Book Review: Elantris

This Labor Day weekend I read Elantris by Brandon Sanderson.

I decided to read this book because I enjoyed Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series and Brandon Sanderson will be writing the final installment since Robert Jordan passed away before finishing the last book. I thought it would be best to familiarize myself with Brandon Sanderson's work prior to the release of the next Wheel of Time novel.

I like to rank books by how I read them. I either a) love them and can't put them down, b) enjoy them but find it a little tedious to get through them, c) stop reading them and never finish them, or d) never start reading them in the first place because they don't appeal to me at all. To my delight, Elantris was an "a"-category book.

It's not a book I would read again right away, but it was a very enjoyable one-volume fantasy story that had the epic feel I enjoy. As the story went along I found myself expecting and predicting how the plot would turn out in the end quite easily, but this did not take away from the enjoyment of reading it through. There were enough surprises thrown in as well to make things interesting.

It's hard not to compare his writing to Robert Jordan's even though this was his first novel, but I felt like Brandon Sanderson dealt with plot better than characters, but he did a great job of tidying up the ending of the story and not letting it come to abruptly. Fortunately Robert Jordan has already established the characters in the Wheel of Time series very well, and what is needed for the final trilogy is plot development and a tidy, climactic ending. After reading Elantris I am really looking forward to The Gathering Storm.