The-Way-Of-Kings-Prime-By-Brandon
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the WAY of KINGS PRIME THE 2002 ALTERNATE VERSION FICTION BY BRANDON SANDERSON® THE STORMLIGHT ARCHIVE® The Way of Kings Words of Radiance Oathbringer THE MISTBORN® SAGA THE ORIGINAL TRILOGY Mistborn: The Final Empire The Well of Ascension The Hero of Ages THE WAX & WAYNE SERIES The Alloy of Law Shadows of Self The Bands of Mourning THE RECKONERS® Steelheart Firefight Calamity SKYWARD Skyward Starsight ALCATRAZ VS. THE EVIL LIBRARIANS Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians The Scrivener’s Bones The Knights of Crystallia The Shattered Lens The Dark Talent NOVELS Elantris Warbreaker The Rithmatist NOVELETTES Firstborn Defending Elysium Mitosis: A Reckoners Story NOVELLAS Perfect State Snapshot Children of the Nameless INFINITY BLADE Infinity Blade: Awakening Infinity Blade: Redemption COLLECTIONS Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere® Collection Legion: The Many Lives of Stephen Leeds GRAPHIC NOVELS White Sand, Volumes 1–3 Dark One THE WHEEL OF TIME, with Robert Jordan The Gathering Storm Towers of Midnight A Memory of Light SANDERSON CURIOSITIES The Way of Kings Prime This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. the way of Kings Prime Copyright © 2020 by Dragonsteel Entertainment, LLC All rights reserved. A Dragonsteel Entertainment Book Published by Dragonsteel Entertainment, LLC American Fork, UT brandonsanderson.com Brandon Sanderson®, The Stormlight Archive®, Mistborn®, Cosmere®, Reckoners®, Dragonsteel Entertainment®, and the logo are registered trademarks of Dragonsteel Entertainment, LLC ISBN 978-1-938570-24-7 First Dragonsteel Edition: December 2020 Printed in the United States of America 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Sanderson C uriosities the WAY of KINGS PRIME THE 2002 ALTERNATE VERSION BRANDON SANDERSON ® A D ragonsteel Entertainment® Book INTRODUCTION his book is both one of my greatest accomplishments and one of my greatest failures. TI started it during a difficult time in my life. I’d graduated with my undergraduate degree in English in 2000, but had been summarily rejected from every graduate program to which I’d applied. (The book Elantris was my writing sample for those submissions.) The publishing industry didn’t want my books either; I’d been racking up a nice stack of rejections saying my books were too long. On top of it all, I’d just finished writing what I consider two of the weak- est books of my career. (Though later on the ideas from these unpublished books evolved into Mistborn.) And this was when I decided to begin the most ambitious story I’d ever attempted. I’ve talked a lot about that time in my life; you might have heard the story before. I started The Way of Kings because I needed something for me. Something to prove to myself that I still loved writing. After spending several years chasing the market by trying to write like popular writers who were selling at the time, I asked myself, “What would I most want to read? What would I be writing if I didn’t care what the publishing industry thought?” The book you are now reading is the result. I was told my books were too viii PREFACE long; this is even longer than any book I’d heretofore created. Publishers told me to focus less on magic and more on creating gritty Earth-like set- tings, like what was selling at the time. I went off in a completely different direction, into a land of knights in magical power armor, ancient magics, and an ecology that was far, far removed from anything you’d find on Earth. To an extent this was me giving up, but in the most glorious way possible. I had realized, during those dark moments, that I loved writing so much that I wasn’t going to give up, even if I was never published. The Way of Kings was for me. It was my exploration of my own goals for the fantasy genre—my feelings of where it could go, what it could do—and what I’d like to see fantasy become. I’ve talked about something my friends jokingly called “worldbuilder’s disease.” That’s the affliction a writer can get where they spend all their time worldbuilding, and never actually tell their story. For The Way of Kings, I decided to GIVE myself worldbuilder’s disease. I let myself just think and plan about the world for months and months before writing—far more than I normally did. At the time, I was working the graveyard shift at a hotel and would write during downtime. I bought a three-ring binder, and I started printing off pages of Roshar’s worldbuilding each day after I finished. I filled that thing up with some three or four hundred thousand words of ideas for the setting—more words than the book itself eventually had. In part, this was to give myself time to deal with all the rejections I’d been getting. Things eventually got better. I finally got accepted to a graduate school. (BYU let me in; I hadn’t wanted to apply there initially because that’s where I’d done my undergraduate studies. However, out of twelve applications the first year and another eight the next year, it’s the only school that accepted me.) I started to see some small successes in publishing. And right around the time I finished The Way of Kings Prime, I finally sold a book. The Way of Kings saw me through it all. It shepherded me through my transition from an amateur to a professional writer—and the text, as you’ll soon find out, shows that. This book is a failure, but a spectacular one. I’d never attempted something on this scope before, and so I tried to write too many different viewpoints, with too many different plotlines for me to juggle. The end result, as you’ll read, is a book that lacks focus—it’s trying to do too much. What it envisions is awesome, but because of my limited skill at the time, I ended up with a large number of fragments of different stories told together in one book—rather than something that tells a single narrative. THE WAY OF KINGS PRIME ix Everything is going to feel just a little off to you in this novel. Indeed, themes like mental health, which I later learned better ways of addressing, are . handled less delicately in this book. Also, in reading history, I found that many arranged marriages happened between people of extremely disparate ages, and I wanted to explore that kind of strange relationship. (I did it in a way that didn’t involve anything uncomfortable happening—but it still came off poorly in the book. Fair warning.) Almost all the characters are here, though most of them have different names. (Jasnah and Dalinar are the only names I remember keeping. And I don’t believe Navani exists yet.) Kaladin, called Merin in this, has a completely different arc—as I hadn’t put Bridge Four into the book yet, and hadn’t yet figured out how to make spren part of the world as I wanted. Taln, the Herald, is a main character—I envisioned him as the main character of the series back then, though his arc was supposed to be un- certain, as I didn’t want you to know if he’s actually what he claims, or if he’s delusional. The events of this book are far, far different from the published version. So please don’t assume anything in here is still canon, or an indication of the future for the real Stormlight Archive—even the name of the series was different; I was calling it the Dawnshards. All that said, I’m very proud of this novel. It’s the book I wrote right before Mistborn, and is of a similar quality—just less controlled. It taught me a great deal, however, and I still think it’s worth reading—so long as you understand that the book is an embryonic version of the story I truly dreamed of telling. I would eventually gain the skill and confidence, after years of thinking about what went wrong, to write the book a better way. If for some reason you haven’t read the published version, please read that one first. Despite all its flaws, it’s exactly what I needed when I wrote it. And it is the seed that eventually grew into something great. I hope you find something in it to love. 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(In those of fact, one was published, the with binders the now the pages printed you book of writing gave groups—who and feedback. the by it read time Even still it large a had people group of way, tional Even though For this Curiosities Sanderson Ahlstrom thanks edition, big For Peter go to ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The Way of Kings Prime of Way The was never in published the tradi — friends, family, members of of members friends, family, Elantris - Rashkah Warden Khardinar HIGH WATCHINGS Nahel-Elir's Teth-Kanar Bay DISTANT PRALL Kholinar Sea of Chomar Jorevan The Drunken Mountains Streatched Bay Ral Eram DAVAR LAIT Shentil's Crook Veden City Flinwell RIENAR LAIT Channel Lahkhor (The Daughter) Drywater SVADEN Kenedal Channel LAIT Nomkhor (The Son) This is a map of Roshar Far Channel Proper, as it was divided Nanah during the days of the Epoch Kingdoms.