Just Finished Reading Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings

The Way of Kings, which came out in 2010, is the first book in what promises to be many over the next several years of fantasy writer Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive series.  Although I have had my share of fantasy reading over the last few years, I began this new series because of my respect toward Sanderson and his writing after reading his excellent Mistborn series...and then reading how he he salvaged Robert Jordan's protracted The Wheel of Time series after the original author died...

The setting of The Way of Kings is an imaginary world with a tumultuous history...in other words, a typical fantasy world.  There are legendary heroic figures from the distant past called Knights Radiant and the Heralds while monsters abounded: the Voidbringers.  As usual in fantasy fiction, our more modern technology is suppressed while alternative forms are introduced: certain gemstones contain special powers to those who know how to use them and a strangely sentient phenomenon called a "high-storm" imparts power to these stones when passing through.  Also, those Knights Radiants had left behind special armor and swords with super powers to those who possessed them: the Shardblades and Shardplates.  Sanderson was very thorough about describing this sometimes nightmarish world, but his main strength here...he has done in other stories...is his character development...

The people in The Way of Kings belong to a more medieval society where royalty, knights, slaves, and wars abound and the weapons of choice are swords and spears.  There seems to be a great deal of emphasis placed on the color of one's eyes: the lighter they are, the higher the position in society they enjoy.  Four characters present the story from their points of view: the reluctant assassin slave Szeth,  the noble and persecuted bridgeman Kaladin, the young scholar girl Shallan, and the king's uncle, brave warrior Dalinar...who, during high-storms, keeps having recurring visions of the past and warnings about the future...

I can see how Brandon Sanderson can eventually turn this series into another overblown fantasy library as did Robert Jordan and Terry Goodkind with more than ten volumes to read through.  However, if he can avoid Jordan's mistake of introducing too many characters and subplots, we might have here an epic series.  It seems to me that, at least in this first book, Sanderson compares and contrasts two often disparate meanings of "nobility"...and applies them to his characters.  I expect this to continue with his next book.  So far, we only have two books in this Stormlight Archive series...it will probably be well into my senior years before it's finished...