The Hope of Elantris

Elantris is, perhaps, my favorite Sanderson book. It's not the most action-packed, but it is full of some great, existential stuff, as well as interesting politics.

As an uber-fan of Elantris, I enjoyed this short story a lot. That said, I can see why Sanderson cut it from the book. It shouldn't have been included, as it focuses on characters that are never/barely mentioned in the novel.

If you really, really love Elantris like I do, this is a nice little aside. Otherwise it holds no value whatsoever, and isn't Sanderson's best work.

This is a cute little side story set during the climactic final scenes of the main Elantris storyline. Basically, it's a story that Sanderson had originally in mind for Elantris but cut due to pacing or other issues.

Basically, it follows Matisse, an Elantrian who is charged with watching after the children and ends up saving them all with the help of Ashe the Seon.

It's actually got a cute postscript about where the where the name Matisse came from.

Worth the quick read.

2.5 stars.

I knew of the postsript before reading this novella and, with all honesty, that influenced my rating positively by half star. I found totally cool what Brandon did.

The novella per se was barely interesting to me. I was not interested in Matisse, the main character, nor the children. In my experience, I have noticed that novellas work for me if the characters are already introduced in a "canon" book and I had the time to get a connection with those characters. Novellas are in general too short for me to grow fond of new characters. I was expecting more a short anedcote focused on Sarene, Raodem and Ashe in New Elantris. However, it was nice to go back to elantris even for a few pages after so many years I have read the book. I show more noticed I also like its magic system with seons resembling somehow sprens of the stormlight archive. I hope we can come back to Elantris soon. show less

3.5 Stars

This was a nice short story that filled in one of the gaps that I had wondered about (but dismissed) after reading Elantris.

This story centers around the children of Elantris during the Dakhor invasion. I liked the characters in this one, and thought that the action scenes were better done here than in the book - maybe because there's just less going on in this story due to its smaller range of focus.

In the afterword, Brandon Sanderson mentioned that he added a new character to this story as something of a tribute to a reader who had done a book report on Elantris. I think that's super awesome, from both sides. It's a great thing to be appreciated.

I foolishly paid 49 cents to download this from Amazon when I could have read it for free on the author's website. Still, it was worth 49 cents. It doesn't answer all the questions left about Elantris, but it does explain what happened in one crucial part of the story when the narrative follows the protagonists elsewhere. My guess is that the events in this story were originally part of Elantris but interrupted the flow of that novel so much that Sanderson removed it from the novel and added a flashback frame to make it a stand-alone.

64 points/100 (3.25 stars/5).

During the fight for Elantris, Matisse takes it upon herself to save the children from the invaders bent on driving them all insane.

This is a short story, now contained in Arcanum Unbounded. It technically takes place after Elantris, and you should definitely read it after you read Elantris, but most of the events in it take place during the book. Sanderson wrote in a character and gave her something to do, namely save the children.

While cute, it is definitely unnecessary to read. Completely unforgettable, but fun in the moment if you already have Arcanum Unbounded and have just finished Elantris. Maybe a 12 minute read, if that.

A nice little story for what it is, especially since it's free on his website. The annotation also makes it even sweeter. This story gives me some hope (that there might be a sequel) and its always great to read more background. I'm glad I got to read at least a little bit more about Elantris before moving on to other things.