Brandon Sanderson's White Sand Omnibus by Brandon Sanderson

The epic tale by New York Times best-selling author Brandon Sanderson returns with an incredible omnibus anniversary edition! Celebrating five years since its publication, we have collected all three volumes of this seminal tale into a massive nearly 500 page tome that tells the complete story in one beautiful edition. This masterful tale will captivate you with powerful characters in an unfathomable world that only the masterwork of Sanderson can deliver! White Sand brings to life a crucial component of the sprawling Cosmere universe. The previously unpublished story is told by Brandon Sanderson and Rik Hoskin (Mercy Thompson), with art by Julius Gopez & colors by Ross Campbell. On the planet of Taldain, the legendary Sand Masters harness arcane powers to manipulate sand in spectacular ways. But when they are slaughtered in a sinister conspiracy, the weakest of their number, Kenton, believes himself to be the only survivor. With enemies closing in on all sides, Kenton forges an unlikely partnership with Khriss -- a mysterious Darksider who hides secrets of her own. Assassins are coming for them from all directions, and Kenton's only true ally is Khriss, a visitor from the other side of the planet who has an agenda of her own to pursue.

Rating: 4.5 ⭐️

Although I absolutely love Sanderson's prose and writing style, I've always wanted to see a graphic adaptation of his works. This first volume was a good start. I can't say I'm a fan of the art style, but I did like the story, characters and magic system. I have a lot of questions because this trilogy is related to the Cosmere, so hopefully this series will answer some of my inquiries.

Very good. I like how everything related to the Diem was resolved. Especially liked the part where we mess with Sand Mastery to try to figure out how it works.

Not okay with how these guys broke Aarik and then it ended?! WHAT? At least someone talk to him! Don't leave the most cheerful character in depression

I went into this deluxe omnibus edition almost blind. I read only the excerpt in Arcanum Unbounded. Based on the ratings I didn't have large expectations but I was looking forward to finally read it. After a year of waiting full of printing issues that this book had to go through I finally had it in my hands. Props to Dynamite for being so open about it and delivering top quality product in the end.

But once I started reading my disappointment started growing. The dialogues were bad. There was no characterization. Conversations continued “seemlessly” through time skips of days at least twice in the first volume. Didn't notice this later. I'm not talking about transitions but direct dialogues between characters.

Khriss was insufferable though her character improved towards the end. Instead Ais replaced her as one of the worst characters I've ever seen. I hated her inner dialogue. It was so cringe. It reminded me of Warbreaker which I used to consider by far the worst Cosmere novel. Well, now it has a companion.

I don't know if it was poor translation of a written novel into comics media or if the novel itself is this bad. But it simply didn't work. Whole story should've been reworked and properly adapted. I have a feeling they just took dialogues from the book and pasted them into text bubbles with little care for storytelling. Which suggests the book is bad too. There are deus ex machinas, it's simplistic, full of clichés and pseudo twists which you can easily guess.

When I first heard there will be omnibus of this series I couldn't wait and held off on purchasing the separate volumes. This book allegedly contains many improvements. Kriss's notes were cool and added explanations of how magic in this world works. I know that the prologue is also exclusive to this edition. But if anything else was improved I can't imagine the original. They should've spent the resources on redrawing the last chapter of volume 2 which is atrocious. Don't know the reason why it was done by different artist but the other two artists managed to capture the atmosphere quite well. This chapter was full of clinically clean low budget looking drawings which are also sadly present in many other comic books nowadays. No wonder everyone (including me) prefers manga.

There's a sequel teased at the end which I will certainly not touch if it ever comes out. I'm satisfied in getting through this book as I want to read everything in Cosmere but boy... Haven't been disappointed like this in a while. I recommend it only to the hardcore fans.