Review: Elsecaller and King Lopen the First of Alethkar, by Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, and Isaac Stewart
by
Stuart Holland
I love that Brandon keeps playing with the entire format around delivering stories. This book is a set of two short stories that were first distributed… as decks of collectible cards during a convention. Bizarre place to start. But not only that, this book is… double sided? Elsecaller starts from one end and is one way up, and then you reach the end of that story and flip the book over and read King Lopen the First of Alethkar starting at the other end! It has two front covers! (So I’ve included both in this review.)
And on top of that, Brandon also didn’t write these stories himself. The shorthand here is that he has canonized some fanfiction, but that’s not quite true either. Dan and Isaac are folks he works with, and Brandon was involved in the writing and revising of each story. In the end, their merging has worked well - the stories feel very true to the Stormlight series and the characters feel like themselves as they are seen in other books.
On to the stories themselves, I was definitely more excited about Elsecaller - seeing what happened to Jasnah after she (Words of Radiance spoiler) was something I’ve wanted to know more about for quite some time. And seeing an (Oathbringer spoiler) was also fascinating. Alas, the story was over very quickly!
King Lopen surprised me and I enjoyed it quite a lot. Lopen is a fun character to be around and I can definitely see where Sanderson was going in the foreword for this story, in making sure that Lopen didn’t become too much slapstick or too absurd. It’s also a real pull at the heartstrings to see (Oathbringer spoiler)
This book is short and not essential to the larger Stormlight story, but it is nice flavor to sprinkle on top of the Stormlight main courses that makes the full dish all the better.
