Elantris, by Brandon Sanderson

[rachelmanija]

An ambitious high fantasy, complete in one volume, which is one-third a cool story about a magical apocalypse narrated by a prince who gets cast into a city of zombies, one-third an irritating tale of political intrigue, narrated by the prince’s fiancée, in which virtually everyone involved is a total imbecile, and one-third a mostly dull account of religious fanaticism brightened by the fact that the priest who narrates is, by far, the smartest person in the book. Not that that’s saying much.

Once people were randomly hit by the Shoad, which transformed them into glowing mages with amazing powers. They would then move to Elantris, a wonderful glowing magic city. But ten years before the story begins, for no reason anyone knew, the Reod hit: a magical apocalypse which made the Elantrians become hideous zombies, physically dead but still sentient, suffering agonies of unending hunger and pain but unable to die. Elantris instantly rotted away, and though the Shoad continues, it now turns people into sentient zombies who are flung into Elantris, where they are locked in, not given any food, and are not allowed contact with the outside world. There are, however steps up the outside wall, which people regularly climb to gawk at the zombies.

Why no one ever tosses food down to their hungry loved ones is but one of the many, many, many, stupidities of this book. There’s also the sadly common stupidity in which people don’t tell each other why they’re doing what they’re doing, or who they are, and so forth, for no convincing reason. (This is especially aggravating because doing so not only would have made sense, but probably would have made the story more interesting, not less.) The king secretly hides the prince in the zombie city, figuring no one will recognize him, and tells everyone he died. This works only because the prince doesn’t tell anyone who he is for no reason that makes any sense, even when the king stupidly lets the fiancée princess into the city to distribute food.

There are the several scenes in which the princess plots against the king and discusses the stupidity of the king, IN COURT WHILE THE KING IS PRESENT, and gets away with it because she whispers and no one is bright enough to notice or eavesdrop. She eventually makes the king commit suicide by marching into his chambers and saying, “You suck and I’m going to tell everyone.” I pictured the scene in Airplane where the guy hangs himself rather than listen to his seatmate for one more second.

There are many, many moments in which someone thinks of or tries a rather obvious solution to a problem that has been ongoing for ten years, and are the very first person to do so. (My absolute favorite was that in ten years of slimy, starving existence in zombie city, it apparently never occurred to anyone to scrub off the slime or grow their own food until the prince suggested it.) The aura of Mary Sue, which floats about the main characters like their pet balls of light, isn’t helped by the unintentionally hilarious scene in which the princess tells one of the prince’s buddies that the prince sounds too perfect to be true, and the buddy responds, “No way! He has many flaws. For instance, he doesn’t care at all about money. All he’s interested in is making people happy. He even loses card games intentionally to make me happy!” The repeated references to the spunky princess as "liberated" didn't help either.

The solution to the mystery of the magical catastrophe is conceptually cool, but depends on no one having ever, either at the time of the catastrophe or in the intervening ten years, applied basic deductive reasoning to a set of clearly relevant facts which were widely known at the time of the apocalypse.

And then there are the terrible made-up words. The magic apocalypse is the Reod and a major city is called Teod, leading to several sentences like “Things haven’t been the same in Teod since the Reod.” Depressed zombies are Hoed, which I kept misreading as Hosed, which they certainly are. Talking balls of light are called Seons. A person named Shaor is afflicted by the Shoad. It’s like there was a vowel-sound shortage, along with a tax on syllables.

Also, this sentence is probably not supposed to be funny: The common people served the arteths and dorven, the arteths and dorven served the gradors, the gradors served the ragnats, the ragnats served the gyorns, the gyorns served Wyrn, and Wyrn served Jaddeth. Only the gragdets – leaders of the monasteries – weren’t directly in line.

Here’s what made me finish this book, and keeps me from labeling it “awesomely bad”: for all its ridiculous elements, the plotline about the prince in the zombie city is genuinely compelling storytelling – I really wanted to know what he’d do, why the apocalypse happened, and how he was going to undo it. The less-fanatical-than-meets-the-eye priest would have been a good character in a better storyline, but spends two-thirds of the book spouting exposition about gragdets, odivs, hrodens, and other ridiculous religious titles.

Has anyone read his other books? Are they better?

Elantris

Comments

[ambyr]

Has anyone read his other books? Are they better?

Maybe? I'd say each of his books is likely to appeal to slightly different people, so you may find one that's a better fit for you, but all suffer from having cool concepts insufficiently supported by characterization/plot.

Me, I liked the first Mistborn book, but couldn't finish the second (stupid characters being stupid, and then some fairly triggering SI descriptions as a final straw). I also really enjoyed Alcatraz Versus The Evil Librarians, although admittedly partly because I'm more willing to forgive plot holes in middlegrade books than adult literature. (And also partly for the final pages, which had me giggling madly.) I've never felt compelled to look up the rest of that series, though.

[yhlee]

I've read the Mistborn trilogy. Summation: great conceptual "toy world" [1] worldbuilding, terrible flat cardboard characters (not to mention endless stupid infiltration of the nobility in endless stupid ball scenes in which the protagonist, who grew up a member of the slave caste, spends way too much time thinking about endless stupid dresses--er, I might have had an allergic reaction), and then...without being spoilery, I will just say that the ending was a horrible disappointment that could have been fixed in about 100 words but wasn't. Book 1 was all right, I nearly bailed on book 2, and only nagging got me to read book 3 and I kind of wish I hadn't. I don't know what you'd think of the trilogy, but if you get to book 2 and feel like bailing, you probably should.

[1] Basically, a world that works on a very small number of principles that the story then goes on to explore/enumerate, rather than one that exhibits the kind of exponential complexity you might hope to find in a more "realistic" world. I don't mind this style of worldbuilding, but I suspect it's an acquired taste.

[rachelmanija]

I sometimes like "toy world" worldbuilding, but this one maxed out my tolerance for stupidity (which is generally higher than yours!)

[rushthatspeaks]

Warbreaker was about the same-- it had a lot of actual conceptual coolness which kept me reading it. The magic system, which was based on color, was original and nifty and I was interested in the larger metaphysical implications, some of which he even went into. On a character level, there were some thing that weren't stupid, and then there was the rest of it. I can't say it was a bad book, because I think it did exactly what it was trying to do, but I think that his goals as a writer do not match what I think of as what that sort of book ought to be trying to do. I have mentally filed him under 'pleasant beach reading, lots of cool shit, do not expect much, worth time if tired'.

[rachelmanija]

ARGH I love the idea of color magic! But the characters in this were SUCH IDIOTS.

[rivkat]

Thanks for the review! I had been wondering about him.

[telophase]

I have to say that I like his work on the Writing Excuses podcast far, far more than I like the rest of his work. I've bounced off of the Mistborn trilogy, and read Warbreaker all the way through because he was doing a couple of things that I almost never see done, i.e. having the girl in the arranged marriage not be all "OMG MUST RUN AWAY" and having her sister who was *supposed* to be in the arranged marriage and was raised to be so run away *towards* the marriage so as to save her sister by replacing her.

Was not impressed by the magic system, but OTOH I don't particularly like non-numinous magic in books, so YMMV.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I bounced off Mistborn too, and for the precise reason of non-numinousness (among other things, but that one was particularly striking).

Based on what I've heard here, I don't think I'll be seeking out his other books.

[lenora_rose]

I thought he worked out a lot of interesting implications in his weird (But very very rule-heavy) magic system in the Mistborn trilogy, and I was kind of pleased that after the first book, I couldn't predict as much of books two and three as I assumed. I liked the conceit of a world where the dark lord won, and I kind of liked the ideas of what happened afterward. The characters were meh, with moments of definite TSTL (His political plots remained kinda bleah), but I read on with genuine interest.

I seem to have been happier with it overall than your other readers here, though.

[mildred_of_midgard]

What I liked about Mistborn was the way every single little thing tied together at the end. That was satisfying. But I slogged through each individual scene. It may have been worth reading once, but there's nothing I read with pleasure or would read again.

[chalcedony_cat]

I enjoy Brandon Sanderson *really* a lot, but no, the books are not good. I think the actual sentence-level quality of his writing does improve over time, and he does toy worlds that I really REALLY love, but his characters are very simplistic and he is (IMO) hamstrung by certain ideas about human nature which keep the characters from ever developing into real people.

[brownbetty]

Hah! I have read this book, although I think I got through by skipping all the Priest-POV sections, which possibly was a mistake? What I remember finding stupid was the incredible simplicity of everyone's moral alignment. It was like they drew lots for "good" or "evil" and that was that.

[tool-of-satan.livejournal.com]

The common people served the arteths and dorven, the arteths and dorven served the gradors, the gradors served the ragnats, the ragnats served the gyorns, the gyorns served Wyrn, and Wyrn served Jaddeth.

And this is good old Elantris,
the home of the arteth and gyorn...

[tool-of-satan.livejournal.com]

Also: http://xkcd.com/483/

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I read about half of the first of a series, which had a cool idea, but the sick prince and the princess who was supposed to marry him spent chapters and chapters inching forward in learning stuff from the other that should have been covered in a single scene, as none of it was particularly surprising.

I liked the subplot with the other princess better.

Overall I think that the audience for these is The Wheel of Time and David Farland readership (which is a huge readership indeed!).

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I read this because I'm trying to find reasonably decent high fantasy as a gift for my step-mom that she hasn't already read - she has read you, Kate Elliott, Tamora Pierce, George R. R. Martin, Robin Hobb, Naomi Novik, (and O'Brien), and Terry Pratchett. Any ideas?

[sophia-helix.livejournal.com]

I read the first couple of chapters of this book and then had to put it down, even though I was mildly intrigued by the zombie city, because it was just too silly and solemn by half. A., however, is pretty into him (having interviewed him shortly after the WoT announcement), and recommends the Mistborn trilogy.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

The aura of Mary Sue, which floats about the main characters like their pet balls of light

aaaaaaand that was the part of your review where I had to quit reading because I was laughing too hard to go on.

[shalanna.livejournal.com]

This!!

Bad books do get published . . . why not MINE, is what I always ask. *grin*

*My* talking balls of light in my books are named, but the name is not an anagram of "Noses." That was all I could see when I read THAT sentence about how they are called Seons. "Here's a tissue, for Gnorky's sake--blow your Seons!" ***HONKKK*** "Look, Mary Sue--it's a flaming Triffid!"

[tavella.livejournal.com]

I faintly recall trying the first Mistborn book after semi-enjoying Elantris and not getting very far in. Finding out about his nasty homophobia has made me disinclined to direct any more money his way to find out if I liked other books better.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Homophobia?

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

Sanderson is emitting some jarringly tone-deaf writing; ouch.

The common people served the arteths and dorven, the arteths and dorven served the gradors, the gradors served the ragnats, the ragnats served the gyorns, the gyorns served Wyrn, and Wyrn served Jaddeth.

1. Much better read aloud in a Tom Lehrer voice!

2. Unfortunately, (1) leads us to finish up with "...and everybody hates the Jews!" and to wonder whether Sanderson's world features a National Brotherhood Week.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Heee! I can hear him now...

[branna.livejournal.com]

Like you I found the mystery of the city/apocalypse compelling enough to keep me reading, and I still like the section where they figure it out.

Sanderson has serious weaknesses in characterization, particularly female characterization, and a tendency to be overly baroque. His strength is in genuinely intriguing magical systems/wacky world-structure. A good enough world-mystery sucks me in despite weaknesses of plot and characterization, but still with his work I can only get past the "I don't care about these people" problem a fraction of the time.

That being said, I found his most recent, _The Way of Kings_, slow to get into but genuinely interesting, perhaps because it builds to the world-mystery being relatively central to the story.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I am such a sucker for world-mysteries. I got through about a million words worth of Robin Hobb characters I could not stand because she does world-mysteries so well.

shallow cover-judging

[jinian.livejournal.com]

The Mistborn trilogy hits my magic-geeking buttons hard, and it's better than Elantris. It also has great covers on the hardbacks, though somehow the MMPBs fell victim to looking like generic paranormal romance covers -- I can't distinguish them in my head from Seanan McGuire's Toby books, which also deserve better.

Warbreaker, eh, I finished it. The characters seemed flat and the plotting uninspired.

other books are better, yes

[(Anonymous)]

This was his first published book, and it shows. As you said, it's not bad, but the names are a little ridiculous, and the plotting a little annoying. If you want good Brandon Sanderson though, read Mistborn.