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From #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings, Book One of the Stormlight Archive begins an incredible new saga of epic proportion.
Roshar is a world of stone and storms. Uncanny tempests of incredible power sweep across the rocky terrain so frequently that they have shaped ecology and civilization alike. Animals hide in shells, trees pull in branches, and grass retracts into the soilless ground. Cities are built only where the topography offers shelter.
It has been centuries since the fall of the ten consecrated orders known as the Knights Radiant, but their Shardblades and Shardplate remain: mystical swords and suits of armor that transform ordinary men into near-invincible warriors. Men trade kingdoms for Shardblades. Wars were fought for them, and won by them.
One such war rages on a ruined landscape called the Shattered Plains. There, Kaladin, who traded his medical apprenticeship for a spear to protect his little brother, has been reduced to slavery. In a war that makes no sense, where ten armies fight separately against a single foe, he struggles to save his men and to fathom the leaders who consider them expendable.
Brightlord Dalinar Kholin commands one of those other armies. Like his brother, the late king, he is fascinated by an ancient text called The Way of Kings. Troubled by over-powering visions of ancient times and the Knights Radiant, he has begun to doubt his own sanity.
Across the ocean, an untried young woman named Shallan seeks to train under an eminent scholar and notorious heretic, Dalinar's niece, Jasnah. Though she genuinely loves learning, Shallan's motives are less than pure. As she plans a daring theft, her research for Jasnah hints at secrets of the Knights Radiant and the true cause of the war.
The result of over ten years of planning, writing, and world-building, The Way of Kings is but the opening movement of the Stormlight Archive, a bold masterpiece in the making.
Speak again the ancient oaths:
Life before death.
Strength before weakness.
Journey before Destination.
and return to men the Shards they once bore.
The Knights Radiant must stand again.
Other Tor books by Brandon Sanderson
The Cosmere
The Stormlight Archive
The Way of Kings
Words of Radiance
Edgedancer (Novella)
Oathbringer
The Mistborn trilogy
Mistborn: The Final Empire
The Well of Ascension
The Hero of Ages
Mistborn: The Wax and Wayne series
Alloy of Law
Shadows of Self
Bands of Mourning
Collection
Arcanum Unbounded
Other Cosmere novels
Elantris
Warbreaker
The Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians series
Alcatraz vs.
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings, Book One of the Stormlight Archive begins an incredible new saga of epic proportion.
Roshar is a world of stone and storms. Uncanny tempests of incredible power sweep across the rocky terrain so frequently that they have shaped ecology and civilization alike. Animals hide in shells, trees pull in branches, and grass retracts into the soilless ground. Cities are built only where the topography offers shelter.
It has been centuries since the fall of the ten consecrated orders known as the Knights Radiant, but their Shardblades and Shardplate remain: mystical swords and suits of armor that transform ordinary men into near-invincible warriors. Men trade kingdoms for Shardblades. Wars were fought for them, and won by them.
One such war rages on a ruined landscape called the Shattered Plains. There, Kaladin, who traded his medical apprenticeship for a spear to protect his little brother, has been reduced to slavery. In a war that makes no sense, where ten armies fight separately against a single foe, he struggles to save his men and to fathom the leaders who consider them expendable.
Brightlord Dalinar Kholin commands one of those other armies. Like his brother, the late king, he is fascinated by an ancient text called The Way of Kings. Troubled by over-powering visions of ancient times and the Knights Radiant, he has begun to doubt his own sanity.
Across the ocean, an untried young woman named Shallan seeks to train under an eminent scholar and notorious heretic, Dalinar's niece, Jasnah. Though she genuinely loves learning, Shallan's motives are less than pure. As she plans a daring theft, her research for Jasnah hints at secrets of the Knights Radiant and the true cause of the war.
The result of over ten years of planning, writing, and world-building, The Way of Kings is but the opening movement of the Stormlight Archive, a bold masterpiece in the making.
Speak again the ancient oaths:
Life before death.
Strength before weakness.
Journey before Destination.
and return to men the Shards they once bore.
The Knights Radiant must stand again.
Other Tor books by Brandon Sanderson
The Cosmere
The Stormlight Archive
The Way of Kings
Words of Radiance
Edgedancer (Novella)
Oathbringer
The Mistborn trilogy
Mistborn: The Final Empire
The Well of Ascension
The Hero of Ages
Mistborn: The Wax and Wayne series
Alloy of Law
Shadows of Self
Bands of Mourning
Collection
Arcanum Unbounded
Other Cosmere novels
Elantris
Warbreaker
The Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians series
Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians
The Scrivener's Bones
The Knights of Crystallia
The Shattered Lens
The Dark Talent
The Rithmatist series
The Rithmatist
Other books by Brandon Sanderson
The Reckoners
Steelheart
Firefight
Calamity
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson, Words of Radiance, Book Two of the Stormlight Archive, continues the immersive fantasy epic that The Way of Kings began.
Expected by his enemies to die the miserable death of a military slave, Kaladin survived to be given command of the royal bodyguards, a controversial first for a low-status "darkeyes." Now he must protect the king and Dalinar from every common peril as well as the distinctly uncommon threat of the Assassin, all while secretly struggling to master remarkable new powers that are somehow linked to his honorspren, Syl.
The Assassin, Szeth, is active again, murdering rulers all over the world of Roshar, using his baffling powers to thwart every bodyguard and elude all pursuers. Among his prime targets is Highprince Dalinar, widely considered the power behind the Alethi throne. His leading role in the war would seem reason enough, but the Assassin's master has much deeper motives.
Brilliant but troubled Shallan strives along a parallel path. Despite being broken in ways she refuses to acknowledge, she bears a terrible burden: to somehow prevent the return of the legendary Voidbringers and the civilization-ending Desolation that will follow. The secrets she needs can be found at the Shattered Plains, but just arriving there proves more difficult than she could have imagined.
Meanwhile, at the heart of the Shattered Plains, the Parshendi are making an epochal decision. Hard pressed by years of Alethi attacks, their numbers ever shrinking, they are convinced by their war leader, Eshonai, to risk everything on a desperate gamble with the very supernatural forces they once fled. The possible consequences for Parshendi and humans alike, indeed, for Roshar itself, are as dangerous as they are incalculable.
Other Tor books by Brandon Sanderson
The Cosmere
The Stormlight Archive
The Way of Kings
Words of Radiance
Edgedancer (Novella)
Oathbringer
The Mistborn trilogy
Mistborn: The Final Empire
The Well of Ascension
The Hero of Ages
Mistborn: The Wax and Wayne series
Alloy of Law
Shadows of Self
Bands of Mourning
Collection
Arcanum Unbounded
Other Cosmere novels
Elantris
Warbreaker
The Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians series
Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians
The Scrivener's Bones
The Knights of Crystallia
The Shattered Lens
The Dark Talent
The Rithmatist series
The Rithmatist
Other books by Brandon Sanderson
The Reckoners
Steelheart
Firefight
Calamity
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
The #1 New York Times bestselling sequel to Words of Radiance, from epic fantasy author Brandon Sanderson at the top of his game.
In Oathbringer, the third volume of the New York Times bestselling Stormlight Archive, humanity faces a new Desolation with the return of the Voidbringers, a foe with numbers as great as their thirst for vengeance.
Dalinar Kholin’s Alethi armies won a fleeting victory at a terrible cost: The enemy Parshendi summoned the violent Everstorm, which now sweeps the world with destruction, and in its passing awakens the once peaceful and subservient parshmen to the horror of their millennia-long enslavement by humans. While on a desperate flight to warn his family of the threat, Kaladin Stormblessed must come to grips with the fact that the newly kindled anger of the parshmen may be wholly justified.
Nestled in the mountains high above the storms, in the tower city of Urithiru, Shallan Davar investigates the wonders of the ancient stronghold of the Knights Radiant and unearths dark secrets lurking in its depths. And Dalinar realizes that his holy mission to unite his homeland of Alethkar was too narrow in scope. Unless all the nations of Roshar can put aside Dalinar’s blood-soaked past and stand together—and unless Dalinar himself can confront that past—even the restoration of the Knights Radiant will not prevent the end of civilization.
Other Tor books by Brandon Sanderson
The Cosmere
The Stormlight Archive
The Way of Kings
Words of Radiance
Edgedancer (Novella)
Oathbringer
The Mistborn trilogy
Mistborn: The Final Empire
The Well of Ascension
The Hero of Ages
Mistborn: The Wax and Wayne series
Alloy of Law
Shadows of Self
Bands of Mourning
Collection
Arcanum Unbounded
Other Cosmere novels
Elantris
Warbreaker
The Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians series
Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians
The Scrivener's Bones
The Knights of Crystallia
The Shattered Lens
The Dark Talent
The Rithmatist series
The Rithmatist
Other books by Brandon Sanderson
The Reckoners
Steelheart
Firefight
Calamity
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
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A word of caution. I do not think that this is a good place to start if you are new to Brandon Sanderson. For that I would recommend his Mistborn Trilogy. You can find that here Mistborn Trilogy. That is where I started and I am glad I did.
Ask me any questions in the comments you could have. I am always up for talking about Sanderson!
I disagree with other Amazon reviews that say all the world building and attention to detail don't pay off. This is the first 3 of 10 books, so there's a lot more coming. And having just finished Oathbringer, there's a lot of payoff for all the details and different characters.
I would recommend Mistborn as well. I'm not as big a fan of his Reckoners series only because I feel he does better with an empty canvass to build a new world, the reckoner's series is set on earth.
November 2018 marked the release of Skyward, the first book in a new YA quartet about a girl who dreams of becoming a pilot in a dangerous world under alien attack. The follow-up, Starsight, will be released December 2019. Also out last year was the final volume of the Stephen Leeds saga, Legion: Lies of the Beholder, which was also published in an omnibus edition, Legion: The Many Lives of Stephen Leeds, that includes all three volumes.
Late 2017 we saw the release of Oathbringer, the third massive book in the New York Times #1 bestselling Stormlight Archive series that begins with The Way of Kings. This series is my love letter to the epic fantasy genre, and it's the type of story I always dreamed epic fantasy could be.
Most readers have noticed that my adult fantasy novels are in a connected universe, called the Cosmere. This includes The Stormlight Archive, both Mistborn series, Elantris, Warbreaker, and various novellas available on Amazon, including The Emperor's Soul, which won a Hugo Award in 2013. In November 2016 all of the existing Cosmere short fiction including those novellas was released in one volume called Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection. If you've read all of my adult fantasy novels and want to see some behind-the-scenes information, that collection is a must-read.
I also have three YA series: The Rithmatist (currently at one book), The Reckoners (a trilogy beginning with Steelheart), and Skyward. For young readers I also have my humorous series Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians. Many of my adult readers enjoy all of those books as well, and many of my YA readers enjoy my adult books, usually starting with Mistborn.
Additionally, I have a few other novellas that are more on the thriller/sci-fi side. These include the Legion series, as well as Perfect State and Snapshot. There's a lot of material to go around!
Good starting places are Mistborn (a.k.a. The Final Empire), Skyward, Steelheart, The Emperor's Soul, and Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians. If you're already a fan of big fat fantasies, you can jump right into The Way of Kings.
I was also honored to be able to complete the final three volumes of The Wheel of Time, beginning with The Gathering Storm, using Robert Jordan's notes.
Sample chapters from all of my books are available at brandonsanderson.com/library--and check out the rest of my site for chapter-by-chapter annotations, deleted scenes, and more.
