Book review: Elantris

Elantris was Brandon Sanderson’s first published novel, sharing the same Cosmere universe as his famous other works such as the Mistborn Saga and the Stormlight Archives. Elantris is a standalone novel (as of yet¹) with an additional novella and a short-story set in the same world.

The review will not contain any spoilers.

The novel reads very fluently, much like that of a contemporary Tolkien’s work - not much effort needed to unwrap the texts as some of the other fantasy series would require. The expressions of the characters and the description of scenes are elaborate and succinct, all of which adds to an eventful page-turner fantasy novel.

As for the plot, the fantasy that the novel is based on is pretty unique (to me atleast), and holds up pretty solid with respect to consistency throughout the novel. The book follows three different perspectives throughout upto the end - and it has been handled pretty well without leading to frustration as would the Dan Brown books. The pacing is a bit of a problem though, which I only realised towards the end of the book - the first 70% of the book has a constant pace, with developments in the different perspectives’ arc set-up uniformly. Towards the end the three arcs tie up, which might be the reason why the remaining 30% of the book feels rushed up, riddled with so many plot twists and much more reveals - which could’ve been done earlier without teasing them up for about three-quarters of the book. But other than the pacing, the ending definitely stands up for it.

Since I got the 10th anniversary edition of the book, it also features - guess what - a post-credit scene!. That’s a first for me. Brandon has claimed that his writing has matured since Elantris and yet he is proud of it - so if I have to go by his words then I’m surely interested in taking up the other Cosmere books.

Cheers!