
Fantasy, High Fantasy
Brandon Sanderson
The Stormlight Archive, Book # 1
Tor Books
August 31st 2010
Hardcover
1007
English
I long for the days before the Last Desolation.
The age before the Heralds abandoned us and the Knights Radiant turned against us. A time when there was still magic in the world and honor in the hearts of men.
The world became ours, and yet we lost it. Victory proved to be the greatest test of all. Or was that victory illusory? Did our enemies come to recognize that the harder they fought, the fiercer our resistance? Fire and hammer will forge steel into a weapon, but if you abandon your sword, it eventually rusts away.
There are four whom we watch. The first is the surgeon, forced to forsake healing to fight in the most brutal war of our time. The second is the assassin, a murderer who weeps as he kills. The third is the liar, a young woman who wears a scholar's mantle over the heart of a thief. The last is the prince, a warlord whose eyes have opened to the ancient past as his thirst for battle wanes.
The world can change. Surgebinding and Shardwielding can return; the magics of ancient days become ours again. These four people are key.
One of them may redeem us. And one of them will destroy us.
From Brandon Sanderson-who completed Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time-comes The Stormlight Archive, an ambitious new fantasy epic in a unique, richly imagined setting. Roshar is a world relentlessly blasted by awesome tempests, where emotions take on physical form, and terrible secrets hide deep beneath the rocky landscape.
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!

About the book
It is a little difficult for me to summarise this monumental book. Partly because I didn’t like it as I thought (but I will explain why later) and partly because it’s long and remembering everything is impossible and it would be an understatement anyway.
The book is the first in a series of 10 books called The Stormlight Archive and is divided into parts, like all Sanderson’s books apparently and each part it is divided into chapters narrated more or less by a single character. The main characters are essentially 3 or 4 and we follow their story independently of the others or while it is intertwined with the others.
We have Shallan who has an independent story but who intertwines with Jasnah who is the King ‘s sister Elhokar. We have the king’s uncle, Dalinar Kholin and his son Adolin, we have Kaladin to whom a big portion of the book is dedicated and a murderer, Szeth, with whom the book begins, but apart from a few scenes he doesn’t have much space in the story.