Hello! So today I'm making two posts, one about another of my favorite book series, and another about one of my favorite animes!
First up is the books series, called The Stormlight Archive, by Brandon Sanderson. The first book in the series is The Way of Kings (pictured above).
These books are pretty long, in the roughly thousand page range for each book, just letting you know. That said, these books are fantastic. Brandon Sanderson is one of my favorite authors, mainly because he is a master of worldbuilding. He's created multiple fantasy worlds in his various book series, and each of them is as believable as our own. He invents entire cultures, countries, religions, foods, and magic systems that are wholly unique.
In the Stormlight Archive books, people from various nations in the planet of Roshar are brought together for various reasons, and they each bring exactly the kind of diverse perspectives you'd expect if people from wildly diffrent cultures were brought together for the first time in our world. They share stories and burdens, and each character is vibrant and lively.
A little bit of a plot synopsis, without any spoilers: One of several point of view characters, Kaladin is a surgeon's-son-turned-solider who has unfortunate circumstances befall him on the battlefield. There are other POV chararcters as well, from all walks of life, such as Shallan, a young noblewoman from a house that has fallen into hard times, attempting to learn from a famous scholar in a neighboring country; and Dalinar, a member of one of the royal families on Roshar, who is beset by the harships from his haunting past and the future of his nation.
In the midst of all of these characters are the spren, spirit-like creatures who pop up everywhere. They're associated with many things, including emotions such as anger or fear, but also rain, life, and other concepts of reality. These spren are taken for granted as part of life, but they serve a much more important role later on.
In addition to the spren are the shards, a combination of extremely rare armor and weapons that are relics from a forgotten age. Only great nobles and royalty have access to them. They grant enormous strength, and will heal themselves with time. Shardblades can only be used by their owner, and can be summoned at any time with a ten second delay. In addtion, shardblades can cut through any material, and when they touch a living being, they instantly kill then, ripping the souls from their bodies.
In most (but not all) of the nations on Roshar, individuals with light eyes (blue, green, etc.) are nobles, while those with dark eyes are commoners. It is said, however, that owning a shard will turn a darkeyes into a lighteyes, thereby turning a commoner into nobility...
Anyway, I would highly recommend these books. Sanderson weaves words and worlds in ways that few authors can. I'll probably recommend some more of his work in the future, so stay tuned!
Till next time!
-- Bradley