I spent yesterday's snow day with Brandon Sanderson and my puppy Finn, and it was unexpectedly wonderful. I admit I was lured into a false sense of springtime security with the fifty degrees we had for Super Bowl Sunday (I live in East Rutherford, the REAL Super Bowl City this year!), so I hadn't been ready for the day of slush and shoveling that followed. I'd also committed to a pretty well-thought-out reading list for February, so I had no idea I'd be going back to Roshar any time soon.
Gee willickers, Batman, I'm glad I changed my mind.
I had a revelation while digging out my car yesterday morning-- there are only twenty-nine days until Words of Radiance, Book Two of the Stormlight Archive, is released!
The Stormlight Archive came alive, for me, when I was wandering around the massive Hackensack Public Library one summer afternoon, looking for something to read. The giant spine of Way of Kings jumped out at me, and I checked it out without any real knowledge of where it would take me. I remember spending all my sunlight at the park that day, sitting next to the murky river with my friends, feeding geese and falling deeper and deeper in love with the story.
Plus, I'm like ninety percent sure Kaladin is the love of my literary life.
Way of Kings, book one of the series, is an epic fantasy powerhouse, filled with all the things I like best about epic fantasy: flawed heroes, dead kings, tragic wars, and ancient magic. I found it at a time when my reading list was made up largely of regency romance, when I had lost the thread of fantasy novels that I had loved so much when I was younger. It rekindled my ardent admiration for the fantasical, which is something I'd like to personally thank Brandon Sanderson for, should I ever have the chance. I even pressured a librarian at my hometown library to add a copy of Way of Kings to their sadly small sci-fi/fantasy collection, because of how strongly I felt every fan of the genre should read it! Since finishing it myself, I've devoured Sanderson's work, from Mistborn to Warbreaker, and returned to my reading roots with other epic fantasy authors.
But in twenty-nine days, Stormlight comes back.
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To prepare, I've decided that it really wouldn't be right not to revisit Way of Kings in its entirety. Sanderson is a busy man (Wheel of Time, anyone?), and these are long books, so it's been a helluva long while since the first installment stole my heart. I know many places, including the grand ungodly godlike Tor publishing, have hosted read-alongs of Way of Kings, and I've loved seeing what other fans are saying, but for my personal re-read, I want to really relish in the world as it is on the page, get lost for a while, and hopefully come up for air with some new ideas of my own.
Also, I want to gush like a little girl about how so totally awesome it is.
So I've had to shift around my February reading list to make room for this behemoth of an epic fantasy novel. My library copy of George R.R. Martin's Dying of the Light has been sitting on my coffee table for a week now, unmoved from the place where I dropped it after doing my little happy dance at the circulation desk when it first came in, and it's going to have to sit there for a little longer (my apologies, Mr. Martin; you're so totally awesome, too, I swear). I've whittled it down to just what I'm "currently reading," which looks like this:
- Way of Kings, Stormlight Book 1, by Brandon Sanderson (duh)
- Hard Times, by Charles Dickens (for THIS Dickens birthday celebration)
- Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton (as my keep-in-my-purse-for-boring-life-moments book)
I have been anxiously awaiting whining like crazy about how badly I've wanted Words of Radiance for so very long, it's hard to believe it's almost here! I'm excited, and nervous, and sometimes I peek my head in at the library just to make sure they're all aware that it's coming soon (they are, and they've asked me to stop reminding them). I hope epic fantasy fans who haven't read it yet will give it a try, and lapsed fans will jump down this particular rabbit hole and realize how much they've missed it.
In the meantime, I'll be reading (and gushing about) Way of Kings while these last twenty-nine days slip away.
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