Part fantasy, part pirate novel, part fairy tale, this was the first Brandon Sanderson book I’ve read, and I’m not sure it was the best one to start on. The main things I enjoyed in this book were the worldbuilding and the writing style. Unfortunately, I had a hard time disentangling the character of the in-universe narrator with the author, who took almost every opportunity to drop “wisdom” and moralize the current situation. The story itself felt like it predictably flowed along the lines of fairy tale tropes even when it was subverting them.

Reading the acknowledgements section after finishing the book, it’s clear that Sanderson was trying out a new first-person narrator and also targeting a “The Princess Bride”-style fairy tale pretty explicitly here. I’ll probably try out another one of his novels sometime soon to see if the things I did like about this book shine through some more.