dayblood

Well, I've finally finished reading this book. Merin was interesting as a peasant who won shards on the battlefield. But just like he was described as a baby in the majority of the book, I felt the same way, especially when he decided to not use the jade necklace when facing those five Veden shardbearers at the docks. His training as a spearman would have been enough to tell when he needed to cheat. His stupid sense of honor nearly gets him killed. I also liked how Merin arrived at the nick of time to save Alethkar forces. It was a nice, if unintentional callback, to Aragorn's arrival at Minas Tirith aboard the enemy ships to save the city in LOTR. Jasnah was a mixed bag. Yes she was intelligent, she was manipulative, but I liked that she was reprimanded many times to show her her errors. Especially Meridas telling her it was her fault that their "army" would either be killed or be slaves. Just showed that even she could make mistakes and be manipulated herself. The canon Jasnah would have seen many of these errors instantly, but that wouldn't have made as great of a story. Shinri was pretty one dimemsional. There were some allusions to some trauma she suffered as a child, and her supposedly carefree nature when unrestrained. None of that really is shown on the pages. She was more like Sansa with Jasnah's training, where she has just enough wit to know something is wrong, and yet walking into traps anyways. Aredor = Adolin, not many changes, except when he disobeyed his father. Adolin does that later in WOR, but not in canonical Way of Kings. Renarin was creepy to say the least. He was probably very depressed. Brandon has said he has grown a lot about handling mental issues. This was his early attempt to write a depressed character, and it shows how inept he was at that time, compared to canonical Way of Kings' treatment of Kaladin. The villains were written very well. I wish Meridas wasn't split up into Sadeas and Amaram in the canon WOK. This Meridas would have been devasating to the current characters of Stormlight. He had enough toxicity to get in people's heads, displayed just enough characterisitcs of nobility to be considered a fop and thus underestimated. And yet, he is just mean spirited, vain and proud enough to betray Dalinar and hamper his efforts to unify Alethkar under him. In my head canon, in today's books, I'll think of Meriddas as the man who failed to get Dalinar killed by Parshendi and then hampered his effort to unify Alethkar. And when all that failed, he betrayed humanity itself to go over to Odium for more power and attacked Thaylenah. Ahven the Idiot king was frighteningly competent. I agree with his assessment that he actually did not make any mistakes, but was defeated because Renarin was the unknown factor his seers couldn't foresee and thus plan against. Without those powers manifesting again, I have no doubt Ahven would have conquered Roshar. Overall, this book is a solid 8/10. I agree with Brandon in that nothing really happened in this book. This was more a historical political thriller with fantastic weapons than the beginning of a big fantasy epic. Compare this book with canon WOK. We know about the parshmen, we know the other more civilized Parshendi. We see how Parshmen are treated. It's finally revealed in the end that the Parshmen might be the voidbringers. This immediately evokes a feeling of dread, for the ubiquitous Parshmen might not be too happy on realizing that they were slaves for so long. But in WOK Prime, we don't know the Khothen, we don't know their motivations, we know nothing. Not at the start of the book, and not even at the end. We are left with a tantalizing cliffhanger about whether Taln was really a Herald, and about Ishar's betrayal. But really nothing of any substance really happened. Armies fought, some died, some lived, another battle, Others die, final battle, Taln fights, dies, Merin saves the day. I'll class this book as political thriller than a fantasy.