I recently picked up Brandon Sanderson's debut novel, Elantris, for the same reason that I suspect half the people that bought it did: Sanderson has been named as the author for the final book in the Wheel of Time series. Robert Jordan's unfortunate death left one book unfinished in the mammoth series, and his widow apparently thought Sanderson was the man to put the ideas that Jordan sketched out in his last days to paper. As a Wheel of Time fan (and anti-fan, depending upon which parts of which books I'm reading), I figured I might as well have a look at what's in store for the Wheel of Time's conclusion.

Elantris is a standalone fantasy book (they make those?) roughly six hundred pages in length. Elantris was once the city of the gods, standing tall and shining and noble, inhabited by immortals who could perform miracles with the wave of a hand. Anyone could become an Elantrian - the change came in the dead of night, and completely at random. But Elantris fell ten years ago for reasons unknown, its towers blackened and crumbling, its citizens wretched undead husks that are barely sentient and spend most of their time wailing in pain. The conversions continue to happen, however, and given Elantris's sorry state, becoming an Elantrian has moved from being the greatest blessing to the greatest curse. Arelon, the nation surrounding Elantris, is still trying to cope with the city's demise, particularly as the world's most powerful militaristic religion knocks down the remaining unbelievers and looks toward Arelon to finish its world conquest.

The book follows three characters, though it is odd in devoting precisely every third chapter to one, then the other, then the other. I liked 3x + 1 guy the best, followed by 3x + 2 a little ways behind, and didn't really care for 3x + 3. He became more likable by the end, and his chapters were the shortest, but to me, it still remains a problem that I essentially don't want to read a third of your book - and know that by end of chapter three.

I have another complaint with Elantris as well: there is a general rule of writing, in my opinion, and that is that if you're going to tell me a character is particularly something, you also have to show me. You can repeat that a character is badass in the narrative a bunch, but until I have some actual reason to believe it, well, I won't. The most straightforward way to establish that a character is, in fact, badass, is obviously to have him or her do something badass, but there are plenty of alternatives. One even includes just repeating that the character is badass, but through the mouths of other characters who themselves have established some credibility in the region of badassery. But back to the point, I have another rule for writing: if you're going to show that that character is something, you had damn well better do it well. If you want me to believe that a character is badass, and you decide to prove that by example, your example needs to actually be badass. If it is instead lame, then you're going to ruin this perception that you're trying to build up that the character is badass. It's actually better to not try then to try and fail horribly.

The most awful example of this I've ever run into was in Terry Goodkind's Wizard's First Rule. One of the badass characters essentially tells a gathered mob of men that their dicks have fallen off, and for no apparent reason, they buy it, and run screaming away. That is laughable. It is not badass, it is just fucking stupid. Better off without that scene. It's the whole "better for people to assume the character actually isn't badass then to write about it and remove all doubt" thing. Nothing in Elantris is anywhere near that bad, but the book goes on and on about how Sarene, 3x + 2, is so clever and intelligent and witty. When Sanderson actually writes clever moments for Sarene, however, they come off a bit less-than-intelligent. More that everyone else is fucking stupid than she's incredibly brilliant. It's not horrible, and it gets better as the book goes on, but there were plenty of times when I wished that the characters would shut the fuck up about how smart she is.

Sanderson does do a fairly decent job of pulling seemingly disparate threads together at the end, though, which may well be a big part of why he got the Wheel of Time gig. I never had any moments of "shit, I should have seen that coming," and there were a few things that I did see coming, but at the same time, there's no ridiculous deus ex machina "and then the good guys win" shit. Well, you could probably argue that one, and I might grant you that there is some of it, actually. I didn't think it so stupid as to subtract substantially, though. I also never felt as heavily invested in the book as I have in many others, but I did tear through it about a week, which might indicate that I like it more than I think I do.

Regarding being the successor to Robert Jordan, I suppose Sanderson is a decent fit. Young enough in his career that he doesn't bring any baggage, established enough that he's not a complete unknown. He doesn't do any of the shit that fucking pissed me off to no end about Jordan, but then again, for the most part Jordan didn't either until four thousand pages in. He does tend toward one of Jordan's habits, however, specifically of writing strong female characters who aren't strong so much as they're bitches. Yes, strong females in fantasy are a goddamn rarity, going all the way back to The Lord of the Rings, which was a fucking Vienna sausage festival that had all of two barely-there female characters. Yes, it would be nice to have strong female characters in fantasy. No, yelling at the male characters, refusing to admit to having any flaws, and pushing the men around does not make women strong. It makes them fucking awful and annoying. How I wish fuckers would learn that. Sarene is nowhere, nowhere near as bad as 95% of Jordan's females, but there were plenty of moments where I was with all the guys from her homeland who wanted nothing to do with her.

I'd hardly consider Elantris a modern classic of fantasy writing (speaking of, is there any fucking jacket out there that doesn't describe the attached book as such?), but it is a good, entertaining read. The characters are generally pretty likable, and the plot moves along at a decent pace. It won't change your life, but if, like me, you're curious about what's to come for The Wheel of Time, it's certainly worth a look.