* Dalinar, the assassinated king's brother and uncle of the new one, is an old soldier who is weary of fighting. He is plagued by dreams of ancient times and legendary wars, visions that may force him into a new role he could never have imagined.

* Kaladin, a highborn young man who has been brought low, indeed to the most miserable level of military slavery, and like Ben Hur must suffer and struggle to survive and rise again.

* Shallan, a naïve but brave and brilliant young woman who will do anything to save her impoverished noble house from ruin.

These are people we will come to know deeply and take to our hearts. But just as important to is a fourth key ‘character’, the unique world of Roshar itself, a richly imagined setting as real as science fiction's Dune, as unforgettable as epic fantasy's Middle Earth. Through all the volumes of , Brandon Sanderson will make Roshar a realm we are eager to visit.

What Robert Jordan's has been to the fantasy genre for the last two decades, will be to the next, and is where it all begins.

From the bestselling author who completed Robert Jordan's epic series comes a new, original creation that matches anything else in modern fantasy for epic scope, thrilling imagination, superb characters and sheer addictiveness. Return to a planet swept by apocalyptic storms, a world tipping into war as aristocratic families move to control the Shardblades and Shardplates, ancient artifacts from a past civilisation that can win wars. As the world tips into a war for control of the mythical artifacts of power made from Shard, characters are swept up into new dangers which will threaten their integrity and their lives. Huge, ideas-filled, world-spanning fantasy from a master of the genre.

This story takes place after and contains spoilers for

 

In Oathbringer, the third volume of the Stormlight Archive, humanity faces a new Desolation with the return of the Voidbringers, a foe with numbers as great as their thirst for vengeance. Dalinar Kholin’s Alethi armies won a fleeting victory at a terrible cost: The enemy Parshendi summoned the violent Everstorm, which now sweeps the world with destruction, and in its passing awakens the once peaceful and subservient parshmen to the horror of their millennia-long enslavement by humans. While on a desperate flight to warn his family of the threat, Kaladin Stormblessed must come to grips with the fact that the newly kindled anger of the parshmen may be wholly justified. Nestled in the mountains high above the storms, in the tower city of Urithiru, Shallan Davar investigates the wonders of the ancient stronghold of the Knights Radiant and unearths dark secrets lurking in its depths. And Dalinar realizes that his holy mission to unite his homeland of Alethkar was too narrow in scope. Unless all the nations of Roshar can put aside Dalinar’s blood-soaked past and stand together—and unless Dalinar himself can confront that past — even the restoration of the Knights Radiant will not prevent the end of civilization.