It’s been an emotional roller coaster of a week, but now I get to talk about this delightful little book. After I read Cress in June, I read Edgedancer by Brandon Sanderson. This is a short novella set in Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive series. It takes place between the end of Words of Radiance, which I read in May, and the beginning of Oathbringer, which I haven’t started yet.
While Edgedancer takes place between the second and third book of the Stormlight Archives, I think you could potentially read it inn its own, without reading any of the much longer Stormlight books. That being said, you might be confused because the world building is a lot less detailed than it is in the Stormlight books, and I’m not sure how much sense it would make if you didn’t already have the context of the other books. Nevertheless, I’m going to write this review without any spoilers for the main series. If you haven’t read any of the Stormlight books and you’re curious, you can check out my review for the first book, The Way of Kings, right over here. The short version: The Way of Kings is long but so worth it.
So Edgedancer stars Lift, the young street urchin who we meet briefly in Words of Radiance. Since I was really intrigued by Lift’s interlude in Words of Radiance, I was delighted to discover this novella from her point of view.
The novella opens with the interlude from Words of Radiance, where Lift and some friends break into the palace, Lift meets the executioner in black who is searching out potential knights radiant, and Lift saves her friend’s life with her own powers. Her friend becomes the new premier of the country,, stops the executioner from killing Lift, and Lift gets everything she could have wanted out of life. But she’s unsatisfied, and when she hears the executioner in black is heading somewhere else, she follows him and decides to try to stop him from killing another potential knight radiant.
This book was a breeze. It was fast-paced and fun, and I really loved Lift’s voice and her very particular turns of phrase. I also loved watching her journey and her character development as she grows into using and accepting her powers.
Another thing I really liked is how we get to see the immediate impact of the events of the climax of Words of Radiance on other parts of the world. It was really fun to see other countries and go into details about them and also how the main series is impacting the world.
The only part of the book that didn’t quite work for me was that the start of the book was the same as the interlude in Words of Radiance. This definitely bothered me because I had just read Words of Radiance so it was fresh in my mind. But if it wasn’t fresh in my mind, this wouldn’t be a problem. It’s a good place to start the story, because it grounds us in who Lift is and how she gets to where she’s going. If you haven’t read Words of Radiance recently, or if you’re reading the book on its own, I think it is a good place to start and not a problem at all. For me, because I had just read Words of Radiance, it was just redundant.
But on the whole, this was a fun, fast novella, and a great next installment in the Stormlight Archives series. Now that the bar is over, I’m really looking forward to diving back into this world with Oathbringer.