As agreed upon by the gang we will look at the prologue and first 2 chapters of Elantris.
A bit of a background:
Elantris is of course one of Brandon Sanderson's earlier works. I personally got interested in his work strangely through the first book of his Reckoners series: SteelHeart.
As I love comicbooks and superheroes in general SteelHeart pulled me right in. After that I had to look for more Sanderson. My brother Rob was the big Sanderson fan so I asked him what would be a good read and I got into the first Mistborn trilogy. The Final Empire blew my mind. And I was hooked now on the Cosmere.
After devouring the first Mistborn trilogy and the first Wax and Wayne book I then moved to Stormlight Archives.
Now reading Elantris my biggest fear is that the previous books I've read might spoil the experience of reading Sanderson's earlier works.
On to Elantris...
Prologue:
The setup is great. Brandon Sanderson is really great at world building.
It opens with "Elantris was beautiful, once" and ends with "Eternity ended ten years ago"
Immediately questions come to mind and you want to find out what happened to Elantris.
Chapter 1:
We get introduced to Raoden. And my biggest thought here was "WHAT THE HECK! ZOMBIES!"
The character introduction here feels a bit tame and bland compared to how the main protagonists got introduced in Mistborn and the Stormlight Archives.
Biggest things on my mind: "What Zombies???" and "Why is Elantris like this?"
Galladon feels like he will play a big part in this book.
Chapter 2:
We meet Sarene. She continues the grand tradition of strong female characters for Brandon Sanderson.
We also get to meet Ashe, Saren's Seon. Ashe feels like a spren from Stormlight Archives.
Just like with Raoden, Sarene's introductory chapter doesn't feel as engaging as say Jasnah's or Shallan's Stormlight Archives intro.
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I'm probably spoiled by Mistborn and Stormlight Archives. I have to keep reminding myself that Elantris is one of Sanderson's earlier works. The writing style indeed shows some differences punctuated for me by the use of modern day colloquialisms like Sarene's father going "oh honey..."
Well forward to the other chapters. I'll probably add some other notes here later on.
-Taleweaver
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