Warbreaker – Brandon Sanderson

Rating: 3.5 / 5

As with many of the books we have opportunity to read, this one came with recommendation from a trusted friend of mine. What a roving tale of politics, plot twists, and deceptions! 

I tend to organize books mentally in three categories: idea driven, plot driven, or character driven. Of course every book has three, and any great book explores each in an interesting way. My interest has long been books with good ideas and characters. Often my favorite novels have plots that are intentionally boring to allow easier exploration of deep ideas. I’m thinking here of books like The Passenger (Cormac McCarthy, one of my favorite novels, with deep ideas and characters though a simple plot, The Dispossessed (LeGuin, amazing ideas, amazing characters, solid plot), any Dostoevsky (with simple, even boring, plots that explore deep ideas in psychology), or Kurt Vonnegut novels (sometimes you don’t even know if there is a plot). This is contrasted with, say, Tom Clancy novels, which don’t appear to explore an idea at all, but just following a character through a riveting plot. 

Warbreaker had all three: good plot, great characters, good ideas. I use the word “good” and “great” intentionally here. The characters were fantastic, funny, and sometimes inspiring. More than anything else in this book, the characters made the book fun and mysterious. Many of the characters you don’t understand until the end, and they ultimately become something you don’t expect. 

As for plot, it was not the kind of plot I appreciate, especially in the fantasy genre. I prefer adventure-fantasy like Lord of the Rings or Wheel of Time. This book had very little actual adventure. The plot was driven by political intrigues, manipulations, deceptions, and twists. The entire story, some seven hundred pages, occurs within the same city, and a notable portion of that within a single palace. 

As for ideas, they were interesting from a fantasy world-building and a religious point of view, though not as deep as author’s like LeGuin get. The world that Sanderson created is very fun! Gods of an unusual nature called the “returned” – people who lived lives and were returned after death to serve a singular purpose unknown to them. Once the returned identify and fulfill their purpose, they die once again and once for all. 

If there is an idea exploration here it would be that of the corruptibility of religion. The two key factions that most of the book is based on have very different religious views, though each religion is based on a similar base. Much like Judaism and Christianity. Both consider the other corrupted. The revelation in the books seems to be that both are in fact corrupted but both are nonetheless extremely useful and serve the purposes they are designed to.