What Would You Rate Warbreaker?

[Kidpen]

Pretty much just the title. I was wondering what you guys thought, since it seems like it's definitely the most not-child friendly thing he's written. Also, I want to say sorry if anyone thought from the title I was talking about how good the book was. That wasn't what I meant.

[Calderis]

I dunno. There's not-child-friendly bits to all of them. 

A particularly bloody scene in Elantris comes to mind... And heads exploding from a strike by the butt of a spear... 

I think that Warbreaker is about on par with everything else, save era 1 Mistborn, which I'd put a notch lower. 

Edited March 30, 2018 by Calderis

[1stBondsmith]

PG-13 for most of the Cosmere books.

[Mistspren]

I don’t know, Hemalurgy isn’t exactly all to peachy, and there are some mass slaughter parts in mistborn era 1.

I have to agree with @1stBondsmith‘s assessment here.

[Philomath]

I basically agree with what the others have said. I think the thing with Warbreaker though is there are some heavy sexual tones in it. When I first read Warbreaker it was the first more "adult" book I had read and it was initially shocking to me how certain characters were treated. I think as a society we are a lot more accustomed to violence and war. Issues with rape and consent seem more charged to talk about and therefore more adult. That being said, I think every person is different and some younger people will have no qualms reading it while others may be more uncomfortable. 

As for the rest of the cosmere books, I would rank Warbreaker up with Stormlight Archives. Just under that would be Elantris, Mistborn Era 1, and SoS and BoM. 

I think Alloy of Law is the most child friendly, but I think that is due to Brandon's original intent of making it a fun book in between the Mistborn eras that grew into something more. 

[kaduzy]

I was not thrilled with it in the end.  I got into it art first, but then the ending was a mess and I never really liked the characters or the magic system. 

Character problems: Vivenna's woes were repetitive and boring to read about; I never cared what happened to her and it was obvious that she was just going to have to be rescued repeatedly until she got her sh!t together.   Siri was such a typical manic pixie dream girl that there was nothing much to like or dislike about her; she just fulfilled a function of falling in love with the king and being dewey-eyed and innocent up till the end, and really served no other purpose.  Bluefingers was given no agency as a villain beyond his 11th hour reveal.  "Oh he's the bad guy," was my only thought, and he spent all his page time after the reveal monologuing.  Denth's anger at Vasher was explained only very briefly and then their fight was stupid, though I liked the way Vasher ended it.  The Denth character was never given enough time for us to get to know him as he really was, so it made little sense that he'd hold this grudge for 300 years and spend three hundred years trying to catch the guy who killed his sister.  I mean, that's just plain inefficient.  Lightsong might as well have been named Wayne.  All of Sanderson's "clever" or "witty" or "funny" characters sound the same to me now.  I honestly think that's one of his weaker points as a writer.  None of that banter is ever as funny as he apparently thinks it is.  Blushweaver was boring too, and all the God names annoyed me.

It was also too predictable.  I knew Vasher would turn out to be the Peacekeeper dude (though admittedly he wound up having so many different identities that I guess it wasn't hard to guess at least one of them -- way too many secret identities, actually) and I knew the statues in the city would turn out to be his mythical army.  I predicted that the God King would get his tongue back somehow by the end of the story, that he and Siri would fall in love, that his priests would probably turn out to be good since they were played up to be so evil, that the mercenaries would betray the princess, and that Vasher would turn out to be a good guy and end up with Vivenna.  The only thing I wasn't sure about was who was ultimately behind the push for war and what Lightsong's part in all of it would turn out to be, and those reveals just turned out to be boring.

The magic system was just weird.  Apparently it's supposed to be impressive when the God King rescues Siri by attacking everyone with carpets and rugs or whatever, but the image was incredibly silly, not remotely heroic.  And he changed the colors of some stones.  So what?  The thing about him bending light was interesting, and the idea of people essentially giving up their souls had possibilities, but it never got explored enough.  And it seemed evident that the invisible god Austre or whatever he's called must be real, otherwise what's making all the Returned come back and where's their giant Divine Breath coming from?  Their whole religion made no sense.  (Not that other religions necessarily do.)  What difference does it make if the gods know who they were before the return?  Why wasn't the creepy sexual side of it explored more?  (Probably because BS is a prude who goes to absurd lengths to avoid writing sex scenes.  Another major weakness of his; a good writer should be able to convincingly write anything.)  Anyway I wasn't impressed by any aspect of the whole breath thing, except for Nightsong.  We should have spent more time just on that.  I guess the ability to see colors more clearly and gain perfect pitch just doesn't seem worth the effort of stealing someone's soul.

Finally, I was annoyed by the ending.  There was no resolution reassuring us that one army would defeat the other, no scene letting us see the healed God King to actually do something kingly like go send his armies into battle, no scenes showing the breaking of war in a book called Warbreaker, a bunch of rushed murders and sloppy fight scenes, Vivenna serving no purpose except as sword delivery girl (don't forget to tip!) and Siri serving no purpose except to suddenly realize who the bad guy was.

Soooo, yeah.  Not my favorite.  Guess I'll still check out Elantris though.  I'm desperate for something between waiting for the next Wax & Wayne and the next ASOIF.  I tried First Law and that turned out to be awful too, so I'm not bothering with the second or third books in that trilogy.  I think it's time to roll the dice on some new authors.

Edited July 25, 2018 by kaduzy