Let me start by saying that I am a huge Sanderson fan.

I love his work. I love his voice, I love how he crafts his stories, I love how he creates such wonderful worlds with new and unique magic systems. I tell you this so you understand me when I tell you that I did not like Warbreaker at all.

It felt like he was not even trying.

Warbreaker read more like an old Piers Anthony book than a Brandon Sanderson masterpiece. The magic system was there, a wonderfully complex system based on Color and Breath. But that was it.

I hardly cared about the characters, and I was able to correctly predict every plot twist and turn and surprise. I knew which characters would turn out to be traitors, I knew which characters would be secretly revealed to be the good guys, the classic anti-hero. I knew who would die and who would live and which ancient artifact would be cleverly used just in the nick of time to save the day.

One of the things I loved about Elantris and the Mistborn trilogy was Sanderson’s ability to blindside me. He managed to trick me with those books, with endings I didn’t see coming. Not with Warbreaker.

Warbreaker also made several recurring themes of Sanderson painfully apparent. The anti social yet powerful night stalking anti hero. The rag tag and jocular band of rebels or thieves. A tyrannical and god-like figure at the center of the conflict. Sanderson tried to play with these themes, but failed. It was painfully clear what he was doing, trying half heatedly to change these themes from Mistborn, but he did so clumsily, by just putting each of those characters in exactly the opposite roll as the previous books.

And perhaps my biggest complaint was his use of Deus ex Machina. None of the main characters triumphed. Well, one did, but again in a painfully predictable way. The character who saved the day was an incredibly old and powerful individual who basically just had to decide to interfere. That was it. No adversity to overcome. Only one example of personal sacrifice. Very little inner turmoil.

This was just a book about things that happened to some people.

I was very disappointed by the effort Sanderson put forth in Warbreaker. I hope Sanderson did not let his success with Mistborn and the Wheel of Time go tho his head. I have not read any of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series, as I gave up on that atrocity after Book 4, even knowing Sanderson would be finishing it.

I still plan on reading The Way of Kings once I get hold of a copy. But Sanderson no longer shines like he used to.

I would not recommend Warbreaker, though his other novels still rank amongst my favorites.