Control Review: The Way of Kings…
(This is the first of a series of book reviews in which I write about each book focusing on an examination of what we can learn about writing by reading each successful novel.)
I, Daniel Trump, aka Dalton Lewis, read a book.
I read 27 last year. I want to read more than that this year — a lot more.
This book was only 1,124 pages on Kindle. It was The Way of Kings, a long fantasy epic by Brandon Sanderson. In it a number of characters deal with an assassination and a subsuquent war.
Why is it so successful? Why does it work so well when my novels are considered awful?
That’s what I’m wondering.
I read it over a month or so. I really worked at reading it. It was an excellent book.
That’s my review — it was good.
It’s about a guy named Kaladin. He’s a slave.
A groups of slaves live in a kingdom that has some innocent people and some guilty people.
He fights to get out of slavery and to improve the conditions of himself and his fellow slaves. These attempts go awry — often in outlandish and unfortunate ways. It’s not played for comedy but certain that it’s made difficult for Kaladin to improve his situation. There aren’t easy solutions to his problems.
Horrible things happen to the characters. They are put through terrible physical ordeals. The slavers demean them and kill many of them.
He and his fellow slaves carry bridges. They carry bridges to cross ravines. They help the soldiers to cross the ravines and often die in combat. The slaves die just as much as the soldiers do, and they find that to just be a part of their lives. They don’t have much hope of anything else.
There are other characters, too. There is one of the leading knights of the kingdom, trying to keep the kingdom together after some disasters happened that crushed the realm and started a war.
Also there’s a woman. A woman is trying to steal something so that she can afford to support her family. Brandon Sanderson, the author of the book, loves thieves and writing about heists and stealing and sneaking. It’s a recurring theme in his works.
Sanderson has sold 30 million + copies because people love his characters and his realms that he has created. I remember, as a child, reading wonderful fantasy novels that were epic stories that transported me to other places with wonderful heroes and amazing adventures. I have felt a little bit of that while reading this book. It felt neat, at forty-seven, to feel young again reading a wonderful fantasy epic.
I sit around, watching football, and I know that I should be reading more and writing more. I do work hard — and I have to work even harder.
Why do some people succeed and others fail?
What elements of this book work?
Kaladin is easy to root for. He’s a good person in a bad situation. He’s a wonderful but flawed person, in point of fact. His plight — being a slave — makes him easy to root for.
Horrible things happen to the main characters. Interesting things happen. They fight amongst themselves, trying to figure out their situations. Someone wants to steal from a wonderful friend. Another person sees visions and thinks that they are images that actually mean something — when he is called crazy by many people. Interesting things happen to the characters.
The enemies — the bad guys — are deceitful and evil but have sympathetic elements to them — but are definitely evil. There are evil elements that need to be stopped.
The chapters develop the characters and the themes. The characters have discussions about their situations. They live their lives. They fight bad guys sometimes, but they also talk and have arguments and have parties and have depressed days. All manner of things can happen to them. An entire world is created.
These elements combine to make for an excellent story.
I don’t understand.
Why don’t I do all this?
Why don’t the rest of us write masterpieces?
Thanks, and take care, friends.
