The Way of Kings

The first novel of The Stormlight Archive series, The Way of Kings, offers a compelling “underdog” story with memorable set-pieces and a world brimming with mystery – even if it fails to fully justify its length and the focus on some of its characters.

The Way of Kings opens with the death of a king and follows the resulting conflict. After the Parshendi people agrees to form an alliance with the Alethi king Gavilar, they send an assassin to dispatch him during the night, leading Alethkar to a long, drawn-out war. The battles are being waged in the aptly named Shattered Plains, a barren and vast labyrinth of rent plateaus, filled with deadly chasms and crevasses. Due to the peculiar nature of the battlefield, warfare revolves around the use of bridges that allow the bulk of the army to cross from one plateau to the next. But despite their importance, the bridgemen are horribly treated in the Alethi army.

One of these bridgemen is Kaladin, a young officer who became a slave after an unfortunate decision in battle. Kaladin is introduced as a natural leader, someone capable of inspiring men and gaining their complete trust. He fits the masculine ideal of a warrior perfectly: he’s fearless, strong, and deadly with a weapon; he’s the fearsome man that doesn’t cry. Syl, a fairy-like spirit that follows him around, even highlights this trait: “The others cry at night,” she says, “But you don’t.”

In the eyes of his men, Kaladin is a one-man army and the single reason why they often succeed in battle. When a newcomer asks why Kaladin’s squad is so sure that they will survive the incoming fight, a man answers: “Aye, it’s part training. But it’s mostly him. He fights like a storm, that one, and thinks twice as fast as other men. The way he moves sometimes…”

Kaladin, however, is actually unable to protect everyone – he’s just one person, after all – and this ends up haunting his every thought. He believes his failures betray the trust people put in him: it doesn’t matter how good he is with a spear, how effective is his strategy, or how humanely he treats his men, the people he’s supposed to protect all eventually die regardless. Everyone seems to die around Kaladin, but never Kaladin himself. So, as a bridgeman, he’s put in a position that exacerbates this very problem.

The first part of his narrative arc is an internal struggle to return to being the man he once was. When he’s assigned to Bridge Four, Kaladin’s spirit is crushed, and he’s overcome by fatalism and depression. Since the bridge crews are the first ones into battle – to set the bridges for the rest of the army to advance – they are easy targets for enemy archers. Kaladin learns that bridgemen are considered to be easily expendable lives by the Alethi army – and specially by his commander, Highprince Torol Sadeas. A bridgeman can be even trampled by the calvary of his own army if he stands in the way – and no one will spend a thought on him. How, then, can Kaladin protect anyone when the fate of every bridgeman is a violent death, pierced by enemy arrows or trampled by his own allies?

The first time Kaladin goes in a bridge run, the scene plays out as the beach landing of Saving Private Ryan: he’s marching senseless into a slaughter and is powerless to stop it, having to move forward nonetheless. There’s death and carnage everywhere, arrows flying like bullets hitting anyone near Kaladin, who must keep going despite the bodies littering the ground around him: “Arrows zipped past Kaladin, killing the other two men in the front line with him. Several other arrows smacked into the wood around him, one slicing open the skin of his cheek,” the narrator describes.

But we know during this scene (or at least there’s an expectation) that Kaladin is mostly safe, that he will survive the carnage, even if not unscathed. Sadeas may be the one wearing a special magical armor, the imposing and shiny shardplate, but Kaladin’s armor, although much more inconspicuous, is much better at its job of protecting the wearer: the plot armor. Kaladin is the protagonist of The Way of Kings and, since this is the beginning of the book, we are mostly sure that he will not die. The narrative actually goes one step further and not only acknowledges the existence of this armor but makes it a part of the character: Kaladin laments how he always survives, he notices how he lives instead of his friends and wishes it were the other way around.

The story of Kaladin and his bridge crew starts to gain form as the character starts to become his old self. He intends to lead the bridgemen the same way he used to lead his squad: by treating them like people, by knowing their names, by hearing their thoughts, by treating their wounds, and never abandoning a single one in the field of battle. In Sadeas’ army, the bridgemen are slaves in all but name, they are easily-replaced meat that is supposed to put a bridge in place and then quietly stand aside or die. Kaladin wants to train them, make them good at their jobs, and give them the ability to dream about a future where they survive. In other words, the protagonist starts to break the order of things in his army, angering his superiors by changing how things are supposed to go: by investing in his men, he’s starting a revolution.

It’s not a coincidence that the character shows an aversion to conservative rhetoric; Kaladin is a revolutionary at heart. “Tradition is the blind witness they use to condemn us, Teft,” he explains to one of his companions. “It’s the pretty box they use to wrap up their lies. It makes us serve them.” He often scoffs at his men when he hears them talking about how a man can go up in life, change his social class, through hard work and ability alone. He knows that the powerful will try anything to stop that from happening, that it’s just an empty promise made to give people hope and make them conform to their low status in life.

Social inequality angers Kaladin deeply, but one of the fuels of his depression is the belief that his society may be impervious to change. Depression seeps in when he fails to see that men are making the world the way it is instead of God. When he blames the divine for the injustices of the world, the protagonist is removing from himself the responsibility to enact change. This belief leads to a conformist, fatalist worldview. If it’s God’s will, he cannot actually transform the world, he can just feel anger: “Anger at himself for failing Tien. Anger at the Almighty for creating a world where some dined in luxury while others died carrying bridges.”

The narrative makes it very hard for us not to root for Kaladin. He’s not just the underdog, but altruistic almost in a messianic sense. He needs to save everyone, it’s his whole mission. He’s deeply empathetic, always putting himself in the position of others, feeling their pain. He doesn’t charge for medicine and treatment, believing healthcare should be free. He’s always going out of his way during battle and risking his wellbeing – we all know he won’t die, but he can be severely hurt – to save his men, sometimes from being trampled by their own allies, who couldn’t care less about their lives:

“Kaladin charged in. He threw himself to the ground and crawled beneath the zipping arrows, hoping that the Parshendi would ignore a couple of unarmed bridgemen. Dabbid didn’t even notice when Kaladin reached him. He was in shock, lips moving soundlessly, eyes dazed. Kaladin grabbed him awkwardly, afraid to stand up too high lest an arrow hit him.”

Due to his “special” armor – eventually, everyone starts to notice it – the protagonist’s messianic aura keeps intensifying. He becomes their immortal savior, the kind and just leader, altruistic to a fault. There’s one particular scene that even invokes the biblical imagery of crucifixion and resurrection to reinforce the notion that, in The Way of Kings, Kaladin is basically fantasy Jesus and his bridge crew are his apostles.

But what makes Kaladin a bit more complex is the fact that his savior complex is at odds with his disdain for those in power, for he needs that very power to save everyone, but keeps rejecting it. Maybe Kaladin fears that power will corrupt him (“The more noble they look, the more corrupt they are inside. It’s all an act,” he says to one of his followers), maybe he feels that being an underdog is a more comfortable position, morally speaking, but the fact is that he is quick to throw away the power that would allow him to fulfill his deepest wish:  Kaladin sincerely wants to save everyone, but his morals make him often decline the ability to do so effectively.

Unfortunately, in an attempt to develop the character a bit more, the book often interrupts the action to present some flashbacks of Kaladin, showing the most important moments of his childhood and what led him to join the army. However, these sequences only pad the length of the book, as they don’t offer any unique insight into the protagonist’s motivations, just spelling out events and situations that we could already figure out by his thoughts during the war.

The other main point of view in the narrative is the brother of the late king Galivar, the shardbearer Dalinar Kholin. It’s easy to compare him to A Game of Thrones‘ Eddard Stark, because honor, and the price to pay to maintain it, reside at the core of both characters’ arcs.  Dalinar’s honor, however, is not intrinsic to his nature but has to be forced by him into his every action.

Much like Kaladin, Dalinar is haunted by his failure to protect his brother. To make up for it, he wants to imitate how Galivar was acting in the last years of his life, which means living by the words of a book called The Way of Kings. This book is a treaty on honor: it teaches a King – any leader – to be humble, to know their people’s struggles firsthand, to never let oneself be led astray by the temptations of power. These teachings are frowned upon by the Alethi, who are a warmongering people. To act with kindness and seek peace, in their eyes, is nonsensical. People used to describe Galivar’s behavior as “erratic” before his assassination and similar adjectives are attached to Dalinar: everything that challenges the status quo is deemed madness.

Living by the codes written in The Way of Kings is not something that comes naturally to Dalinar. His instincts push him to fight, to get drunk, to kill. Before his brother’s death, he was known for being a brute: people feared his anger and his strength. In one sense, Dalinar is not a man defined by his honor, but by his self-control. It’s his capacity to tame and suffocate his most base impulses that elevate the character.

This internal struggle can be clearly seen in the descriptions of warfare in his chapters. Sometimes, Dalinar allows himself to partake in the thrill of battle, which blinds him to the humanity of his enemies and sanitizes the violence he commits. While he dismembers and beheads his enemies, he’s thinking of victory. This thrill makes warfare seem glorious, making him addicted to violence: “The Thrill consumed Dalinar, giving him strength, focus, and power. The glory of the battle grew grand. He’d stayed away from this too long. He saw with clarity now. They did need to push harder, assault more plateaus, win the gemhearts.”

But sometimes, Dalinar is able to get out of this thrill in the midst of battle. The narration immediately changes, as if it were a camera zooming in abruptly on the carnage, showing the violence he and his son Adolin are committing in detail: “The corpses before him suddenly seemed a horrifying sight. Eyes burned out like spent coals. Bodies limp and broken, bones shattered where Adolin had punched them. Heads cracked open, blood and brains and entrails spilled around them. Such butchery, such death. The Thrill vanished.”

Kaladin notices how this thrill is essential for a soldier, making their job possible. A binary worldview, where your enemy is an Enemy with a capital letter, a monster, a barbaric and cruel creature, this worldview dresses the act of killing with the golden robes of a heroic deed: “Protect the ‘us,’ destroy the ‘them.’ A soldier had to think like that. So Kaladin hated the Parshendi. They were the enemy. If he hadn’t learned to divide his mind like that, war would have destroyed him.”

This “us vs them” mentality is reflected in the characterization of the Parshendi, the people that betrayed and ordered the death of King Galivar. They are viewed as inhuman by the Alethi characters and their physical traits seem to support this monstrous take on their nature: they bleed differently – their blood is orange –, their skin has a marbled texture, and they even grow a bizarre coat of armor from their very skin. But when Dalinar and Kaladin start to observe them instead of killing them, they start to realize that there’s more to these people than what they initially thought. In other words, they begin to see the humanity in their enemy.

Dalinar’s relationship with Highprince Sadeas is also a core pillar of the novel. For Kaladin, Sadeas is a cruel and heartless general, a man that never hesitates to sacrifice others for his goal. He represents everything about nobility that Kaladin despises. He’s an enemy just like a Parshendi soldier. But for Dalinar, Sadeas is an old friend and the only Highprince on the side of Galivar’s son – the new king. This complicates the tension in the narrative, as the great villain of one story is an ally – even if a shaky one – in the other.

Dalinar knows that Sadeas is the antithesis of the codes, but he believes – he wants to believe, at least – that he can trust him in the battle against the Parshendi. There’s a great measure of respect between the two men even if they are always quarreling with each other: they both want the Alethi to win the war and protect the new king, but their methods couldn’t be more different. They may despise what each other represents, but know that they must work together to achieve victory. The contrast between Sadeas’s function in Kaladin and Dalinar’s chapters is what builds a narrative tension around him and makes the character a complex figure in the book.

(This paragraph contains general spoilers about the direction the book takes) Unfortunately, a final twist dissolves this tension and puts Sadeas in a much less complex position by the end of the book. Another twist, meanwhile, seems to reverse the Parshendi back to the status of a monstrous enemy, negating their development throughout the novel. The Way of Kings also shows to be the opposite of A Game of Thrones when it comes to the price of being an honorable man. Here, honor is mostly rewarded: Dalinar’s great misfortune in the climax, for example, is only made possible because he compromises when he shouldn’t. Honor may make the journey much more difficult, but seems to guarantee that the destination is always right.

The Way of Kings also presents the point of view of Dalinar’s son – Adolin – but much like Kaladin’s flashbacks, his perspective adds nothing but filler to the book. Adolin distrusts Sadeas deeply and judges that his father’s attachment to The Way of Kings is misguided. Much like the Alethi people, he’s very close to believing that Dalinar is going mad. All these points, however, are already explored in his father’s chapters – Adolin openly argues with him often –, which makes his part of the narrative feel a bit redundant.

Finally, we have Shallan, the final main point of view in the book. She stands out immediately for being isolated from the grand narrative. While Kaladin and Dalinar are battling the Parshendi in the Shattered Plains, sharing the same enemy and fighting the same war, Shallan is far away reading books and trying to become a scholar. This means that her chapters always mark a break in the action, being almost bereft of violence, but also that they come very close to being inconsequential to the main plot.

If Kaladin and Dalinar’s goals are also altruistic and noble, trying to save everyone while doing what’s right, Shallan’s objective is intrinsically egotistical: she just wants to save her family’s reputation, no matter the cost to others. The book even offers a brief chapter focusing on her brother just to show – in a very blunt way – how her family is not even good people: it focuses on how her brother feels pleasure in the act of dismembering animals.

The narrative seems inclined to push us to dislike Shallan. She’s shown to be a pampered noblewoman (“Before this trip, she’d never used money”) that instinctively treats people around her as servants (“She nodded at the porter, blushing, realizing that she’d reflexively used Yalb like a master-servant intermediary”). It doesn’t help that the constant contrast to Kaladin and Dalinar’s chapters makes her actions seem frivolous and unimportant: while the protagonist is fighting to survive and inspire a revolution, and Dalinar is trying to dismantle the warmongering culture of his people, Shallan is… painting.

Her art, however, gives Shallan an important sense of power over the people she meets and the locales she visits. Shallan believes that when she draws and paints someone, she’s “collecting” them, making them hers: “That gave her a euphoric thrill. Even if this woman rejected Shallan again, one fact would not change. Jasnah Kholin had joined Shallan’s collection.” When she’s upset or anxious, she paints to regain a feeling of control over the events.

The tension in her chapters derives mainly from her need to keep her secret agenda (the quest to help her family) hidden from her mentor, Jasnah. It’s a simple source of tension that the book stretches for too long, making the suspense dissipate after a while: suspense is much like a cord that must be stretched just right so to make its release impactful, but if you stretch it for too long, the cord may break, making the tension evaporate into thin air.

Eventually, Shallan is even privy to some discoveries about the world that promise to impact the war with the Parshendi, but the consequences of these findings are not felt here, being left for the sequels to explore.

And there a plenty of things Shallan can yet discover, for one of the strengths of the worldbuilding in The Way of Kings is that the world itself is full of mystery: there’s too much that scholars don’t know about the past and many lands still remain unexplored. The Parshendi people, for example, are shrouded in mystery, having been found by the Alethi by accident just prior to Gavilar’s assassination. The Alethi don’t know what motivated their betrayal, what drives the Parshendi, how they think, or even the things they believe in. The Alethi are in the dark, foolishly dismissing everything under the accusation that the Parshendi are barbarians – and so devoid of culture and critical thinking.

Another big mystery is related to the past. Dalinar has visions during special storms where he witnesses the heroes of the past – who acted almost as superhumans – fighting terrifying monsters. Much like in A Game of Thrones, there’s this impossible quest to unite all peoples before the big supernatural threat comes to end all life.

But this is a world divided in more ways than one. Nations are either isolated or at war with each other. Gender roles are strict and clearly delineated, even if not explored as they should be by the narrative. Here, science and the pursuit of knowledge is exclusively a feminine activity: “a woman of great renown was the best way to be schooled in the feminine arts: music, painting, writing, logic, and science.”

Only women are allowed to write and read, which should grant them an immeasurable amount of power, and yet the men still rule unopposed. A military general has to dictate to a woman what he wants to be written in a report but can’t even attest if the words the woman wrote match the ones that left his mouth. And yet, men being socially forbidden to read is treated more as a quirky piece of worldbuilding – that is often brought up – than the seed of a deep change in power dynamics.

The Way of Kings also suffers from some common issues of Brandon Sanderson’s writing style. For example, when a character first pulls off some magical move, there’s often a whole paragraph to explain what happened. But this explanation is meant for the reader and the reader alone: it’s artificial in its nature because it’s detached from the character’s point of view. Here, we are following a deadly assassin, extremely skilled at his job, who would have no reason to think about his actions in didactic terms, especially during a job:

“This was a Basic Lashing, first of his three kinds of Lashings. It gave him the ability to manipulate whatever force, spren, or god it was that held men to the ground. With this Lashing, he could bind people or objects to different surfaces or in different directions.”

When introducing a specific name or concept, Sanderson also seems to forget that synonyms exist and just uses that new word extensively. This is probably for didactic purposes too, allowing us time to learn and get used to the new terms, but inevitably leads to repetition. In this small paragraph, we can see this happening with the words “shardbearer” and the verb “to lash”:

“He rounded the Shardbearer, then picked a moment and dashed forward. The Shardbearer swung again, but Szeth briefly Lashed himself to the ceiling for lift. He shot into the air, cresting over the swing, then immediately Lashed himself back to the floor. He struck as he landed, but the Shardbearer recovered quickly and executed a perfect follow-through stroke, coming within a finger of hitting Szeth.”

Despite some shaky narrative decisions and a bit of padding, The Way of Kings is still a great fantasy novel, presenting a fascinating world and some memorable characters and set pieces.

October 15, 2022.