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Elantris

Thursday, May 29th, 2008 Will Leave a comment Go to comments

I became interested in Brandon Sanderson when I found out that he was finishing The Wheel of Time for Robert Jordan. I decided to start with his first book, Elantris.

Elantris was a city of magical people whose inhabitants were thought of as gods. Something has changed and now Elantrians are thought of as being cursed. It’s been 10 years since the fall of the city, and book focuses on 3 characters with related plot lines. The story takes place both inside and outside of Elantris.

One thing that attracted me to this book is that it’s a standalone story. It’s not one part of an epic series. Nice! As always with fantasy novels, it took a little while to get into. I think part of it had to do with learning a new universe. I was having a little trouble in my head figuring out how some of his terms should be pronounced and somebody else’s pronunciations might be different. I just had to make myself not worry about that and get on with the book. I also didn’t like the frequency in which Sanderson was throwing out new terms and not really explaining what they mean. There’s no glossary in the back to help clear things up. Eventually, everything was explained enough to understand what he was talking about. Once I started getting into the book, I really enjoyed it. I do remember thinking that there were a lot of surprising twists happening, but that’s okay. I found it interesting that there weren’t many battles. There was a great deal of intellectual maneuvering, but not much physical fighting. I’m pretty sure I’m going to read Sanderson’s Mistborn series when I get a chance.

F.Y.I. – There’s an Elantris glossary on Sanderson’s website. I wish I had known this when I was reading the book.

The Sword and Laser’s current book is Unshapely Things and I’m already reading it. I don’t think I had ever heard of elf punk until now.