The Way of Kings

Journey Before Destination

I recount reading the entirety of ‘The Way of Kings’ cooped up in a room on a cruise during a family vacation. I didn’t leave my room for the first 3 days of the 7 day experience, and all I did was read. For a book that I downloaded on a whim, I’ve yet to have had a book that would shape so many of the aspects of my character as this singular fantasy novel.

Morals and Ethics are something that are quite easy to preach off. The universal truths about how lives should be lead are simple enough that they may all fit into a single sentence. But the issue with such pure confirmations is that they find no purchase in the mind. Simple, Livable ideals are flawless. We were never built to inhabit a flawless world, so we find it hard to inhabit flawless morals.

This is the very reason we have been telling myths and fables since time immemorial. In our tales we craft beings who embody the best within ourselves. The parts that will slip if we do not give them purchase. So we turn them into people. Fictional people yes, but people who’s stories we can remember. People who we can look back at and ask, “How would they have done this”. Even when these people are but characters, characters that never lived, and had magic powers and visions of the future.

Brandon writes about broken people. Broken people who live for something greater than themselves, who make choices that I would want to make.

They were all broken silly

• Sylphrena

A soldier who lives with discipline and compassion. Who keeps coming back even when he is in the worst circumstance you could be in.

A general who lives by a code, even when that code pits him against everyone in the world.

A young girl who makes the most defiant choices, see’s her fears and steps forward regardless.

One Thousand Pages, three characters, a dozen nuggets of wisdom, and a story that changed me.

Life before death, strength before weakness, journey before destination.