Edgedancer by Brandon Sanderson
137 pages
Tor, 2016
Genre: Fantasy, fiction
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Re-readability: I already know I’m rereading The Stormlight Archive at some point, and it wouldn’t be a complete reread without this book!
Reviewed by Pete
Edgedancer is a hard book to summarize. It is a novella found in Brandon Sanderson’s collection Arcanum Unbounded, and it’s set in the same world as The Stormlight Archive. It takes place just after the events of the first two Stormlight books, and it follows a minor character.
The Stormlight Archive is a planned ten-book epic fantasy series, and the third book is set to release in November 2017.
This review contains minor worldbuilding spoilers for The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance.
Edgedancer was just what I needed to sate my thirst for more Stormlight until November.
This novella follows Lift, a young girl with accompanied by a strange spren (a type of magical being) named Wyndle. She has traveled to the city Yeddaw to follow the man she calls Darkness—and also to eat the city’s famous ten types of pancakes.
Lift is an odd character, whose ability to give herself or objects a slippery quality is fueled by food. As a result, she is eating constantly, and she prefers to acquire her meals by stealing them from people she doesn’t like.
If you want to get technical, the novella’s plot revolves around her quest to try the ten varieties of pancake and to steal Darkness’s food.
While the book is mostly whimsical, it does give us some interesting details about where book three will head, and some important Stormlight characters make brief appearances.
I found the plot to be a bit too whimsical and meandering at times, and I wish Lift’s purpose had been more captivating than trying to eat some pancakes, but the story was fun, and Sanderson managed to cram a surprising amount of worldbuilding and detail into the city of Yeddaw. It was nice to get a glimpse of a new part of the world of Roshar.
This is a must read for Stormlight Archive fans, and if you like epic fantasy, you should put Stormlight on your list (if it isn’t there already).
Lit Lens 
My husband and I are Sanderson fans, stormlight in particular as it was the first series of his for us to read. I was considering getting that collection for hubby for Christmas but it sounds like I’ll enjoy that story more than he will; sounds like the novella Rothfuss wrote, the slow regard of silent things. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s also set outside of a series, follows a minor character, quite whimsical!
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If you guys like the Stormlight Archive (and are picking up book three in November), you’ll love Edgedancer. It reveals a lot more about the world and some side characters than The Slow Regard of Silent Things does for the Kingkiller Chronicle. Warbreaker by Sanderson is another great read that ties into Stormlight.
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Love warbreaker!
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