General YouTube 2024

Brandon Sanderson

The 2024 edition of the reading order of my books.

I generally do not recommend publication order. Why is this? That's because I feel like my first book, Elantris, is actually one of my weaker novels. Still, I hope you will someday read it. I do think it holds up moderately well. But it's not up to the caliber of what I write right now.

I would recommend, if you're just coming into this blind:

I would say read the original Mistborn trilogy, Mistborn One, Two, and Three.

Then, I would jump, and I would read Warbreaker.

Then, I would jump, and I would read another of the standalones, probably Tress of the Emerald Sea.

From there, I would jump, and I would start into the Stormlight Archive. And I don't know if I would read straight through the Stormlight Archive; each of those books are enormous. I might take breaks with the Wax and Wayne series, or the other standalones, such as Elantris or Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, and read those.

I do intend for people to read Dawnshard and Edgedancer in the middle of the Stormlight Archive; so Edgedancer, I would read after Book Two; Dawnshard, I would read after Book Three. And The Sunlit Man, I would read after Book Four. That's a standalone novel; it is intended to be read before you read Stormlight Five.

Where would I, then, add the short stories in? The rest, it doesn't matter that much. You can splice in Sixth of the Dusk, Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell, basically wherever you feel like they're appropriate and you want something a little shorter. They're collected in the volume Arcanum Unbounded.

Dan Wells

Now, you're talking about possibly (no promises being made) a revision and an actual release of White Sand. Is that something you would ever consider doing with Dragonsteel Prime or Aether of Night?

Brandon Sanderson

No. Main reasons being that they're too far out of continuity. I haven't been considering them in continuity. Like, Aether of Night, they fight Midnight Essence; shows up in Stormlight, shows up in Tress of the Emerald Sea. And we delve into the first appearances of a Shard of Adonalsium, but that Shard's no longer canon. And the worldbuilding of Aether of Night is totally canon; aethers have been showing up since late 2000s in my books. But Aether of Night, there's nothing about that book, of the actual plot and characters, there's nothing about that that is appealing to me or interesting to me. Hopefully, I will eventually write a book set on the aether planet, where the Aethers come from, which is where Aether of Night was. But that planet's completely different, and the story'll be completely different. Those characters aren't relevant to me.

Dragonsteel, I consider lightly canon to the Cosmere in that the events of Dragonsteel happen, mostly, but the worldbuilding's been refined so much that eventually I will write the book that will be called Dragonsteel (or maybe the series), but it'll now be Hoid's story, rather than Jerick's story. And it'll be a completely different type of story. Though little bits of it will be recognizable.

White Sand's the one that's still canon; I've been considering it canon all along. There's no events in White Sand that disrupt that. The characters are still really interesting to me. Khriss has shown up all over the Cosmere, and she's a main character in it. Baon's shown up in Stormlight twice, now (as of the little reading I did recently), so I wanna get a real good canon prose version of White Sand out there for those who don't want the graphic novel, so that it can be in the line. The big question I have, though, is: will I sit down to write it and be like, "I need to start on page one and just do this over?" Or will I be able to revise it and release it?

Brandon Sanderson

It is, frankly, a bit of a miracle that this [Secret Project Five] manifests in the middle of Stormlight Five. And it only did because I had a little bit of momentum on it from a number of years ago. And you'll find out once that is once we do more of the reveals. But it's something I've been writing on for maybe seven, eight years.

I wrote a bunch of this in Hawaii last year. I took some time and relaxed; I actually had two trips to Hawaii last year, one with the whole family, and then one with just myself and Emily. And that's where the bulk of this was written, was during those two trips.

Dan Wells

Secret Project Five is much shorter and more compact. It's got, I think, really only two POVs.

Brandon Sanderson

Something else I wanted to talk about with this. You mentioned High Cosmere Connectivity; I worked forever trying to figure out how to write that phrase. Because it had to fit in, like, two or three words on the screen. And it had to explain... and I'm not sure if people will understand, even still, what we're getting across. Because what I really wanted to say is: this book isn't intended for first-time Cosmere readers (though if you are a first-time Cosmere reader and you understand that, you'll probably have a good time). The rest of you probably should read a few Cosmere books before you pick this one up, then you will really enjoy it better. That's what I wanted to write; that's not three words.

If they know they're jumping into future era where there's a lot more cosmere connectivity... but, the story reads just fine on its own. There are plenty of people who could read this book, not know anything, and enjoy it quite a bit. It doesn't require you to have read other books to understand. But...

And some people don't like a lot of cosmere connections. And this one does have them. It's got characters from multiple different planets; some you've seen, some you haven't. And it's taking place, kind of dealing with future era sort of stuff. I think most readers will enjoy it, but I do want you to be aware of that, right? There are some people who are just like, "I just want to read Stormlight Archive, and I don't want to worry about the larger mess." And this is probably not something they would like.

Dan Wells

One of the things, as I was reading it (because I was keeping this idea in mind of how accessible is it to new readers), in a lot of ways I think... Imagine Lord of the Rings, except it starts after they've already left the Shire. So you don't actually get to see the homeland of anyone in the Fellowship. But you hear about their homeland, and they brag about their homeland to each other. That still works, right? It's very Guardians of the Galaxy; other than Earth, you don't really see anyone's homeworld. But you can accept, "Okay, these are all the adventurers that have come together to do the thing."

Brandon Sanderson

My number two was a book I don't think you ever read because I wasn't submitting to the writing group. It's called Star's End.

Dan Wells

I've heard of Star's End, and I've read some of Star's End. But you didn't submit it to the writing group, I think that was just Leading Edge read that. 

Brandon Sanderson

My early books I wanted to try a bunch of different genres. So this is - not really a space opera, I don't know what to call it. It's like a Star Trek episode. That's what it's like. It is a guy who gets assigned to a station whose job is to try to harness all the energy of an upcoming supernova. And they're trying to figure out how to make kind of like an expandable Dyson Sphere of energy receptors, that will with the nova go bigger and bigger, and be trapping a lot of this released energy. I don't know why I didn't just go with a Dyson Sphere, but yeah. 

I was new, I hadn't read all that much science fiction. But it plays out much more like a Star Trek episode with technobabble rather than science, so it's not hard science.

And he shows up and it turns out this space station has become a confluence - he's in charge of it but a bunch of alien species are very interested in what's happening here, and they start showing up and jockeying for political position with the energy that's going to come from this station. And there's a mystery, there's a murder and all sorts of things ensue. It's basically murder mystery/ interaction with weird aliens. So like I said,  very Star Trek-y.

Brandon Sanderson

My fourth book, Knight Life (with a 'k') - it wasn't a Pratchett-esque thing, because I didn't know Prachett back then ... it was Bob Asprin. It was very Bob Asprin inspired. Very pun, and very light comedy, not real social commentary, not that kind of extra layer that Prachett or Adams could layer on. And just kind of silly fantasy about the last barbarian who ever lived and his sidekick.