The Way of Kings

The Way of Kings is Brandon Sanderson's 2010 epic fantasy, the first volume of the Stormlight Archive and one of the most ambitious series openings of contemporary genre fiction. The setting is Roshar, a continent whose ecology is built around catastrophic Highstorms that sweep east to west every few days, leaving every form of life adapted to either burrow or be killed. The novel follows Kaladin (a former military medic enslaved as a bridgeman in a war he no longer believes in), Shallan (an impoverished noblewoman attempting to apprentice with a renowned scholar in order to steal from her), and Dalinar (the highprince of a feuding kingdom seeing visions he cannot interpret).

Sanderson's strength as a fantasy writer is hard-magic worldbuilding executed at scale, and Stormlight is the project where that ambition pays off most fully. The Surgebinding magic system is internally consistent at the level of mid-twentieth-century hard SF. The Roshar geography is fully realized. The Kaladin chapters carry the emotional weight of the novel; the Shallan chapters carry the intellectual mystery; the Dalinar chapters carry the political stakes. The 1,007-page length earns itself; almost no scene is filler.

Recommended for fans of epic fantasy who want a series that takes itself seriously without being grimdark (Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen), for readers willing to commit to a projected 10-volume series, and for anyone looking for books like The Way of Kings in the post-Tolkien epic tradition. Five stars and the right entry into the Cosmere.