Cameron Recommends: The Way of Kings

I know what you all are thinking, "another Brandon Sanderson book? Really?". Yes, really. He is just that good. 
The Way of Kings is a heavyweight, weighing in at just over 1000 pages. But man alive, is it good. I just finished it for the second time and it was even better the second time around. Sanderson is a master at putting little clues to twists in his book without you even realizing it. Not only that, he crafts his characters with such care that you really do care about them and their story. 

I guess I should give a brief summary of the book. The Way of Kings is the first book taking place on Roshar (for which their will be 10 books) and Sanderson does an amazing job with the worldbuilding. On Roshar, terrible tempests, known as highstorms, hit every few weeks. As such the vegetation and animal life has had to adapt, most animals have hard shells and most plants are able to creep back into the earth to avoid the storms. Most of society also has adapted to deal with the storms, cities are built deep into the sides of cliffs and buildings are all made of hardened stone. 

The story mainly follows 4 people, Szeth, Kaladin, Dalinar and Shallan. Shallan is a young girl, leaving her family's estates for the first time in order to become the apprentice to a well known scholar, the heretic sister to the king. 

The Assassin in White

Highprince Dalinar Kholin, the brother of the King who was murdered. Before he died, his brother directed Dalinar to an ancient tome called The Way of Kings, which leads Dalinar to start questioning the warlike and competitive Alethkar way of life. 
Szeth is a Shin man cast out by his people and condemned to do the bidding of his constantly changing masters. He becomes the Assassin in White, sent to murder the king. 
And then there is Kaladin, the MAN! Kaladin is the main focus of the book. His story is told in two ways, one his present story, where is a a slave sold into the army of a competitive HIghprince who values riches over human life. The other way is through flashbacks, showing how he got to that point in the first place. 

This book is so good. Oh man it is so good. I love it. The sequel is coming out next month, and as such I just re-read it. It was even BETTER the second time through. So get get it. Go read it!