After bursting onto the fantasy scene with his acclaimed debut novel, Elantris, and following up with his blockbuster Mistborn trilogy, Brandon Sanderson proves again that he is today’s leading master of what Tolkien called “secondary creation,” the invention of whole worlds, complete with magics and myths all their own. Warbreaker is the story of two sisters, who happen to be princesses, the God King one of them has to marry, the lesser god who doesn’t like his job, and the immortal who’s still trying to undo the mistakes he made hundreds of years ago. Their world is one in which those who die in glory return as gods to live confined to a pantheon in Hallandren’s capital city and where a power known as BioChromatic magic is based on an essence known as breath that can only be collected one unit at a time from individual people. By using breath and drawing upon the color in everyday objects, all manner of miracles and mischief can be accomplished. It will take considerable quantities of each to resolve all the challenges facing Vivenna and Siri, princesses of Idris; Susebron the God King; Lightsong, reluctant god of bravery, and mysterious Vasher, the Warbreaker.

Helvia Abgrall, a naïve and restless young Breton farm girl, leaves her comfortable and uneventful life at her family's farmstead in High Rock in hopes of attending Skyrim's College of Winterhold, as she longs to learn more about magic and how to use it, as well as to improve upon her own natural aptitude. However, she's anything but prepared for the journey that lies ahead of her. She's inexperienced, clueless, nearly incapable of fending for herself, and her lack of common sense is almost unreal. However, she's determined to make a better life for herself than the one she had before, and her resolve alone might just be enough to help her reach her goal. Well, that is, if things were going in her favor to begin with. There is another force that seeks to divert her path to a less pleasant venue, and it is far stronger than she is. In order to keep herself from losing sight of why she even left home in the first place, she'll have to stay ahead of a surprisingly powerful, on-the-rise faction in a foreign land - and she won't be able to do that alone. This aspiring mage will travel alongside pickpockets and pariahs, mercenaries and monarchs, and many more intriguing inhabitants of the province of Skyrim on the way to achieving her dream - and, just maybe, she'll befriend a few of them along the way way. But her path will not be an easy one - at least, not the one that she's hoping to take. She will have to make sacrifices and learn to adapt to unfavorable outcomes, and, in the end, she may learn that following her dreams might not be in her best interest.