Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson, Warbreaker is the story of two sisters, who happen to be princesses, the God King one of them has to marry, the lesser god who doesn't like his job, and the immortal who's still trying to undo the mistakes he made hundreds of years ago. Their world is one in which those who die in glory return as gods to live confined to a pantheon in Hallandren's capital city and where a power known as BioChromatic magic is based on an essence known as breath that can only be collected one unit at a time from individual people. By using breath and drawing upon the color in everyday objects, all manner of miracles and mischief can be accomplished. It will take considerable quantities of each to resolve all the challenges facing Vivenna and Siri, princesses of Idris; Susebron the God King; Lightsong, reluctant god of bravery, and mysterious Vasher, the Warbreaker. Other Tor books by Brandon Sanderson The Cosmere The Stormlight Archive The Way of Kings Words of Radiance Edgedancer (Novella) Oathbringer (forthcoming) The Mistborn trilogy Mistborn: The Final Empire The Well of Ascension The Hero of Ages Mistborn: The Wax and Wayne series Alloy of Law Shadows of Self Bands of Mourning Collection Arcanum Unbounded Other Cosmere novels Elantris Warbreaker The Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians series Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians The Scrivener's Bones The Knights of Crystallia The Shattered Lens The Dark Talent The Rithmatist series The Rithmatist Other books by Brandon Sanderson The Reckoners Steelheart Firefight Calamity

This book was amazingly good!

Sanderson has written a few books that are in the top of fantasy charts and they are truly outstanding, deserving the praise and hype. But...

How the hell is this book more popular than Elantris?! Elantris is great! If this wasn't Sanderson I would've dropped it long time ago. Except for Lightsong's humor and that black sword there's nothing interesting here. The plot crawls for the first 300 pages and the rest isn't much better.

Main characters are boring and dumb. Vivenna is Mary Sue with zero character development until 400th page. Four hundredth!!! The only interesting thing about Siri's chapters were the late night talks.
Magic is barely used and it's not even that interesting. Original, sure. But underutilized. I know this is his second published book but in reality it was like 6th or 8th he had written and yet he's explaining how magic works on 500th page out of 650!

I continue to love Brandon Sanderson's books.

Gradually over the past year and a half I've been reading more and more fantasy books, gradually working my way through some new releases and some old classics but one name and author kept cropping up as the most recommended and highly regarded of the fantasy genre and that was Brandon Sanderson. It became apparent quickly that as master of the genre he was someone I needed to read.

Upon recommendation, I started off with Warbreaker, the story of the two Idrian princesses one of whom is sent away to the neighbouring Hallandren to marry their God King whilst her sister follows after her to try and save her sister from the fate she believes awaits her at the hands of her future husband.

I was worried initially that I'd find the book quite dense and difficult to delve into, being one of my first experiences of high fantasy I hoped it would be accessible to me. Instead of a difficult book to read I found one full of humour, relatable characters it is easy to fall in love with and vivid settings with histories that you discover as the book goes along. I could not stop reading this book, I loved the way that his characters are not always what they appear to be. Just as we are developing feelings for them Sanderson flips them and suddenly they are not all that they appeared to be. We can be cheering them one moment then praying for their demise the next.

The beautiful blossoming relationships between Siri and her God King husband was so beautiful to rea and they were two of my favourite characters in the novel. However, the real prize must go to Lightsong the Bold, the god who struggles with his godliness and his role as a deity and who develops a conscience about what is going on around him and so sets out to discover who is controlling the scheming in Hallandren, he is a beautiful and witty character to read from the perspective of and his journey of self-discovery and his endearing sense of right. I get it now, I'd heard people talk about the amazing characters Sanderson writes and I now sense the potential and hidden joys his other books have waiting for me and I cannot wait to savour them all.

When I initially started this book I had been led to believe that it was a standalone but I now believe that there will be more stories set around the characters of Warbreaker and I am totally invested, I cannot wait to learn more about the history of the Manywars and the players involved and to find out how things will resolve from Warbreaker.

A well deserved 5 out of 5 stars.