The Way of Kings

Welp. I did it. Was it worth spending hours and hours trudging through these pages? A little. I enjoyed parts of it. The grandiosity is what gives the book its appeal but the execution fell so flat for me. I'm more of a character-driven story reader but I feel like they were stretched so thin that I feel like I didn't even have to make conclusions myself. The book literally fed me who these characters are "supposed" to be. IMO, there's a lack of nuance in majority of the characters, i.e. Sadeas, Adolin, Navani, even Dalinar and Shallan.

The biggest problem I had with this book isn't the length. I crave for long reads because I do enjoy the mundane sprinkled in between action-packed scenes. The problem for me was it's lack of dynamics when it comes to the story. And no, it being the first book to a 10-book series is not an excuse. A book is a story in of itself and should be able to hold on its own while giving hints of what is to come. I'm not talking about the hidden secrets, schemes, and the overarching "villain" of the world. Again, the grandiosity is what gives it's allure. But by itself, it felt like it was just one fleshed-out scene divided in chunks and over-stretched. The first 200 pages and the last 100 pages were pretty much the entire story. Cut the middle pages and it's still going to be the same.