The way of kings

[Blue-phoenix186]

What does the in universe Way of kings Book look like for example is it a Big tome or is it just an average book

[Treamayne]

12 hours ago, Blue-phoenix186 said:

What does the in universe Way of kings Book look like for example is it a Big tome or is it just an average book

We don't have a definitive answer to this, but the best description we have comes from Oathbringer Ch 105:

Spoiler

 

Inside the royal reading room, he found Jasnah with a huge tome set before her at a standing table. . .

Just a series of stories, their morals ambiguous. It took almost eight hours to finish, but Jasnah never gave any indication she wanted to stop.

 

Huge, in this instance, is a useless description since we don't know if the books are handwritten or not; and what size a "normal" book may be. However, the fact that the entire book could be read aloud in only 8 Hours at least shows that the content is on-par with shorter modern novels (compare with other audiobooks that are 8 hours long) regardless of the binding and text size.

Edited September 8, 2022 by Treamayne
SPAG

[Elegy he/him]

13 minutes ago, Treamayne said:

We don't have a definitive answer to this 0 but the best description we have comes from Oathbringer Ch 105:

  Hide contents

 

Inside the royal reading room, he found Jasnah with a huge tome set before her at a standing table. . .

Just a series of stories, their morals ambiguous. It took almost eight hours to finish, but Jasnah never gave any indication she wanted to stop.

 

Huge, in this instance, is a useless description since we don't know if the books are handwritten or not; and what size a "normal" book may be. However, the fact that the entire book could be read aloud in only 8 Hours at least shows that the content is on-par with shorter modern novels (compare with other audiobooks that are 8 hours long) regardless of the binding and text size.

This is a great bit of information. We don't know how long Alethi words are on average, but if they are comparable to English in length, that would be circa 80,000 words. Alloy of Law, for reference, is 90,000 words, Warbreaker 200,000, Way of Kings (the real one) 380,000.

[Yumiya]

Do remember that Jasneh probably didn't read him the subtext only for women. That means the book would be much larger that a traditional hardcopy of 8 hours in today's printing methods. 

[offer]

22 minutes ago, Yumiya said:

Do remember that Jasneh probably didn't read him the subtext only for women. That means the book would be much larger that a traditional hardcopy of 8 hours in today's printing methods. 

Does the way of kings have an undertext? It was written in a time when men also wrote. On the other hand maybe there is an undertext written during the translation, which probably happened later (the way of kings was originally in dawnchant, right?). 

[Yumiya]

Hmm.. The original probably would not have, given as you say men wrote at the time. It was originally in Dawnchant, given the conversation Dalinar had with Nohadon was the proof Navani used to prove the visons true as one of his sentences matched one in the Analectics.

So the text probably saw a couple of translations and numerous transcriptions. Additionally, Jasnah in one of her earliest published works claimed "More disturbingly, modified copies of ancient texts were made, aligning history to match Hierocratic dogma." The Way of Kings, being one of the oldest know texts, was probably modified in this way.

Undertexts seem to be expected in modern books. I assume that once that tradition began, whoever transcribed new copies added to or modified the existing undertexts, as a way of putting their mark on history. Those may have been lengthy, like the one Jasnah promised to write for Dalinar's book. 

Regardless, each book would have been unique, a piece of art. That is something most of us in the world of the printing press often forget. We have different editions of books, but copies of the same edition will be the same. That is not true when paper is expensive and books are written by hand. How big the book would depend on the size of the hand writing, content of undertext, quality of paper and numerous other variables.