I was a big fantasy reader in my teens already, and read Elantris when it was the only book published by Brandon Sanderson.

I liked his style and over the years read his newest books not long after they were released. I was happy when he was chosen to finish Wheel Of Time, because that was another favorite series of mine, although I liked the writing style of Sanderson much better than Robert Jordan.

I somehow went through Mistborn, Stormlight, Warbreaker and even some of the novellas without connecting the Cosmere thing.

Then via subreddits it finally clicked and I chose to do a big reread of everything Cosmere. Almost done, only the last two Stormlight books are missing. And of course the newest secret novel.

My first exposure to the cosmere was reading Elantris in high school. I really enjoyed it, and went looking for more by the same author, but there wasn’t anything. I moved on with my life, and a decade later I had a couple friends tell me I had to read Mistborn. I did, recognized it as the same author, and was hooked. I’ve gone to several release parties, made a giant inflatable Doomslug costume with my wife, and gotten involved in the collector community and other online Sanderson communities.

I saw a large poster of the cover for The Way of Kings behind the register at a bookstore. Thought it looked cool and made a mental note to check it out.

A few years later I randomly remembered it and described it to a friend. He told me the title and said it was one of his favorite books.

I finally picked it up myself and really enjoyed it. Moved on to the rest of the Cosmere after that.

A colleague recommended Way of kings to me and at that time the title sounded to me quite cheesy so I have put it on my todo list.

One day I did not have mood for reading anything so I just picked up Wok not expecting anything. I was hooked the moment Szeth son son volano wore white when he decided to kill the king.

A few coworkers at an old job had all started reading stormlight together right before I joined the company, and they recommended it to me so I caught up to them and we read the rest of the cosmere together in a book club

Literally on a whim. I had a spare Audible credit. Brandon Sanderson is a name I saw a lot but had never read. Warbreaker was in my recommendations. Checked to make sure it was a stand alone novel. Bought it, Amazon proceeds to take lots more of my money, it was a good sell on their part.

I had a cheap paperback copy of the way of kings laying around for years before I finally jumped into it. Needless to say, I’m completely addicted and we are lucky Brandon is such a prolific writer!

I saw a recommendation in a thread on /r/books over at reddit actually! I started reading around the time of Words of Radiance, and went through things pretty slowly in a relatively unintuitive order:

• Way of Kings
• Words of Radiance
• The Final Empire
• Warbreaker
• Oathbringer
• The rest of Mistborn Era 1
• Elantris
• Rhythm of War
• Mistborn Era 2 (Up to BoM)
• Arcanum Unbounded
• The Lost Metal (Went to Dragonsteel 2022 for this!)

Since I’ve caught up I’ve gotten probably a half dozen people to start reading, and have been carefully curating their reading order to avoid the nonsense I went through.