After the joyride that was Mistborn, as eager as I was to continue on in that series I decided to follow a list I found on the internet with a preferred reading order of the Cosmere works, which brought me to Elantris, Brandon Sanderson’s first published novel.
The first thing I realized is that Sanderson is a masochist. Many fantasy authors either labor over their magic system, like Rothfuss, or ignore the rules altogether, like Tolkien, but few make up new ones for each set of stories.
Spoiler alert: I’ve read more since Elantris and damn if he doesn’t make up even more systems.
I want to stress that Elantris is a better novel than anything I’ve ever written, but its status as “first novel” shows.
Mild spoilers follow.
On the planet Sel, the city of Elantris is home to demigod-like beings, Elantrians, who practice a form of magic called AonDor. Practitioners create glowing symbols in the air, called Aons, and depending on the symbols drawn things happen, such as people being healed of injury or illness.
Ten years before the events in the book, a major earthquake hits Elantris and AonDor stops working. The city, once shining, becomes dark and covered in grime. The Elantrians themselves became, basically, zombies. Their skin turned grey, their hair fell out and their hearts stopped beating. Just like zombies, they have almost insatiable hunger (just for food, not brains), and their wounds don’t heal.
Non-Elantrians fled the city and the city itself became a prison for those afflicted. The city of Kae, which was just outside the walls, became the new capital city of the nation of Arelon.
Now the story could just end here, but it turns out that otherwise normal people can be afflicted with a malady called the Shaod. This turns them into Elantrians, and when that happens they are exiled to Elantris.
The novel follows three people:
Prince Raoden: heir to the throne of Arelon who is afflicted by the Shaod and exiled to Elantris, while the rest of the population is told he died.
Princess Sarene: Raoden’s betrothed, Sarene is from the neighboring nation of Teod whose marriage was arranged to build an alliance between the two nations. Raoden “died” as she arrived in Kae, but the way the marriage contract was written she was technically married, and she decides to stay.
Gyorn Hrathen: A “gyorn” is a high rank in the Derethi religion, favored by Fjorden, an imperialistic nation that has been conquering other states. The marriage alliance between Arelon and Teod was driven by an attempt to stand against Fjorden aggression. Hrathen was in Kae to convert the population or dooming it to invasion.
Elantris is told from the points of view of the main characters, with chapters in groups of three featuring each one in turn. This was probably the worst part of reading the book, as the transition could be jarring, especially in the beginning before the three story lines start to come together.
As you can imagine, there is court intrigue, political manipulation, and betrayals, all while the goal of bringing Elantris back to its former glory is pursued.
I won’t say any more to avoid giving too much away, and I did like the book overall, but coming from Mistborn, which had better characters, a more engaging story and a satisfying pace, it was very hard to get into it at first. I put it down after reading just a chapter many times, as going from, say, reading about Raoden trying to learn AonDor to Sarene teaching noblewomen how to fence was disconcerting. I’d pick it up a day later, read the Sarene chapter, and then put it back down when it was Hrathen’s turn. This went away when the events in one chapter fed cleanly into the events of the next toward the end of the story.
It was fun to read another installment in the Cosmere, but I am looking forward to getting back to Mistborn. However, that is still many books away. (sigh)