Start Elantris!

[brass dragon she/her]

I am reading Elantris. (Chapter 9. Don't Spoil!) I've heard many times that Elantris is not as good as the rest of Brandon's books. But I like it (although it's probably a little early to judge) I've read Mistborn (including Secret History) and I know about Cosmere. I wonder if that makes me like Elantris more? Or would I enjoy more if I didn't know anything?

whatis your opinion?

1) Elantris as the first book of the Cosmere

2) Elantris after Mistborn or other books

...

(English is not my first language. Apologies for possible spelling mistakes)

[Treamayne]

Welcome to the Shard. 

2 hours ago, brass dragon said:

I am reading Elantris. (Chapter 9. Don't Spoil!) I've heard many times that Elantris is not as good as the rest of Brandon's books. But I like it (although it's probably a little early to judge) I've read Mistborn (including Secret History) and I know about Cosmere. I wonder if that makes me like Elantris more? Or would I enjoy more if I didn't know anything?

whatis your opinion?

1) Elantris as the first book of the Cosmere

2) Elantris after Mistborn or other books

...

(English is not my first language. Apologies for possible spelling mistakes)

What I usually recommend to people starting the Cosmere is:

Spoiler

On 2/24/2023 at 4:31 PM, Treamayne said:

• Elantris - It's a stand-alone (for now - 1 Short Story and one tangentially related Novella) and was the first published. Start here if you really like political intrigue books and a cerebral atmosphere. Less action than Mistborn or Warbreaker, until the end. 
• Mistborn Trilogy (Book 1 Mistborn: The Final Empire / Era 1) - It's a Trilogy (so more initial time investment) but it is packed with action, great magic, great (dystopian) worldbuilding. Some political intrigue - can be a lot to take in at once for some readers. 
• Warbreaker - Stand-alone (for now - no short stories). About mid-way between the the first two in both action and politics. The world is specifically meant to contrast to Mistborn's setting (so I recommend reading this either right before or right after Mistborn) and introduces many important things for shared universe (Cosmere)

There are many Reading Order threads, so it should be easy to search up other thoughts on this topic. As far as "Why" some people consider Elantris "not as good," I feel there are two factors and they be referencing either or both of these based on their own personal preference:

1. Elantris was his first published book, and his sixth written novel overall (see below), where as Mistborn: The Final Empire was his 14th novel written, so he had much more "practice" by the time his other books were published. 
2. Elantris is far more cerebral (and politics-based) than stories like Mistborn and Stormlight Archive. Some people simply prefer more action in their stories and therefore prefer those stories and enjoy Elantris less due to that Preference. (Above, I note that Warbreaker is a nice median between the two on the politics/action scale)

Publication WoB:

Spoiler

Brandon Sanderson

Folks,

This essay I just posted:

http://www.brandonsanderson.com/article/55/EUOLogy-My-History-as-a-Writer

Started as a blog post for this thread, talking about the old books I wrote to give context to my previous post. It outgrew the length of a proper forum post, so I put it on the site instead. But this might help you understand some of my history as a writer, not to mention explain the origin of all these old books Ookla that references all the time.

Lightning Eater

I remembered a thread from ages ago in which Brandon posted a list of the books he'd written, I looked it up when I realised it wasn't in the article, and I figured you guys might be interested too, so here it is.

1) White Sand Prime (My first Fantasy Novel)

2) Star's End (Short, alien-relations sf novel.)

3) Lord Mastrell (Sequel to White Sand Prime)

4) Knight Life (Fantasy comedy.)

5) The Sixth Incarnation of Pandora (Far future sf involving immortal warriors)

6) Elantris (You have to buy this one!)

7) Dragonsteel (My most standard epic fantasy)

White Sand (Complete rewrite of the first attempt)

9) Mythwalker (Unfinished at about 600 pages. Another more standard epic fantasy.)

10) Aether of Night (Stand-Alone fantasy. A little like Elantris.)

11) Mistborn Prime (Eventually stole this world.)

12) Final Empire Prime (Cannibalized for book 14 as well.)

13) The Way of Kings(Fantasy War epic. Coming in 2008 or 2009)

14) Mistborn: The Final Empire (Coming June 2006)

15) Mistborn: The Well of Ascension (Early 2007)

16) Alcatraz Initiated (YA Fantasy. Being shopped to publishers)

17) Mistborn: Hero of Ages(Unfinished. Coming late 2007)

18) Dark One (Unfinished. YA fantasy)

19) Untitled Aether Project (Two sample chapters only.)

Brandon Sanderson

Thanks for posting that. Note that I can never quite remember which was first, Aether or Mistborn Prime. I always feel that Aether should be first, since it wasn't as bad as the two primes, but thinking back I think that the essay is more accurate and I wrote it between them.

This would be the new list:

1) White Sand Prime (My first Fantasy Novel)

2) Star's End (Short, alien-relations sf novel.)

3) Lord Mastrell (Sequel to White Sand Prime)

4) Knight Life (Fantasy comedy.)

5) The Sixth Incarnation of Pandora (Far future sf involving immortal warriors)

6) Elantris (First Published)

7) Dragonsteel (My most standard epic, other than the not-very-good Final Empireprime.)

8 ) White Sand (Complete rewrite of the first attempt, turned out much better.)

9) Mythwalker (Unfinished at about 600 pages. Another more standard epic fantasy.)

10) Aether of Night (Stand-Alone fantasy. A little like Elantris.)

11) Mistborn Prime (Shorter fantasy, didn't turn out so well.)

12) Final Empire Prime (Shorter fantasy, didn't turn out so well.)

13) The Way of Kings Prime (Fantasy War epic.)

14) Mistborn: The Final Empire (Came out 2006)

15) Mistborn: The Well of Ascension (Came out 2007)

16) Alcatraz Verus the Evil Librarians (Came out 2007)

17) Mistborn: Hero of Ages(Came out 2008)

18) Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener's Bones (Came out 2008)

19) Warbreaker (Comes out June 2009)

20) Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia(November 2009ish)

21) A Memory of Light(November 2009ish. Working on it now. Might be split into two.)

22) The Way of Kings Book One (2010ish. Not started yet.)

23) Alcatraz Four (2010. Not started yet)

<Redacted>

Hero of Ages Q&A - Time Waster's Guide (Oct. 15, 2008)

Finally, I would like to ask if you are reading the 10th Anniversary edition? If not, you may want to search that out, as there were some changes that needed to be made (which is why a new edition was published for the 10th Anniversary) and the ending can be confusing in the original Edition. 

There are WoBs about the changes, but since those would have spoilers, I did not post them. Once you finish, if you would like more info on the changes, please let us know (or read this post [spoilers] after you finish which also discusses the changes)

Hope that helps.

Edited April 18 by Treamayne
SPAG/Clarity

[brass dragon she/her]

1 hour ago, Treamayne said:

Finally, I would like to ask if you are reading the 10th Anniversary edition? If not, you may want to search that out, as there were some changes that needed to be made (which is why a new edition was published for the 10th Anniversary) and the ending can be confusing in the original Edition. 

Yes. I read 10th anniversary

1 hour ago, Treamayne said:

There are many Reading Order threads, so it should be easy to search up other thoughts on this topic

It was because of the reading orders that I chose Elantris for reading. But it is always interesting to read more opinions and different tastes. I read a comment that said the appeal of Cosmere is that everyone has a different way of discovering it. I agree with that and would like to hear these different ways.

Thanks for your comment

[Treamayne]

41 minutes ago, brass dragon said:

I read a comment that said the appeal of Cosmere is that everyone has a different way of discovering it. I agree with that and would like to hear these different ways

Whole-heartedly agree, if you read the linked thread (or any of the many other Reading order threads - link has links to many other similar threads), you may notice that I prefer to not actually recommend a reading order to family, friends, and coworkers - I prefer to give them the information on which stories have spoilers or can be spoiled by other stories so they can make informed decisions on what appeals to them (and how many, if any, spoilers they are willing to tolerate).

I actually put together my own Cosmere Intro epub - with a list of all of the stories, a short blurb on Shardworlds to help a reader choose where to start, and Brandon's Essays on his "Laws of Magic" which I send to people who ask where to begin (if they have a way to read eBooks and want it, of course). 

3 hours ago, brass dragon said:

(English is not my first language. Apologies for possible spelling mistakes)

English is my first language, and I still have many spelling errors, don't worry about it and feel free to ask clarification if needed. May I ask what your native language is?

Edited April 18 by Treamayne
SPAG

[brass dragon she/her]

15 minutes ago, Treamayne said:

May I ask what your native language is?

Persian

[Treamayne]

1 minute ago, brass dragon said:

Persian

Merci

Spoiler

I had friends studying Farsi in school in the 90s. . . my understanding is that there are more than a few French loan words. I hope I am remembering correctly. 

 

Edited April 18 by Treamayne
Clarity

[CtrlAltDepressed]

I had heard the same things as you about Elantris, and for that reason I put off reading it for a long time. Boy was that a mistake. I got around to reading it recently and I liked it a lot more than I liked any of the books in MB Era 2. 

 

I still loved MB Era 2 but Elantris was great for me for a couple reasons:

-The intrigue. There are a lot of questions that you ask very early in the book and you get answers to pretty much all of them by the end. In fact 9/10 of these answers are subtly written into the story before they are explicitly stated.

-Unpredictably predictable. Going through the story, you have a pretty good idea of where the end of the book is going to end up. But HOW you get there has some curveballs. Which leads to a simultaneous "I KNEW IT" and "OHHHHHHH Why didnt i see that before" moment which is really fun. 

-The characters. For the most part their decisions and motivations seem genuine / not contrived and I relate to a lot of them personally (even some of the bad guys). This is something I was missing from MB Era 2. The bad guys there felt way more objectively evil than the bad guys in Elantris.

-The magic. AonDor is just really really cool and a story that slightly revolves around AonDor is very interesting.

-The Sanderstorm. I wont get too much into this but the ending is really good in my opinion. The crescendo builds slowly but surely and the payoff is huge.

 

There were at least 5 moments while reading Elantris that I was blown away by the skill Brandon shows in pulling the pieces of this story together. Again, I love MB Era 2, but I didn't feel that way for Era 2. 

[brass dragon she/her]

On 4/18/2024 at 11:05 PM, CtrlAltDepressed said:

I had heard the same things as you about Elantris, and for that reason I put off reading it for a long time. Boy was that a mistake. I got around to reading it recently and I liked it a lot more than I liked any of the books in MB Era 2. 

 

I still loved MB Era 2 but Elantris was great for me for a couple reasons:

-The intrigue. There are a lot of questions that you ask very early in the book and you get answers to pretty much all of them by the end. In fact 9/10 of these answers are subtly written into the story before they are explicitly stated.

-Unpredictably predictable. Going through the story, you have a pretty good idea of where the end of the book is going to end up. But HOW you get there has some curveballs. Which leads to a simultaneous "I KNEW IT" and "OHHHHHHH Why didnt i see that before" moment which is really fun. 

-The characters. For the most part their decisions and motivations seem genuine / not contrived and I relate to a lot of them personally (even some of the bad guys). This is something I was missing from MB Era 2. The bad guys there felt way more objectively evil than the bad guys in Elantris.

-The magic. AonDor is just really really cool and a story that slightly revolves around AonDor is very interesting.

-The Sanderstorm. I wont get too much into this but the ending is really good in my opinion. The crescendo builds slowly but surely and the payoff is huge.

 

There were at least 5 moments while reading Elantris that I was blown away by the skill Brandon shows in pulling the pieces of this story together. Again, I love MB Era 2, but I didn't feel that way for Era 2. 

I also like the characters. Interestingly, most of my friends who have read Elantris don't like Sarene. But she is one of my favorites (after Galladon of course)

But I don't like the triple system of chapters.

[Treamayne]

2 hours ago, brass dragon said:

But I don't like the triple system of chapters.

That's okay, they don't work well for everybody. Here's what Brandon has to say in the Elantris Annotations about them (only chapters you have read):

Spoiler

Quote

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter three marks the end of the first "chapter triad."

The chapter triads are a major structural element of this novel. The viewpoints rotate Raoden-Sarene-Hrathen, in order, one chapter each. Each of the three chapters in the grouping cover pretty much the same time-frame, so they can overlap, and we can see the same scene sometimes from two different viewpoints. (Note the point in chapter two where Sarene sees Raoden being led to Elantris, wearing the sacrificial robes.)

We always follow this same format, going from Raoden, to Sarene, to Hrathen.

<Spoilers redacted>

I'll talk more on chapter triads later. You can read more about my theory on the format in the critical afterword to Elantris (which should eventually be posted in the Elantris "Goodies" section.) I might also do essay specifically about the format and the challenges it presented.

Elantris Annotations (June 9, 2005)

Quote

Brandon Sanderson

Other than that massive tangent, I don't know that I have much to say about this chapter. I thought that it was necessary to set Raoden up with a firm set of goals to accomplish–hence the three distinct gangs he has to overcome. Since Sarene and Hrathen's storylines were going to be a little more ambiguous plot-wise, I wanted a conflict for Raoden that could show distinct and consistent progress.

I knew from the beginning that I wanted him to set up a new society for Elantris, and the gangs represented a way for him to approach this goal in an incremental manner.

The cliffhanger at the end of this chapter, by the way, is one of my favorites. The chapter-triad system gave me some amazing opportunities for cliffhangers–as we'll see later.

Elantris Annotations (June 10, 2005)

Spoiler

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Nine

This third "chapter triad" is the first one where I do a real intersection of the three viewpoints. Raoden sees Hrathen on the wall, Sarene and Hrathen spar, then Hrathen thinks about his run-in with Sarene on his way to the meeting with the noblemen.

I'm not sure if I'd ever want to use the chapter triad system again. It made all kinds of problems for writing the book. Almost everything else I've written has been strictly chronological–if you jump from one viewpoint, or one chapter, to the next, you're always progressing forward in time. By jumping backward in two chapters out of three, I gave myself some challenging pacing and coordination issues. For instance, the important events in each of the three storylines had to happen on generally the same days. Also, I had to rotate the chapters strictly, and so I couldn't just skip a character during a given time-frame. That meant I had to have important events happening in all three viewpoints all the time.

However, the benefits of this situation are moments like you see in this triad, where I could flow from one chapter to the next, having the timeframes play off of each other. You might have noticed from this triad that I had to fudge just a bit. Not all of the viewpoints happen at exactly the same time. The rule I set up for myself is that they had to all happen on the same day–preferably as close to overlapping each other as possible.

Elantris Annotations (July 1, 2005)

Form and the Fantastic Snippet:

Quote

Part Three: Form and Elantris

In this work, Elantris, Form itself is a stronger theme than in any book I have written. This motif manifests itself most overtly in the physical shape of the novel. Even the casual reader will notice thatElantris follows a very careful sequence. There are three point-of-view characters, and while the book is broken into chapters, it is actually organized in chapter-triads. Each triad begins with a chapter from Raoden’s point-of-view. Then, the following chapter shows the same span of time from Sarene’s viewpoint. Finally, the third chapter repeats the time-frame from Hrathen’s viewpoint.

This progression of chapter-triads is not independent of the characters they include. The three characters are, in a way, metaphors of Form themselves. 

 

As for the annotations, if you were not aware, in many of his early books, while he was doing the Copy Edit (last edit before publishing) he would write a blog entry about that chapter giving information that didn't make it in the book, explanations or just thoughs on why he did what he did. On his website, spoilers are hidden so that they can be read with the book, but most of us suggest it is better to wait until you finish a book (or are doing the first re-read) to check out the Annotations so spoilers are not an issue (for example, since you have finished Mistborn, you could check out the annotations to The Final Empire, Well of Ascension and Hero of Ages (at the link in this paragraph above - example below)). On the Arcanum, the spoilers cannot be hidden in the same way, so if you use that tool to read annotations, beware of Spoilers. 

Mistborn Spoilers - Annotation example:

Spoiler

Annotations to the Prologue of The Final Empire:

Quote

By the way, Joshua–my agent–pushed until the end to get me to put the Kelsier action sequence in-scene, rather than having it happen off-screen. I resisted. Allomancy is a very complicated magic system, and my writing relies on the reader understanding how Allomancy works in order to provide action. I didn’t want to slow the story down right here by giving an extended explanation of the magic. Instead, I just wanted to show the effects of what Kelsier can do. Later (chapter six, I think) we’ll actually see how he does them.

Spoilers:

Spoiler

Okay, some spoiler stuff here. Mennis does make a return later in the book, as you probably know. I actually wasn’t intending to ever use him again, and was surprised when people read this chapter and expected him to be a main character. I guess I characterized him a little too well in the scene where he gets up.
So, when the time came for Kelsier to have a quiet conversation with one of the rebels, I dusted off Mennis and used him again. I’m very pleased with how that scene turned out, though it’s another one I had to rewrite a couple times to get correct. We’ll talk more about that later.

 

 

Hope that helps

Edited April 21 by Treamayne
SPAG

[brass dragon she/her]

5 minutes ago, Treamayne said:

As for the annotations, if you were not aware

I know. Actually, I love annotations. I wish there was something like this for all the books in the world!