Warbreaker

This week we were assigned to read Brandon Sanderson's Warbreaker. Let me start off by saying, and pardon my language, that I FUCKING LOVED THIS BOOK.

When I first opened the pdf and saw it was over eight hundred pages, I thought, "My god, this is going to take forever to read. There's no way I'll be able to read the whole thing." So I didn't even plan to. But the book turned out to be incredibly captivating and I found myself sucked in almost right away. I was reading at night and as I started to get tired, I kept thinking, "Well, I'll read one more chapter..." Yes, one more chapter indeed, but the next thing I know it had been several chapters, I was almost halfway through the book, and it was four in the morning! No place seemed a good place to stop and I didn't just want to know what was going to happen next, I needed to know.

The book essentially took me two days to read. The second night was another one of staying up until past three in the morning. I had stopped at some point for the night, thinking I had more to read than I did, but then finished it the next day [today] within a half hour.

I don't know what exactly got me so enthralled in this book, but I suspect it was probably the multitude of everything that I liked about it. Really, where do I start?

I love color, and having it be such a central part of the story and the culture of their world really had my attention. The city T'Telir just sounded really amazing to me and I wish it was a real place I could visit. The whole system of their magic, which involves both color and breaths, I found just incredibly fascinating.

And the characters! I was especially involved with them; there was not a single character I did not like. They were all very real and well written. Even Vivenna, who was my least favorite, was still not a character I didn't like. I felt truly involved in their plights. I felt just as betrayed as Vivenna did by the mercenaries, and I never came to dislike or hate Denth, even at the end. I felt bad that Parlin die, even though he was hardly a presence in the book. Blushweaver's death was upsetting, and Lightsong seeing her die and learning who he was before he died, was all the more upsetting.  I really cared for the characters.

My favorites were easily Lightsong, Llarimar, Siri, and Susebron. Though again, that doesn't mean I didn't like the others...but when these four were involved, I found it especially hard to stop reading. Lightsongs's dialog was great, and I especially loved his interactions with Llarimar. That it turned out they were brothers seemed very fitting - and explained why Llarimar seemed the only one with the patience to put up with him! I even liked Nightblood - poor little sword doesn't know any better. It tries very hard to do as it was told.

I don't really know what to talk about other than how much I loved this book, so I suppose I'll end this post here. And now to catch up on all that sleep I missed reading it.