{"id":630,"date":"2006-09-24T08:51:21","date_gmt":"2006-09-24T08:51:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/09\/24\/brandon-sanderson-elantris-lib\/"},"modified":"2006-09-24T08:51:21","modified_gmt":"2006-09-24T08:51:21","slug":"brandon-sanderson-elantris-lib","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/09\/24\/brandon-sanderson-elantris-lib\/","title":{"rendered":"Brandon Sanderson, Elantris [Library of Babel]"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Brandon Sanderson’s debut novel, Elantris<\/cite><\/strong> first appeared on store shelves, I was tempted to buy it. It had a lot of things going for it: good review quotes, a striking cover, an interesting description, and it’s published by Tor, who are usually pretty reliable. I couldn’t quite figure out, though, whether it was the first book in a series or not, and I’d really rather not commit to another long fantasy series if it can be avoided.<\/p>\n

The paperback edition helpfully addresses this in the back cover copy:<\/p>\n

\n

“Elantris<\/cite> delightfully proves that a great complete fantasy story can still be told in a single volume of action, intrigue, wonder, and countless surprises.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

(If that was in the hardcover jacket copy, I missed it.)<\/p>\n

Thus reassured, I bought a copy a while back, and read it over the last couple of weeks.<\/p>\n

The really interesting thing here is the setting. The titular city of Elantris was a magical city, whose inhabitants were marked by glowing silvery skin and almost godlike powers. People became Elantrians more or less at random– from the highest level of society to the lowest, anyone could wake up one morning to find themselves transformed into an Elantrian, and granted magical powers (a process known as “the Shaod”).<\/p>\n

Then, ten years before the book opens, everything changed. The magic of Elantris suddenly stopped working, and the tranformation became a curse– instead of silvery skin and magical powers, those taken by the magic turned grey and blotchy, and suffered lingering pain from even the slightest injury. The light of the city was snuffed out, and it became a decaying wreck, covered in muck and slime. And nobody had any reason why.<\/p>\n

Starting from there, the plot is fairly standard fantasy material. It follows three viewpoint characters: Raoden, the crown prince of the kingdom that has sprung up since the fall of Elantris, who is taken by the Shaod; Sarene, a strong-willed princess from another country, who had been set to marry Raoden for political reasons; and Hrathen, a priest of a martial religion allied with a distant empire, sent to prepare the country for conquest. They all do pretty much what you expect them to do: Raoden tries to find out the reason for the fall of Elantris, Sarene tries to keep her new home from falling under Hrathen’s sway, and Hrathen plots and schemes and grapples with his faith. There’s political scheming, magical theory, discussion of theology, and a few big fight scenes, and i’s all handled very deftly.<\/p>\n

Having opened this booklog entry with the worry that this might’ve been the start of a trilogy, it seems a little uncharitable to end it by saying that the book sags in the middle, but, well, it sags in the middle. The set-up is brilliant, the ending is very satisfying, but the book sort of drifts through the middle section. It’s clear where events have to go, but they take their time getting there. This easily could’ve been a trilogy, and God knows, there have been trilogies with less overall plot, but it still dragged a bit in the middle section.<\/p>\n

Still, if that’s the only complaint I can find regarding a debut novel, well, that’s pretty impressive. Sanderson has written a very good book, falling just short of excellent, and it’s well worth reading. And, hey, the story is complete in one volume, so it’s not like you’re making a long-term committment by reading it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Brandon Sanderson’s debut novel, Elantris first appeared on store shelves, I was tempted to buy it. It had a lot of things going for it: good review quotes, a striking cover, an interesting description, and it’s published by Tor, who are usually pretty reliable. I couldn’t quite figure out, though, whether it was the… Continue reading Brandon Sanderson, Elantris [Library of Babel]<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,18,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-booklog","category-books","category-sf","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}