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A review by mudder17
Elantris by Brandon Sanderson
5.0
5 stars! This book is definitely going on my favorites list!
This is my first adult fiction book written by the author (I previous read his Alcatraz series) but it's also his first work as an author. And guess what? I loved it! There were a few places where he got a bit bogged down in the details as he explained the system of magic, but overall, I thought it was excellently planned out and executed and I had a hard time forcing myself to stop in places so I could get some sleep! I'm kind of a book nerd, so the magic system of using runes of a sort was pretty cool. This book has a heroine (Serene), a hero (Raodan), and an antihero (Hrathen), all of whom you get to know slowly over the course of the book. Hrathen may have ended up being one of my favorite characters just because of the challenges he went through. Even though there was a lot of information in this book and it could have felt like an information dump, I thought Sanderson did an excellent job letting everything unfold in their own time. This WAS a slow burn, so if you need more action in your books, this may not be the Sanderson book to begin with. But I was captivated from the beginning and never felt bored. I listened to the audio recording and I thought the narrator, Jack Garrett, did an excellent job. The only snag was that for some reason I kept getting Hrathen and Raodon mixed up. Every time the narrator said one of their names, I had to take a moment to remember which one was which. Maybe because both of their names are pronounced with an R sound and are essentially 2 syllables? But that is a totally minor detail and it did not take away my enjoyment of the book. I have had this book in my library and on my TBR pile for a long time, in part because I was intimidated by the length, but I didn't feel like the story was "too long" at all, and in fact, by the end, I was kind of sad to say goodbye to the characters. I know there are two related short stories, so I'm looking forward to digging into those (I believe they're both in the Arcanum Unbounded collection). Although you can begin Sanderson by starting at any of the Cosmere Universe subseries, I think this is a great place to get a sense of Sanderson's writing while enjoying a good story. It's rare these days to find standalone books with this level of complexity, so I enjoyed it for that reason as well. But if this book is any indication of what is to come, I am looking forward to reading more books in the Cosmere Universe!
This is my first adult fiction book written by the author (I previous read his Alcatraz series) but it's also his first work as an author. And guess what? I loved it! There were a few places where he got a bit bogged down in the details as he explained the system of magic, but overall, I thought it was excellently planned out and executed and I had a hard time forcing myself to stop in places so I could get some sleep! I'm kind of a book nerd, so the magic system of using runes of a sort was pretty cool. This book has a heroine (Serene), a hero (Raodan), and an antihero (Hrathen), all of whom you get to know slowly over the course of the book. Hrathen may have ended up being one of my favorite characters just because of the challenges he went through. Even though there was a lot of information in this book and it could have felt like an information dump, I thought Sanderson did an excellent job letting everything unfold in their own time. This WAS a slow burn, so if you need more action in your books, this may not be the Sanderson book to begin with. But I was captivated from the beginning and never felt bored. I listened to the audio recording and I thought the narrator, Jack Garrett, did an excellent job. The only snag was that for some reason I kept getting Hrathen and Raodon mixed up. Every time the narrator said one of their names, I had to take a moment to remember which one was which. Maybe because both of their names are pronounced with an R sound and are essentially 2 syllables? But that is a totally minor detail and it did not take away my enjoyment of the book. I have had this book in my library and on my TBR pile for a long time, in part because I was intimidated by the length, but I didn't feel like the story was "too long" at all, and in fact, by the end, I was kind of sad to say goodbye to the characters. I know there are two related short stories, so I'm looking forward to digging into those (I believe they're both in the Arcanum Unbounded collection). Although you can begin Sanderson by starting at any of the Cosmere Universe subseries, I think this is a great place to get a sense of Sanderson's writing while enjoying a good story. It's rare these days to find standalone books with this level of complexity, so I enjoyed it for that reason as well. But if this book is any indication of what is to come, I am looking forward to reading more books in the Cosmere Universe!