Over the last few years, Brandon Sanderson has become one of my favorite authors. My discovery of him was an odd journey. I had stopped reading Wheel of Time in the gap between book releases, so hadn’t found him there. Instead, I instead I decided to read a novel with superheros in them, in part because I was thinking of writing one. I picked up Steelheart and began to read. I didn’t love it. Mostly the idea that everyone who had superpowers was evil frustrated me. But I liked it enough to read further, and I discovered that there was more to the story. It’s still not my favorite book by Brandon Sanderson, but it was the first.

So I tried something else he had written. And so I read Warbreaker. I enjoyed it more, but not enough to seek any of his other books. I then largely forgot about him until I decided to finish the Wheel of Time now that the books were all out. Since it had been twenty years, I reread the entire series. When I got to the end, the name Brandon Sanderson was familiar, but I didn’t think about it much except to give him another chance.

That was when I found The Stormlight Saga books. I almost stopped partway through the first book. I was listening to it in audiobook format and the main character was in the army and seemed to be doing reasonably well there. I got distracted and the next thing I knew he was a slave. So I went back and discovered I really had missed little. I finished it and it’s one of a tiny number of books I’ve reread more than once, along with Lord of the Rings and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Now I’m working my way through the rest of the Cosmere. I’ve read everything in the Mistborn series that is currently out and enjoyed both parts. And this time I picked up Elantris.

What Happens in Elantris?

Elantris is far more about character than most fantasy books. That is true of many of Brandon Sanderson’s stories, but I think it’s even more true of Elantris. The story follows two main characters. The first is Raoden, the popular son of the unpopular king of Arelon. He is engaged to Sarene the daughter of the king of a neighboring kingdom that needs an alliance with Arelon so they can protect each other.

That danger is because of the fall of Elantris. A city that had once been the home to people considered gods by much of the rest of the world. They were long lived, and able to use Aons to do magic. But ten years ago, something happened. The Elantrians lost their magic and became physically weak and sickly. But people still become Elantrians more or less at random. When that happens, they are thrown into the city of Elantris and treated as if they are dead.

Early in the story Raoden becomes an Elantrian and even though he is the son of the king he is said to be dead and thrown into Elantris. There he discovers the true curse of the Elantrians. They don’t die, but they also don’t heal. Because of this, when he stubs his toe a few minutes after arriving in the city, his foot remains in pain basically forever. But an even bigger problem is that there is no food in the city except the small offerings thrown in with the dead. And while they don’t need to eat to survive, they become hungrier the longer they go without food, so the city has broken down into gangs who attack everyone who comes into the city to steal their food.

Raoden now in the city sees the problems and begins to work on helping the people of the city by rescuing the people who are thrown in the city rather than allowing them to be robbed and beaten by the gangs. As he does, he begins to learn to understand the city better. The people in the city are victims and while some choose to victimize others to survive, they do it largely out of self preservation. He also discovers some of the gang leaders are better people than he first assumed.

Outside of the city Sarene arrives to discover that her fiance is dead before she ever met him, but because of the marital contract she was in fact married to him and remains in the city and spends much of the book in various schemes to help Arelon even though she has just arrived. But there are many threats. Its king is a terrible ruler, and thanks to the collapse of the Elantrian’s government, enemy nations are seeking to capture the country by converting its citizens.

Much of the middle of the book is about these two characters first working separately and then beginning to get to know each other as Serene begins to help the people of Elantris and meets Raoden who is unrecognizable and hiding who he is for fear that anyone knowing who he is would make things worse.

This romance is a fairly good fantasy version of a romance. Raoden knows who Serene is and wants her to like him even though he can’t be with her and Serene thinks of him as a gang leader and tyrant who is starving the people of the city who aren’t in his gang but grows to like him despite what she thinks.

The end of the book comes with two things that seemed inevitable throughout the story. First, the attack of the enemy nation and secondly Raoden’s discovery of what happened to the Elantrians turning the end into a race to return the half dead people of Elantris to their own power before they can be burned to death by the enemy soldiers.

I’ll leave the exact nature of the solution to the book, but as one might expect, the solution comes at the last possible second and allows for a climatic battle and eventually the culmination of the romance plot of the book in a marriage.

What did I think of Elantris

This isn’t Brandon Sanderson’s best story. The middle is slow, and it’s marginally more predictable than most of his other novels. Beyond that, the characters while likable and enjoyable don’t have the same depth as many of the characters in his other works. Part of this is because while they go through difficult times, they don’t have the level of brokenness that many other Sanderson characters do. So if you’re looking for Vin or Kaladin in this story, you will not find it, though I’d say that you get a fairly good approximation of Elend Venture.

In the end, this isn’t a book I’d recommend as someone’s entry point into Brandon Sanderson’s work. But then I wouldn’t recommend reading the books in the order I did either, and it worked out well enough. But it has some advantage. This is a standalone Brandon Sanderson novel. The characters are still good. The world building is excellent, and it has Hoid. That said, this is in the lower end of Brandon Sanderson novels for me, but if he ever writes more in the series, I’d read it.