Brandon Sanderson: Where Should You Start With His Books?

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The author shares the various starting points based on your interests.

Brandon Sanderson is a prolific author of epic fantasy and science fiction—best known for his Cosmere shared universe, which links together most of his novels. He also finished Robert Jordan’s fantasy series The Wheel of Time. Sanderson made Kickstart history in March, with a Kickstarter campaign that was the most successful ever, finishing with 185,341 backers pledging $41,754,153.

The only author to make the short list for the David Gemmell Legend Award eight times in seven years, Brandon won that award in 2011 for The Way of Kings. He has also won the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice award for Best Epic Fantasy twice and has been nominated three other years. His novella The Emperor’s Soul won the Hugo Award in 2013. Brandon has been serving as a judge for Writers of the Future since 2016.

He has hit the New York Times bestseller list 15 times, most recently at #1 with Oathbringer, book three of The Stormlight Archive, which is also Audible’s most pre-ordered book of all time. DMG Entertainment optioned the rights to the Cosmere universe shared by his fantasy novels, and Fox acquired the Reckoners trilogy.

Given that he has dozens of books available, wondering where to start? Watch the video above for some suggestions. I’ve also lifted a list from his author website of books you can start with…

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From Brandon’s website: “WHERE SHOULD I START?”

If you’re new to his books, here’s a primer where to start.

If you don’t typically read fantasy, try Steelheart or Elantris.
If you consider yourself a fantasy reader, try Mistborn: the Final Empire or The Way of Kings.
If you like romance, try Warbreaker.
If you’re a younger reader or want something humorous and lighthearted, try Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians.
If you’re looking something that will appeal to young adults, try Steelheart, Mistborn, or The Rithmatist.

Steelheart (The Reckoners Book 1)

The #1 New York Times bestseller from Brandon Sanderson. Don’t miss the rest of the Reckoners series: Firefight and Calamity.

How far would you go for revenge if someone killed your father?
If someone destroyed your city?
If everything you ever loved was taken from you?

David Charleston will go to any lengths to stop Steelheart. But to exact revenge in Steelheart’s world, David will need the Reckoners—a shadowy group of rebels bent on maintaining justice. And it turns out that the Reckoners might just need David too.

Buy Steelheart from Amazon.

Elantris: Tenth Anniversary Author's Definitive Edition

In 2005, Brandon Sanderson debuted with Elantris, an epic fantasy unlike any other then on the market. To celebrate its tenth anniversary, Tor reissued Elantris in a special edition, a fresh chance to introduce it to the myriad readers who have since become Sanderson fans.

This new edition begins with a preface by author Dan Wells, the first person to read the completed novel, and a new afterword by Sanderson explaining how he came to write the book and its place in the Cosmere, the unified universe of all his Tor novels.

Also included is an expanded version of the "Ars Arcanum" appendix, with more of the technical details of the book's magic that fans can never get enough of.

Elantris was truly a milestone both for Sanderson and for the genre of epic fantasy. It deserves this special treatment, something Tor has done only once before, with Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game. Sanderson fans old and new will be excited to discover it.

Buy Elantris from Amazon.

Mistborn: The Final Empire

The Mistborn series is a heist story of political intrigue and magical, martial-arts action.

For a thousand years the ash fell and no flowers bloomed. For a thousand years the Skaa slaved in misery and lived in fear. For a thousand years the Lord Ruler, the “Sliver of Infinity,” reigned with absolute power and ultimate terror, divinely invincible.

Then, when hope was so long lost that not even its memory remained, a terribly scarred, heart-broken half-Skaa rediscovered it in the depths of the Lord Ruler’s most hellish prison. Kelsier “snapped” and found in himself the powers of a Mistborn. A brilliant thief and natural leader, he turned his talents to the ultimate caper, with the Lord Ruler himself as the mark.

Kelsier recruited the underworld's elite, the smartest and most trustworthy allomancers, each of whom shares one of his many powers, and all of whom relish a high-stakes challenge. Only then does he reveal his ultimate dream, not just the greatest heist in history, but the downfall of the divine despot.

But even with the best criminal crew ever assembled, Kel's plan looks more like the ultimate long shot, until luck brings a ragged girl named Vin into his life. Like him, she's a half-Skaa orphan, but she's lived a much harsher life. Vin has learned to expect betrayal from everyone she meets, and gotten it. She will have to learn to trust, if Kel is to help her master powers of which she never dreamed.

This saga dares to ask a simple question: What if the hero of prophecy fails?

Buy Mistborn from Amazon.

The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive Book 1)

Book One of the Stormlight Archive begins an incredible new saga of epic proportion: Roshar is a world of stone and storms. Uncanny tempests of incredible power sweep across the rocky terrain so frequently that they have shaped ecology and civilization alike. Animals hide in shells, trees pull in branches, and grass retracts into the soilless ground. Cities are built only where the topography offers shelter.

It has been centuries since the fall of the ten consecrated orders known as the Knights Radiant, but their Shardblades and Shardplate remain: mystical swords and suits of armor that transform ordinary men into near-invincible warriors. Men trade kingdoms for Shardblades. Wars were fought for them, and won by them.

One such war rages on a ruined landscape called the Shattered Plains. There, Kaladin, who traded his medical apprenticeship for a spear to protect his little brother, has been reduced to slavery. In a war that makes no sense, where ten armies fight separately against a single foe, he struggles to save his men and to fathom the leaders who consider them expendable.

Brightlord Dalinar Kholin commands one of those other armies. Like his brother, the late king, he is fascinated by an ancient text called The Way of Kings. Troubled by over-powering visions of ancient times and the Knights Radiant, he has begun to doubt his own sanity.

Across the ocean, an untried young woman named Shallan seeks to train under an eminent scholar and notorious heretic, Dalinar's niece, Jasnah. Though she genuinely loves learning, Shallan's motives are less than pure. As she plans a daring theft, her research for Jasnah hints at secrets of the Knights Radiant and the true cause of the war.

The result of over ten years of planning, writing, and world-building, The Way of Kings is but the opening movement of the Stormlight Archive, a bold masterpiece in the making.

Speak again the ancient oaths…

Life before death.
Strength before weakness.
Journey before Destination.

…and return to men the Shards they once bore. The Knights Radiant must stand again.

Buy The Way of Kings from Amazon.

Warbreaker

Warbreaker is the story of two sisters, who happen to be princesses, the God King one of them has to marry, the lesser god who doesn’t like his job, and the immortal who’s still trying to undo the mistakes he made hundreds of years ago.

Their world is one in which those who die in glory return as gods to live confined to a pantheon in Hallandren’s capital city and where a power known as BioChromatic magic is based on an essence known as breath that can only be collected one unit at a time from individual people.

By using breath and drawing upon the color in everyday objects, all manner of miracles and mischief can be accomplished. It will take considerable quantities of each to resolve all the challenges facing Vivenna and Siri, princesses of Idris; Susebron the God King; Lightsong, reluctant god of bravery, and mysterious Vasher, the Warbreaker.

Buy Warbreaker from Amazon.

Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians

Experience the action-packed first book in Brandon Sanderson’s laugh-out-loud middle-grade fantasy series!

AN ANCIENT RIVALRY REAWAKENS.

Everything I’d known about the world was a lie.

On my thirteenth birthday, I, Alcatraz Smedry (yes, I got named after a prison, don’t ask) received my inheritance: a bag of sand. And then I accidentally destroyed my foster parents’ kitchen. It’s not my fault, things just break around me, I swear!

I thought the sand was a joke until evil Librarians came to steal it. You’re probably thinking, “Librarians are nice people who recommend good books,” but that’s just what they want you to think! It turns out they’re actually a secret cult keeping the truth from you—a hidden world filled with magical eyeglasses, talking dinosaurs, and knights with crystal swords!

Or so my Grandpa Smedry claimed when he suddenly showed up to rescue me. So now I have to go with him to invade the local library and get that sand back, before it's used to conquer the world. And Grandpa says how I keep breaking things is actually an amazing talent. There’s no way that can all be true, right?

Will I ever make it back home alive?

“An excellent choice to read aloud to the whole family. Funny, exciting, and briskly paced.” —NPR

Buy Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians from Amazon.

The Rithmatist

Brandon Sanderson’s debut novel for the young adult audience: More than anything, Joel wants to be a Rithmatist. Chosen by the Master in a mysterious inception ceremony, Rithmatists have the power to infuse life into two-dimensional figures known as Chalklings. Rithmatists are humanity's only defense against the Wild Chalklings—merciless creatures that leave mangled corpses in their wake. Having nearly overrun the territory of Nebrask, the Wild Chalklings now threaten all of the American Isles.

As the son of a lowly chalkmaker at Armedius Academy, Joel can only watch as Rithmatist students study the magical art that he would do anything to practice. Then students start disappearing—kidnapped from their rooms at night, leaving trails of blood. Assigned to help the professor who is investigating the crimes, Joel and his friend Melody find themselves on the trail of an unexpected discovery—one that will change Rithmatics—and their world—forever.

Bestselling author Brandon Sanderson brings his unique brand of epic storytelling to the teen audience with an engrossing tale of danger and suspense—the first of a series. With his trademark skills in world-building, Sanderson has created a magic system that is so inventive and detailed that that readers who appreciate games of strategy and tactics just may want to bring Rithmatics to life in our world.

Buy The Rithmatist from Amazon.

Brandon Sanderson: Where Should You Start With His Books?

The author shares the various starting points based on your interests.

Hear about cool monster fiction with the Monster Complex weekly newsletter. CLICK HERE!

From Brandon’s website: “WHERE SHOULD I START?”