I was a bit reticent to begin The Stormlight Archive, if only due to the massive investment I knew it would entail. Sanderson is a prolific writer, and the volumes in the Stormlight Archive are… substantial. And there’s going to be ten of them. Oh, and he’s only just finishing book four now. So, as with The Expanse, I knew I’d find myself waiting.

However, given I absolutely loved the first Mistborn trilogy, I knew I would probably enjoy Sanderson’s writing and world building, and it’s been a while since I’ve been hooked by a large scale, high-fantasy series (and before you ask, no, I haven’t started A Song of Ice and Fire… someday!), so I decided to take the plunge.

The Way of Kings is a long, slow burner that, I think, is better thought of as a set of four interwoven novellas–Kaladin and the Bridgemen, Adolin and Dalinar, Jasnah and Shallan, and Szeth–set against the backdrop of a grand mystery of the past and a prophesied cataclysm to come. This structure means the book requires a bit of patience from the reader, as rather than taking us through a single character journey Sanderson must set up and execute multiple plots simultaneously. However, I found the overall setup sufficiently interesting, and the final third compelling enough, that I’m definitely going to be continuing on to book two.