Figured today is as good a day as any to review this book, seeing as how I have opened (NOTE: merely opened) The Way of Kings mere minutes ago and have great hopes of finishing it in the four days I have left remaining on my library loan (NOTE: between writing this and finally posting I have finished this book and the next and am ready to start the third).
Even re-reading a detailed summary of this book was a TRIP. It’s almost cliche at this point, no, talking about how detailed and amazing it is to delve into the world of Sanderson? I cannot say that I fully remember the minutiae of the magic system here, but that’s probably because it’s once again something pretty novel and farfetched–hard to map to anything else that I’ve read before, at least at the time I read it.
In a nutshell, there are a few types of magic that exist in this world, but on the whole the main is BioChromatic Breath, best described as the “soul” of a person. You can give your soul to another person, at the risk of becoming a “Drab” and therefore losing some spark of vitality that makes the world better living. That being said, having many Breaths–e.g., as many as upwards of 50,000–comes with a series of increasing powers (although some of the earlier ones, like perfect pitch, one could argue are less powers and more nice to haves???).
There’s a way, there’s misinformation, there’s a lot of twists and turns and definitely not any that I saw coming (some that I did, though, because I am getting better at this!!!). It’s the last novel before the start of the true Cosmere books, so I was always going to read it for completeness but it’s also just a solid, good book, and can standalone (!) although you’ll probably hunt around for a few more standalones after reading it 🙂