My journey into the world of Roshar has been a long time coming, but the prospect of reading a series of books, each with a length of over a thousand pages has been a barrier to entry for a while. But with the release of Wind and Truth marking the end of the first arc of The Stormlight Archive, I decided to set myself the goal of reading all five published Stormlight novels in 2025.
In all honesty, it took me a while to really get into The Way of Kings. There is a bit of a learning curve upon entering Roshar, and it takes a while for the characters, setting, magic system, and politics to really sink in. The pacing in the first half of the novel is fairly slow at times, and the opening chapters can feel a bit disorienting at first, but this is one of those books where you really just need to trust the author and keep pushing forward. While my inclination before finishing this book was the say that it was too long, I’m not sure I still agree with that. What makes The Way of Kings’ conclusion so rewarding is that we have spent so long just marinating with these characters and this world. And that kind of impact is one of things I love most about big epic books like this.
I have nothing but love and praise for the characters Brandon Sanderson has created here. While the roster can be overwhelming at first, each of the main point-of-view characters is given so much depth, growth, and personality that I found myself rooting for them, feeling their pain, and celebrating their accomplishments. While Kaladin is undoubtedly the main protagonist, I actually found myself more compelled by Dalinar and Shallan, particularly in the first half of the book. I could argue that the number of pages spent following Kaladin’s exploits with Bridge Four slowed things down and could have been condensed, but again, it really paid off in the end. I feel similarly about the flashbacks to Kaladin’s past, where the lessons and values he learned from his father in his youth ended up tying in beautifully to the overall philosophy of The Way of Kings in Kaladin’s conversation with Dalinar near the end of the book.
I have often heard Sanderson’s fans refer to the climaxes of his books as a “Sanderlanche” and I definitely understand the sentiment. After reading The Way of Kings fairly slowly over the better part of a month (for a number of reasons, some of which were unrelated to the content and quality of the book) I devoured the final 150 pages in a single day. The battle at the Tower on the Shattered Plains was masterfully staged, the duels were exciting, and seeing each of the three main characters truly come into their own by unlocking confidence, power, and knowledge was thrilling. The revelations in Part 5 also struck a great balance between answering lingering questions and setting up future books. I was particularly impressed when I realized the significance of the short epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter.
I could argue about minor pacing issues and wanting a bit more of certain characters, but at the end of the day, The Way of Kings was a truly epic first foray into the world of Roshar and one of the most impressive feats of world-building I have ever experienced in any medium. This book had a lot of groundwork to lay and it carried that heavy lift as effectively as the crew of Bridge Four carried theirs. I look forward to reading Words of Radiance after cleansing my palate with a few shorter books first (in the spirit of The Stormlight Archive, consider them interludes).
The Once and Future Lit 