White Sand, Volume 1 by Brandon SandersonMy rating: 1 of 5 stars
This was shockingly terribly. I'm not the kind of person who usually trashes people's hard creative work, but, oh dear, this was quite terrible.
The language is good, but the beginning feels terribly derivative of 'Dune' before it. It's also really weird to write a story in the 21st century where the characters are divided by race. The Daysiders are sand masters and they're all white. We later meet Darksiders (yeah, seriously) who turn out to be black. The white characters are all bald (mostly), except for the main one who is blonde. He's also supposed to be half-black, but doesn't look anything like it.
Add to this there are a grand total of 3 and a half female characters among a veritable sea of male characters. How does that work? Not to mention the fact that because one of the judges at a council is female she is constantly referred to (and refers to herself as) 'Lady Judge'. Which century do we live in?
The story isn't interesting at all and it's all very predictable. Hero takes on an unlikely journey... and wins. Hero suffers a great loss [spoiler: everyone he knows dies] but he doesn't react at all. Predictable bad person predictably happens to be the villain. It's all quite boring.
I can't comment on the art because the copy I received from NetGalley was so utterly low-res I couldn't make head nor tale of what was going on for a lot of it. At least I tried.
I haven't read any other Sanderson books, even though I have heard a lot about him, but I'm assuming none of his other books are as listless as this one.
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