I have been a lurker of the various Sanderson-themed subreddits. Unfortunately for me and my fellow introverts, there isn’t much here to lurk at (yet!). I thought maybe we could get things started by discussing how we all got into the Cosmere. I’ll go first!
In November of last year, a friend of mine recommended I read Mistborn. I had just barely started reading again after a long break and was in need of a new series. I was about to go on a long drive, so I borrowed the audiobook from the library so I had something to listen to. I didn’t realize what I was getting myself into. In the last six months, I have read every single Cosmere book I could get my hands on, and have absolutely loved each one. I finished it all off with Tress last month. My only regret is not getting into this sooner so I could have been a part of the Secret Project Kickstarter.
Here’s hoping we can get this community going!
You must log in or register to comment.
I saw a recommendation in a thread on /r/books over at reddit actually! I started reading around the time of Words of Radiance, and went through things pretty slowly in a relatively unintuitive order:
- Way of Kings
- Words of Radiance
- The Final Empire
- Warbreaker
- Oathbringer
- The rest of Mistborn Era 1
- Elantris
- Rhythm of War
- Mistborn Era 2 (Up to BoM)
- Arcanum Unbounded
- The Lost Metal (Went to Dragonsteel 2022 for this!)
Since I’ve caught up I’ve gotten probably a half dozen people to start reading, and have been carefully curating their reading order to avoid the nonsense I went through.
Dragonsteel was great! Are you planning to go again this year?
I saw a large poster of the cover for The Way of Kings behind the register at a bookstore. Thought it looked cool and made a mental note to check it out.
A few years later I randomly remembered it and described it to a friend. He told me the title and said it was one of his favorite books.
I finally picked it up myself and really enjoyed it. Moved on to the rest of the Cosmere after that.
6 months! That’s quick. For me, my friend told me stop wasting my time with A Song if Ice and Fire because it will never be finished. He told me to check out Sanderson.
Flash forward and we now do a podcast a la Binge Mode covering the series. We started with Mistborn Era 1 and we are now in the second book of Era 2. I can’t get enough!
We have to go at a slower pace for production purposes but it’s so fun and this may take us years, but I’m here for it.
I have been a Wheel of Time fan for over 2 decades. I’d heard of Sanderson (and read the first alcatraz book), but when I finished WoT is what really launched me into his cosmere works (started with Mistborn).
My personal discovery of BS was through the Wheel of Time! I read it, had the typical struggles with the middle books, and when I got to the last 3, I suddenly found myself enjoying reading a lot more again. So I looked up what else this Sanderson guy had written, and learned that he was most known for this book called Mistborn. Well. I devoured everything, I think I read the whole cosmere in less than two months. Haha it really took over all my other hobbies.
The Cosmere books have really become my comfort reads, I’ve read them all so much by now that when I’m bored I’ll just grab any of them to read again. It’s made it hard to get other books read, whenever I finish something I think “What to read next… Ooh I could read Stormlight again” lol.
As for all my friends, I can tell you they started reading Cosmere because I keep talking to them about it and telling them to read it! The best part is when they send updates on their thoughts, theories, spotted connections, etc!
In 2015 a buddy of mine basically shoved Elantris, Way of Kings, and Words of Radiance at me and said “You gotta read some Sanderson, he’s the next big guy in fantasy.” I started with Elantris and really enjoyed it, but admit that I was intimidated by how chonky Stormlight was and so they gathered dust for the next 5 years.
When 2020 rolled around, I had a lot of free time and decided to finally give Sanderson another try and picked up Era 1 of Mistborn instead of Stormlight to ease into the Cosmere and instantly fell in love. That was pretty much the jumping off point because I then went right into Stormlight (which have since become my favorite books of all time) and after that I went and read everything else in the Cosmere. It even pushed me to read Wheel of Time which I finished at the end of last year and had a blast reading (I didn’t think the infamous slog was that bad tbh). So here I am waiting for SP3 to come out so I can get my fix of more Sanderson…
The first Sanderson books that I read were Elantris and Warbreaker which I found through the GraphicAudio audiobooks. At the time I had no idea that they were part of a larger world or series. I thought they were good, but they didn’t cause me to go seek out others from the author. I rediscovered Sanderson when I found the Mistborn trilogy in like 2015 and have been reading everything he’s ever written since then.
When The Way of Kings came out a friend of mine who was very excited about it got a copy for me. I’ve been hooked on Sanderson since.
After finishing several other novels on my queue, I finally wanted to read some Sanderson works after hearing so much positivity around him. I had actually read one of his standalone novels a couple of years ago, “Children of the nameless” since I’m a fan of MTG. Read up on the Cosmere order and started with Elantris earlier this year. The rest is history.
That’s a good question. I think I just saw it mentioned a lot in the r/books subreddit so I decided to give it a shot. This was a bit after Oathbringer came out.
Nice username, btw.
Probably reddit (sigh). I’d been subscribed to r/fantasy for a good while. Heard something about the interconnectedness of his books, which was really intriguing to me. And I knew he had been picked to finish WoT, though I had been so burned out from WoT that it took reading the Mistborn trilogy (back when there was only era 1) before seeing how he was finishing WoT (AMoL wasn’t quite out yet).
I was a big fantasy reader in my teens already, and read Elantris when it was the only book published by Brandon Sanderson.
I liked his style and over the years read his newest books not long after they were released. I was happy when he was chosen to finish Wheel Of Time, because that was another favorite series of mine, although I liked the writing style of Sanderson much better than Robert Jordan.
I somehow went through Mistborn, Stormlight, Warbreaker and even some of the novellas without connecting the Cosmere thing.
Then via subreddits it finally clicked and I chose to do a big reread of everything Cosmere. Almost done, only the last two Stormlight books are missing. And of course the newest secret novel.
Someone in a discord server was recommending The Way of Kings and described it as anime in prose form.
I discovered Reckoners too from that same discord server, previously.
I found Brandon after catching up on ASOIF and needing something to fill my drive time. Glad I did because I enjoy Cosmere stuff way more than ASOIF.
A friend of mine played the opening to the Legion audiobook. He said it was really good and short. So I tried it and liked it. I had already read many of the classics in fantasy so I decided to give Sanderson a try. Started with Mistborn and have been hooked ever since.
