White Sand III

This review contains SPOILERS. Read at your own risk.

So, you can ask Brandon for a copy and he'll mail it to you.

Good things about the book:

- Balanced magic system
- Well thought out economy
- Very well written characters
- Plot and pacing is excellent

Things I didn't like:

- Bad worldbuilding in certain areas
- Way too many twists
- No map (I guess the published version will have one)

White Sand is set on a tidally locked planet called Taldain. Which means that the two faces of the planet are either in constant sunlight or darkness. This should in theory mean that life, as we know it, shouldn't be able to exist. But apparently, it does. And not only on the dayside, it even exists on the darkside where plants grow without sunlight. Dayside should be under constant heating, and all the water should have evaporated ages back, but it hasn't. Darkside is cold, but not so cold to be freezing.

The thing I like most about Sanderson's worldbuilding is that it always makes sense. The conclusions you'd draw from the given scenario would be the exact same conclusions that Brandon makes (perhaps even better). That guarantees you suspension of disbelief.

For eg, at the end of the Mistborn trilogy when Terris-people are freed, and start to populate again, it becomes logical that the powers of Allomancy and Feruchemy would become mixed and come out in the same person. And that is what the next book is all about.

The second issue I have with the book is that it has way too many character twists. It is often required of the plot, and some of it requires clever foreshadowing; both of which Brandon tries. But apart from the few cases where it works (the Aha! moment), there are like 5 extra character twists where the character is not what you thought him to be. It feels too much like a heavy-handed trope used far too many times for a single book.

I would have liked to see a map of the book, but I guess that will be fixed in the final published version. My rating is 4.5 because while I enjoyed the book overall, there were times I felt like it could have been made better. The rating is actually bumped from 4 to 4.5 because its still unpublished.

I can't wait for the graphic novels to come out and see what all is changed from the original material.