- Dates Read: 7/20/24 – 8/9/24
- Date Published: June 9, 2009
- Publisher: Tor
- Length: 652
- Genres: Adult Fantasy
- My Rating: 3.5/5
Colors, Colors, Colors
So much happening, so little time! Brandon Sanderson’s Warbreaker is an ambitious, inventive high fantasy all about colors. The magic system is based on Breath, kind of like a person’s aura or lifeforce. By collecting multiple Breaths, you can gain the power to “awaken” objects – investing some of this lifeforce you control into inanimate objects to animate and control them. Taking place in Hallendren, we follow a myriad of characters in Warbreaker, including two princesses from the pious, rival country of Idris, a God reincarnated from a man with no recollecting of his past life, and a mysterious rebel with unknown motivations. Warbreaker is full of political intrigue in a dignified battle to start or prevent war from breaking out.
A creative and unique world that occasionally lacks depth
I enjoyed how creative and individual Warbreaker was. I found the magic system to be really interesting and loved all the ethical implications of it. The god of Hallandren, so remain living as gods, were required to feed off of Breaths donated by Hallandren citizens. Additionally, if you were to give Breaths to someone, you can do so without their consent. It caused a lot of interesting scenarios and interactions between our characters with more or less Breaths. However, I sometimes found myself a little lost in the actual way this magic system worked. By the end of the book, many foundational aspects of the magic system are unexplained which I didn’t feel occurred in other Sanderson books like Mistborn. It seemed towards the end of the book we were learning so many new applications of awakening all at once, with not a lot of structure to stand on.
The characters
Overall, I really enjoyed our lead cast of characters. I found Lightsong, the reincarnated God, to be the most interesting with his internal batted with his supposed divinity. Siri and Vivenna, our two princesses, were such great compliments of each other with their transformations throughout the story. I did feel as though they both could have enacted a little more authority and action throughout the story – sometimes it felt as though they both were just being drug along with the current against their will instead of forging their own path.
Minor gripes
The pacing of this book struggled a bit for me. It meandered somewhat in the middle 50%, and even though I am used to the Sanderson pacing where the last 20% ramps all the action up, this book truly only reached the “I-can’t-put-this-down-because-I-need-to-know-what-happens” until the last 80 to 100 pages. Especially starting medical school while I was reading this, I found it challenging to want to pick this book up at the end of a super long day. It was easy for me to push it off just because it wasn’t consistently hooking me.
Additionally, we interact a lot with Blushweaver, a female Goddess of honesty. Virtually all of the reincarnated gods and goddesses are described as larger than life and extremely attractive (physically speaking), but I grew tiresome of the many descriptions of Blushweaver and her “revealing” outfits and her “voluptuous” body. It got a little old when every time we would encounter Blushweaver, we also got ample descriptions of her outfits, how her body looked in said outfits, and her unrequited desire to sleep with Lightsong. After 650 pages it got a little old to me as we had plenty of descriptions to formulate an image of Blushweaver. It just seemed a tad over the top for me!
Overall Thoughts
I enjoyed Warbreaker, and if you like unique, trailblazing magic systems on the more ethereal side, you may love it too!
