ELANTRIS by Brandon Sanderson

I made a deal with myself to check out new authors I'd previously held in contempt for their successes after liking Mirrored Heavens, and picked up Elantris, the first novel by Brandon Sanderson, on Friday. Over the weekend we got tons of snow where I live, and I was stuck in the house, so I sat with a bunch of dolls (for warmth) and read this thing. By the end, I was ready to go battle the elements alone, since if I was wrapped up in death's gentle embrace I'd never have to look at a page from this book ever again.

Okay, so it wasn't that bad, but I really didn't get much enjoyment from this book at all. It started off great, with a prologue that charmed me and sucked me in with it's warm, conversational tone. From there, things quickly went downhill.

Conceptually, there aren't many problems with the novel. The city of Elantris is now home to tortured souls covered in filth, most stuck in a state between being dead and alive. They are called here by the Shaod, with marks on their skin making them stick out before their exile. This is an appealing idea, although the execution of it is certainly flawed. The magic system is somewhat interesting, with users writing elaborate spells in the air in order to perform them, and give the book a hint of imagination. However, outside of these two things, Elantris doesn't have very much to offer.

Prince Raoden is banished to the city, and his arranged wife-to-be Sarene arrives in Kae to find that her betrothed is "dead." Running alongside Sarene's radically new life in Kae and Raoden's in Elantris is the story of Hrathen, a priest working on conquering a nation to protect it from a worse fate. These are pretty conventional plot threads, and feature relatively little twists or unexpected movements.

From the beginning of the first chapter, it's clear that this is Sanderson's first novel. He writes this as if it was a somewhat animated textbook, always disconnected from his characters and their predicaments, often writing as if he's observing them live their lives and writing what he sees with as little emotional involvement as possible. His dialogue is snappy, but doesn't feel realistic at all; everything said seems to head towards a predetermined plot point, whether it's awkwardly spoken or not. This is perhaps the worst part of this novel. If there was a drinking game where you took a shot every time you read "as if," "seemed," or a character "feel" something happen, by the end of this novel your liver would be disintegrated.

The three characters are conventional and write-by-numbers. Sarene is a young and naive woman, but manages to politically outsmart and out-maneuver veteran nobles and royalty who have spent their entire lives in the courts. Her character is perfect and unrealistic, and anybody who can relate to her lives inside a Disney movie, and will thus have a difficult time getting their hands on this novel.

Raoden is another fairly perfect character, without any real flaws and follows the basic innocent-boy-thrust-into-the-big-bad-world formula as far as his arc. There isn't very much interesting about him, and while his story is the most compelling of the three it quickly gets tiresome thanks to his nature, its predictability, and the writing.

Hrathen is the worst of the three, since his story is pretty crappy which doesn't mix well with this crappy writing. His chapters are the most arduous to read, and I would momentarily be happy when the perspective switched to one of the other two characters, before I remembered how horrible their stories are, and then I would start crying.

Brandon Sanderson receives lots of acclaim for his writing and is considered by many to be one of the best new writers in the genre. After reading his debut, I can say I have no idea why this is. The book is weakly written, boring, and (besides a few small cases, mentioned above) unoriginal. Luckily, this book has reaffirmed my previous feeling that anybody who is a successful writer is also a bad one.

Grade: 3/10