Elantris

Elantris is the first novel by Brandon Sanderson. It is a very good first novel, but it does feel a little raw as compared to his later work. The concept is interesting and the characters well fleshed out.

However, I actually felt the characters were too well fleshed out. The majority of the book feels like character development with very little movement of the ultimate conflict of the story. The story sort of meanders back and forth between the three main characters until the last 1/4th or even 1/5 of the book. At that point, suddenly it kicks it into overdrive and begins to tell a very interesting and compelling story.

My biggest complaint is that once the story was over, I finally really wanted there to be more. The book ends with the potential for much more. While the novel resolved, it felt to me that there was much more that could have been told. It really feels like the first book in the series, where the majority of the time was spent establishing a world and characters so that a larger, epic story could be told in the follow up books (that don't, at least at this time, exist). Worth reading, no question, but not my favorite of the author's.