Brandon Sanderson. BRANDON SANDERSON.
My god, this man.
His ideas! His world building! His magic systems!
HIS WRITING SPEED.
The man is a genius.
Literally all of his books except one is on my favourites list.
That is ridiculous.
RIDICULOUSLY AWESOME.
Let's just take a look at his books.
Elantris
His debut. Probably the weakest of his books I've read so far, but still quite a decent book. It was actually the first Sanderson I ever read, and it's not bad to start with, since you don't know how amazing his other books are when you first read this one haha
The Emperor's Soul
One of the best novellas I have ever read. Honestly, you should just go into this one completely blind and be amazed and dazzled by the magic system and the character development and just everything. Sanderson manages to cram so much into such a short read, but you never feel that it's too much. SO AWESOME.
The Mistborn series (The Final Empire, The Well of Ascension, The Hero of Ages)
The Hero of Ages is maybe my favourite individual book of Sanderson's (although don't ask me to confirm that, because I CAN'T CHOOSE).
THE PLOT TWISTS MY GOD THE PLOT TWISTS.
And that is all I shall say about this series...
The Mistborn second series (The Alloy of Law, Shadows of Self, Bands of Mourning, The Lost Metal)
This is so cool, it's like the original Mistborn trilogy is set in the far past, with not much technology available and such, and this series is set in the more recent past, with guns being combined with magic. Sanderson is also going to be writing a third trilogy which is more of a SFF crossover, set in the future of this world (sort of correlates to a 1940s/1980s Earth, apparently he hasn't decided yet).
The Reckoners series (Steelheart, Mitosis, Firefight, Calamity)
AGAIN THE PLOT TWISTS. JUST WHAT EVEN.
So basically, in this series, of which I've only read Steelheart, the beings with supernatural powers (called Epics) are pretty much all supervillains, and humans basically live in fear. But all hope is not lost, because all of the Epics have a fatal flaw! Steelheart is one of the Epics, and ermahgerd, the reveal for his flaw was freaking awesome.
The Stormlight Archive (The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance)
I do believe this is my favourite of Sanderson's series. It's very long and complex (projected two subseries of five books each) and there are a gazillion characters to keep track of, but the world building and the magic system and the way Sanderson reveals the secrets of the series are all just fantastic.
Legion (Legion, Legion: Skin Deep)
I haven't actually read Legion: Skin Deep yet (waiting out for the UK editions because the covers are so much prettier and all match) but the premise of Legion is so weird and creative! Basically the main character has a strange form of personality disorder where he has the ability to hallucinate entire entities that interact with him and know things that he doesn't (e.g. how to speak certain languages). It's bizarre, and quite unlike any of Sanderson's other books/novellas.
Warbreaker series (Warbreaker, Nightblood)
AGAIN WITH THE TWISTS ALKSJDFASDF!!
This book is actually completely free from Sanderson's website, so YOU SHOULD FREAKING GET IT AND READ IT BECAUSE IT'S AWESOME.
The Rithmatist series (The Rithmatist, The Aztlantian)
Never would I have thought that chalk drawings would be so scary! In this series, the "Rithmatists" are people who can make chalk drawings come to life, and battle each other with chalk figures and circles and such. The magic system is really complicated, but thankfully the book has all these illustrations to help you visualise what is going on.
Sanderson actually has a ton of other projects planned which you can read about in this blogpost here, but I thought I'd just go over the books that I've read (which is pretty much all of the ones that have been released).
So, have you read any Brandon Sanderson? If you dislike his books, I'll disown you. (Am I kidding? We'll find out, won't we...)
If you haven't read any of his books, you need to take a good long look at your life and make some much needed changes.
haha in all seriousness though, it's fine if you haven't read any of his books. As long as they're on your TBR...
lol I really should stop threatening people. Pretty sure that's not going to motivate you to read the books.
Okay, Nara out. Before this post gets too crazy. (Probs way too late...)
Oh, and a slightly early Happy New Year! :)
