Lyn: Well, my Cosmere chickens, we’ve reached the final installment of the Dawnshard reread, and boy do we have a lot to talk about!
Sam: Hoo boy…. This week the chapters we’ll be talking about completely change a lot of what we assumed about the Cosmere and the history of Adonalsium. Where last week I had a lot to say about how paraplegia was portrayed via Rysn’s character, I think it’s safe to say I’m expecting to have a LOT to say in the Cosmere Connections section.
Welcome back, Cosmere fans! Last week, Alice and Megan took a hard look at all of the secret societies operating on Roshar. This week, I’ll be diving into what we know about all of those pesky worldhoppers who keep showing up on Roshar!
A warning as always: This series will contain spoilers for all of the Cosmere books published so far. In some cases, like in my Cosmere Primer, I’ll be drawing on Words of Brandon (WoBs) for further information. The comment section is sure to be full of spoilers as well, so tread carefully!
Hello, Cosmere fans! Many of you have been following Alice Arneson’s fantastic “Everything We Know About…” series of review articles for The Stormlight Archive, but today we’re looking at the bigger picture. In this piece, we’re digging deep into the Cosmere itself to see what we actually know about the characters and plots hiding in the background of Brandon Sanderson’s fantasy books.
The Way of Kings surgebinding chart; Art by Isaac Stewart
Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere novels, spearheaded by The Stormlight Archive and the Mistborn series, have become international bestsellers and developed a reputation for their rich worldbuilding, in-depth magic, and ambitious plotting. But another aspect of the books sets them apart: the art. While many fantasy books feature maps, and some include other artwork, Sanderson’s novels have become inextricably linked to a wide array of artwork. Whether it’s the sketches from Shallan’s journal in The Way of Kings, the striking Steel Alphabet in Mistborn, or the incredible Dragonsteel leatherbound editions of the books, it simply doesn’t feel like a Cosmere book without visual art accompanying the text.
Robert Jackson Bennett’s Foundryside made its way into the world in 2018 and quickly found an audience as one of the most creative and fun new fantasies around. Building on his success with The Divine Cities trilogy, Bennett found a groove with a world built around magitech and politics.
Meanwhile, David Farland’s The Runelords has been collecting fans since the late ’90s, with multiple titles in the series—of which eight books have been published so far—hitting the The New York Times Best Seller list. Split into two sub-series (The Earth King series and the Scions of the Earth series), The Runelords truly is an epic fantasy, in terms of scope, featuring over a dozen major POV characters and spanning multiple worlds, and multiple magic systems.
Despite being conceived decades apart and having rather disparate settings, The Runelords and Foundryside share common ground in their exploration of economics through magic. While many fantasy authors have tackled economic theory and practice in their stories, weaving the complexities of trade, finance, and cultural stability into the fabric of their worlds—consider the work of Daniel Abraham, Patrick Rothfuss, Elizabeth Bear, Max Gladstone, and Ann McCaffrey, to cite a few examples—it’s rarer to find fantasy novels in which the magic system itself is inextricable from matters of wealth and economic injustice, and the morality underlying both. Farland and Bennett, for all their differences, have both created worlds in which magic is inseparable from its economic impact, and its costs on both financial and human levels play central roles in the unfolding of their stories.
Brandon Sanderson is one of the biggest names in genre fiction right now. His young adult offerings, ranging from The Reckoners to Skyward to The Rithmatist, have attracted hordes of ardent fans. His adult fantasy set in the Cosmere universe features the heralded Stormlight Archive and six (and counting) installments under the Mistborn title, including multiple bestsellers. Warbreaker and Elantris are standalones (for now) with plenty of enthusiastic supporters. Even some of the shorter stories in the Cosmere—like the Hugo Award-winning The Emperor’s Soul—are well-known.
But seemingly lost in this impressive mix is White Sand, chronologically the earliest currently-published work in the Cosmere.
Glen Cook’s classic fantasy series, The Black Company, has largely flown under the radar in the 19 years since its ostensible conclusion with Soldiers Live (published in 2000). But with the recent publication of a new “interquel,” Port of Shadows, and the announcement one year ago that Eliza Dushku was planning to produce and star in a potential TV adaptation, The Black Company is seeing a resurgence. (It’s unclear how reliable the source is, but according to IMDB, the show is listed in pre-production as of April 2019.)
The series generally regarded as a sort of godfather to the now-popular grimdark subgenre, The Black Company could make for an ideal follow-up in the wake of HBO’s adaptation of A Song of Ice and Fire.
During the early 2000s, the fantasy genre underwent something of a revolution. After decades of heroic epic fantasy, headlined by the likes of Robert Jordan, Terry Brooks, Anne McCaffrey, and David Eddings, a new subgenre erupted in popularity. The era of grimdark arrived, spearheaded by George R. R. Martin’s opus, A Song of Ice and Fire.
Martin’s as-yet-unfinished series was praised for its “realism” and low-level perspective. Instead of prophesied heroes and farmboys fighting Dark Lords, A Song of Ice and Fire focused on family drama, political meddling, and the gritty, depressing realities of war. It was a hit, to say the least, and reached stratospheric levels with the development of HBO’s Game of Thrones adaptation.
But Martin’s work (and subsequent authors like Joe Abercrombie, Mark Lawrence, and—especially—Steven Erikson) did not form the foundation of grimdark. No, it is the relatively unheralded Glen Cook who can properly be ascribed the title of “Godfather of Grimdark.”
Matthew Stover is perhaps best known for his work in the Star Wars Expanded Universe—and for good reason. His novelization of Revenge of the Sith brings a depth and emotion to Anakin’s relationships with Obi-Wan and Padmé that the movie could only wish to achieve. His installment in the New Jedi Order sequence, Traitor, is possibly the best-written, finest single novel in the entire Expanded Universe.
But it is Stover’s Acts of Caine quartet that has achieved cult classic status and represents his best work. He brings the same level of characterization, the same depth to his portrayal of relationships, the same emotion that he did in his Star Wars novels—but he wraps it up in an even richer world built upon deep and layered themes, fantastic action sequences, and one of the strongest voices in the science fiction and fantasy genres.
All of this is possible because of Caine. Caine is the seminal hero—or, perhaps, anti-hero, as Stover’s quartet really hits all the marks of the grimdark subgenre.
Before diving into the list itself, I’d like to establish a few things: first, these are completely subjective rankings based on my own favorite series. The list takes into consideration things like prose, dialogue, characters, worldbuilding, and plot. In some cases, weight will be given more to phenomenal prose; in others, the focus will be on setting or characters or whatever the books’ major strengths happen to be.
It also ignores incomplete series, so you won’t see any love for The Kingkiller Chronicle or The Stormlight Archive, among others. Similarly, it ignores standalone books, so no Uprooted or The Windup Girl or Roadside Picnic.
Additionally, this list in many ways represents science fiction and fantasy of the past (mostly the late 20th century). It’s likely that a few of these will still be on my list in a decade, but SFF of the past few years has taken a much-needed turn toward more diverse viewpoints and voices. This means that I simply haven’t read some of the best new authors yet—and others, whom I have, don’t have their series finished. So while the largely male and white voices of the 1980-2010 era have provided some excellent groundwork, the future of science fiction and fantasy will undoubtedly feature more diverse voices at the top of the board.
For instance, I haven’t yet read the Broken Earth trilogy by N.K. Jemisin (which is by all accounts a stunning literary work). Authors like Jemisin are sure to figure into future lists of this sort…and the opportunity to find and read new stories from new voices is one of the most exciting things about reading SFF.
That said, let’s dive on in!
