At the beginning of 2023, I made a point to start texting my closest friends at least once a week. In early 2024, I got really into the work of fantasy author (andYouTuber) Brandon Sanderson. Slightly later in 2024, those two things collided.
Connecting With The Cosmere
Sanderson is best known for the Cosmere, an interconnected fantasy universe that binds his biggest series (The Stormlight Archive and Mistborn) and standalone novels (Tress of the Emerald Sea andWarbreaker) together. I entered the Cosmere with Elantris, Sanderson’s first published novel. It’s stylistically rough — to this day, Sanderson is a substance over style kind of author, who says that he hopes his authorial voice is “invisible” — but the concept, worldbuilding, and plot immediately grabbed me and kept me going through the climactic Sanderlanche.
‘Sanderlanche’ is the community’s goofy term for the last hundred pages or so of a book where Sanderson brings all the plot threads together in thrilling, satisfying fashion.
Here’s the concept for Elantris: once there was a city, called Elantris, where the inhabitants were immortal beings who radiated light and magical power. One day, for no apparent reason, Elantris' fortunes reversed. Its inhabitants still lived forever, but now instead of well-being, they lived in constant pain. The smallest cut or bump would never heal, so they accumulated agony like a snowball rolling down a hill. The city itself changed, too, with dark slime appearing on the ground and walls.
No one knows why this change occurred, but the affliction can befall anyone that lives in the land, through a process called the Shaod. As the story begins, Raoden, the prince of the nation of Arelon, wakes up to find himself changed into an Elantrian. He’s cast into the city, which has effectively become a leper colony in the ten years since it fell. Raoden seeks to carve out a livable existence for the people of Elantris, and in the process may discover why the city fell in the first place.
Though Elantris is Sanderson’s least technically accomplished novel, I go against the grain of the Sanderson community in thinking that it’s a fantastic place to start. Worldbuilding and the core mystery of the plot are inextricably tied together. As you learn more about the world, you get closer to understanding the mystery. It’s an intoxicating formula for a page turner, and though the Cosmere fandom generally ranks the book pretty low, I’ve recommended it to multiple friends and they all came out of the experience wanting to read more of Sanderson’s work.
Once You Start Reading Sanderson, It’s Hard To Stop
So far, I’ve convinced four friends or family members to give Brando Sando a try. Three started with Elantris, one (my dad) with Tress of the Emerald Sea. Two of the Elantris readers have gone on to gobble up as much Cosmere as possible. One doesn’t read physical books, but has nearly made it through the first two massive Stormlight Archive audiobooks. Each is over 1,000 pages, and the audiobooks are 40+ hours long. The other has finished the first Mistborn trilogy, and just started the second set.
This tends to be what happens with Sanderson. Either you bounce off his work, or you read as much of it as you can. When I first picked up Elantris, I thought that the whole interconnected universe thing would put me off the Cosmere, but it actually has drawn me deeper in because it provides natural breaks. When I finish a book in, say, The Expanse series, I take some time to read other books before coming back. But, when I finish a Stormlight Archive book, I can go read a standalone Sanderson novel or a Mistborn era, and then come back feeling rested.
The many series within Terry Pratchett’s Discworld universe offer something similar, but those books are light and comic, so you don’t feel like you’ll be missing out on anything important if you take some time off. With Sanderson’s books, I feel the need to catch up, to learn all the available information about the Cosmere, and the characters within it. And now, thanks to my evangelism, I have people who can share in that pursuit.
