 Warbreaker! It's like everything else Brandon Sanderson writes, except not all that good. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. Now, let me be clear. This book isn't bad, okay? It's definitely the worst in the Cosmere that I've read so far, and it's definitely the worst book by Brandon Sanderson that I've read so far, but it's not awful, okay? Overall, I would just say it is decent, okay? To me, it's somewhere between being okay and good. There is some stuff in here that's worth praising. There's some stuff in here that's interesting. But overall, I would just say it's like a regular book in the Cosmere at around 50% enjoyment. You know, the characters are about 50% as interesting and likable. The setting and the magic system is about 50% as in-depth and 50% as cool. The storyline is about 50% as interesting, 50% as fast-paced. You know, it's all the same stuff that we're used to, but just at a lower level. So the plots of this one is actually pretty simple and easy to follow. There are these two kingdoms which are... They have a lot of tension between them, essentially. And so the king of one, Idris, sends his daughter, a princess named Ciri, to Halandrin to marry the god king of Halandrin. And her older sister... Now, Ciri was actually not supposed to go. Her older sister was the one that was supposed to. And so her older sister, Vivanna, decides, you know what? My sister shouldn't be there, so she runs off to Halandrin to try and rescue her. And while this is going on, there is another god living in Halandrin named Lightsong, who is just experiencing some political stuff going on. It's left pretty vague, even while you're reading it. And he's just thinking, okay, there's some sort of conspiracy happening here, but he doesn't know exactly what it is, and it doesn't play into the story much until near the end. And finally, there is a guy named Vashr, who is running around with a talking sword, and he is also up to something that we don't really know about until near the end. Probably my biggest issue with this book is the plots, because, like I said, it's about 50% of what a Cosmere plot is normally like. You know, it's 50% as fun, 50% as enjoyable. Because Ciri's storyline, where she's just in the palace being married to the god king, is pretty boring at first. Because at first it's just her kind of wandering around, taking in the sights, and well, that's about it. You know, there's hints that there might be some stuff brewing for later, but there's not much happening right then. And later on, as she gets to know the god king better, it becomes more interesting, but that's like, that's character-driven rather than plot-driven. So her storyline is really bad. Lightsongs, which I already kind of mentioned is, again, it gets better near the end, but for the most part it's just him kind of hanging around drinking wine and stuff. And Lightsong himself is not a very interesting character, I'll get to that in a minute. But, yeah, his storyline isn't that great. And then we've got Vashar's storyline, which is not even really a storyline, because he's not in this a lot until the last third. For the first two thirds he only pops in every now and again, and he just kind of gets into trouble. And we don't know what he's doing, so he's not that interesting either. The only storyline that was consistently pretty good was Vevenna's, because after she arrives in Helandrin, she just meets up with this group of mercenaries who are working for her father, the king of Idris, or Idrian. I already forgot, I'm sorry. But they're working for her father, and so she's helping them with the war effort, essentially, because they're thinking, okay, a war's gonna start soon, let's try and make sure it goes our way. And so Vevenna's storyline is actually pretty interesting, because there's always some stuff going on. It's still not amazing, but it is pretty good. There are two really big twists in this story, which I won't go into a lot of detail now, I'll save that for the spoiler section. But one of them, the first one to happen, is pretty good as well. And it happens in Vevenna's storyline, which is part of what makes it a good storyline, and it works because there are hints leading up to it, and then when it happens, it caught me off guard, I was thinking, wow, okay, that actually shocked me. That's a good twist. The second twist is just... It's not very good. It caught me off guard, but there also wasn't much leading up to it, so it just kind of comes out of nowhere, and you're thinking, oh, well, all right, that's cool, I guess. I think the biggest single issue with the plot is that there isn't really a villain until near the end, which I know I keep mentioning near the end, and that's because the climax is still pretty good. You know, it's not on the level of something like Mistborn or Stormlight Archive, but it's a pretty good climax, and because that's when, you know, villains pop up, and until then, we don't really have one. It's just the characters wandering around doing stuff. You know, they don't have, like, the Kingdom of Hallandrin itself isn't a villain, and they don't really have any individuals that are villains or organizations, it's just them doing stuff. So, and honestly, I would say that villains is one area where Sanderson kind of struggles. Not that they're terrible, just that out of all the aspects I was writing that I love, villains usually aren't one of them. You know, he has a couple of really good ones, like Elantris and the Stormlight Archives, he has some great ones, but other than that, they're not that interesting, and so Warbreaker is a pretty good showcase of that. And as for the main characters, they're, again, they're about 50% of what you'd expect, with the exception of Vivena, I'll talk about her in a sec, but Light's song is actually less than 50%, he's really annoying is the thing. Like, he's built up to be like this wise-cracking Joker guy, and he's just kind of lazy and lounges around and he's sarcastic, and he's clearly meant to be funny, but he's not funny. None of his jokes landed, okay? I don't think I even cracked a smile reading this. It's just, he just came across as an obnoxious prick, honestly, that's it. And he redeems himself a bit at the end and he becomes, you know, more serious and he becomes a better person, he becomes worthy of the power he has, but that really doesn't make up for all the annoying conversations he has with all the people around him before then. And then there's Ciri, who is, she's alright, you know, she is just a scared kid that gets thrust into a situation she doesn't want to be in, and then she kind of makes the most of it and she does a lot of growing up over the course of the story, and again, she's not like particularly interesting, but she's a likable person, you know, she's a decent person and she does some good, so, again, she's fine. That's really all I can say about her, she's fine. And Vivena, on the other hand, is actually really good, because she starts off as kind of, or at least she seems like a very mature young woman, like okay, she's very educated, she has herself under control, and when the story goes on, she realizes that she's actually a pretty naive person, she doesn't know a lot about the world, and as it goes on, she becomes much tougher, much stronger, and just realizes, you know what, I wasn't really cut out to be a princess, maybe. And so that struggle between her wanting to continue to be the old princess that she always had been and her wanting to be this new person is actually really interesting, and watching her become smarter, is also really cool. And of course I can't talk about a Sanderson book without mentioning the setting and the magic, and those are, again, fine. You know, like the setting, I didn't really get a feel for it the way I did in the Stormlight Archive, or in Mistborn, or in Elantris. It's just kind of these two kingdoms that we know about, and we know about one city where the story takes place in, the capital of Elandrin, and the thing is, it doesn't feel that much like a distinct city. You know, it has character to it. There is some talk of the unique culture that it has, and, well, no, that's mostly it. Well, no, it talks a little bit about the economy too, there's that, but it's just not really all that deep. You know, there's not that much depth to it, that's just immersed in this alien world. Like, the first Mistborn book also mostly took place in one city, but that was a totally weird city, okay? It was huge. There were, you know, gangs and thieves running around all over the place. There was, you know, Allomancy, the crazy magic that was going on. The whole place was ruled by an immortal demigod. He had his goons wandering around. Like, there was a lot of stuff in Luthadel that was really, really cool, but it's missing here. And segwaying into the magic system, that's also kind of neat, but it's missing something. You know, it needs to take a couple extra steps in order to become as good as something like Allomancy or Stormlight, because in this, the way magic works is that every person is born with something called breath, and that's kind of like their soul, but not really, because if you take it from them, they live, and the thing about breath is, you know, you can't forcibly take it from someone. They have to give it to you. And, you know, you can stock up a whole bunch of breath, so you have, you know, hundreds or even thousands of them, and you can, the most interesting thing you can do with it is put it into objects to make them sort of come to life, and then you can retrieve the breath from it later. So, for example, in the prologue, one of the characters makes his cloak come to life and start fighting people, and that's, I mean, that's pretty neat, but they don't go quite far enough with it, you know, they don't show all the different applications that you could do with that. They show a couple, but, you know, it just doesn't feel like the same hard magic systems that, you know, things like Allomancy are. I know I keep comparing this to other Cosmere books, but, well, that's kind of what a lot of people are going to expect going into this, so I think that's only fair. So, the magic is still unique, and it still has some interesting aspects to it, but it doesn't go far enough with it. You know, if it went just a little bit farther, I think it could have been a really, really cool magic system, and we could have had a lot of fun with it, but as it stands now, it's just mmm, it's just meh. That's it. As for the positives, I think that the pros is still really good, you know, it's Sanderson, so it's still very straightforward. You can always tell what's happening and who's doing what, and it's never confusing as to what's going on, so that's good. This one has a little bit of talk of religion in it, which comes at it from a different angle than some something, sorry, something like Mistborn or Launtrested, and I enjoyed that. You know, it's not, there's not a lot of it, but it's there, it's kind of neat, and like I said before, the Climax is pretty good. It's not amazing, but everything ramps up at the end, and a whole bunch of stuff happens, and it's cool. I liked it. So, that's about it for the non-spoiler section. Would I really recommend this? And... Man, it's a difficult question to answer, because like, if you're a huge fan of the Cosmere and you want to know how this connects with everything else and you want to get just a little bit of extra info about how the universe works, then yeah, you should obviously read it. If you're not, then and you're just looking for a regular fantasy story, ah... I can't say you shouldn't read this. I just don't think it's that great. Like, there's other stuff I would say before that there's stuff I would say you should read before this, I mean. But, you know, it's not terrible, so if you hear the plot synopsis and that sounds interesting to you, go ahead and check it out. Like, it's not gonna offend you, I don't think. Okay, so now for the brief spoiler section here. If you don't want to be spoiled, then leave. So, first thing I want to talk about here is Light Song and his death near the end. So Light Song gave up his life to heal the God King and allow him to use his magic properly and then the God King just comes and saves the day. And... Okay, on paper that sounds pretty good, but before that, Light Song was just kind of whining about his dead girlfriend who... I mean, they didn't really spend time building up their relationship at all, so I felt very little. You know, I didn't have the same emotional impact that I... or I didn't have the same emotional response that I probably should have or that Sanderson was hoping I would have. And, well, yeah, that's about it. You know, if Light Song had been a better character, if it had been more likable, then that would have hit a lot harder, but as it stands it's just kind of, oh, okay, well he died, but that leads to cool stuff. And now I want to talk about the two twists. Now, the one where Denth betrays Vevenna, and it turns out that he's been manipulating her the whole time, I really liked because looking back you can kind of see, oh yeah, like this was all his idea and she was kind of just going along with it. She felt like she was in charge, but she really wasn't. And so that's great twist. I have no issues with that one. The other one where it turns out that Pon Call and Blue Fingers were the ones that were trying to get Halandrin and Idris to go to war, no. That was dumb because there was almost nothing that built up to it. And that's really another issue with the plot is just that all that time they spent with people just kind of wandering around talking and stuff they could have been trying to solve a mystery basically and then that could have led up to oh hey, Blue Fingers is he's the one behind all this. And so if they had cleverly laid out a couple of clues then it would be just like any other mystery or any other good mystery where you're like oh, okay, I know what it is before the characters do or at least you think you do and then it happens and you find out, oh, that surprised me. I can't believe I didn't see it coming. And finally Vivena leaving at the end. I really liked that decision actually, you know, because again over the course of the book watching Vivena's development from a really naive young woman to a much more experienced, intelligent person well, I don't know if she could go back to being a princess after that. So I would like to see where Vivena's character goes after this and I know she appears in Stormlight briefly but I want to see where she goes in her own story. I want a sequel to Warbreaker essentially where she continues on and we get to see more of her and we get to see more of her journey basically. I think there's sequels to Warbreaker planned and that's what I want the sequels to be about. So that's about it for the spoiler section now and again, recommendations I can kind of recommend it to people who are really big fans of the Cosmere and kind of recommend it to people who are into fantasy and well, that's about it. Thanks again to Desk Brennan and all my other patrons whose names are going along the screen now I couldn't do it without you guys and if you want to consider being a patron please do that and please subscribe and please like and comment on the videos so that other people see it and that's everything, bye.