Book Review: Warbreaker, by Brandon Sanderson

Last's month's book club book was Warbreaker, by Brandon Sanderson. I had mixed feelings for this, as I loved Elantris, and the first Mistborn book... but by the last Mistborn book Sanderson was almost added to my "Never read anything by this author again, EVER!" list. (I like happy endings. If you want to lose me as a reader forever, just kill off one of my favorite characters... or all of them...)

The beginning of the book wasn't that gripping, for me. We start off in one characters viewpoint, then jump right away to someone else's.
It's a tad jarring, and the first character just wasn't working for me.
After we meet Siri and Lightsong, though, things start picking up. Like most Sanderson books, there's almost constant switching of veiwpoints. This technique really works for me, as it allows you to get to know multiple characters. It's just about the only way you can do that, now that omniscient point of view is considered a big no-no. Another plus, is that you're not stuck inside the head of a character you don't like for too long. Case in point, I couldn't stand most of the Vivernia scenes (until almost the end). My wife, on the other hand, thought she was one of the best characters.

There's also a lot of quotable dialog in this book:

"There's one thing I haven't figured out. How juggling lemons fits into all this."

"What in the name of you are you doing?"

... and tons more.

The ending is where I think this book really shines. (we do lose one character, but it'd been forecast enough that I didn't mind it... that much...) There's a whole bunch of twists in the story that seem to come out of nowhere, but the more you think about them, you can see the clues were there from the beginning.

I give it four stars.

Buy Warbreaker from Amazon