The Way of Kings
Sanderson's 2010 opening volume of The Stormlight Archive is the most ambitious fantasy world-building project of this century: an alien world swept by massive highstorms, a magic system rooted in oaths, and character arcs that take trauma and moral struggle seriously over thousands of pages.
Several hundred pages go to positioning characters before the real conflict arrives, everyone “gradually backing themselves into a corner,” with estimates running from four hundred to seven hundred depending on the reader. The battles are “superman characters slaughtering hordes of luckless opponents,” one reader comparing the effect to “the transcript of somebody playing a video game.” A cluster call the dialogue clunky. Shallan’s storyline is flagged independently by critics and readers as thinner than the other two and dragging through the middle. And more than one admits “I very nearly quit at about the 450 page mark.”
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
