The Way of Kings has been referred to as one of the finest Fantasy books released in the past decade (many would suggest much longer than that). Can you give readers a sense of how the story progresses in Words of Radiance and how you feel it compares to the first in terms of the reading experience it offers?
Boy, big question. Living up to a really successful book is always hard. As writers, you get in this mindset where you read through something that you’ve done, and you think, how did that even happen? How did it come together? You’re always surprised, and there’s always a sense of, “Well, I can never do that again.” Right? But that happens consistently as you work on things. I’ve had that same sense for Words of Radiance . It turned out wonderfully. So where does it go? It expands the world and the characters. It shows off a new magic. It has Wit being himself. It involves more depth into the understanding of Realmatic Theory and the cosmere. It lets several of the characters really come into their own. It moves at a fast pace, and things where you may have been thinking, “Oh, it’s not going to go there at least for a few more books,” happen immediately instead of taking forever. This is all part of my desire and goal for the series. I wrote a really big essay for Tor.com about how I envisioned these books going, where I look at each one as being more than book, where I’m playing with the idea of what it means to be an epic. Words of Radiance went very well in that regard. I plotted it like a trilogy, and wrote it as this one book made of three books. Anyway, I’m just super excited about how it turned out. I’m trying to talk around giving any spoilers, but it’s also very humbling that people have enjoyed the series so much.
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