Dalinar Kholin, one of the ten highprinces of the country of “Alethkar” and the uncle of the Alethi King Elhokar, is stepping into the role of “Highprince of War.” This position gives him de jure dictatorial control over all of Alethkar’s military forces, though he does not have, in a crucial plot point, de facto control.

The plot of the novel, the second in the Stormlight Archive, picks up immediately where the first book of the series, The Way of Kings, left off. Sanderson has said he expects the series to be ten books long, and they are no shorter than their Wheel of Time forebears similarly, one of the major delights of the series is simply experiencing the depth of imagination in Sanderson’s alternate world of “Roshar.” The Stormlight Archive, Sanderson’s own new series, is clearly influenced by Jordan’s approach to the fantasy epic form.

The Wheel of Time, begun in 1990 and finished by Sanderson last year, was massive both imaginatively and textually, and was arguably the most important fantasy series since The Lord of the Rings as Edward Rothstein wrote, in an oft-quoted line from a New York Times review, Jordan came “to dominate the world Tolkien began to reveal.” In particular, the scale of Jordan’s imagination took the genre a step beyond Tolkien’s work: his elaborate alternate mythology (based on Celtic traditions) and complex magic system, along with a complex network of political and historical details, formed the backdrop for a massive epic that took fourteen volumes to resolve. Brandon Sanderson, as fantasy readers know, was the author brought in to finish Robert Jordan’s epic series The Wheel of Time after Jordan’s death in 2007.

Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson