Perhaps you’re curious about this Brandon Sanderson fellow we occasionally talk about, but not sure where to start with his considerable bibliography? We’re here to help. We want to send you copies of three of his books—Elantris, Mistborn, and The Way of Kings. (And if you want to start reading him right now, here’s the beginning of the novella The Emperor’s Soul!)
In 2005, Brandon Sanderson debuted with Elantris, an epic fantasy unlike any other then on the market. A rare epic fantasy that doesn’t recycle the classics and that is a complete and satisfying story in one volume, Elantris is fleet and fun, full of surprises and characters to care about. To celebrate its tenth anniversary, Tor reissued Elantris in a special edition, which begins with a preface by author Dan Wells, the first person to read the completed novel, and includes a new afterword by Sanderson explaining how he came to write the book and its place in the Cosmere, the unified universe of all his Tor novels. Also included is an expanded version of the “Ars Arcanum” appendix, with more of the technical details of the book’s magic that fans can never get enough of.
Mistborn turns Tolkien, and all the fantasy derived from his masterpiece, on its head. Once, a hero rose to save the world. He failed. For a thousand years since, the world has been a wasteland of ash and mist ruled by the immortal emperor known as the Lord Ruler. Every revolt has failed miserably. Yet somehow, hope survives. Hope that dares to dream of ending the empire and defeating the Lord Ruler. A new kind of uprising is being planned—one that depends on the cunning of a brilliant criminal mastermind and the determination of an unlikely heroine: a teenage street urchin named Vin. This time, can a young heroine succeed?
The result of over ten years of planning, writing, and world-building, The Way of Kings is but the opening movement of the Stormlight Archive. Roshar is a world of stone and storms. Uncanny tempests of incredible power sweep across the rocky terrain so frequently that they have shaped ecology and civilization alike. It has been centuries since the fall of the ten consecrated orders known as the Knights Radiant, but their Shardblades and Shardplate remain: mystical swords and suits of armor that transform ordinary men into near-invincible warriors. Men trade kingdoms for Shardblades. Wars were fought for them, and won by them.
One such war rages on a ruined landscape called the Shattered Plains. There, Kaladin, who traded his medical apprenticeship for a spear to protect his little brother, has been reduced to slavery. In a war that makes no sense, where ten armies fight separately against a single foe, he struggles to save his men and to fathom the leaders who consider them expendable. Brightlord Dalinar Kholin commands one of those other armies. Like his brother, the late king, he is fascinated by an ancient text called The Way of Kings. Troubled by over-powering visions of ancient times and the Knights Radiant, he has begun to doubt his own sanity. Across the ocean, an untried young woman named Shallan seeks to train under an eminent scholar and notorious heretic, Dalinar’s niece, Jasnah. Though she genuinely loves learning, Shallan’s motives are less than pure. As she plans a daring theft, her research for Jasnah hints at secrets of the Knights Radiant and the true cause of the war.
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