Why read Warbreaker? But more interesting than that. Why your laundry could kill you? Ever been strangled by your scarf? Why toy story could be in the Cosmere? What if zombies were nice? Except they ate your soul. Why dressing like the 80s could give you superpowers? Hey internet, I'm Steve the Cosmere not, and this is Raffo. WARBRAAKER Brandon's fifth published entry in the Cosmere after a launtress and the first misborn trilogy. Those were pretty dark, so his agent said his next book had to have some color in it. Really Brandon? Warbreaker tells the story of two sisters, princesses of a small nation, one of whom is destined to become queen and the other to live a quiet life in her poor provincial town. And then BAM! Stuff happens! I mean that's not a perfect summary, but also it's not wrong. The story follows Vivena and Siri of the Kingdom of Idris, a small mountain kingdom that broke off a larger, jungly kingdom when their royal family said nope during a huge war 300 years ago and ran away. That jungly kingdom is called Halondron, and it's ruled by a class of people called Returned, basically magical zombies but kind of the opposite of what we get in a launtress. These are people who died and were then brought back to life as a perfected, physically ideal version of themselves. Light song is one of these. They're very pretty. These not zombies though, instead of wanting to eat brains, need to consume bits of another person's soul every week or else they die. Those soul bits are called Breath, and everyone born on this planet has one, which can be given away or collected and used to awaken things. Give functional, limited life to an object. Like if I had enough breath I could awaken my shirt by telling it give me a hug and then walk around feeling loved all day. The specifics of how that work I go into in a different video linked here, but color is used as a sort of fuel wool to make that happen. When an object is awakened, the color of an object nearby is sapped away, bleeding to gray. Someone with a large store of breath and experience is called an Awakener, and Vasher, another main character in the story, is one of those. He's pretty good at it too. Vasher also has a talking sword called Nightblood, who is a lot more scary than he seems. Like a cute kitty that wants to play with you and stab you in the face and eat your soul and munch on your bones. There are a lot of them. The story in this book is fantastic. Lots of twists and turns, political intrigue, fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles. This is some too bad. The magic system, because it's a Sanderson, is impeccable. It's vitally important to the rest of the Cosmere, required reading before you get towards radians. Even if you've never read any other Cosmere book, this one is a great jumping on point. It's self-contained, it's impactful and philosophical, and most importantly, it's actually free on Brandon's website, like in its entirety. Read it, it's good. Thanks for watching. As always, thank you to my patrons for their incredible support. Matt, Doug, Steve, Dave, Gramlin, Alec, your investment means a hell of a lot. If you dear viewer would like to join them and the rest of these lovely folks in their support of my channel, head over to my Patreon. If you joined before Dragon Steelcon this year, I'll even send you cool stuff like all these stickers I've made, or pins, or even an awesome shirt, do what I dare you. My cash to yours, my wealth become yours. Too far? Also available on Brandon's website if you've already read and reread Warbreaker, are all of Brandon's annotations, digging into backstory and peeking behind the curtain a little bit, which is really fun. If you haven't seen those, I recommend going to read and find out. The story follows Serini and Vivanna of the Kingdom of Idris. Serini, Siri. Hey, Siri, subscribe to this channel.