The Way of Kings

The Way of Kings is the first book in The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson.

After gods called the Heralds beat the evil Voidbringers, they decide to leave the world and let their soldiers, the Knights Radiant take over. The Radiants become corrupt and destroy themselves.

Thousands of years later the magic swords of the Radiants, called Shardblades give people powers and light eyes so Warrior countries like Alethkar make light-eyed people their leaders. Then Alethkar’s king Gavilar Kholin is killed by someone called Szeth who works for people called the Parshendi. When Gavilar he dies, he asks Szeth to tell his brother to find the most important words a man can say so Szeth writes down that message. (Even though, in Alethkar it’s against the religion for men to read or write.)

Gavilar’s brother Dalinar go to war against the Parshendi, the people who had Gavilar killed. Dalinar finds out that there’s a book called The Way of Kings about how to find the most important words that a man can say and that it was one of the ideas of the Knights Radiant. Dalinar also finds out that every Radiant used to say “Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination.”

He also finds out that each Radiant has to swear nine oaths and that they have to have the most important words that you can say.

Dalinar’s niece, Jasnah Kholin, causes a scandal by admitting that she’s an atheist. Jasnah then takes an apprentice named Shallan. Shallan secretly plans to steal from Jasnah and then she meets a Spirit called Pattern who wants to understand her secrets and lies. With Pattern’s help, Shallan finds out that Jasnah is a Radiant and is planning to save the world from the Voidbringers.

A boy named Kaladin, whose father Lirin was a surgeon and a pacifist, wanted to be a soldier but his father said no. Kaladin had dark eyes, so the light-eyed people who ruled were mean to him and his family. He tried to stop them, so they had his little brother Tien forced to become a soldier. Kaladin chose to join the army to protect Tien but his commander decided to put Tien in front and Tien got killed. Kaladin was angry about this.

Then a man with a Shardblade attacked and killed almost every soldier, so Kaladin killed him to stop him. Kaladin refused to take the Shardblade since he didn’t want to have light-eyes. Kaladin gave the Shardblade to another soldier, so his commander Amaram killed that soldier. Amaram also killed everyone else except Kaladin for being witnesses. Amaram also had Kaladin enslaved.

Kaladin then met a female spirit named Syl who wanted to help him out. Syl talks Kaladin out of killing himself and tells him to believe in “Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination.” Kaladin swears an oath to “protect those who cannot protect themselves”, so Syl gives him powers and he becomes a Radiant.

Then Dalinar realizes that the Parshendi are the Voidbringers and that the Radiants are coming back and he needs to get them all to work together to save the world or it will be destroyed.