2012 Book Review #91: Warbreaker

[jethrien]

Title: Warbreaker
Author: Brandon Sanderson
Genre: High fantasy
Thingummies: 4.5

Synopsis: Princess Vivenna has been trained her entire life to marry the God-King of the neighboring country, to prevent them from invading. But at the last moment, her impulsive sister Siri is swapped into her role. Both sisters must learn to deal with their sudden change of status when no one around is quite who they seem to be.

Thoughts: Despite some plot holes, Sanderson gives you everything you might possibly want in a high fantasy novel: compelling characters, detailed world-building, tons of intrigue, and a creative magic system. (This guy clearly loves inventing magic systems.) There's even a snarky talking sword.

It's clearly always been a goal of Sanderson's to create interesting, well-developed female characters, which I very much appreciate given how often some of his fellow male fantasy authors fail at this. He's getting better at it, too. I really liked both Siri and Vivenna. I initially thought that they were going to be fairly tiresome stereotypes--the prim and dutiful princess vs. the irresponsible princess who keeps running off from her lessons to ride her horse. Instead, they each start there but very quickly evolve. Here's the thing--both women are genuinely smart. And so when they're placed in situations where their default reactions are wildly inappropriate, they learn, and fast. Their personal flaws still cause problems, and their growth makes sense within the context of their personalities, but they react quickly and adapt to their situations like a reasonably intelligent person ought to. Given how often I've screamed at characters for repeatedly making the same stupid mistakes because of their "character", this was incredibly refreshing.

All of the characters, it seems, are more complicated than they initially appear. Nearly everyone has something to hide, which makes sense in the complex political world that Sanderson has created. And it becomes a delight to discover where all the loyalties lie and where all the bodies are buried. Some of them, I guessed. Some I never even saw coming. No one is what they're initially indicated to be, but each reversal (some get several revelations) makes sense, given the information laid down before.

There are a couple problems, none of which actually bothered me until after I'd put down the book. A day later, it occured to me that some of the explanations were never quite thorough enough. So I'll give him that much--he keeps the tension sufficiently high that I didn't have time to question things until well after I'd finished the book.

Here there be spoilers.



We conveniently never learn how a lot of this stuff actually works. It's heavily implied that the Returned are in fact sent deliberately, but much was made of how the current batch of Returned are less moral and helpful than previous generations, and it's never really dealt with. Likewise, we never find out how the God-King's Breaths are passed on to his child. For that matter, if the priests already had a candidate for God-King, why was the high priest so concerned about Siri not trying hard enough to seduce Susebron? It's implied that there is some mysterious reason that the royal family turned away from Awakening, but that's never explored. Also, it's implied that Vivenna is Denth's many-times-removed granddaughter--surely it would have been nice to have some idea of how he felt about his descendents. (The high priest is also his descendant, I take it? Given the name? Why not the hair as well?) It's hinted that there's something special about Clod--his skill, his affection for Vivenna, Vasher's reaction to him--but we never learn it. And while it's left as given that the second army will dispatch the first, we don't actually know for sure. The lack of resolution there and the fact we don't know how Siri and Susebron manage to handle the deaths of pretty much all of their priests do make the ending feel a little abrupt.

I rather liked the revelation of Vasher's real name, though.

Despite all these issues--I still really liked this book. It was hard to put down, and I loved all the characters--Lightsong and his priest, the two mercenaries, Bluefingers, basically everyone. I wish he'd tied up all the threads, but it's still an excellent story.

Comments

[fairest.livejournal.com]

So thrilled you liked this one. I agree it's one of his better books for female characters, and I find it really satisfying to re-read as a one-shot piece when I want to read Sanderson but don't have the time for Mistborn (another series where the worldbuilding trumps the characterization -- though I would say that's true of all of Sanderson's books, to one extent or another) or the interest in the characters of Elantris. I always hoped there'd be more of this particular series to answer those abandoned questions, but sadly, no.