3. INFINITY BLADE: AWAKENING
By Brandon Sanderson
Dude… where are your eyes?
I wanted to fit a quick book in so I could take a few days off. I also meant to read some Brando Sando that didn’t take place in the Cosmere. So as I scrolled through my Libby TBR List and saw this, clocking in at only 5 hours, it checked all the boxes. I could legitimately read the entire book in one day of work.
So I did.
That does not look structurally sound.
Here’s the thing about going into a book blindly… If it’s well written, you enjoy it for what it is. Having had no idea that this book was not only based on a video game but meant to bridge a story gap between the first and second games (games I’ve never heard of, let alone played,) one might have expected me to be completely lost.
But Sando proves once again that he is him because He Do What He Do When He Do What He Do. Get me? The man is GOOOOOOOD. I had no idea I was missing anything the entire time. I fully understood, got invested in the characters, loved the sci-fi magic, the fights, the lore. All great! The main character arrives at the novel's start after having just completed an epic quest, but it honestly felt like that was the beginning of his story as he shows up with a new lease on life!
The plot got me right away, actually. A warrior returns home after his epic quest of facing the God-King in single combat. Folks have done this for centuries. No one had defeated the God King. Until this little punk. So no one expects him to return victorious. He returns with the Infinity Blade. Proof he’d killed the unkillable God King.
When the villagers of his home town learn he’s back, they immediately banish him, as all the other power-hungry maniacs out there are going to come gunning for that blade. So he sets off to find them first, and take them out before they can take him out. Along the way… he’ll learn who he REALLY is.
When it was done, I felt like this was the first book in a series I didn’t know about, as it ended by setting up our MC’s next great adventure. Only after reading did I look up the wiki and learn what this was. So if you play the games, you should like this, I’d wager. If you don’t play the game, you still stand a legitimate chance at loving this.
Check it out, if I was a rating man I’d give it 4/5. It's not a perfect 5 because it could’ve been longer. But that’s just me.
