Elantris

The Book in 1 Sentence

The most predictable political fantasy book that sign post all the end results in the first 3 chapters.

Brief Review

I have never had a book so plainly and overtly tell you the end of the book so early in the book. Brandon Sanderson tells a great political story with characters that are full of life, but lack a non-cliched constant direction. The over arching story is well written, but leaves nothing to the imagination as the sign post are covered in neon lights.

Why I Read this book

This has been in my "library" for a long time probably from a 2-for-1 sale. I am trying to get through the old items in my library.

In-Depth Review

So I have to say that the world build is wonderful in this book. It is by far the best part about it. There is a really nice growth of the land that honestly does more growing that the characters. That is the most surprising thing about this book. There is little to know character growth from the main characters. The main bad guy does more growth. Everyone just plays the characters that were initially presented to us the readers. The idea of the magic and its origin is actually really different from anything that I have read and I appreciate the lack of knowledge by the world about its origin.

What is really frustrating is the heavy handed sign posting that happens. What is really interesting is at the end of the book, the author makes comments about how the book came to be, items he took out, and his intentional foreshadowing. He made a comment about his intention to place them there and I can't understand why he would want to do it. He literally gave away the ending with the first 3 chapters and wanted to add more??? I can't understand

Rating

I know that I should say "To each their own," but in the back of the book he also mentioned that he has been told that this book is their favorite and I can't get behind the elementary writing where very little happens. A lot of words happen, but there is nothing that presents a true crisis to the characters that wasn't given away earlier in the book. This book is a 5. The world building is great, but the rest should never have been published.