Not Sanderson's Finest

For a little perspective, let me start by saying that Brandon Sanderson is one of my favorite authors. According to Goodreads, I've read 18 of his novels or novellas, and I'm actually reading the hardcover edition of Calamity right now.



That said, I thought Elantris was, frankly, just bad. I had been warned that, as Sanderson's first published novel, it was little rough around the edges, but that was an understatement. Unfortunately, I discovered that Elantris was full of flat characters, unrealistic dialog, and tons of fantasy tropes. Sadly, Sanderson's amazing ability to write fast-paced novels with good characters and great magic systems must have manifested AFTER writing Elantris because none of those qualities were present here and it was quite a let down.



What really surprised me the most was just how boring the novel was. There's almost no action until the last hour or two of the recording and there's no sense of suspense at all. The characters, plot, and worldbuilding just didn't push the story along like they should have. It's not even clear until near the very end of the book why the "bad guys" are even bad at all.



However, I do have to wonder if this was one of those rare cases where the narrator actually made the book worse. Jack Garrett was just not a great choice for a fantasy novel. Everything just came off a little too upbeat and his reading style was really slow. This is the first time I felt compelled to use my Audible app's increased speed feature, first going up to 1.25x and then later to 1.5x when I just couldn't wait to be done.



Now, for whatever reason, this novel gets pretty amazing reviews, well, everywhere. I don't really understand why that is, but it may be that Elantris simply wasn't a good fit for me or perhaps it was a case of the wrong novel at the wrong time, so if you really love Brandon Sanderson and you still haven't read Elantris, perhaps you'll still like it, but just beware that the reasons that you love Sanderson may be the same reasons why you won't like Elantris. And do yourself a favor and pick up a print copy.



