kaladin was introduced first. This had an interesting effect. While I would easily say that Shallan was far more likable and interesting, I kept wondering how Shallan fit in with Kaladin's story, not how Kaladin fit in with hers. I subconsciously knew where the main plot was, so I do have to give Sanderson props there.

By the end of the first part, both Shallan and Kaladin face their conflicts. Their stories never intersect, and there isn't so much as a hint of how they might do so later. Both are serviceable protagonists, especially Shallan, but the lack of any sort of connection is rather annoying. Increasingly, I feel like I'm reading an epic saga which had no idea how to get started. I feel like Sanderson has a cast of main characters, and is trying to start with all of them. One should rarely do that. Instead, you should start with a single main character, and forge connections as that character meets people. Different PoVs are fine, but you've got to establish those connections. Otherwise I'm basically reading two different stories. The longer that goes on, the more likely I will be to start liking one over the other. I came close to doing this with Shallan - fortunately for Sanderson, part one ended before that really happened.

Overall, the part held my interest sufficiently, but only just. There were several points where I was tempted to just go read something else. Twice I actually did. I'm going to stick with the story, because I assume at some point things are going to become awesome. But that point hasn't arrived yet.

The review for part 2 will be out soon.

~TGRF.
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