I was asked to summarize "The Way of Kings" -- did I miss anything...?
Posted May 9, 2022, 12:26 AM UTC
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Godamn a discord server with a book club, that sounds cool as hell
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We also play D&D in a multiverse spanning homebrew campaign, it's pretty rad.
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That sounds fucking awesome
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How can I join
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For the love of Adonalsium, if you have a Stormlight DnD campaign please share it! I've been dying to move beyond the Forgotten Realms and I'd love to drop my players in Roshar.
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Oh, not cosmere based, I'm afraid. I think this is my group's first time hearing about Roshar.
That said, I have realized that my character comes from a space western setting that's got a similar vibe to Roshar, sort of a dehydrated ocean world with giant crabs and such. Main difference being everyone's a space cowboy.
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Stormlight era 2
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Not the same discord server, but r/SFFA ‘s discord server has an active book club
Edit: also worth noting that the subreddit looks pretty small, but it’s pretty much just the extension of the discord server which is where all the activity takes place.
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You forgot to add that the sad boy has a tinkerbell
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People with mental illnesses and trauma gain superpowers and magical companions that act as therapist. Also war.
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Glowing depressed people and crabs.
The above statement has correct syntax, the crabs are also glowing and depressed.
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I think it gives too much away if I’m honest.
Personally I was absolutely mesmerised by the book, me not knowing which way it will go. It has been such a delightful reading experiences for me to get to those points and be surprised/affected by them as intended by the author.
The Kaladin’s betrayal, him ending up with the bridge 4, how miserable and dangerous the whole thing was and how everyone is so freaking depressed. I also definitely would not want to know beforehand about Shallan’s motivations about her wanting to steal the artefact from Jasnah.
I just feel that all of these are better to be discovered by a reader at the point whenever the author has intended and not from a few paragraphs post.
I might be wrong here, not everyone is the same but I’m speaking for myself here.
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Imo trying to explain Stormlight Archive by explaining the plot is just a bad idea. It makes it sound stupider than it actually is and no short description would actually do justice to how well handled those storylines actually are. Plus it gives away a bunch of motivations, character traits etc that would have been realizations for a first time reader.
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Usually when I try to summarize it for people I focus on the prelude and the worldbuilding, just stuff you’d learn anyways in the first handful of chapters of TWOK.
Like I’ll usually just summarize the desolations as a cycle of “apocalyptic wars”, explain that the heralds figured out a way to pause the cycle but lied and said the humans won (usually I just call them demigods because that’s… close enough), and now 4500 later a new apocalypse is brewing and humanity has forgotten everything about them. Then I can just gloss over the plot in very broad strokes as “the story is about a bunch of different people who need to come together to prepare for the oncoming apocalypse”, maybe give a nod to some of them mysteriously getting magic or slowly piecing together the truths of history.
And then I just talk about the world building instead, like the highstorms and the flora and fauna, or the different cultural traditions, or shardblades, or the basics of stormlight as magic, etc. Nothing plot-related just background stuff. Sanderson’s strength is his worldbuilding and imo it’s what sets SA apart as a high fantasy story worth reading. So I focus on that stuff over plot.
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You obviously know the people you are recommending it to but to my friends I know this would be a terrible idea. Explaining a ton of lore and background in a world the person doesn’t have any connections to is like reading them an encyclopedia article. Brandon talks about this in his writing lectures, world building is only interesting to most people through the eyes of the characters and you should specifically try not to start with just an information dump.
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Depends on the people I think. And the goal of the conversation. Personally I stopped trying to get people to get into the series I enjoy years ago because it just doesn’t work, so instead if they come up in conversation I’ll talk a bit about what I’m enjoying about the show or book or whatever, and let that speak for itself. I avoid infodumping and usually make it more about how I think Sanderson did a good job accounting for how ecology or cultures would evolve in a world with highstorms, as opposed to delving into the actual details of the world, if that makes sense.
The one person I actually genuinely tried to convince to read the book, my partner, likes interesting worldbuilding and finds most fantasy too boring because it’s not fantastical or weird enough for his tastes. So for him explaining the environments of the world was important and I wouldn’t have convinced him without that.
However I can think of one or two friends who, if I were to try and talk them into reading the series, I would probably use a different approach and try to pick a character I know they’d find appealing instead. That’s tough to do for everyone though, you need to know the kind of character tropes those people already like. And if I’m just having a casual conversation and not trying to talk someone into reading the book I’d rather avoid getting too detailed about characters because it’s too easy to start talking spoilers.
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I think Kabsal would be best described as:
A hot and jamming priest
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ahem...
Hello so sorry, I'm Zelisai
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dad, nooooooooo
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This is epic
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Now do the rest pretty please :3
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Sure, see you in fifteen years.
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I just posted this in my slack at work. Been having trouble explaining to these guys what the book is about.
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Love the stream of consciousness, wish I could describe these books that well! I usually wind up going “oh, what is it about? Well, um, there was.. there’s these powers, no.. the characters are… well it starts off as.. it’s really REALLY good and… you know what? Just read it, it’s awesome!”
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That is actually a great mostly spoiler free summary
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Huh.. I was actually thinking the opposite.
It gives too much out of the plot!
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I think people these days are a little too fixated on spoilers. I've found that having a basic narrative buy in sometimes gets me a lot more invested in the overall story. There are so many insane revelations within the first book, I feel like I wouldn't be able to even scratch the surface if I tried to spoil anything.
Due to some unwise attempts to Google fan art, I accidentally found out that [end of the book spoiler]>!Taravangian was secretly evil, hope I tagged this correctly!< only halfway into my read-through. That didn't stop me from going nuts in the final chapters when the actual plot twist is revealed and was SO MUCH WORSE than I could have imagined.
Blood of my fathers, but that was some stormed up crem.
In any case, I did open with "this book is over 1000 pages long," so I can assure you that none of my friends have any intention of reading The Way of Kings anyway.
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You forgot the crucial stew storyline. Airsick lowlander!