Elantris

Did You Know?

• Elantris takes place within a universe known as the Cosmere, which also includes Mistborn, The Stormlight Archive, Warbreaker, and Arcanum Unbounded.
• A mysterious figure named Hoid appears in the last chapter of Elantris.

Characters

Prince Raoden of Arelon is transformed into an Elantrian by the Shaod at the story's start. Elantrians after the Reod bear dark splotches and lose their hair; they cannot die except by burning or beheading, and their bodies never heal, so minor injuries accumulate and eventually drive them insane. They feel torturous hunger without needing food. Raoden is secretly exiled to Elantris while his father pretends he died.

His storyline involves retaining his sanity, uniting the Elantrians through work, and dispersing or incorporating the gangs that terrorize newcomers. Princess Sarene of Teod was to be Raoden's political bride, though they never met. Upon arriving in Arelon, she learns that if either dies before the wedding, they are considered married. As the widow of a supposedly dead prince, she navigates the Arelon nobility, seeks to understand the plight of commoners and Elantrians, and works to stabilize the monarchy and improve the political system. She also learns of Gyorn Hrathen and uses her skills to prevent his religious revolution.

Releases

Tor Books published Elantris in hardcover on April 21, 2005. The Science Fiction Book Club issued a hardcover edition in May 2005. A Tor mass market paperback appeared on May 30, 2006, and an ebook followed in April 2007. A tenth anniversary author's definitive edition with 10,000 words of additional content was released in October 2015, and a Dragonsteel Leather Edition with full-color art, new maps, and two-tonal typeset came out in December 2015. The novel has been translated into Bulgarian, Chinese, Czech, French, Dutch, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish. GraphicAudio produced a dramatized audio version on April 1, 2009, and Recorded Books released a digital audio book of the tenth anniversary edition on October 7, 2015, narrated by Jack Garrett.

Reception

Elantris received generally positive reviews. Orson Scott Card called it the finest fantasy novel in many years, praising its original world and rigorous magic system. Kirkus Reviews noted it was not the first book in a series and had an unusually well-conceived magic system, calling it a cut above the same-old. Publishers Weekly described Sanderson's debut as outstanding and free of genre clichés, offering mystery, magic, romance, politics, religious conflict, and robust characters.

Sequels

Sanderson has discussed an official sequel set ten years after Elantris, centering on minor characters, and later announced plans for two books with Kiin's children as main characters in Elantris Two. The e-book short story The Hope of Elantris, released in 2007, occurs concurrently with Elantris and was inspired by a story Sanderson's wife told him in 2006. The novella The Emperor's Soul, published in 2012, takes place in the same world but a different region; it follows Shai, a thief and magical forger sentenced to death, who is given 100 days to forge a new soul for the comatose Emperor. Sanderson notes that reading Elantris is not required to understand the plot. The Emperor's Soul won the 2013 Hugo Award for best novella.