The Rithmatist

Executive Summary: An enjoyable story that can easily skipped by all but biggest Sanderson fans outside of the target demographic. It's a great book to share with your kids if they are old enough.

Full Review
I enjoyed this book, though not as much as his others. It's a young adult book, and unlike some books I've read in that category felt like it the whole way through.

The book has great illustrations. I'd highly recommend getting the print or ebook copy over the audio. I guess the audio comes with an errata of the pictures, but I'd find that sort of hard to work in, especially considering I'm usually doing something else while listening to audiobooks. The illustrations aren't high art, but they certainly add a lot to the story.

Unlike a lot of Sanderson books, there isn't a whole lot of world building. From a map in the front of the book and a little of the discussion, apparently the United States is a series of Islands united under what seems more like the Articles of Confederation rather than the US Constitution.

The main thing that binds neighboring islands together are the academies where children are sent to learn how to be Rithmatists. Rithmatists are being trained to fight in a war in the center of the country against wild creatures that populated the country prior to the Europeans arrival.

There is some sort of federal jurisdiction, akin to maybe the FBI of sorts, but for the most part each island seems to keep to itself. The book is set in the early 1900s and has a bit of a Steampunk feel to it.

That's about all I could gather from the entire book. I'm sure he will flesh things out more as the series goes on.

As is the norm for a Brandon Sanderson novel, this series has an interesting and pretty unique magic system. Not as good as some of his others, but still interesting. Everything is based on drawing with chalk. Fans of Real-Time Strategy games will find the combat system familar.

You build your defenses, a base if you will, and there are various attacks you can do, including creating an army of chalkings to either attack or defend.

The protagonist is a 15 year old boy named Joel, whose mother works as a cleaning lady at the academy, where only Rithmatists and the richest non-Rithmatists can normally attend. He wants nothing more than to be a Rithmatist, but he was not chosen to be one.

Students begin to disappear, the Feds show up and one of the professors is tasked by the university to help figure out what is going on. Joel manages to get himself assigned to help in the hopes of learning more about Rithmancy that is normally kept from the non Rithmatists.

The story is decent, the writing is good, the characters are interesting, if a little cookie-cutter. The world building could have been a little better, even in a shorter young-adult novel. He does a bit at the end of the novel, but it is mostly setup for an inevitable sequel.

I was originally under the impression that this was a stand-alone story. I'm not sure if that was incorrect, or if it changed. I feel like the last few chapters could have been dropped with little detriment to the overall story and left it as stand alone.

That said when the next one comes out, I'll pick it up, though maybe not right away. I'm not the target demographic here, but I'd think pre-teens especially should enjoy this book. It might be a great book for parents to read with younger kids as well.