After reading George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones, I found myself wanting to check out other works of modern fantasy. Brandon Sanderson, the author who took over for Robert Jordan on his The Wheel of Time series, wrote a book last year entitled, The Way of Kings. This particular book, priced out at $12.99 (e-book price), was too expensive for me to justify buying as a digital copy–I won’t do it!–. Remembering that there is something called a library, a place where books are free, I quickly made a visit of acquisition. Upon check out, I learned that I hadn’t checked anything out since 2007. One could have called this trip quite overdue.

The Way of Kings is a massive tome clocking in somewhere near a 1000 pages. Hardbound, the book is heavy and hard to situate when reading in bed at night. Now I have to confess that my Nook has made me forget what it is like to have to wrangle a 1000 page book. Weight and size have no meaning in the digital form. I could be reading a 2000 page book on my Nook and never know the difference. This is where the e-reader and the e-book shine. The other thing I had forgotten is how nice it is to have the Nook save my place every night. Bookmarks have always failed me with physical books. Somehow, someway, the bookmark always ends up falling out. Utter frustration ensues.

So how is The Way of Kings so far? At this point, a few hundred pages in, I am enjoying it immensely. Unlike Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice series, Sanderson has not seen the need, thus far, to throw-in gratuitous amounts of sex and language. Brandon Sanderson is slowly restoring my faith in modern fantasy.