I’ve read “The Way of Kings” and I really didn’t enjoy it. Before I discovered that I didn’t like it, I bought Dawnshard while it was on sale. I’m too cheap to not read a book I’ve bought so I am planning on reading it.
What lore or spoilers should I know to catch me up from tWoK to DS?
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If you don’t already know, Dawnshard is an interlude novella that takes place between book 3 and 4 in the series. It expands on some world history that was only touched on and mostly adds a lot of context for things for the next books. My partner read the first interlude novella, Edgedancer, without reading any of the other books and didn’t have any issues. If you’ve read the entirety of The Way of Kings you’ll probably have enough environmental and worldbuilding context to kind of figure out what’s going on at least.
Possibly very minor spoilers
The story centers around a character who was already introduced to you in the interlude chapters of TWoK, Rysn. Rysn lost the use of her legs during an accident and was given a pet Larkin, which is a small dragon/lizard creature that feeds off Stormlight, as a condolence.
Some of the overarching political things might go over your head, but really nothing is important enough that you won’t understand the book itself. The big gist of it all is that a big war between good and evil just started at the end of the previous book, but none of it is very important to this book except as a backdrop.
Aside from that there are a few characters that have the same powers as Kaladin came into in TWoK. They only have powers because they are his subordinates.
Seeing as it is set between Oathbringer (#3) and Rhythm of War (#4), ideally you should have read until the third book already to understand what is happening and what it means, otherwise I think you’ll be very confused.
Fair enough but I really didn’t enjoy the first book and these books are huge. I’d rather be confused and get through it than buy and read two more massive tomes I likely won’t enjoy.
Basically so much stuff happens in book two and 3 of Stormlight that I have no idea if you’ll enjoy it at all.
Tap for spoiler
Rysn from the interludes of Way of Kings has the following things happen to her:
She continues to work with her Vstim and becomes a master trader.
She falls off a giant greatshell (the size of an island) and becomes paraplegic.
She is given a ship.
The Lopen is a hilarious Knight Radiant, and you will quote everything he says.
Additionally the Voidbringers (called Fused or Singers) have returned and are waging a full war on Rosharran factions. These are the souls of ancient Parshmen/Parshendi who fully control the flesh of modern Parshmen made sentient.
This faction is led by Navani and Dalinar Kholin from the mythical castle in a sky from Urithuru, they task Rysn with finding a cache of weapons or supplies to aid in the war effort.
Chiri-Chiri is a that Rysn has that can absorb Stormlight.
In another interlude we know that the crew of a ship heading to Aimia was poisoned by a creature made up entirely of cremlings (basically thing a collective creature) that was “covered in tattoos” as part of their disguise.
I am genuinely not sure you’ll enjoy it, but maybe! May I ask why you didn’t like Way of Kings? It may help me figure out if you won’t like Dawnshard.
I finished Dawn Shard now and I enjoyed it more than Way of Kings but not enough to want to read more Stormlight Archives. I actually found the story to be a fairly self-contained story on a boat. I think already knowing a bit of spoilers about spren and void bringers was enough.
There were sometimes parts where characters would mention things like briefly being a king in the past, which I’m sure comes from another book but wasn’t important for the plot of this book.
Overall I’m just not a Sanderson fan I think. I don’t like his humour and I found I really didn’t care about the characters in Way of Kings. The big problem is that his books are so long and it seems like not much happens until the end. I saw fans calling this an avalanche but I really couldn’t stand it. No hate on others who like it but it’s really not for me.
