The Way of Kings

First off, my final impression: I enjoyed the book immensely once I got about halfway into it. That said I have a HUGE problems with the book which is why I can only give it three stars.

Two things I'm taking into account while reviewing this book. One, fairly or unfairly I am comparing it to “The Eye of the World.” As Sanderson was hand picked to finish up the Wheel of Time series (for which he's doing a fantastic job I must say) I feel this is fair. Second, one of the main themes of this book is life is about the journey not the destination. Seems very appropriate for how to review a book to me.

This book fails both of those points for the exact same reason. Because this is the first book in a planned 10 book series it needed to slowly introduce us to the characters. The Eye of the World did a fantastic job of this by slowly introducing us to each of the Emmonds field gang and giving us half a book to get use to them before splitting them all up. The Way of Kings though introduces us initially to five separate characters (eight by the mid point) early on two of which you never see again but become important by the end. And another who we only see occasionally again through out the rest of the book. Complicating matters further the book starts jumping back in forth in time through flashbacks, to reveal stuff that had happened years earlier, some times 7 years some times hundreds of years.

These literary devices are by no means bad, they are just used way to often and way to early that it takes much longer to connect with the main characters. For example in the Eye of the World you can't help to connect with Rand, Matt and Perrin by the end of the first few chapters. In the Way of Kings though I didn't really connect with any of the characters until just before the climax.

As stated previously, one of the major themes of the novel is how the journey should out weigh the destination. Ironically the destination of The Way of Kings far out weighed the journey.