The Way of Kings

The American author Brandon Sanderson published the epic fantasy novel The Way of Kings on 31 August 2010 from Tor Books, and it opens The Stormlight Archive. It begins with a prelude and a prologue and ends with an epilogue, with 75 chapters and nine interludes in between. The volumes that followed were Words of Radiance, Oathbringer, Rhythm of War and Wind and Truth, published in 2014, 2017, 2020 and 2024. In 2011 it took the David Gemmell Legend Award in the best novel category, and a leatherbound edition appeared in 2021.

Roshar is a world where highstorms sweep the land with hurricane force, and everything alive has adapted to survive them: animals hide in shells, plants pull back into the ground, and cities are built only where the rock offers shelter. Kaladin is a surgeon's son who joined the army, lost his brother and ended up carrying bridges for a war that does not want him. Dalinar Kholin is a highprince and a legendary soldier whose visions during the storms will not stop.

Shallan Davar is a young woman trying to steal from a heretic scholar because her family's estate is failing. The story rotates between their points of view and several others, following lives that appear unconnected before the plot brings them together. All of them are moving towards a history older than the Knights Radiant, an order the world has largely forgotten, and the order's return is part of what the series is about.

The Stormlight Archive is planned as a series of ten books in two sets of five, and the first volume establishes Roshar, its magic and its three main viewpoints. The unabridged audiobook is read by Michael Kramer and Kate Reading, who have narrated several of the author's other series, and the later books assume the first has been read.