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Review: White Sand

White Sand White Sand by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

White Sand is a creative effort by Brandon Sanderson and the team at Dynamite. It was a previously unpublished venture of Sandersons', and it has finally been brought to life in graphic novel format. I've never read any Sanderson before but having heard much applause for his work I decided to download this graphic novel.

Sanderson is a fantasy writer, and fantasy this was. It had it's own world, own magic system, different cultures and races, monsters, and new vocabulary. I honestly didn't know what I was getting myself into and wasn't ready for all of this. The story was intriguing at first but it started to drag and I even considered dropping it. It felt like being hurtled headfirst into this new world that I knew nothing about and it wasn't a fun time. At the same time, once I started to understand a bit more of the world and what was going on, it became interesting once again.

As is unfortunately the case with reading graphic novels digitally, and made even worse when said novels are also ARCs, the reading experience was not ideal. I read this on my tablet so everything was slightly smaller than it will be in print, and one of my favourite parts of graphic novels, the double page spread, rarely has the same effect when I have to view each side of the spread separately. E-ARCs always have pretty shit image quality in order to reduce the file size (and also probably to discourage people from posting them online), but this was one of the worst I've ever read. The worst would be Tortured Life, and White Sand's wasn't as bad because at least the writing was good visual quality. What I'm trying to say with this whole paragraph is that I'm not really in a position to judge this book in terms of art quality because it wouldn't be fair as this does not reflect how the final book will be.

HOWEVER. There are book previews online that actually do show the artwork in proper quality, as seen here: http://bit.ly/1SWNVIt. So judge for yourself whether or not you like the artwork and layout and whatnot, because I can tell you what I think (and I will) but in the end everyone's opinion differs but YOURS is what's most important for your own reading experience. Myself, I quite like the art. Judging from the cover I honestly thought it was going to be horrendous. And although I couldn't really make anything out for the most part just because of how shit the quality was, I could make out just enough from certain panels that pleased me. Especially, ahem, those with Aarik and Kenton. I like eye candy, what can I say.

In the end is this worth reading? Good question. Maybe if you're already a big fan of Sanderson and/or the fantasy genre you will have an easier time adapting to the new world and understanding what is going on. The thing with fantasy is that when an author creates this whole new world, there's a LOT that needs to be explained which is what makes these books pretty dense. This is what didn't work well in graphic form, since it has to be greatly condensed and the story moves at a kind of jerky pace which is what makes it hard to follow. Otherwise I thought it was just alright. Like I said, I even felt like dropping it at one point. I wasn't invested in it at all.

Click here to read a rant I wrote which was inspired by reading other people's reviews of this book.


I downloaded an e-ARC of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

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