Elantris

I recently finished Brandon Sanderson’s first book, Elantris.  I liked his Wheel of Time and Stormlight books.  Plus I heard that all of his books are connected inside a sort of shared universe.  I figured that would be interesting and worth checking out.

Unfortunately, this book did not really do it for me.  I enjoyed some of it.  I liked the characters.  I thought the magic system was pretty cool.  I guess you could really tell that Sanderson was not as polished a writer as he has become.

I also thought the book was very simplistic.  I guess since he was writing a single novel, he did not have the pages to expand many of his ideas.  For example, the world sounds like there are only five countries.  Is it a small planet or are there a bunch of places not explored?

The biggest thing that bothered me though was the religiosity of the book.  I felt like there was some preaching going on.  The one group (one religion, two sects I suppose) is converting people and one of their leaders has very little faith.  Also, they dabble in a dark form of magic.   The other group is more righteous and yet also more persecuted.  They are becoming a dying sect.  Is this supposed to be Islam and Judaism?  Or maybe the normal Christian church versus the Mormon church (since Sanderson is a Mormon).  Not really sure, but I could not get past it.

Even though I did not enjoy this book, it will not deter me from reading some more of Sanderson’s works.