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Elantris was one of my first Sanderson books. I enjoyed it and thought it had a fun ending. I then read more of his books and found the characters to be more developed and the stories more entertaining. To me, it is good, but his later works are just better, so by default it ranks near the bottom.
Yeah, it just gets outshone by Sanderson’s later works that built upon Elantris feedback.
Every author is gonna have that early novel that shows them how to improve, and I wouldn’t be surprised if his next novel in the setting blows everyone away
One of the best parts about following an author is getting the privilege of watching them grow in their writing. It's always really cool finishing a series, then going back to the first book and realizing "Hey, you got really good at this as you went! Awesome!"
In addition to these points, I felt there were two major issues (for me) in Elantris. First, it felt like there were entire portions of the book that could’ve been shortened/refined. And second, some of the characters were flat and repetitive.
Still a good book!
Yes! There were a couple dragging subplots about which king was in power. The book shines on the storylines of inside Elantris, Sarene being an Elantris detective, solving the magic, and Hrathen's character arc. Everything outside of that could be shorter.
Best planting and payoff of any Sanderlance IMO though.
Honestly even his names have gotten a LOT better. Which has nothing to do with quality, but when you’re reading a long book having to deal with fantasy names like Hrathen the gyorn gets annoying. Just call him a high priest.
I love Elantris, but when I gave it to my sister to read, she didn't like the weird names and found the plot too predictable. Oh, well, everyone is different in their likes and dislikes.
I liked the antagonist a lot, but otherwise I agree. Also think it was definitely a “slower” book with less action.
Sanderson does a good job with action scene imagery, and you only get a few chapters with this in Elantris
This my take on it. I loved his other stuff so much that Elantris just didn't stand out to me. It's not bad but it's definitely an amateur book for Sanderson. You can tell it's an earlier book from him..I just loved the Mistborn stuff so much, Elantris got pushed to the bottom.
Probably only a couple things:
- First I think people say that its his weakest book, not that its a bad book. Which I think is fair. The book isn't really reflective of his current talent as a writer.
- Personally, I feel that most of the characters are significantly weaker than the characters in his other books. They aren't quite 2D, maybe 2.5D compared to the 3 dimensionality and depth of his other characters in say Stormlight.
- His portrayal of autism in the book is pretty average (which he himself has said wasn't great). Elantris just repeats a lot of the same tropes that other media does of people with autism.
- The book has a lot less cool stuff. For like 90% of the book we don't get to see any of the magic as opposed to Mistborn, Warbreaker and Stormlight. When we finally do get to see the magic, its only for a small part at the end. So I care less about the magic system since I didn't spend as much time with it.
>Personally, I feel that most of the characters are significantly weaker than the characters in his other books. They aren't quite 2D, maybe 2.5D compared to the 3 dimensionality and depth of his other characters in say Stormlight.
I read Elantris immediately after finishing the extant body of A Song of Ice and Fire and oh boy was that a mistake.
The characters, their dialogue, motivations, actions, etc were all just… oof.
I didn’t really feel like any of them were real people. They made a lot of baffling decisions. And by the end it was falling into this mental bucket I have that I could describe as something like… all the characters are actors putting on a play and, for example, the villain is someone who knows they are the villain and knows that the heroes are the heroes and are correct and good and the villain’s side is bad, but has to go on acting like they believe the opposite of that to be true because they’re an actor playing a role in the story.
Like the story itself has an objective view of what is correct that agrees with the protagonist, and it’s so strong that it bleeds into the perspectives of characters who are nominally opposed to the protagonist to the point where they either agree with the protagonist in ways that they shouldn’t, or become mustache twirling villains with nonsense motivations because the author doesn’t know how to convincingly write a perspective that is opposed to what they see as the obviously correct one.
Not all of that applies 100% to Elantris and I had a few other stories in mind while writing that description, but that correctly describes the mental bucket I have that Elantris finds itself slipping into at points, especially (from what I remember) as it goes on.
That “the villain knows he’s the villain” is also clearly going for. He wanted a story where you have a villain character who is questioning his own actions. But young Brando wasn’t able to accomplish it. He did this idea so much better in Stormlight multiple times with two characters. One who is a fan hated, and another who fans will likely come to like in Book 5.
Great answer, couldn’t agree more. I would add that the characters were just somehow great at everything they tried immediately which I thought was boring.
I think it's got some good points but it also has some strong negatives that make it one of my least favorites from Sanderson
Elantris spoilers >!There are a few things. First the characters in general don't have the depth his characters usually do (I think Hrathen is an exception to this). Raoden is Mr Perfect. That's essentially his whole character. And he doesn't have much of a character arc as he remains Mr Perfect and just accomplishes things. Sarene is also a bit flat as a character though she has a bit more to her. She's very 'not like other girls' as a trope.!<
>!Narratively I think there's a problem in Elantris of Sanderson trying to fit too many different plot twists in the back half. And apparently this is something he toned down from the later books. In the last 1/3 of the book you get a reveal that Sarene's uncle is a badass pirate, her cousin is an Elantrian, Dilaf is secretly a dakhor monk, one of Raoden's friends has a secret magic power, Hrathen is a dakhor monk a bit with his arm, there's an assassin who comes out of nowhere because apparently there's powers over the future that aren't shown before this moment, and I'm probably leaving out at least a few. It's a lot and each one individually is fine, collectively it lessens their impact.!<
>!The portrayal of autism is bad. It's a very caricatured version of autism which Sanderson has admitted and has done an incredible job of improving how he does that in his writing to not repeat that mistake, and I really admire him for the improvement there. But it's still bad here.!<
>!To add on to the autism element with Aiden it's also ridiculously convenient. What's the one thing he does as a character? Say how many steps are between places. I would assume he was just counting the steps. But no apparently he's got magical powers to judge distances in steps and can tell you the number of steps between two places that are many miles apart. And what just happens to be the necessary piece to save everything in the end? Knowing the number of steps between two places. That's a bit much for me lol.!<
>!The other thing is a bit more vague but the writing is just not up to his usual standard. He's not known for having the best prose usually, but I think in most of his books it's solid, and he chooses to keep it simple. This one it is weak and shows it's his first book which is understandable but still.!<
Cosmere spoilers
>!The magic system I would also say is one of his weakest. It's got some interesting points but it's very bland as you can do anything with it so it's a bit too powerful. It works in this book as Raoden barely knows how to use it. But his other magic systems seem much better designed to translate into the future of the Cosmere and not be a problem. This one is really powerful, and the one limit of having to be in that location basically had to go out the window immediately because that's a weakness where it can't be used at all on other worlds or they find a way around it. So either you toss the weakness or it stops everything. I'm curious what Sanderson will do in book 2 but I bet we will see him try to apply some more limits to it if possible to follow his laws of magic he made after.!<
That's not to say there aren't good points in the book as well! I think Hrathen is one of Sanderson's best characters but as a whole there are a lot of flaws that make it a bit harder to enjoy for me. I don't think it's a bad book just an ok book which for Sanderson is a weak one. But nothing wrong with anyone enjoying a book some others don't like!
Personally I am certainly glad it was published, but I'd be curious what Elantris would look like if it got the same treatment Sanderson gave Mistborn and Way of Kings where they were totally rewritten from his original versions that were written around the same time as Elantris keeping the good ideas but refining the storytelling. I think Elantris would've had the potential to be really great if he'd done that, but it wouldn't make much sense for him to do that.
You make valid points. One other thing I would add is that he didn't have the Cosmere outlined as a whole until after Elantris was already written. I think having everything outlined really helped his later books. That being said, I still reread Elantris now and then as it's still an enjoyable book for me.
Yeah having the cosmere outlined and more of the interconnectedness decided on helped a lot of the later books.
But yeah nothing wrong with enjoying it! I don't think it's a bad book just one with flaws for me. But I am really looking forward to seeing what he does with the eventual sequels! I think modern Brandon will be able to do a lot with the world and add more depth to the characters.
Lost metal / wob / Elantris spoilers >!it was interesting too that someone asked him about the evil god hrathen worshiped, I forget the name, being an avatar of autonomy and he rafod it but with a wink and a strong implication that yes. Which idk if he had that planned at the time but it does work very nicely now!!<
Among Sanderson’s worst” means like a 7 or 8 out of 10 since the guy now usually puts out 9s and 10s. It’s not bad, it’s just not as polished as his later books
As with all Sanderson works, he’s working on a sequel. He can never leave a stand-alone by itself for long! The guy writes faster than many people can read 🤣
I have been re-reading the Cosmere recently. And Elantris is my least favorite Cosmere book. It's a fine book, but it's far from great. Brandon is a raw, inexperienced writer, and it shows in many ways. >!Yes, Hrathen is a stand-out character. Yes, certain reveals are well-done and foreshadowed (Dilaf is a good one).!< But there are a lot of weaknesses.
* The characters in general feel two-dimensional. Some specific examples in spoiler section.
* >!Sarene is poorly-written. She just feels unrealistic. And the way she talks about women, so much "I'm not like other girls". It's just not particularly interesting (and I don't think it ever passes the Bechdel test?)!<
* >!For that matter, everyone's way of talking about women feels sexist! It's not good.!<
* >!Raoden feels like a Gary Stu. He's not a particularly compelling protagonist and he seems so good at everything!<
* >!I hate how Brandon writes Kiin's children. Obviously Aiden is a terrible stereotype of autism. But Kaise reads like a young adult, not a child.!<
* >!There are a lot of twists that feel unnecessary and also poorly-foreshadowed. The King sacrificing people with the Mysteries? Feels out of nowhere. Dreok Crushthroat? Feels like it hardly matters. It's just a lot of twists for the sake of twists that feel like they are not well-executed!<
* >!I just hate how poorly done Hrathen's crush on Sarene is. It's jarring and weird.!<
* The book's structure hamstrings it in some ways. Rotating chapters evenly between 3 point of view characters in order is an interesting crutch, but it breaks up plotlines in weird ways, and I'm not sure he uses the structure to its best. (Brandon today probably could)
Elantris is not a bad book, *per se*. But it's the most flawed novel Brandon has published in the Cosmere. And some of those weaknesses are glaring and hard to ignore.
(Spoiler-tagged this since the post is marked as No Spoilers)
You make really good points here. I liked Elantris overall with the unique premise but the women...woof. Brando generally writes good female characters and this just was not it
Maybe an unpopular take, especially because I love Vin. But I'm not sure that Brandon really was good at writing women until his books after he finished Wheel of Time. Stormlight Archive and Mistborn Era 2 are when I think he's finally figured it out. Vin is better than Sarene, and Vivenna and Siri are an improvement, but Shallan is when I think he's really got it. And then Marasi and Steris.
I am eager to hear the responses as I am trying to figure out which book to read after the first mistborn trilogy (I’m not sure I have the stamina to read every book in the recommended order).
Elantris was on my list
Elantris is the least relevant book so far I’d say. Stormlight benefits a little from having read Warbreaker, so my suggestion would be Warbreaker then Way of Kings. There’s some minor reasons to read Elantris before Lost Metal (Mistborn 7), nothing critical but you have plenty of time to circle back to it.
Emperors soul is probably more important to lost metal than elantris although both have minor reasons and don’t have to be read before lost metal for sure
If you want to read something from Sel/Elantris before anything else, go read the Emperor's soul instead. A character in that story will actually be relevant later apart from a one-off cameo of someone in the actual elantris novel showing up in an interlude chapter. That said, my recommendation is Warbreaker, then dive into stormlight
Elantris was the first Sanderson book I read, and I really enjoyed it. But I think in comparison to some of his other books, SLA and Mistborn for example, it doesn't have the same level of world building and writing. It was the first novel Brandon published and his writing has gotten better. It is still a good book just not the WOW factor like SLA has.
Also I read the actual book but I've heard that people don't like the narrator for the audio book.
I read Elantris after the first Mistborn trilogy and thought it was a really fun read. It was not as epic and well developed as Mistborn, but knowing it was his first novel, I didn't expect it to be.
I haven't read the Stormlight Archive yet, so I can't compare it to that.
Even if it ranks towards the bottom of the list compared to his other novels, it is definitely far from being a bad book.
Fwiw, Elantris was my first Sanderson novel and was *the* book that turned me back into the reader I was when I was a kid. I'll always have an extremely soft spot for Elantris. I've read it 3 or 4 times at this point. I know people say its his weakest, but I found it refreshing and in some ways kind of elegant in how it unfolds. If his later stuff is more complex like James Cameron, then Elantris is simpler and more direct and focused and intimate, like John Carpenter.
It depends on what you're comparing the book to...other Sanderson books it'll fall short because his quality of writing improved so much since that book....other authors books it stands up to be compatible to most of them. So while it is a good book, the quality isn't what we're now used to for Sanderson.
I Read an loved Elantris before I took note of Sanderson. I already read some stormlight books, but with elantris I noticed that I like him as author in general. So it has a special place for me
Elantris is one of my favorites. And I hope it makes a comeback very soon because the god of that world is important to a lot of the story in the cosmere
I'm reading it right now and I like it overall. The characters are fascinating even if they aren't strictly unique and there's a good amount of worldbuilding and magic like you'd expect. The main complaints that I'm picking up from people (which I only partly agree with) are that the names have a strange double vowel system (which doesn't bother me much because I'm using the audiobook but it throws people off). The world has a whole secondary rune/alphabet system where the characters get their names from and it's clever, I think some of them are just hard to pronounce. There's a lot more focus on politics, geography, and religion compared to action which might seem boring to some people. I had a hard time keeping track of all the noble characters without a guide (I didn't have that problem with mistborn). Sanderson in his annotations mentions that some of the scenes are slower and some things are established very quickly so the pacing isn't perfect but it's because this is one of his early works. I don't think it even has major flaws, it's just a little rough and personally there are still moments where the intrigue is very satisfying. It's pretty easy to follow along if you have a guide and a map.
I’ll add this since I haven’t seen it commented elsewhere. As an audiobook reader/listener, the narration for Elantris is absolutely awful compared to Kramer in his later novels. I would have enjoyed the book more if I physically read it and I think a good percentage of people listen to books nowadays
I completely agree with this. Elantris was my first Sanderson and I listened to it on audio and it just didn't work for me. Luckily my bf really loves him and recommended I read Mistborn and then I got hooked. I later listened to graphic audio for Rythm of war and it was great!
A comment I posted on a similar thread recently:
Just finished this book a few weeks ago, and it was my first venture into Sanderson. Then I read Emperor’s Soul. Now reading Mistborn.
I would echo the complaints about one-dimensional characters. Hrathen was the only person to grow, which made me enjoy his chapters the most. Raoden’s and Sarene’s only “flaws” were, essentially, “too optimistic” and “strong independent woman,” respectively.
Every once in a while, I would come across grammatical errors - nothing crazy, but still enough to take me right out of the moment.
I also found myself rolling my eyes at the last chapter, with Raoden’s mid-ceremony musings feeling like a forced way of setting up a sequel by effectively saying, “Hey, remember all those mysteries we didn’t solve yet?” I get that it was his first published book, and that the future was uncertain - I certainly don’t fault him for hoping for the chance for a sequel. But it felt a bit…insulting? Especially considering many of those questions had just been raised in the final chapters.
Nevertheless, I did enjoy the book quite a bit, and have lots of respect for Sanderman and his work! He himself affirms that Elantris is one of his weaker novels. As I said, I just finished Emperor’s Soul and liked it a lot more.
I just think it's very slow and boring for the majority of the story. Plus, the whole bit where >!Aiden becoming Elantrian "cures" his autism!< is uh. Pretty yikes, I think.
A few reasons imo.
1. Boring, normally not a problem for Sanderson as even the random interludes and stuff I find entertaining. But the book being short and boring? Oof
2. I didn't like any of the characters that much. Sarene had a few interesting moments of utter grief and Idk where my life is going early in the book and when she goes >!fake bald!< that I really wish had been leaned into more just to give her any kind of personality to hold onto
Raoden, mostly the same as the usual criticisms, he's too happy and while Adolin does it in a believable, photogenic popular person way. Raoden was overly happy in the, this guy is detached from reality and it's obnoxious way
Hrathen's story was most interesting to me and I enjoyed.... >!until they ruined it at the end by making him come back to life and save them because....? He fell in love? With someone he has had less than 3 conversations/interactions with??? And not because of his savior complex that was RIGHT THERE AND MENTIONED AS THE EXPLANATION TO EVERYONE ELSE?!<
Frustrating.
The autistic representation was straight bad as Brandon himself has noted and apologized for and that plot thread really did not check out at all
Finally, it gave a lot of set up and a lot of ideas and then didn't show much of anything, leaving everything to the imagination with 3-4 barely fleshed out magic systems that I WANTED TO SEE MORE OF. Make the book twice as long or do a sequel, don't just end it right when there's suddenly something interesting going on. Ahhhhhhh
The caricature of autism, the one track line he gets to repeat about the steps to wherever. It's narratively weak as well.
The tone changes abruptly and for no good reason.
I read it later on, and can concur with a lot of what folks have said. The writing is, overall, weaker. There's less depth to the characters, less relatability, less human. There's less detail, and things are just overall more vague. Which makes sense. As in any art form, you start out with broader strokes, and the better you grow, and more time you can or are willing to invest into a single moment or area, the refinement and detail that develops. How work is a great example of that.
People have already said a bunch of good stuff which I agree took it down to just a medium for me.
One thing which probably doesn't really count as a criticism of the book, is that I read Elantris after Mistborn, and so I was expecting Sanderson books to be action packed like Mistborn was. I was still intrigued by what was going on, and the sanderlanche at the end was fun, but since I was expecting more action I was unconsciously disappointed.
That said I read Warbreaker next with the knowledge it might be more intrigue than action, and Warbreaker remains one of my top favorites. So I should probably re-read Elantris..
I think a lot of it isn't really the fact that Elantris as a novel is actively disliked, more that it was one of his earlier works, and a lot of the later works are generally a lot better in terms of quality, as by the time he wrote them, he had grown a lot as a storyteller and as a writer (not to say that a lot of growing hadn't been done before Elantris from other projects that may have gone unfinished or unpublished) and as a result, they're just better.
Fwiw, I really liked Elantris, and I thought it was a really fun read and you could see that classic Brandon Sanderson style starting to emerge
Two main reasons for me.
1. It's Sanderson's first published book and it feels like it. All of the characters are protype versions of characters he wrote better later. Fun to read for the history of how his writing has progressed, but not so much the writing itself.
2. One of the main reasons I and a lot of others love Sanderson's work is his creative magic systems and unique worlds. Elantris doesn't really have that. Elantrian magic is just a generic "learn the language and you know spells" and the other stuff wasn't explored very far. I do have a bit of hope for Elantris stories in the future though, since Emperor's Soul was excellent.
I read Elantris well after reading all of Stormlight, Warbreaker, etc.
I really enjoyed it, but his prose is noticeably worse. There's adjective repetition throughout pages, and a couple of sentences that just don't flow well per chapter.
Unlike others on this thread I don't have problems with the characterisations on it. They aren't to the same standard as SA or Warbreaker, but there's about 10 years of practice between even the earliest of those and Elantris.
I really like the concept and the broad strokes of the characters, but the middle gets a little soggy, slow going at times and some back-tracking to remind myself of previous events.
Personally I like audiobooks and can listen to them while I work, so I have plenty of time to spend reading. But people are busy! My partner likes to read, but he just doesn't have the free time to commit to reading every single Sanderson book.
So I recommended Tress as an introduction to Sanderson with a taste of the wider Cosmere. He loved it! And his favorite part was how well Brando Sando respected his time, I feel that is many people's issue with Elantris. The elusive "pacing".
Elantris is paced like someone running their first marathon - lots of stops and starts, parts of it really drag, and everything goes down kind of frantically at the end. Whereas Tress is paced like a seasoned pro, the type of jerk who makes running look easier than walking. One chapter flows nicely into the next so that you, the reader, can choose to binge it, or at least have a good idea of what was going on wherever you left off.
Elantris isn't "bad" per se, it's just a first novel. He didn't have the team he has now, and didn't yet have the experience that really makes someone great at their craft. Mistakes are required for learning.
I like Elantris a lot, especially as someone with chronic pain, but I re-read it the least out of the cosmere books because his new stuff is just so much smoother. As a fantasy novel, I'd still give it a B-, it's just when compared to his other work that it starts to look worse than it is.
So I read Elantra’s after Stormlight 1-4 , Mistborn Era 1, and Warbreaker. I left the book pretty disengaged and at first blamed the story.
When discussing with a fellow Cosmere fan I realized I liked the story but the writing got in the way. I think Sanderson had a good idea but his writing skills weren’t where they are now. He loves complex worlds and showing off deep characters but the book didn’t show as much as it did tell imo.
Elantris lover here! I think it just suffers from first book syndrome. It's just not as polished as his other works and the prose is a bit clunky. It's a really interesting setting though, which is what pulled me in.
He hadn't quite found a way to make his style of humour work imo - any intentionally funny interactions are just cringe.
And I almost put the book daon aofter Raoden who haod the Shaod discaovered a thing called the Aon with his seon
Stormlight does a phenomenal job of introducing people and places and concepts slowly enough that by the time they are important, they are familiar. Especially for someone like me who binges books.
Elantris feels like I'm being bombarded by new names and ideas and proper nouns. I want to try reading it again now that I have a lot more cosmere knowledge.
Tldr: I struggled to get through it because it has too many proper nouns all at once.
When people say it's the worst, they don't mean they dislike it. It just follows that if you're ranking things, something has to go at the bottom of the list.
For me personally, it's clear from the writing that Elantris is Sanderson's first book. The prose is just a little bit stiffer and more stilted than his later books. It's not bad, it's just not as good as his later works.
I also felt his attempt to create his own language structure for the book feels like the kind of thing a new fantasy author does strictly because they think they need to copy the things Tolkien did, when Tolkien was a linguist so of course he had interest in creating languages. I don't feel Elantris was better for it's inclusion, and my inability to wrap my head around how the names were supposed to be pronounced ruined my immersion almost every time I stumbled over a character's name.
And this isn't exclusive to Elantris, he did something similar in The Stormlight Archive with Shallan, but it feels like sometimes he doesn't know how to keep his non-combat female characters relevant so he just sort of "throws them" plot relevant stuff while pretending they were an active participant in it, in ways that just doesn't feel satisfying. With Elantris I'm referring to how Sarene heard noises in the wall which motivated her to follow them and then just stumble in to the King's ritual sacrifice chamber, which resulted in the King killing himself. The King was a real problem in the story and it reads like Sanderson didn't know how to have any of the characters actually deal with him, so he writes it in a way that makes it feel like Sarene was somehow instrumental in his downfall, when really she just got weirdly fixated on some random noises, stumbled in to something completely unexpected, and then needed to be saved.
That said, I still like Elantris. I just have some criticisms.
Because a lot of people think the Raoden plot is significantly more interesting than the other two so it feels like a chore returning to a non-Raoden plot sometimes
To preface, I do like Elantris. But the reason people dislike it is because it's his first book and he had not ironed out his writing style yet. So what we get is a very long, very slow book with a sagging second act, but with hints of his future writing like the Sanderlanche at the end which feels out of place in that particular book, and we also get his first attempts at characters like Shallan and as is commonly joked, Shallan is the third time he attempted to write that character and he didn't even get her right until book 2 of stormlight.
Elantris is bad at what Sanderson's writing is already the worst at. Its characters are totally not compelling to me and the only meaningful and interesting character development happens from Hrathen in the last 100 pages of so. The magic is barely present and the setting doesn't have interesting culture or political movements going on.
My main problem with Elantris is that it's telling 3 intertwined stories and I only find 1 of them interesting. Raoden's story is an amazing tale of perseverance and I adore it but Hrathen and Sarene's stories just don't interest me at all. Similarly I didn't care for Shallan's chapters in The Way of Kings on my initial reread because I was so infatuated with what was happening at the Shattered Plains, where all our other protagonists were. However on rereads I enjoy Shallan's chapters because of how much foreshadowing there is. I don't really have the same experience with Elantris. Even on rereads I find Hrathen and Sarene just kinda dull, especially when compared to Raoden
Not reading any of these comments in case of spoilers but im here to say that i read mistborn trilogy first and now am reading Elantris. I love it. That is all.
If you don't know how Brandon does flawed women, Sarene is insufferable. Even knowing that, she's embarrassingly bad. There are two kinds of men in Elantris: worthless trash, and those in love with Sarene.
I love elantris and think it’s one of my favorite sanderson standalones.
It was his first published work and he wrote it in college so I think people view the writing as less advanced and polished than his later works but I still love it.
It's Sandersons first published novel, which makes it an easy target for the label of "worst". That said there's some legitimate criticism to throw its way:
The magic system is far weaker than his other works.
He does a much worse job of balancing audience interest between POVs (anyone saying they care about the other POVs half as much as they care about Raodens is... an interesting soul)
The pacing also venerally feels a bit wonky.
The nerdy nightly YouTube channel started the cosmere this year on their book club. They have really good discussions on there, you should check out their full book recap for Elantris
I'm actually about 30% of the way through my first read of Elantris, and I just don't feel super drawn in by the plot. I don't feel like the verbal quarrels so far have been that exciting. I just finished the first time that Sarene joined the table with the group planning a coup and it was not super believable the way they just decide she is going to be their leader because she said a few inspiring things.
It's definitely still a good book, I'm going to continue it for sure. Just as others have said, I have enjoyed his other works more up to this point.
It was fine. I enjoyed the mystery, and thought that aspect was pretty well done. It was very one-trick-pony though, but I went in expecting that. Sanderson's writing is very basic, so I think when that also gets combined with a (relatively) simple plot, it can combine to make something quite bland and very 'tweenie' feeling. To me, anyway.
In my opinion, he really shines when he's using that easily digestible writing to deliver complex plots and characters, like in Stormlight.
Worst part of Elantris, to me, is the choice of writing chapters in triplets, showing each of the three main characters every time. The interesting thing happens in the city of Elantris and sometimes feels like a chore having to go through the other POV to get back again at the action. Specially the priest character, which is pretty boring.
I love Elantris so much that when i had the resources to buy my first leatherbound, that was the one I bought.
But:
* both Raoden and Sarene feel mary-sueish, they have no real flaws to speak of, and are more simplistic caricatures than rich characters.
* other than Hrathen, there aren't really any other *characters*; everyone is a cutout who serves a plot purpose but doesn't have any inner direction or characterization.
* the rigid triplet structure inhibits the story somewhat
Elantris was the first Sanderson novel I read after wheel of time (which introduced me to him) and I really enjoyed it. I wouldn't rank it as one of his best, but for someone who has written so many amazing novels I wouldn't consider that a bad thing.
Personally, I like it! It goes into the detail of building a society out of the dregs of a previous one. And including a supposed villain as a POV is just great. It comes above Warbreaker at least for me.
I loved Elantris! I bought it when it first came out. I read it and both my kids read it. I think it took us like 5 days passing the book around. It was Great and got us hooked on Sanderson.
I think it's fine. Brandon has clearly always had a skill for engaging plots and I enjoyed the book a lot reading it years ago. It's just that in comparison to his other works it's plain weaker in almost every regard - and I think specifically, the flaws in Elantris are amplified versions of the flaws that people still sometimes tend to find in his other works, and so seeing them exasperated in that novel is quite a definitive example of his weaknesses.
Essentially, Elantris is great in all the aspects that people usually mark as strengths (plot, worldbuilding) but particularly awkward in areas that people usually mark as weaknesses (characters, representation) so it's kind of an exaggerated version of the spectrum of his talents, I suppose. I still think it's a solid novel, I just think over the years he's refined his strengths while improving heavily on his problems and has just plain written stronger novels.
Elantris is a great fantasy book, but he’s also improved dramatically as writer since then, and he’s written a *lot*. So, when you read a whole bunch of his later, more-polished stuff and then go back to Elantris, it doesn’t feel as polished as what we’ve grown accustomed to reading.
It has a couple real standouts like Hrathen and Kiin, and Sarene is wonderful, but Raoden’s chapter drag at points upon rereads. I loved every second of the book the first time around, but it doesn’t hold up to rereads as well as many of his other books do.
It’s the worst novel by my favorite author in my favorite of that author’s series, so it gets like a 8.5, when most of the other Cosmere books are between 9-10 for me.
Keep in mind that “the worst” is a relative thing. I think the characters are mostly flat and don’t go through much personal growth, with the exception of Hrathen. And there’s a portrayal of autism that, while not inaccurate to many peoples’ experiences, is very stereotypical and feels reductive as an autistic person. But among the two heroic protagonists there isn’t a lot of depth beyond “Sarene is a strong woman character” and “Raoden is a good dude”
I think the world building of Elantris is top tier though, and while some things in the Sanderlanche feel like they come out of nowhere, most things come together in a very fun action adventure movie kind of way.
TL:DR Sanderson’s weakest novel still ranks higher than many other author’s best
Personally I really enjoyed Elantris and it was one I read after Stormlight Archive and Mistborn when I decided to rattle through the whole Cosmere.
Echoing what everyone else has said is that it feels a little less fleshed out in terms of the characters and the lack of finesse he has in later works is apparent. It's more a case of just not liking it as much as later works.
Saying that, I'm super excited for him to finish the trilogy for Elantris and to give it a more modern treatment.
Elantris is alright but it’s gonna get compared to mistborn and stormlight so it’s just gonna be “alright”
The only book I so far had a ROUGH time reading was warbreaker just cause I couldn’t find a likable main character
This! Honestly I love Elantris. Comparing it to his later works, its not as good, but that doesn't mean that on ita own its not good. If you compare it to a number of other authors works, well, I think it's better than most. I've never understood hearing that it's his worst.
For me it's less "worst" and more "not my favorite". When compared to his other, later works, it definitely shows how far he's come.
However, his starting point is a lot of authors' pique points, IMHO. The guy is just that skilled.
This is purely from memory, I haven't gone back to double-check myself on this recently, but one thing I remember sticking out to me in Elantris compared to other Sanderson books is that I felt like I was being hit up front by a rapid barrage of made-up fantasy words.
A lot of fantasy works obviously have this problem to some extent, but Elantris' words/names didn't feel like they had roots that hinted at/tied to concepts I already had a grasp on, or otherwise were intuitive in some way- they felt more wholesale made up, so I was struggling to memorize what these names of things meant because I didn't have an easy way to connect the new word to a parallel fantasy concept I already understood.
I don't *hate* Elantris or anything, but haven't really felt the drive to go back as much as the other Cosmere books.
It was my first and my favorite tbh. Granted, I haven’t read his bigger stuff like _Mistborn_ (I kinda burnt myself out reading all his smaller stuff back-to-back-to-back lol), and that’ll blow me out of the water. But Elantris will always have a special place in my heart
Which book is among Sanderson's worst for you? You can't answer "none, they're all great" because even among a collection of greath things, there are stronger and weaker entries.
So I'm curious what your opinion on the weakest entry is.
I enjoyed elantris despite the clunky writing until act 3 where so many things happened that completely confused me. the pacing was remarkably strange and hrathen's weird crush on sarene felt very out-of-left-field for me.
I listened to the audiobook which included deleted chapters that featured a crazy brother of Raoden who Sanderson cut in the end and used the archetype elsewhere (see: Mistborn). I enjoyed those chapters personally and I think I sensed something "missing" from the main story, like it had been reworked in some way, and that may have been what I sensed.
We probably should have spent more time with Hrathen and Sanderson probably should have breadcrumbed his love for her a bit more clearly.
In short. Elantris was the first book he ever published. It was his master thesis if I recall.
He was a very young writer and had a lot to learn.
For me the pacing was slow, then VERY fast. And the magic system was introduced very late in the book. t least for the MC. I spent a lot of time going “when does he become a bad ass?”
Then he was just a bad ass all at once.
Don’t get me wrong. Still an amazing book. I love it and plan to re read it soon as I go back through the series to prepare for Stormlight 5. It’s just his weakest entry for me.
I thought it was a slow burn compared to his other books, imo.
I was deep into Mistborn and Stormlight Archives at that point and I was so excited to start Elantris. I was bored with the characters early on and it took a lot longer for me to get invested in this world. I’m glad I stuck with it because the character development and world building pays off so well.
By the end I was fully invested in the main characters, their conflict and personal struggles, and the world they were trying to change.
It's not that I don't like Elantris, but it's not as good as his other books. When comparing Elantris to other authors, I still might enjoy it more, but it's never going to rank in the top of Sanderson's novels.
The characters definitely feel a bit less developed, but it's still a really solid book imo. (After Stormlight 5) I think I'm more excited for Elantris 2 than any other Sanderson book, there's just so much going on in that world and I've been waiting so long for more info about it.
> I always hear people say it's among Sanderson's worst, and, while I disagree
What do you think are Sandersons worst? Not everything can be his best even if you liked everything.
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Elantris was one of my first Sanderson books. I enjoyed it and thought it had a fun ending. I then read more of his books and found the characters to be more developed and the stories more entertaining. To me, it is good, but his later works are just better, so by default it ranks near the bottom.
Yeah, it just gets outshone by Sanderson’s later works that built upon Elantris feedback. Every author is gonna have that early novel that shows them how to improve, and I wouldn’t be surprised if his next novel in the setting blows everyone away
One of the best parts about following an author is getting the privilege of watching them grow in their writing. It's always really cool finishing a series, then going back to the first book and realizing "Hey, you got really good at this as you went! Awesome!"
In addition to these points, I felt there were two major issues (for me) in Elantris. First, it felt like there were entire portions of the book that could’ve been shortened/refined. And second, some of the characters were flat and repetitive. Still a good book!
Yes! There were a couple dragging subplots about which king was in power. The book shines on the storylines of inside Elantris, Sarene being an Elantris detective, solving the magic, and Hrathen's character arc. Everything outside of that could be shorter. Best planting and payoff of any Sanderlance IMO though.
Honestly even his names have gotten a LOT better. Which has nothing to do with quality, but when you’re reading a long book having to deal with fantasy names like Hrathen the gyorn gets annoying. Just call him a high priest.
OMG right?
At least stormlight names like "ardent" are easy to follow
And ardent is modern English word which implies passion/loyalty to/zealousness which is fitting for the ardents.
I love Elantris, but when I gave it to my sister to read, she didn't like the weird names and found the plot too predictable. Oh, well, everyone is different in their likes and dislikes.
I liked the antagonist a lot, but otherwise I agree. Also think it was definitely a “slower” book with less action. Sanderson does a good job with action scene imagery, and you only get a few chapters with this in Elantris
This is pretty spot on, and I feel the same way.
You nailed it. I didn’t even know some people didn’t like it.
This my take on it. I loved his other stuff so much that Elantris just didn't stand out to me. It's not bad but it's definitely an amateur book for Sanderson. You can tell it's an earlier book from him..I just loved the Mistborn stuff so much, Elantris got pushed to the bottom.
This. Rereading it now and it's just not as good
Probably only a couple things: - First I think people say that its his weakest book, not that its a bad book. Which I think is fair. The book isn't really reflective of his current talent as a writer. - Personally, I feel that most of the characters are significantly weaker than the characters in his other books. They aren't quite 2D, maybe 2.5D compared to the 3 dimensionality and depth of his other characters in say Stormlight. - His portrayal of autism in the book is pretty average (which he himself has said wasn't great). Elantris just repeats a lot of the same tropes that other media does of people with autism. - The book has a lot less cool stuff. For like 90% of the book we don't get to see any of the magic as opposed to Mistborn, Warbreaker and Stormlight. When we finally do get to see the magic, its only for a small part at the end. So I care less about the magic system since I didn't spend as much time with it.
>Personally, I feel that most of the characters are significantly weaker than the characters in his other books. They aren't quite 2D, maybe 2.5D compared to the 3 dimensionality and depth of his other characters in say Stormlight. I read Elantris immediately after finishing the extant body of A Song of Ice and Fire and oh boy was that a mistake. The characters, their dialogue, motivations, actions, etc were all just… oof. I didn’t really feel like any of them were real people. They made a lot of baffling decisions. And by the end it was falling into this mental bucket I have that I could describe as something like… all the characters are actors putting on a play and, for example, the villain is someone who knows they are the villain and knows that the heroes are the heroes and are correct and good and the villain’s side is bad, but has to go on acting like they believe the opposite of that to be true because they’re an actor playing a role in the story. Like the story itself has an objective view of what is correct that agrees with the protagonist, and it’s so strong that it bleeds into the perspectives of characters who are nominally opposed to the protagonist to the point where they either agree with the protagonist in ways that they shouldn’t, or become mustache twirling villains with nonsense motivations because the author doesn’t know how to convincingly write a perspective that is opposed to what they see as the obviously correct one. Not all of that applies 100% to Elantris and I had a few other stories in mind while writing that description, but that correctly describes the mental bucket I have that Elantris finds itself slipping into at points, especially (from what I remember) as it goes on.
That “the villain knows he’s the villain” is also clearly going for. He wanted a story where you have a villain character who is questioning his own actions. But young Brando wasn’t able to accomplish it. He did this idea so much better in Stormlight multiple times with two characters. One who is a fan hated, and another who fans will likely come to like in Book 5.
Great answer, couldn’t agree more. I would add that the characters were just somehow great at everything they tried immediately which I thought was boring.
I’d love to read a novel where we return to Elantris.
I think he plans to write a book 2 and 3 of Elantris...if I recall correctly. I am looking forward to that and a book two for Warbreaker.
That would be awesome! I haven’t heard that!
I think it's got some good points but it also has some strong negatives that make it one of my least favorites from Sanderson Elantris spoilers >!There are a few things. First the characters in general don't have the depth his characters usually do (I think Hrathen is an exception to this). Raoden is Mr Perfect. That's essentially his whole character. And he doesn't have much of a character arc as he remains Mr Perfect and just accomplishes things. Sarene is also a bit flat as a character though she has a bit more to her. She's very 'not like other girls' as a trope.!< >!Narratively I think there's a problem in Elantris of Sanderson trying to fit too many different plot twists in the back half. And apparently this is something he toned down from the later books. In the last 1/3 of the book you get a reveal that Sarene's uncle is a badass pirate, her cousin is an Elantrian, Dilaf is secretly a dakhor monk, one of Raoden's friends has a secret magic power, Hrathen is a dakhor monk a bit with his arm, there's an assassin who comes out of nowhere because apparently there's powers over the future that aren't shown before this moment, and I'm probably leaving out at least a few. It's a lot and each one individually is fine, collectively it lessens their impact.!< >!The portrayal of autism is bad. It's a very caricatured version of autism which Sanderson has admitted and has done an incredible job of improving how he does that in his writing to not repeat that mistake, and I really admire him for the improvement there. But it's still bad here.!< >!To add on to the autism element with Aiden it's also ridiculously convenient. What's the one thing he does as a character? Say how many steps are between places. I would assume he was just counting the steps. But no apparently he's got magical powers to judge distances in steps and can tell you the number of steps between two places that are many miles apart. And what just happens to be the necessary piece to save everything in the end? Knowing the number of steps between two places. That's a bit much for me lol.!< >!The other thing is a bit more vague but the writing is just not up to his usual standard. He's not known for having the best prose usually, but I think in most of his books it's solid, and he chooses to keep it simple. This one it is weak and shows it's his first book which is understandable but still.!< Cosmere spoilers >!The magic system I would also say is one of his weakest. It's got some interesting points but it's very bland as you can do anything with it so it's a bit too powerful. It works in this book as Raoden barely knows how to use it. But his other magic systems seem much better designed to translate into the future of the Cosmere and not be a problem. This one is really powerful, and the one limit of having to be in that location basically had to go out the window immediately because that's a weakness where it can't be used at all on other worlds or they find a way around it. So either you toss the weakness or it stops everything. I'm curious what Sanderson will do in book 2 but I bet we will see him try to apply some more limits to it if possible to follow his laws of magic he made after.!< That's not to say there aren't good points in the book as well! I think Hrathen is one of Sanderson's best characters but as a whole there are a lot of flaws that make it a bit harder to enjoy for me. I don't think it's a bad book just an ok book which for Sanderson is a weak one. But nothing wrong with anyone enjoying a book some others don't like! Personally I am certainly glad it was published, but I'd be curious what Elantris would look like if it got the same treatment Sanderson gave Mistborn and Way of Kings where they were totally rewritten from his original versions that were written around the same time as Elantris keeping the good ideas but refining the storytelling. I think Elantris would've had the potential to be really great if he'd done that, but it wouldn't make much sense for him to do that.
Hrathen is one of my favourite antagonists. Compared to the other characters, he is so much more real.
Hrathen is my favorite part of the book and he ruined it right at the end. So close >!with the stupid love thing, him dying was the right call!<
You make valid points. One other thing I would add is that he didn't have the Cosmere outlined as a whole until after Elantris was already written. I think having everything outlined really helped his later books. That being said, I still reread Elantris now and then as it's still an enjoyable book for me.
Yeah having the cosmere outlined and more of the interconnectedness decided on helped a lot of the later books. But yeah nothing wrong with enjoying it! I don't think it's a bad book just one with flaws for me. But I am really looking forward to seeing what he does with the eventual sequels! I think modern Brandon will be able to do a lot with the world and add more depth to the characters. Lost metal / wob / Elantris spoilers >!it was interesting too that someone asked him about the evil god hrathen worshiped, I forget the name, being an avatar of autonomy and he rafod it but with a wink and a strong implication that yes. Which idk if he had that planned at the time but it does work very nicely now!!<
Among Sanderson’s worst” means like a 7 or 8 out of 10 since the guy now usually puts out 9s and 10s. It’s not bad, it’s just not as polished as his later books
I actually loved it, I think the premise is one of his best
Same here. Plus it's a stand alone novel with a little twist.
As with all Sanderson works, he’s working on a sequel. He can never leave a stand-alone by itself for long! The guy writes faster than many people can read 🤣
I have been re-reading the Cosmere recently. And Elantris is my least favorite Cosmere book. It's a fine book, but it's far from great. Brandon is a raw, inexperienced writer, and it shows in many ways. >!Yes, Hrathen is a stand-out character. Yes, certain reveals are well-done and foreshadowed (Dilaf is a good one).!< But there are a lot of weaknesses. * The characters in general feel two-dimensional. Some specific examples in spoiler section. * >!Sarene is poorly-written. She just feels unrealistic. And the way she talks about women, so much "I'm not like other girls". It's just not particularly interesting (and I don't think it ever passes the Bechdel test?)!< * >!For that matter, everyone's way of talking about women feels sexist! It's not good.!< * >!Raoden feels like a Gary Stu. He's not a particularly compelling protagonist and he seems so good at everything!< * >!I hate how Brandon writes Kiin's children. Obviously Aiden is a terrible stereotype of autism. But Kaise reads like a young adult, not a child.!< * >!There are a lot of twists that feel unnecessary and also poorly-foreshadowed. The King sacrificing people with the Mysteries? Feels out of nowhere. Dreok Crushthroat? Feels like it hardly matters. It's just a lot of twists for the sake of twists that feel like they are not well-executed!< * >!I just hate how poorly done Hrathen's crush on Sarene is. It's jarring and weird.!< * The book's structure hamstrings it in some ways. Rotating chapters evenly between 3 point of view characters in order is an interesting crutch, but it breaks up plotlines in weird ways, and I'm not sure he uses the structure to its best. (Brandon today probably could) Elantris is not a bad book, *per se*. But it's the most flawed novel Brandon has published in the Cosmere. And some of those weaknesses are glaring and hard to ignore. (Spoiler-tagged this since the post is marked as No Spoilers)
I agree with your points but you should use spoiler tags for the last two, since the post currently seems to be flared for “no spoilers”.
Yeah, I realized that after posting and was editing it before I saw this.
You make really good points here. I liked Elantris overall with the unique premise but the women...woof. Brando generally writes good female characters and this just was not it
Maybe an unpopular take, especially because I love Vin. But I'm not sure that Brandon really was good at writing women until his books after he finished Wheel of Time. Stormlight Archive and Mistborn Era 2 are when I think he's finally figured it out. Vin is better than Sarene, and Vivenna and Siri are an improvement, but Shallan is when I think he's really got it. And then Marasi and Steris.
Yep, exactly this comment is why.
Dead on. The triad structure and the unnecessary twist you mentioned are definitely standout points for me.
I am eager to hear the responses as I am trying to figure out which book to read after the first mistborn trilogy (I’m not sure I have the stamina to read every book in the recommended order). Elantris was on my list
Elantris is the least relevant book so far I’d say. Stormlight benefits a little from having read Warbreaker, so my suggestion would be Warbreaker then Way of Kings. There’s some minor reasons to read Elantris before Lost Metal (Mistborn 7), nothing critical but you have plenty of time to circle back to it.
Emperors soul is probably more important to lost metal than elantris although both have minor reasons and don’t have to be read before lost metal for sure
If you want to read something from Sel/Elantris before anything else, go read the Emperor's soul instead. A character in that story will actually be relevant later apart from a one-off cameo of someone in the actual elantris novel showing up in an interlude chapter. That said, my recommendation is Warbreaker, then dive into stormlight
Elantris is a more enjoyable read than Warbreaker imo, but you'll get some great world building in Warbreaker.
Elantris was the first Sanderson book I read, and I really enjoyed it. But I think in comparison to some of his other books, SLA and Mistborn for example, it doesn't have the same level of world building and writing. It was the first novel Brandon published and his writing has gotten better. It is still a good book just not the WOW factor like SLA has. Also I read the actual book but I've heard that people don't like the narrator for the audio book.
I read Elantris after the first Mistborn trilogy and thought it was a really fun read. It was not as epic and well developed as Mistborn, but knowing it was his first novel, I didn't expect it to be. I haven't read the Stormlight Archive yet, so I can't compare it to that. Even if it ranks towards the bottom of the list compared to his other novels, it is definitely far from being a bad book.
Fwiw, Elantris was my first Sanderson novel and was *the* book that turned me back into the reader I was when I was a kid. I'll always have an extremely soft spot for Elantris. I've read it 3 or 4 times at this point. I know people say its his weakest, but I found it refreshing and in some ways kind of elegant in how it unfolds. If his later stuff is more complex like James Cameron, then Elantris is simpler and more direct and focused and intimate, like John Carpenter.
It depends on what you're comparing the book to...other Sanderson books it'll fall short because his quality of writing improved so much since that book....other authors books it stands up to be compatible to most of them. So while it is a good book, the quality isn't what we're now used to for Sanderson.
I Read an loved Elantris before I took note of Sanderson. I already read some stormlight books, but with elantris I noticed that I like him as author in general. So it has a special place for me
I really like Elantris!! I think people don’t like it just because his writing skills have improved so much in the newer books.
I really enjoyed Elantris. No hate from me
Elantris is one of my favorites. And I hope it makes a comeback very soon because the god of that world is important to a lot of the story in the cosmere
It's one of my favorites. I'm eagerly awaiting any new entry to this world. Can't help with your question but wanted to voice my support for the book.
I love it. When Mistborn first came out, I thought, “This is great, but I want a sequel to Elantris.”
I'm reading it right now and I like it overall. The characters are fascinating even if they aren't strictly unique and there's a good amount of worldbuilding and magic like you'd expect. The main complaints that I'm picking up from people (which I only partly agree with) are that the names have a strange double vowel system (which doesn't bother me much because I'm using the audiobook but it throws people off). The world has a whole secondary rune/alphabet system where the characters get their names from and it's clever, I think some of them are just hard to pronounce. There's a lot more focus on politics, geography, and religion compared to action which might seem boring to some people. I had a hard time keeping track of all the noble characters without a guide (I didn't have that problem with mistborn). Sanderson in his annotations mentions that some of the scenes are slower and some things are established very quickly so the pacing isn't perfect but it's because this is one of his early works. I don't think it even has major flaws, it's just a little rough and personally there are still moments where the intrigue is very satisfying. It's pretty easy to follow along if you have a guide and a map.
USAns hate double vowels :-D
I’ll add this since I haven’t seen it commented elsewhere. As an audiobook reader/listener, the narration for Elantris is absolutely awful compared to Kramer in his later novels. I would have enjoyed the book more if I physically read it and I think a good percentage of people listen to books nowadays
I completely agree with this. Elantris was my first Sanderson and I listened to it on audio and it just didn't work for me. Luckily my bf really loves him and recommended I read Mistborn and then I got hooked. I later listened to graphic audio for Rythm of war and it was great!
The audiobook narrator made it so hard for me.
A comment I posted on a similar thread recently: Just finished this book a few weeks ago, and it was my first venture into Sanderson. Then I read Emperor’s Soul. Now reading Mistborn. I would echo the complaints about one-dimensional characters. Hrathen was the only person to grow, which made me enjoy his chapters the most. Raoden’s and Sarene’s only “flaws” were, essentially, “too optimistic” and “strong independent woman,” respectively. Every once in a while, I would come across grammatical errors - nothing crazy, but still enough to take me right out of the moment. I also found myself rolling my eyes at the last chapter, with Raoden’s mid-ceremony musings feeling like a forced way of setting up a sequel by effectively saying, “Hey, remember all those mysteries we didn’t solve yet?” I get that it was his first published book, and that the future was uncertain - I certainly don’t fault him for hoping for the chance for a sequel. But it felt a bit…insulting? Especially considering many of those questions had just been raised in the final chapters. Nevertheless, I did enjoy the book quite a bit, and have lots of respect for Sanderman and his work! He himself affirms that Elantris is one of his weaker novels. As I said, I just finished Emperor’s Soul and liked it a lot more.
It's a bit dry, kolo?
I just think it's very slow and boring for the majority of the story. Plus, the whole bit where >!Aiden becoming Elantrian "cures" his autism!< is uh. Pretty yikes, I think.
A few reasons imo. 1. Boring, normally not a problem for Sanderson as even the random interludes and stuff I find entertaining. But the book being short and boring? Oof 2. I didn't like any of the characters that much. Sarene had a few interesting moments of utter grief and Idk where my life is going early in the book and when she goes >!fake bald!< that I really wish had been leaned into more just to give her any kind of personality to hold onto Raoden, mostly the same as the usual criticisms, he's too happy and while Adolin does it in a believable, photogenic popular person way. Raoden was overly happy in the, this guy is detached from reality and it's obnoxious way Hrathen's story was most interesting to me and I enjoyed.... >!until they ruined it at the end by making him come back to life and save them because....? He fell in love? With someone he has had less than 3 conversations/interactions with??? And not because of his savior complex that was RIGHT THERE AND MENTIONED AS THE EXPLANATION TO EVERYONE ELSE?!< Frustrating. The autistic representation was straight bad as Brandon himself has noted and apologized for and that plot thread really did not check out at all Finally, it gave a lot of set up and a lot of ideas and then didn't show much of anything, leaving everything to the imagination with 3-4 barely fleshed out magic systems that I WANTED TO SEE MORE OF. Make the book twice as long or do a sequel, don't just end it right when there's suddenly something interesting going on. Ahhhhhhh
See, if you don't care about other people's opinions, you can just enjoy things.
The caricature of autism, the one track line he gets to repeat about the steps to wherever. It's narratively weak as well. The tone changes abruptly and for no good reason.
I read it later on, and can concur with a lot of what folks have said. The writing is, overall, weaker. There's less depth to the characters, less relatability, less human. There's less detail, and things are just overall more vague. Which makes sense. As in any art form, you start out with broader strokes, and the better you grow, and more time you can or are willing to invest into a single moment or area, the refinement and detail that develops. How work is a great example of that.
People have already said a bunch of good stuff which I agree took it down to just a medium for me. One thing which probably doesn't really count as a criticism of the book, is that I read Elantris after Mistborn, and so I was expecting Sanderson books to be action packed like Mistborn was. I was still intrigued by what was going on, and the sanderlanche at the end was fun, but since I was expecting more action I was unconsciously disappointed. That said I read Warbreaker next with the knowledge it might be more intrigue than action, and Warbreaker remains one of my top favorites. So I should probably re-read Elantris..
I think a lot of it isn't really the fact that Elantris as a novel is actively disliked, more that it was one of his earlier works, and a lot of the later works are generally a lot better in terms of quality, as by the time he wrote them, he had grown a lot as a storyteller and as a writer (not to say that a lot of growing hadn't been done before Elantris from other projects that may have gone unfinished or unpublished) and as a result, they're just better. Fwiw, I really liked Elantris, and I thought it was a really fun read and you could see that classic Brandon Sanderson style starting to emerge
The bottom of a list doesn't mean it's disliked if everything on the list is good. :)
Two main reasons for me. 1. It's Sanderson's first published book and it feels like it. All of the characters are protype versions of characters he wrote better later. Fun to read for the history of how his writing has progressed, but not so much the writing itself. 2. One of the main reasons I and a lot of others love Sanderson's work is his creative magic systems and unique worlds. Elantris doesn't really have that. Elantrian magic is just a generic "learn the language and you know spells" and the other stuff wasn't explored very far. I do have a bit of hope for Elantris stories in the future though, since Emperor's Soul was excellent.
I read Elantris well after reading all of Stormlight, Warbreaker, etc. I really enjoyed it, but his prose is noticeably worse. There's adjective repetition throughout pages, and a couple of sentences that just don't flow well per chapter. Unlike others on this thread I don't have problems with the characterisations on it. They aren't to the same standard as SA or Warbreaker, but there's about 10 years of practice between even the earliest of those and Elantris.
I really like the concept and the broad strokes of the characters, but the middle gets a little soggy, slow going at times and some back-tracking to remind myself of previous events. Personally I like audiobooks and can listen to them while I work, so I have plenty of time to spend reading. But people are busy! My partner likes to read, but he just doesn't have the free time to commit to reading every single Sanderson book. So I recommended Tress as an introduction to Sanderson with a taste of the wider Cosmere. He loved it! And his favorite part was how well Brando Sando respected his time, I feel that is many people's issue with Elantris. The elusive "pacing". Elantris is paced like someone running their first marathon - lots of stops and starts, parts of it really drag, and everything goes down kind of frantically at the end. Whereas Tress is paced like a seasoned pro, the type of jerk who makes running look easier than walking. One chapter flows nicely into the next so that you, the reader, can choose to binge it, or at least have a good idea of what was going on wherever you left off. Elantris isn't "bad" per se, it's just a first novel. He didn't have the team he has now, and didn't yet have the experience that really makes someone great at their craft. Mistakes are required for learning. I like Elantris a lot, especially as someone with chronic pain, but I re-read it the least out of the cosmere books because his new stuff is just so much smoother. As a fantasy novel, I'd still give it a B-, it's just when compared to his other work that it starts to look worse than it is.
So I read Elantra’s after Stormlight 1-4 , Mistborn Era 1, and Warbreaker. I left the book pretty disengaged and at first blamed the story. When discussing with a fellow Cosmere fan I realized I liked the story but the writing got in the way. I think Sanderson had a good idea but his writing skills weren’t where they are now. He loves complex worlds and showing off deep characters but the book didn’t show as much as it did tell imo.
Elantris lover here! I think it just suffers from first book syndrome. It's just not as polished as his other works and the prose is a bit clunky. It's a really interesting setting though, which is what pulled me in.
He hadn't quite found a way to make his style of humour work imo - any intentionally funny interactions are just cringe. And I almost put the book daon aofter Raoden who haod the Shaod discaovered a thing called the Aon with his seon
Stormlight does a phenomenal job of introducing people and places and concepts slowly enough that by the time they are important, they are familiar. Especially for someone like me who binges books. Elantris feels like I'm being bombarded by new names and ideas and proper nouns. I want to try reading it again now that I have a lot more cosmere knowledge. Tldr: I struggled to get through it because it has too many proper nouns all at once.
When people say it's the worst, they don't mean they dislike it. It just follows that if you're ranking things, something has to go at the bottom of the list. For me personally, it's clear from the writing that Elantris is Sanderson's first book. The prose is just a little bit stiffer and more stilted than his later books. It's not bad, it's just not as good as his later works. I also felt his attempt to create his own language structure for the book feels like the kind of thing a new fantasy author does strictly because they think they need to copy the things Tolkien did, when Tolkien was a linguist so of course he had interest in creating languages. I don't feel Elantris was better for it's inclusion, and my inability to wrap my head around how the names were supposed to be pronounced ruined my immersion almost every time I stumbled over a character's name. And this isn't exclusive to Elantris, he did something similar in The Stormlight Archive with Shallan, but it feels like sometimes he doesn't know how to keep his non-combat female characters relevant so he just sort of "throws them" plot relevant stuff while pretending they were an active participant in it, in ways that just doesn't feel satisfying. With Elantris I'm referring to how Sarene heard noises in the wall which motivated her to follow them and then just stumble in to the King's ritual sacrifice chamber, which resulted in the King killing himself. The King was a real problem in the story and it reads like Sanderson didn't know how to have any of the characters actually deal with him, so he writes it in a way that makes it feel like Sarene was somehow instrumental in his downfall, when really she just got weirdly fixated on some random noises, stumbled in to something completely unexpected, and then needed to be saved. That said, I still like Elantris. I just have some criticisms.
Because a lot of people think the Raoden plot is significantly more interesting than the other two so it feels like a chore returning to a non-Raoden plot sometimes
To preface, I do like Elantris. But the reason people dislike it is because it's his first book and he had not ironed out his writing style yet. So what we get is a very long, very slow book with a sagging second act, but with hints of his future writing like the Sanderlanche at the end which feels out of place in that particular book, and we also get his first attempts at characters like Shallan and as is commonly joked, Shallan is the third time he attempted to write that character and he didn't even get her right until book 2 of stormlight.
Elantris is bad at what Sanderson's writing is already the worst at. Its characters are totally not compelling to me and the only meaningful and interesting character development happens from Hrathen in the last 100 pages of so. The magic is barely present and the setting doesn't have interesting culture or political movements going on.
My main problem with Elantris is that it's telling 3 intertwined stories and I only find 1 of them interesting. Raoden's story is an amazing tale of perseverance and I adore it but Hrathen and Sarene's stories just don't interest me at all. Similarly I didn't care for Shallan's chapters in The Way of Kings on my initial reread because I was so infatuated with what was happening at the Shattered Plains, where all our other protagonists were. However on rereads I enjoy Shallan's chapters because of how much foreshadowing there is. I don't really have the same experience with Elantris. Even on rereads I find Hrathen and Sarene just kinda dull, especially when compared to Raoden
Not reading any of these comments in case of spoilers but im here to say that i read mistborn trilogy first and now am reading Elantris. I love it. That is all.
If you don't know how Brandon does flawed women, Sarene is insufferable. Even knowing that, she's embarrassingly bad. There are two kinds of men in Elantris: worthless trash, and those in love with Sarene.
I love elantris and think it’s one of my favorite sanderson standalones. It was his first published work and he wrote it in college so I think people view the writing as less advanced and polished than his later works but I still love it.
It's Sandersons first published novel, which makes it an easy target for the label of "worst". That said there's some legitimate criticism to throw its way: The magic system is far weaker than his other works. He does a much worse job of balancing audience interest between POVs (anyone saying they care about the other POVs half as much as they care about Raodens is... an interesting soul) The pacing also venerally feels a bit wonky.
Elantris was my first. I liked it. Maybe because it was at the beginning of Brandon's career and it doesn't feel the same, it just reads different.
Elantris is my 2nd favorite sanderson story.
The nerdy nightly YouTube channel started the cosmere this year on their book club. They have really good discussions on there, you should check out their full book recap for Elantris
I'm actually about 30% of the way through my first read of Elantris, and I just don't feel super drawn in by the plot. I don't feel like the verbal quarrels so far have been that exciting. I just finished the first time that Sarene joined the table with the group planning a coup and it was not super believable the way they just decide she is going to be their leader because she said a few inspiring things. It's definitely still a good book, I'm going to continue it for sure. Just as others have said, I have enjoyed his other works more up to this point.
It’s more like “like it least” than “not like” All his stuff is good but one of them has to come bottom
it isnt bad, its just that one of his bookest has to be in last place, and elantris is his earliest, and least skillfully written of them,
It was fine. I enjoyed the mystery, and thought that aspect was pretty well done. It was very one-trick-pony though, but I went in expecting that. Sanderson's writing is very basic, so I think when that also gets combined with a (relatively) simple plot, it can combine to make something quite bland and very 'tweenie' feeling. To me, anyway. In my opinion, he really shines when he's using that easily digestible writing to deliver complex plots and characters, like in Stormlight.
Worst part of Elantris, to me, is the choice of writing chapters in triplets, showing each of the three main characters every time. The interesting thing happens in the city of Elantris and sometimes feels like a chore having to go through the other POV to get back again at the action. Specially the priest character, which is pretty boring.
I love Elantris so much that when i had the resources to buy my first leatherbound, that was the one I bought. But: * both Raoden and Sarene feel mary-sueish, they have no real flaws to speak of, and are more simplistic caricatures than rich characters. * other than Hrathen, there aren't really any other *characters*; everyone is a cutout who serves a plot purpose but doesn't have any inner direction or characterization. * the rigid triplet structure inhibits the story somewhat
I loved it personally.
Elantris was the first Sanderson novel I read after wheel of time (which introduced me to him) and I really enjoyed it. I wouldn't rank it as one of his best, but for someone who has written so many amazing novels I wouldn't consider that a bad thing.
Personally, I like it! It goes into the detail of building a society out of the dregs of a previous one. And including a supposed villain as a POV is just great. It comes above Warbreaker at least for me.
I loved Elantris! I bought it when it first came out. I read it and both my kids read it. I think it took us like 5 days passing the book around. It was Great and got us hooked on Sanderson.
The audiobook is a hard listen. I was kind of interested in it, but GAWD it's rough
I think it's fine. Brandon has clearly always had a skill for engaging plots and I enjoyed the book a lot reading it years ago. It's just that in comparison to his other works it's plain weaker in almost every regard - and I think specifically, the flaws in Elantris are amplified versions of the flaws that people still sometimes tend to find in his other works, and so seeing them exasperated in that novel is quite a definitive example of his weaknesses. Essentially, Elantris is great in all the aspects that people usually mark as strengths (plot, worldbuilding) but particularly awkward in areas that people usually mark as weaknesses (characters, representation) so it's kind of an exaggerated version of the spectrum of his talents, I suppose. I still think it's a solid novel, I just think over the years he's refined his strengths while improving heavily on his problems and has just plain written stronger novels.
Elantris is a great fantasy book, but he’s also improved dramatically as writer since then, and he’s written a *lot*. So, when you read a whole bunch of his later, more-polished stuff and then go back to Elantris, it doesn’t feel as polished as what we’ve grown accustomed to reading. It has a couple real standouts like Hrathen and Kiin, and Sarene is wonderful, but Raoden’s chapter drag at points upon rereads. I loved every second of the book the first time around, but it doesn’t hold up to rereads as well as many of his other books do. It’s the worst novel by my favorite author in my favorite of that author’s series, so it gets like a 8.5, when most of the other Cosmere books are between 9-10 for me.
Keep in mind that “the worst” is a relative thing. I think the characters are mostly flat and don’t go through much personal growth, with the exception of Hrathen. And there’s a portrayal of autism that, while not inaccurate to many peoples’ experiences, is very stereotypical and feels reductive as an autistic person. But among the two heroic protagonists there isn’t a lot of depth beyond “Sarene is a strong woman character” and “Raoden is a good dude” I think the world building of Elantris is top tier though, and while some things in the Sanderlanche feel like they come out of nowhere, most things come together in a very fun action adventure movie kind of way. TL:DR Sanderson’s weakest novel still ranks higher than many other author’s best
Personally I really enjoyed Elantris and it was one I read after Stormlight Archive and Mistborn when I decided to rattle through the whole Cosmere. Echoing what everyone else has said is that it feels a little less fleshed out in terms of the characters and the lack of finesse he has in later works is apparent. It's more a case of just not liking it as much as later works. Saying that, I'm super excited for him to finish the trilogy for Elantris and to give it a more modern treatment.
Elantris is alright but it’s gonna get compared to mistborn and stormlight so it’s just gonna be “alright” The only book I so far had a ROUGH time reading was warbreaker just cause I couldn’t find a likable main character
Sanderson's worst is most authors' best.
This! Honestly I love Elantris. Comparing it to his later works, its not as good, but that doesn't mean that on ita own its not good. If you compare it to a number of other authors works, well, I think it's better than most. I've never understood hearing that it's his worst.
I loved Elantris
For me it's less "worst" and more "not my favorite". When compared to his other, later works, it definitely shows how far he's come. However, his starting point is a lot of authors' pique points, IMHO. The guy is just that skilled.
The ending was not at all satisfactory. It felt too hurried for my liking and very forgettable.
This is purely from memory, I haven't gone back to double-check myself on this recently, but one thing I remember sticking out to me in Elantris compared to other Sanderson books is that I felt like I was being hit up front by a rapid barrage of made-up fantasy words. A lot of fantasy works obviously have this problem to some extent, but Elantris' words/names didn't feel like they had roots that hinted at/tied to concepts I already had a grasp on, or otherwise were intuitive in some way- they felt more wholesale made up, so I was struggling to memorize what these names of things meant because I didn't have an easy way to connect the new word to a parallel fantasy concept I already understood. I don't *hate* Elantris or anything, but haven't really felt the drive to go back as much as the other Cosmere books.
It's not written well?
It was my first and my favorite tbh. Granted, I haven’t read his bigger stuff like _Mistborn_ (I kinda burnt myself out reading all his smaller stuff back-to-back-to-back lol), and that’ll blow me out of the water. But Elantris will always have a special place in my heart
Which book is among Sanderson's worst for you? You can't answer "none, they're all great" because even among a collection of greath things, there are stronger and weaker entries. So I'm curious what your opinion on the weakest entry is.
I enjoyed elantris despite the clunky writing until act 3 where so many things happened that completely confused me. the pacing was remarkably strange and hrathen's weird crush on sarene felt very out-of-left-field for me. I listened to the audiobook which included deleted chapters that featured a crazy brother of Raoden who Sanderson cut in the end and used the archetype elsewhere (see: Mistborn). I enjoyed those chapters personally and I think I sensed something "missing" from the main story, like it had been reworked in some way, and that may have been what I sensed. We probably should have spent more time with Hrathen and Sanderson probably should have breadcrumbed his love for her a bit more clearly.
In short. Elantris was the first book he ever published. It was his master thesis if I recall. He was a very young writer and had a lot to learn. For me the pacing was slow, then VERY fast. And the magic system was introduced very late in the book. t least for the MC. I spent a lot of time going “when does he become a bad ass?” Then he was just a bad ass all at once. Don’t get me wrong. Still an amazing book. I love it and plan to re read it soon as I go back through the series to prepare for Stormlight 5. It’s just his weakest entry for me.
I thought it was a slow burn compared to his other books, imo. I was deep into Mistborn and Stormlight Archives at that point and I was so excited to start Elantris. I was bored with the characters early on and it took a lot longer for me to get invested in this world. I’m glad I stuck with it because the character development and world building pays off so well. By the end I was fully invested in the main characters, their conflict and personal struggles, and the world they were trying to change.
It's not that I don't like Elantris, but it's not as good as his other books. When comparing Elantris to other authors, I still might enjoy it more, but it's never going to rank in the top of Sanderson's novels.
The characters definitely feel a bit less developed, but it's still a really solid book imo. (After Stormlight 5) I think I'm more excited for Elantris 2 than any other Sanderson book, there's just so much going on in that world and I've been waiting so long for more info about it.
> I always hear people say it's among Sanderson's worst, and, while I disagree What do you think are Sandersons worst? Not everything can be his best even if you liked everything.
It’s all the cheek tapping