Elantris - Brandon Sanderson

So I finished Elantris and I LOVED it!!

 

This booked exceeded my expectations for sure.  I mean I knew it was going to be good because Robert Jordan's wife would never have picked a bad author to finish her husbands legacy and all the reviews that were kindly printed in the first couple pages of the edition I bought also raved about how awesome Brandon Sanderson and his debut book were.  But wow.  

Often times fantasy novels require full series to really give you an understanding of the world that has been created and its political, social, religious and anthropological structure.  Sanderson has managed to pack a pretty full understanding of it all into a tiny (for a fantasy novel anyways) 615 pages.  

I think the reason I like fantasy and sci-fi is that it creates a whole new world.  A place where anything can and does happen.  A place where there are people who are just like us who need to make decisions and live their lives.  Yet you are able to glimpse this whole reality, where the world is just a little bit different.  Where political structures are ideal, or decidedly flawed, where social norms and conventions are different than the ones in our world.  This world reflects how the author thinks that a universe should function.  Somehow I think that these novels show more of a writers perspective, or even their soul, than novels written within a world that we are comfortable in.  Not that there aren't some amazing fiction authors out there who don't do the same thing, but within a worldview that we understand and are familiar with, but I love gaining a perspective that includes creating a universe from scratch. 

But back to Brandon Sanderson and Elantris.  While the novel sometimes lacked depth, and I found myself asking questions, that maybe didn't need to be answered, but I would have been happier if they were, I was pulled in and I raced through the book.  The plot opened a new world for me, and even though everything ended happily I would be happy to see another Elantris novel in the works.  

To sum up; well done Brandon Sanderson, well done.  I thoroughly enjoyed your novel and I hope to read others in the future.

Next up on the reading list.... Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein.  One of my favorite authors with his most famous book.  I have never quite gotten around to reading this particular novel, which gained most of its notoriety from the movie starring Denise Richards and Neil Patrick Harris.  I hope to love this book as much as I love Heinlein's other works.