I loved The Way of Kings the first time I read it, and I’ve loved it every time since, and that’s been more than a few. I gave it a 5 out of 5 a long time ago and I’d give it a 5 again today without a second’s thought. It’s also where my whole Sanderson habit started, because even though it came out well after the Mistborn books, it was the first of his I ever picked up. I didn’t know how much he wrote, or really anything about him at the time, which probably helped, because I went in with no expectations at all and came out the other side wanting everything he’d ever put on paper.
I got my copy straight from Tor back when I was super active posting, which was a really cool moment, and that was before Sanderson started work on The Wheel of Time. He’d go on to finish that series, and I wrote about his first contribution in The Gathering Storm, but this book is what made me pay attention to him in the first place. If you’ve read my earlier review of this book, this one is really a reread take, written after going back through it again with the rest of the series behind me. I wrote about the first Mistborn book around the same era too. Long story short, this is by far the best book in the Stormlight Archive, and I’ve read enough of them now to say that with confidence.
Kaladin and Bridge Four
Kaladin was easily my favourite character, and it all starts here. He’s a surgeon’s son who goes to war to protect his younger brother Tien, and he watches Tien die anyway, which shapes everything he does afterwards. He earns a Shardblade through combat and gives it away rather than keep it, and the lighteyed lord he trusted, Amaram, betrays him and has him branded a slave to cover up the theft. That’s how he ends up on the Shattered Plains carrying bridges for Sadeas, where the bridgemen are basically there to die, sent ahead of the army as the first thing the Parshendi archers shoot at. The flashbacks that explain why Kaladin is the way he is are woven in at just the right times, so you understand what he’s carrying and why he doesn’t trust the men who give the orders.
The thing I love is how he pulls Bridge Four back from the brink. He starts with a crew that has given up, a bunch of men who are waiting to be killed, and he drags them into something better by being smart and stubborn. He changes how they carry the bridges, works out how to keep them alive, and treats them like people in a place where no one else does. Rock, Teft, Sigzil, Moash and the rest turn from names in a crowd into characters I care about, and watching them become a real crew is a big part of why I love this book.
The moment that I think about most is the highstorm. After a creative but failed attempt with a bridge goes wrong, an angry Sadeas has Kaladin beaten and tied out in the open with a storm coming in, and he isn’t supposed to survive it. He does. And afterwards he starts to find that he can do things he shouldn’t be able to, pulling Stormlight out of the spheres people use as money and getting stronger, faster and able to heal. That’s when Syl, the honorspren who’s been following him around, starts to make sense. It’s an iconic moment, and it sets up the whole rest of the series.
Dalinar, the visions and the Tower
Dalinar Kholin, the Blackthorn, is the other spine of the book. He’s a highprince and a legendary warrior who’s starting to question the way Alethkar fights its war, and he’s having visions during the highstorms that show him the ancient Knights Radiant. The other highprinces think those visions mean he’s losing his mind, and his own son Adolin worries about it too. Dalinar follows the old Codes anyway, which makes him look weak to the men around him, and his honour is exactly what ends up being used against him. The voice in the visions keeps telling him to unite them, and he doesn’t entirely know who they are or how to do it.
The Tower is where it all comes together. Dalinar plans with Sadeas to trap the Parshendi, and partway through the battle Sadeas abandons him, leaving the Kholin army cut off. This is where Kaladin’s new powers matter. He channels Stormlight to shield his men from arrows and then charges the enemy, which lets Dalinar’s people get out alive, and it’s one of the best sequences in the book. Afterwards Dalinar confronts Sadeas and trades his Shardblade for two thousand bridgemen, which I love as a choice for a man who could have had revenge.
Roshar, Shallan and Szeth
Roshar itself is a big part of why this book works. It’s a world of highstorms that sweep across the land on a schedule, and everything from the plants to the architecture has adapted to them, with spren hovering around every emotion and object and Shardblades and Shardplate turning ordinary soldiers into something else. The whole war on the Shattered Plains is fought over gemhearts from the giant chasmfiends that live in the chasms, which gives the fighting a strange, almost sporting shape. Sanderson hands you all of this a bit at a time, so it feels like you’re learning a place instead of being handed a manual, and I never felt lost even when there was a lot going on.
Shallan is the third main storyline. She’s a minor noble from a struggling family who schemes her way into becoming Jasnah Kholin’s ward, with a plan to steal Jasnah’s Soulcaster and save her family’s fortune. Along the way she befriends a young priest called Kabsal, and she works out that both she and Jasnah can Soulcast without a device, which isn’t supposed to be possible. Jasnah is a scholar who believes the Parshendi are connected to the ancient Voidbringers, and I found her research threads compelling because they hint at how big the real conflict is going to be.
Szeth, the Assassin in White, is the fourth thread, and he’s the one who kills King Gavilar in the prologue. He’s a Shin exile carrying a Shardblade and powers that let him bend gravity, and he obeys whoever holds his Oathstone, which means he’s made to kill people he’d rather not. Later we learn that one of his masters is Taravangian, the gentle-seeming king of Kharbranth. Even Wit, the king’s jester, gets a role at the end when a figure appears at Kholinar’s gates with a warning about what’s coming. Adolin, Elhokar and the other Kholins fill in the wider cast, and every one of them has enough going on that I wanted more of them.
So many questions, so few answers
The odd thing is how many mysteries and questions it raises and how few answers it gives. You’d think that would leave me frustrated by the end. It really didn’t. There’s the Assassin in White, Dalinar’s visions, the Shardblades, the spren, the Knights Radiant who are clearly on their way back, and every one of them is a hook rather than a hole. I finished the book wanting to know more and not irritated at being left hanging.
The last vision, with the voice behind them finally explained, sends you straight into the second book. It’s definitely a hefty tome, and I won’t pretend otherwise, so give yourself some time with it. Kaladin alone makes it worth the effort. But I can’t recommend it enough, and if I hadn’t already given it a 5 earlier, I’d definitely do so now.
Rating: 5 out of 5. It’s the best book in the series by a distance, and I’ve loved it every single time I’ve read it. Kaladin is my favourite character, the iconic scenes are all here, and it left me with a pile of mysteries I was happy to be left with. Pick it up if you haven’t.