Overall, The Way of Kings was a very good book. By the end, I understood what was happening, how things connected, and mostly which characters were which. However, it took 600 pages to get going. That's a long time for any book to set itself going; 600 pages is longer than a lot of books take to finish themselves. It took far too long describing the unusual storms that took place in this world and the spheres they use for money and light. The last 400 pages of the book were wonderful, and it took me about a tenth of the time to read those pages than the other 600 hundred. Those 600 pages contained a lot of rather bothersome features. For example, it described things several times in the same way. The world is full of spirit-like things called spren, and it describes fearspren by saying "Fearspren - like globs of purple gloo," then, not so many pages later there is another sentence: "Small fearspren - shaped like globs of purple goo" and then the rest of the sentence. They're almost exactly the same! Why would you do that? For the first section of the book, it's like he uses a formula for describing the spren. He has somespren - like something that looks like the spren - and the rest of the sentence. Later, Sanderson describes the dresses of a certain country as tight, form fitting at the top, and long, flowing at the bottom several times. Yes, I got that the first time, try using some different description. Then there were the characters. There were so many characters! The book followed several people, including Dalinar, Kaladin, young Kaladin, Shallan, and Szeth-son-son-Vallano, Truthless of Shinovar. Each had their own story, and the book spent some time on each before switching to another character. Just as I was getting used to one story and character, the book moved to another. By the time it returned, I had no idea which side characters were which. I didn't know who was nice to Dalinar or who Kaladin's brother was.
So the book gets a 4.3. It would have gotten a 3 if not for the fact that it finally managed to end well, with all the characters tying together. And the character Wit. He definitely made the book better.
I like how you get into the factors that complicate reading a long book. I often find that what I love about longer texts is their ability to allow you to know so many characters, but then, if you are reading over a longer period of time, how it can also be a challenge to remember all of the different characters and their backstories, etc. Now I'm thinking I need to at least try reading some Brandon Sanderson. Hopefully in 2012, when I can finally take a break from reading only books published for teens and in the given year.
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