Everything You Need To Know About The Way of Kings

As every book blogger is most certainly posting, there is now an exclusive excerpt of The Way of Kings available at Tor.com. You can read it here. But here at Stomping on Yeti, I don't like just posting excerpts, so instead; I present to you all the relevant content I can find regarding The Way of Kings.

1) The Way of Kings is written by Brandon Sanderson, who previously wrote Elantris, The Mistborn Trilogy, Warbreaker, and who is currently tasked with finishing the late great Robert Jordan's Wheel of TimeSeries.

2) The Way of Kings is the first book in The Stormlight Archives, Tor's newest flagship series. Brandon Sanderson has previously posted a great spoiler-free summary of The Stormlight Archives on his own blog. If you are looking for a good summary of the scope and content of the series, definitely read this.

3) The Stormlight Archives is currently estimated to be 10 volumes long although that number comes from Tor, not Sanderson. Sanderson has said he has the entire series plotted/outlined but doesn't guarantee a number of volumes.

4) Amazon.com lists The Way of Kings at 1008 pages long and Sanderson estimated the book at about 390K words long. The standard novel length is around 100K. You will get your money's worth with this book.

5) Tor.com has posted an exclusive excerpt (about 50 pages or so) on their site here. I'm sure there will be plenty of cross posts with this everywhere.

6) The cover of The Way of Kings is up at the top, plus my thoughts if you care.

7) The publisher's description of The Way of Kings from Amazon.

Widely acclaimed for his work completing Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time saga, Brandon Sanderson now begins a grand cycle of his own, one every bit as ambitious and immersive.

Roshar is a world of stone and storms. Uncanny tempests of incredible power sweep across the rocky terrain so frequently that they have shaped ecology and civilization alike. Animals hide in shells, trees pull in branches, and grass retracts into the soilless ground. Cities are built only where the topography offers shelter.

It has been centuries since the fall of the ten consecrated orders known as the Knights Radiant, but their Shardblades and Shardplate remain: mystical swords and suits of armor that transform ordinary men into near-invincible warriors. Men trade kingdoms for Shardblades. Wars were fought for them, and won by them.

One such war rages on a ruined landscape called the Shattered Plains. There, Kaladin, who traded his medical apprenticeship for a spear to protect his little brother, has been reduced to slavery. In a war that makes no sense, where ten armies fight separately against a single foe, he struggles to save his men and to fathom the leaders who consider them expendable.

Brightlord Dalinar Kholin commands one of those other armies. Like his brother, the late king, he is fascinated by an ancient text called The Way of Kings. Troubled by over-powering visions of ancient times and the Knights Radiant, he has begun to doubt his own sanity.
Across the ocean, an untried young woman named Shallan seeks to train under an eminent scholar and notorious heretic, Dalinar’s niece, Jasnah. Though she genuinely loves learning, Shallan’s motives are less than pure. As she plans a daring theft, her research for Jasnah hints at secrets of the Knights Radiant and the true cause of the war.

The result of over ten years of planning, writing, and world-building, The Way of Kings is but the opening movement of the Stormlight Archive, a bold masterpiece in the making.

Speak again the ancient oaths,

Life before death.
Strength before weakness.
Journey before Destination.

and return to men the Shards they once bore.

The Knights Radiant must stand again.

8) The Way of Kings will be published on August 31st, 2010.

I think that's it. The Way of Kings has been on my highly anticipated list for quite some time so I am very excited to see some actual pages.

Oh and look at this little guy. Shiny!