About a year ago, I started reading Elantris, Brandon Sanderson’s first published novel and the beginning of the Cosmere, the interconnected fantasy universe the author (and YouTuber) has gradually built over the course of the last two decades. Once I finished, I immediately read my way through the rest of the mega-series as quickly as I could. The December 6, 2024 arrival of Wind and Truth, the fifth book in Sanderson’s massive Stormlight Archive series and the conclusion of the first arc of a planned ten-book saga, was my deadline.
That deadline came and went while I was still in the middle of Oathbringer (the third Stormlight Archive book). These novels are big.
On top of that, the Stormlight Archive books have gotten longer with each entry. The Way of Kings was already hefty at 1007 pages in its initial hardcover printing, Words of Radiance was beefier at 1087, Oathbringer bulked up to 1248, Rhythm of War weighed in at 1232, and Wind and Truth broke the scale at 1344.
Journey Before Destination
But, as any Sanderson fan will tell you, journey before destination. I’ve always been a book boy, and have maintained a habit of reading for an hour a day for years. Getting into the Cosmere kicked that up a notch. Now my reading cannot be contained to one hour. Those are rookie numbers, you gotta pump those numbers up. I’m now three-quarters of the way through Rhythm of War, which I’ll probably finish this weekend. Once that’s over, I’ve only got The Lost Metal, The Sunlit Man, and Wind and Truth to read.
And the third volume of the White Sand comic, but that’ll only take an hour or two.
That may sound like a lot, but to get to this point, I’ve finished 14 novels, six novellas, and three short stories. So, while I have a month or two left before I finish my Cosmere journey, the end is truly in sight. The series has been my regular reading companion for a year now and, though I read a lot of other stuff during that time, I always had a Brando book cooking. As I anticipate getting to Wind and Truth and, beyond that, a time when I have finished the series and begin what Sanderson anticipates could be a six-year gap until Stormlight 6, I’m beginning to think seriously about what’s next.
To Return To Old Haunts…
There are a few easy answers. When the Cosmere hooked me, I left behind The Expanse series, which I had been working my way through for a few years. I stopped at a pretty good spot, as the next book begins after a 28 year time jump (I know because I was a few chapters in when the Sanderson bug bit me). I want to return to that. I similarly left A Song of Ice and Fire unfinished a few years ago. I stopped on A Storm of Swords, which some fans say is the best book in the series, and I’d like to see if they’re right.
I’ve also been reading Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books (though at a much slower pace), and those novels provide some of the same things I get from the Cosmere, with multiple series all taking place in the same world with characters, like Death, who are shared among them. But, Pratchett is a very different (read: funnier) flavor than Sanderson, which isn’t always what I want.
…Or To Blaze New Trails?
Then there are all the sci-fi and fantasy authors I haven’t tried yet, like Joe Abercrombie, Robert Jordan, and Frank Herbert. I’ll get to them eventually. But I doubt any will scratch quite the same itch. Sanderson’s books are easy to get sucked into because his overarching structure means that there are built-in breaks.
Normally, when you read a big, beefy book in a series, you want some time off before going back. But, with the Cosmere, you can spend a month on Oathbringer, then take some time off and breeze through a standalone like Warbreaker or Yumi and the Nightmare Painter. These books all belong to the same universe, but they’re distinct enough (in vibe and in length) that you can always be reading one of his books without feeling fatigued.
So, what will I do when I run out? If I listen to any of the dedicated Brandon Sanderson subreddits, the answer is to start over at the beginning and do it all over again. I’m not an audiobook person, which tends to make this process go faster since you can listen while doing other things, so I don’t know if I can swing that. Maybe I should start a big series like The Dark Tower or Malazan: Book of the Fallen. Maybe I should take a break from fantasy entirely and get really into Civil War history. I don’t know. But I’ve got a few thousand pages left to figure it out.
