Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson | BOOK REVIEW

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TITLE: Warbreaker AUTHOR: Brandon Sanderson PUBLICATION YEAR: 2009 GENRE: High Fantasy PAGE COUNT: 656 FORMAT: Mass Market Paperback AVAILABLE  AT : amazon

 Every once in a while you come across a book which helps you in some unexpected way. This book was the one for me. Lately with the entire pandemic around and the overwhelming tasks of taking care of an actively crawling (and standing) 9 month baby was taking a toll on my mental health. I was complaining to my husband that it feels like all I do every day every moment of my life is either mothering our little one or doing household tasks. Even the weekends feel the same as one is not able to just go out and relax. To that - add not being able to read a physical book for the last three months because Amazon delivery for non essential items was prohibited in our place due to the lock-down. So, when I finally had a couple of physical books delivered, my joy knew no bounds.

Enough with my personal drama, let’s get back to reviewing this wonderful book “ Warbreaker” by my favorite author Brandon Sanderson. Let me make this clear that this post is going to be less of a critical review and more of me going on and on about how I had a blast reading this book. 

SYNOPSIS- The story is about two sisters- Siri and Vivenna who live in a kingdom called Idris. Vivenna has been raised her entire life to marry the God King of the rival nation Hallandren. When the time came, Siri was sent instead. This caused ruckus in both their lives.

The magic system is based on Breaths and Colors. It also follows two other perspectives- a God Lightsong who is unsure of his divinity and a mysterious man Vasher who happens to have a talking sword Nightblood.

I have this habit of annotating my book, but for this one I had to stop doing because I found myself putting on sticky notes on every single page. I have highlighted the hell out of this book because every page has either made me laugh or shocked or has evoked just about any emotion that you could possibly think of. Now that’s proof enough of how much I enjoyed my time reading this book. It is the kind of fantasy which contains all the elements – from political intrigue to plot twists to conspiracy to even a slow burn romance and most importantly a fantastic set of interesting characters. That according to me is the perfect recipe for a good time.

I loved all the characters except for perhaps the male lead Vashar. He was the typical Brandon Sanderson hero with extraordinary heroic skills and a brilliant mind. Both the main female characters and the side characters completely overshadowed this guy. These two female leads- Siri and Vivenna have become my all time favorite characters. I loved following them so much that I wish this book was a series instead of a standalone.

Another important character Lightsong was absolutely sassy. I was reading with a big grin on my face every time the story was told from his perspective. There were also two other side characters- Tonk fah and Denth who provided the necessary humor.

Despite this huge cast of characters, I didn’t get bored at all. Whenever there are multiple characters in a story, I tend to invest only in a couple and just skip through the rest. But that wasn’t the case with this one. I had a blast following the lives of each and every character mentioned in this story.

It was definitely fast paced but I took my sweet little time devouring this book because I just did not want this to end. Mini cliff hangers literally every other chapter made my reading experience even more enjoyable. Such story telling was reminiscent of some of my favorites like Children of Blood and Bone series, Vicious etc where the reader is motivated to flip pages or continue to the next chapter curious to know what happens after that shocking twist.

The thing that I enjoyed the most was the funny banter within different characters. It was filled with Hilarious dialogues and funny actions. This is very important in epic fantasies such as these because it is draining to just consume pages and pages of all the negativity (dirty politics, war, betrayal etc). A little humor every once in a while makes it easy to digest. Also, this book had one of the most satisfying ending which has always been one of my deal breakers- many a times I have liked a book throughout but gave it low rating just because of its lackluster climax. Investing a great deal of your time and energy in a tome just to find a bad ending leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

In conclusion- this has become one of my favorites . If you are intimidated by epic fantasy (especially Brandon Sanderson’s fantasy), I highly recommend checking this one out. Trust me- it is phenomenal.

RATING- 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 ( 5/5 )