Title: Warbreaker
Author: Brandon Sanderson
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 688
Published: 2009, Self-published
My Grade: 5 out of 5
Review Summary: The meaning behind colourful fantasy world-building and magic systems have got a whole new depth.

GOODREADS’ DESCRIPTION

Their world is one in which those who die in glory return as gods to live confined to a pantheon in Hallandren’s capital city and where a power known as BioChromatic magic is based on an essence known as breath that can only be collected one unit at a time from individual people.

By using breath and drawing upon the color in everyday objects, all manner of miracles and mischief can be accomplished. It will take considerable quantities of each to resolve all the challenges facing Vivenna and Siri, princesses of Idris; Susebron the God King; Lightsong, reluctant god of bravery, and mysterious Vasher, the Warbreaker.

MY REVIEW

I got a lot of Elantris vibes from this standalone novel. After finishing the full Stormlight Archive series in one go, I felt like this was a very good palette cleanser and I loved getting the backgrounds for two characters who have fairly small roles in the Stormlight series. It turns out that Zahel (Vasher in Warbreaker) is a fairly interesting character. But you won’t know that until the very, very end.

And speaking of the end.The end came upon me quickly and that’s because of two reasons: It was only 500 pages long (compared to Wind and Truth which was 1500), but the Sanderlanshe was also short. I really enjoy those last several hundred pages just being chaotic, unravelling everything everywhere at the same time. But in Warbreaker, it was more like a normal ending. I believe, more similar to Elantris if I remember correctly. But then again, both of these were shorter and standalones, written in a compact way.

Another note on the end: it was not the proper ending to a standalone. And I am sure a lot of people have been frustrated over this for almost 20 years now. I guess it was an ending. This part of the story had an end. But at the same time no. We don’t know exactly what happened to the ones running away in the far distance to the mountains. We do not know what happened to the couple, and after a massive revelation of who Zahel actually is, he just runs away on the next adventure which sounds awesome. I have read that there might be sequels. As with Elantris. But who knows when that will be.

I did have to do a bit of googling while reading as I didn’t quite understand how the breath thing worked and how that correlated to everything I’ve so far learned on Scadrial (Mistborn) and Roshar (Stormlight). I’m still not certain. Especially not how much stormlight one breath is. That would be very interesting to learn. I like that Sanderson teaches you about the magic system a little bit more with each book and also explore it through science. Not so much in this, although it was hinted at.

One of these googlings were about Lightsong. I could have sworn that it was Hoid/Wit. Spoiler: It wasn’t. Because Hoid was actually mentioned by name later on.

As with all Brandon Sanderson books, an easy 5 out of 5.