White Sand Omnibus

It's written too much like a book and didn't really let the panels tell the story. Every panel had descriptions like "He dodged it," something you can also see. The art is also very inconsistent.

I found out this reading style is not for me. I love Brandon Sanderson's books, but in this comic-form I found White Sand to be quite boring, hard to keep my attention, hard to keep track of things (unannounced time and location skips), mediocre characters and feeling a bit guitly for not appreciating the art enough.

I always wanted to try manga, and I will at some point because right now I dont know if the whole comic book story-style is not for me, or White Sand just wasn't doing it for me.

Still very excited for the White Sand official prose to release as full book at some point (I believe Brandon is working on it) as I was unable to get my hands on the fabled “newsletter White Sand prose”. Hope I will like that more. (Review written in december 2024).

I read the first volume of this back in 2016 and remember mildly enjoying it, despite it not being completed. Then I never continued to read the subsequent volumes, but when I heard there would be a completed Omnibus of the whole thing, I got excited to finally finish it.
First off, I just want to say that the physical edition is beautiful. The pages are high-quality gloss, it has a good hardcover, and the artwork is amazing. I also really liked that the binding allowed it to open fully even in the middle and end, since it is so large, and I didn't have to break the spine to see or read in the center.
As for the story itself, I feel kind of ‘meh' about it. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't great. As always, Sanderson's world-building is amazing, but this was an odd choice of story to make into a graphic novel. It is so heavily ‘political' that while visually the artwork is amazing, there is so little to actually work with to make it satisfying. The structuring was odd and the characters were only okay for me. I didn't relate or really care about any of them. I miss those deep dives into characterization that we get in Sanderson's full-length novels. The dialogue was very awkward and the transition between certain scenes was very jarring too.
There is a lot of repetitiveness to the story, and it was ‘go here and unrealistically convince someone of this', and then ‘go to the next place' and do the same thing, for a good 2/3 of the book! The motivations and quick turnaround of the character's stances were unbelievable. I think it could have been much better if fleshed out as an actual book as opposed to a graphic novel.
I like the vein of what Sanderson was trying to get at here, I think I like the overall idea of the story and of course, I loved the world-building, but the execution of it fell flat for me. It's a shame though because there was a lot of potential and the groundwork laid down was interesting, I think it just was the wrong format for it.

I went into this deluxe omnibus edition almost blind. I read only the excerpt in Arcanum Unbounded. Based on the ratings I didn't have large expectations but I was looking forward to finally read it. After a year of waiting full of printing issues that this book had to go through I finally had it in my hands. Props to Dynamite for being so open about it and delivering top quality product in the end.

But once I started reading my disappointment started growing. The dialogues were bad. There was no characterization. Conversations continued “seemlessly” through time skips of days at least twice in the first volume. Didn't notice this later. I'm not talking about transitions but direct dialogues between characters.

Khriss was insufferable though her character improved towards the end. Instead Ais replaced her as one of the worst characters I've ever seen. I hated her inner dialogue. It was so cringe. It reminded me of Warbreaker which I used to consider by far the worst Cosmere novel. Well, now it has a companion.

I don't know if it was poor translation of a written novel into comics media or if the novel itself is this bad. But it simply didn't work. Whole story should've been reworked and properly adapted. I have a feeling they just took dialogues from the book and pasted them into text bubbles with little care for storytelling. Which suggests the book is bad too. There are deus ex machinas, it's simplistic, full of clichés and pseudo twists which you can easily guess.

When I first heard there will be omnibus of this series I couldn't wait and held off on purchasing the separate volumes. This book allegedly contains many improvements. Kriss's notes were cool and added explanations of how magic in this world works. I know that the prologue is also exclusive to this edition. But if anything else was improved I can't imagine the original. They should've spent the resources on redrawing the last chapter of volume 2 which is atrocious. Don't know the reason why it was done by different artist but the other two artists managed to capture the atmosphere quite well. This chapter was full of clinically clean low budget looking drawings which are also sadly present in many other comic books nowadays. No wonder everyone (including me) prefers manga.

There's a sequel teased at the end which I will certainly not touch if it ever comes out. I'm satisfied in getting through this book as I want to read everything in Cosmere but boy... Haven't been disappointed like this in a while. I recommend it only to the hardcore fans.

Very good. I like how everything related to the Diem was resolved. Especially liked the part where we mess with Sand Mastery to try to figure out how it works.

Not okay with how these guys broke Aarik and then it ended?! WHAT? At least someone talk to him! Don't leave the most cheerful character in depression

Rating: 4.5 ⭐️

Although I absolutely love Sanderson's prose and writing style, I've always wanted to see a graphic adaptation of his works. This first volume was a good start. I can't say I'm a fan of the art style, but I did like the story, characters and magic system. I have a lot of questions because this trilogy is related to the Cosmere, so hopefully this series will answer some of my inquiries.