Edgedancer by Brandon Sanderson

Three years ago, Lift asked a goddess to stop her from growing older—a wish she believed was granted. Now, in Edgedancer, the barely teenage nascent Knight Radiant finds that time stands still for no one. Although the young Azish emperor granted her safe haven from an executioner she knows only as Darkness, court life is suffocating the free-spirited Lift, who can’t help heading to Yeddaw when she hears the relentless Darkness is there hunting people like her with budding powers. The downtrodden in Yeddaw have no champion, and Lift knows she must seize this awesome responsibility.

This was a mildly frustrating book. I love pretty much everything about the Cosmere Universe and Brandon Sanderson has one of the most engaging writing styles I have come across. The character Lift is probably his most annoying creation though, and this is a novella focused purely on her.

As with all of the Stormlight books, this has second to none world building and continues with the amazing magic system established in previous books in the system. This brings me to one of the first annoyances of this book - Lift essentially breaks this system. Having gone to all the effort to build this amazing rules based magic system, we have a character here who apparently does not obey the laws previously laid out.

Lift herself is a precocious teenage thief, who was briefly introduced in Words of Radiance. Precocious children are hard to write well, and unfortunately this one falls on the side of annoyingly cocky. Her personality just jars with me.

Despite these issues, this is still a Sanderson Stormlight book. It has his amazing writing style, some genuine moments of humour and a good central storyline and mystery. It is a good book, but due to the central character it just doesn't compare especially well to his other cosmere books. It is still a lot better than many other fantasy books out there though

This was such a fun novella! It's been a few years since I've read something from the Cosmere, and this was a delightful re-entry (I couldn't stomach 1000+ pages of Oathbringer just yet). Lift was one of my favorite characters from Words of Radiance even though she got so little space – so I'm so glad she got the attention of an entire short narrative. Her character development was great, and this was light while still bringing some additional detail to the overarching story.

I know a lot of people do not like Lift much and I will admit I was on the fence about her but after reading this I am quite fond of her. It is a good quick read.

Why you should read this novella, a summary:

- You wanna see someone use a Shardblade as something other than a blade?

- You wanna see the protagonist fall face first onto the ground (literally) and use Stormlight to slide across the ground so as not to hurt her face?

- You wanna see an exasperated Spren trying to dissuade its assigned human from trying to do foolish things?

- Do you wanna see a cool kid fight a Herald, and steal his breakfast?

- Do you just wanna see someone steal food for a 100 pages and use it as motivation to keep doing more stupid things?

Then yes, read this book. You won't regret it! Even if it has no Kaladin or Dalinar, you'll keep on reading!!!

P.S. Szeth shows up so read it