A review by eatreadgamerepeat
Elantris by Brandon Sanderson

adventurous slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

This book is kind of Wild. Its extremely slow at the start, and then I wanna say about halfway through the book all of a sudden it starts ramping up and so much happens in the last 200ish pages of the book its hard to keep track. The Premise of the story & the world is also very interesting and I loved finiding out more about Elantris and magic along with the characters. I also want to add that while I didn't actively dislike any of the characters I also didn't consistenly like any of the characters. I think I probably thought every POV character was being annoying or dumb or just the literary personification of an eye-roll at least once throughout this book. That being said, Sandersons Writing, even at for this, his debut novel, is amazing and when I wasn't super feeling the POV or thought it was moving too slowly the writing made it easy to keep reading. Even though its very slow and full of political scheming, it read almost like watching Season 1 of the Game of thrones TV show (without all the violence and gore and sex). I really wouldn't recommend starting with this if you are new to Sanderson, I would personally recommend Warbreaker or Mistborn. 

I also want to add (some spoilers for the ending)
Spoiler the ending is just...convenience after convenience after convenience after convenience.  It just felt so stupid like, oh we need X - 2 lines later X magically happens/appears/shows up with no real buildup or reason why this would work. Also like, I know Sanderson isn't the only person who has done this but why are we curing autistic-coded characters that are "good with numbers" and he can now magically tell Roaden the exact distance to Sarene...like its just so convenient and kinda just took me back because I wouldn't expect this from Sanderson, and then there are just lots of little other conveniences but honestly I can't be bothered to type them all out lol
  I could kinda go on a big rant but the more I think about this and the specifics of this the more im just tempted to lower this to a 3.....im mostly just dissapointed in these things because I know the author can (and has) done better - like, I loved some of his other works and the ending just...I have So many little gripes, but they are all contained to the ending of the book and yea it was conveniences but it was still a great read that especially at the end felt very cinematic