The Emperor's Soul
WINNER, 2013 Hugo Award for Best Novella! Nominee, 2013 World Fantasy Award for Novella! From #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson, The Emperor's Soul showcases a fascinating magic system as the clock ticks down for a condemned criminal. When Shai is caught replacing the Moon Scepter with her nearly flawless forgery, she must bargain for her life. An assassin has left the Emperor Ashravan without consciousness, a circumstance concealed only by the death of his wife. If the emperor does not emerge after his hundred-day mourning period, the rule of the Heritage Faction will be forfeit and the empire will fall into chaos. Shai is given an impossible task: to create—to Forge—a new soul for the emperor in less than one hundred days. But her soul-Forgery is considered an abomination by her captors. She is confined to a tiny, dirty chamber, guarded by a man who hates her, spied upon by politicians, and trapped behind a door sealed in her own blood. Shai's only possible ally is the emperor's most loyal councillor, Gaotona, who struggles to understand her true talent. Time is running out for Shai. Forging, while deducing the motivations of her captors, she needs a perfect plan to escape…
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6recommend
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2015–2022years
100% recommend
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What Hacker News says
- Sanderson fan chiming in to promote The Emperor's Soul over Mistborn as a primer.
From another comment: "It's a short novella, so you can finish it in a 2-3 hour reading session. And it will give you a taste of his writing style as well as a metaphysical primer to his Cosmere universe."
- Emperor's Soul is a fantastic book along with Warbreaker. The world building Sanderson does is amazing even in his shorter books.
- Linked this in a related discussion yesterday, he has a page specifically for this question: https://www.brandonsanderson.com/where-do-i-start/
"The Cosmere" is his overarching fantasy universe, with The Stormlight Archive as its big fantasy epic (beginning with The Way of Kings). That series has references to his other fantasy work, including his other big series (Mistborn), but you don't necessarily need to have read anything else first. I think there are 4 books now with 10 planned, I haven't read the latest one yet but I enjoyed the first three.
It's been a couple of years but I remember really liking The Emperor's Soul, and it's a $5 ebook novella so you're not investing too much time or money to check it out. DRM free from Kobo, not sure if that's the case via Amazon/Kindle.
- I was also surprised not to see Sanderson on the list. The Emperor’s Soul may be my favorite book of all time however I do think it is technically classified as novella.
- Within the cosmere universe, there is a one off novella that Sanderson wrote called "The Emperor's Soul". It is quite good, and it won a Hugo award.
I very much disagree about his worlds lacking authenticity. It seems you have some strange suspension of disbelief resulting from Shallan's dialogue (which I find is true to her character and upbringing). I agree some of the writing for dialogue is "off", but I feel much of this results from Sanderson's pace of writing.
- I think the response is more accurate - that big ideas and epic world-building require a lot of space. http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/may/20/fanta...
And I would cite Brandon Sanderson as a good example (and good counter-example to the original article) - smaller ideas get novellas (Legion, Emperor's Soul), medium-sized ideas get novels (Elantris, Rithmatist, Warbreaker), epic ideas get large novels in series(Mistborn, Way of Kings).
All excellent, by the way...
