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Tor, Copyright 2005, 638 pages
ISBN: 978-0-7653-5037-4
Read: July 2011 (at age 33)
First time read
If you haven’t read it
This book is a stand-alone story. It’s high fantasy, involving the fall of a
divine city and the people who try to bring it back. Or survive.
Or tear it down completely.
From the back cover:
Elantris
was the city of the gods. What power
could have cursed it?
Raoden,
prince of Arelon, was loved by all, including the princess he’d never met. Where has he gone?
Hrathen,
high priest of Fjordell, will convert the people of Arelon or kill them. How will he decide?
Sarene,
princess of Teod, was a widow before she was ever married. Who can stand against her?
And a whole bunch of blurbs – on the back
cover, on the front cover, and the first two pages inside. The blurbs didn’t do anything other than
irritate me. Usually, when there are
more blurbs than plot summary, I set the book back down. I picked this book up and took it to the till
because I’ve enjoyed listening to the author on his podcast, and I wanted to see what
his book was like, rather than hearing about it secondhand.
Reactions below the break:
I think that I’m just the wrong reader for
Brandon Sanderson’s books. I had
essentially the same reactions after both Mistborn and Elantris. The setting was really cool. The characters were good by the end, and it
felt like the beginning was just there because it had to be in order for the
good parts at the end to make sense.
Most of my complaints are from the early part of the book – by the end,
either things had changed, or I got used to the problems, and they faded into
insignificance beside the strong points.
One gripe:
I really didn’t like the dialogue, early,
when the world was being unveiled. It
felt forced, like the author needed to get these three facts about the world or
the characters to come up, and warped the sentences accordingly. It also felt… maybe ‘glib’ is the right
word. People talked too much. And explained too much.
One rave:
The premise was fantastic. It was awesome having one of the main
characters waking up dead, and then having to explore his new world, and the
rest of the various motivations that followed the initial conditions worked very
well.
Rating:
3
Characters:
The characters were wonderful ideas on
paper, but I didn’t really buy into them, early in the book, anyway. Once the book got done telling me who the
people were and why they were acting the way they were, and just let them get
on with what they were doing, then they were pretty good. Early on, though, it just didn’t work for me.
Plot:
There were a few nice twists along the
way. Pacing was good. There were lots of different plotlines that
intertwined quite well.
Premise:
Let’s see if I can boil this down:
·
Something’s wrong in the city
of the gods – all the gods are dead, and what’s left in the city are cursed
shadows of former people.
·
The princess wants to carve out
a niche for herself, as well as find out what happened to the husband she’s
never met, the prince.
·
The prince wants to survive,
and save the dead city that he’s stuck in.
·
A visiting cleric has the whole
mess slated for either extinction or conversion.
·
And, of course, status quo is
busy trying to resist change.
It’s a pretty complex setup, and it worked
well, once it was set up.
Setting:
The setting was very strong – but there
were a few unnecessary/irritating things thrown in. The first one that pops to mind is that the
“bad religion” had taken over the whole
world except the two little countries where our heroes were from. It wasn’t enough that they were an expanding
empire run by a priest/king, trying to gobble up the small neighbors – they had
to already have taken over the entire world (other than that last little bit)
first. It made the world seem small and
unrealistic – the Romans, who had a pretty good empire going on, didn’t ever
conquer everywhere. Neither did the Mongols.
Or the Chinese. It’s a small
thing, but it bugged me. Otherwise – the
“fallen city of the gods” was really neat.
The bad religion worked very well, as did the good religion.
Readability:
It wasn't a difficult read, and passed by
quickly despite my irritation with the book in the early going, and being
incredibly busy with a new baby on the way and a whole bunch of jobs that
needed doing first. It hooked me soundly
by the end, and the last couple hundred pages just flew by.
Other reactions:
Great review. Lots of fun.
I wish I’d written it.
A bit deeper. Balanced review.
Another good, balanced review.
There are lots like this one – It’s all
great! Read the book!
Balanced, positive review.
This seems to be a heavily reviewed book.
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