Edgedancer - Brandon Sanderson

   2014; 268 pages.  Full Title: “Edgedancer: From the Stormlight Archive”.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Action-Adventure, Epic Fantasy.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

 

    Meet Lift.  A child of the streets, and just ten years old.  Although that’s a bit misleading, since she’s claimed to be that age for three years in a row now.

 

    She survives on the streets by the use of her wits, plus a couple of handy talents she’s somehow picked up along the way.  Her traveling companion, Wyndle, is also a creature (a “spren”, actually) with some unusual abilities.

 

    Lift and Wyndle prefer to avoid attention.  As long as they can find a bit of food to eat and a place to sleep at night, they’re content.  When they can’t find those things, Lift uses one of her talents to find food and shelter.  For instance, she’s an excellent pickpocket and cat burglar.

 

    As is true with any street urchin, most people go out of their way to pretend not to notice her and Wyndle.  With one exception.  Lift calls him the Man in Black.  He’s been trailing them for quite some time now.  Doggedly.  Like a bloodhound on a scent.

 

    What could he possibly want?

 

What’s To Like...

    Edgedancer is set in Brandon Sanderson’s “Stormlight” fantasy world, but it is not technically part of it.  Instead, it's apparently a plot thread tangent featuring a minor character from Book 2, Words of Radiance.  The book opens with a 57-page-long Prologue (22% Kindle), and reportedly is a retelling of a portion of Book 2.  I’ve only read the first book, The Way of Kings, so it was all new to me.

 

    Both the Prologue and the main story follow the adventures of Lift and Wyndle.  The storyline is YA-oriented, which means I'm not the target audience.  Nonetheless, I thoroughly enjoyed Brandon Sanderson’s storytelling.  The thrills-&-spills were nail-biting, and the banter between our two protagonists was witty throughout.

 

    The character-building is equally superb.  One expects the protagonists to be well developed, and indeed they are.  But the secondary characters, such as “the Stump”, the old philosopher, and “Darkness” (the Man in Black) are deeply detailed as well.

 

    There is also a coming-of-age aspect to the story.  Lift may have some fabulous talents, but she’s not a master of any of them, and almost certainly has other yet-to-be-discovered ones.  And she finds herself facing a bunch of formidable challenges, ranging from actions that will determine who rules, to caring about the poor and homeless.

 

    I liked the way the magic system worked.  Lift has been endowed with some powerful spellcasting (she labels them “Awesomeness”), but they have limitations and are not foolproof.  For instance, Awesomeness gets used up rapidly and is only replenished by eating lots of food.

 

Kindle Details…

    Edgedancer sells for $5.99 right now at Amazon.  The five full-length (and I do mean “full-length”) e-books in the series will cost you anywhere from $11.99 to $20.99 apiece.  This may sound pricey until you look at the page-count of each volume.  Brandon Sanderson has lots of other series and standalones for your reading pleasure, generally in the $8.99-$12.99 price range, many of which also have hefty page-counts.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.6*/5, based on 18,637 ratings and 782 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.14*/5, based on 153,409 ratings and 11,131 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “He told me tonight was a good night for sneaking.  I owed it to him.  Besides, I wanted to be here in case he got into trouble.  I might need to help.”

    “Why bother?”

    Why indeed?  “Someone has to care,” she said, starting down the hallway.  “Too few people care these days.

    “You say this while coming in to rob people.”

    “Sure.  I ain’t gonna hurt them.”

    “You have an odd sense of morality, mistress.”

    “Don’t be stupid,” she said.  “Every sense of morality is odd.”  (loc. 296)

 

    “What body part do you feel that you are most like?” he asked.  “Are you the hand, always busy doing work?  Are you the mind, giving direction?  Do you feel that you are more of a . . . leg, perhaps?  Bearing up everyone else, and rarely noticed?”

    (. . .) 

    Lift eyed him.  Great.  Angry twig running an orphanage; weird old man outside it.  She dusted off her hands.  “If I’m anything, I’m a nose.  ‘Cuz I’m filled with all kinds of weird crud, and you never know what’s gonna fall out.”  (loc. 1175)

 

 “Guard, do something!  There’s a dirty refugee in my grain!”  (loc. 888)

    I didn’t note any profanity in Edgedancer.  When the situation call for it, Brandon Sanderson uses the euphemisms.  “Starving” and “storming” replace f-bombs, and if you want to invoke a deity, you say “by Yaszir himself”.  I really like this way of handling fantasy world cussing.  There also were no “adult situations” that I recall. 

 

      Several reviewers felt the ending was rushed and incomplete.  They have a point, but I think such a finale is inherent when you’re penning a tangential storyline.  Edgedancer chronicles a phase of Lift’s life, but is not indispensable to the overarching storyline in the Stormlight series.

 

    Edgedancer is both a standalone book and set in what is one of Brandon Sanderson’s most popular series.  Although it’s technically true that, thanks to the Prologue, you don’t have to read the whole series first, I didn’t, and this is one of the few cases where I wish I had.

 

    Still, an author with the writing skills of Brandon Sanderson can make this work, and yey again, I found his storyline completely mesmerizing.  Despite me not being in the target audience, the book held my attention from start to finish.  Now I just have to get motivated to read Book 2 of the series.  It is a mere 1,328 pages long.

 

    9 Stars.  Speaking of lengthiness, can you think of any other book that’s 268 pages long and described as a “novella”?  I can’t.  But each of the five books in this series is about 1,300 pages long, so I guess in this case that label is applicable here.