---
product_id: 109674393
title: "The Emperor's Soul (Elantris Book 2)"
price: "€ 12.73"
currency: EUR
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 13
url: https://www.desertcart.fi/products/109674393-the-emperors-soul-elantris-book-2
store_origin: FI
region: Finland
---

# The Emperor's Soul (Elantris Book 2)

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## Description

WINNER, 2013 Hugo Award for Best Novella! Nominee, 2013 World Fantasy Award for Novella! From #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson, The Emperor's Soul showcases a fascinating magic system as the clock ticks down for a condemned criminal. When Shai is caught replacing the Moon Scepter with her nearly flawless forgery, she must bargain for her life. An assassin has left the Emperor Ashravan without consciousness, a circumstance concealed only by the death of his wife. If the emperor does not emerge after his hundred-day mourning period, the rule of the Heritage Faction will be forfeit and the empire will fall into chaos. Shai is given an impossible task: to create—to Forge—a new soul for the emperor in less than one hundred days. But her soul-Forgery is considered an abomination by her captors. She is confined to a tiny, dirty chamber, guarded by a man who hates her, spied upon by politicians, and trapped behind a door sealed in her own blood. Shai's only possible ally is the emperor's most loyal councillor, Gaotona, who struggles to understand her true talent. Time is running out for Shai. Forging, while deducing the motivations of her captors, she needs a perfect plan to escape…

Review: Wish it was longer - By now its pretty obvious I'm a Sanderson fangirl. He ranks in my top 5 favorite authors and is an insta-I'll even pay full cover price for the hardcover buy. This isn't to say I think everything he writes is perfect (I had some issues with The Alloy of Law for instance), but by golly his writing makes me excited to read every time. This is his second stand alone novella of the year (after the contemporary mystery/urban fantasy Legion, which I have yet to review) and I think this one fared better then Legion. Not just because its longer (edited to add: You can see in the comments, EMPEROR is much longer than Legion), but because it played more on his strengths. The magic system here was as intricate as they come--in about 140pages he conveys a system just as detailed as anything in Warbreaker or The Way of Kings. Unfortunately unlike his longer epics the information is more or less explained to us instead of organically weaving itself into the plot. That's okay though, this is a much shorter work so I expected that. This is loosely tied in with Elantris (as in, set in the same world, but not the same characters, setting, magic system or tone at all) and for his eager fans that bloody trickster that runs throughout all his books (tied in with the Cosmere at least) gets his due here as well. Sanderson approaches this magic system from a more philosophical bent. Forging is, in essence, re-writing something (or in this case someone's) history. Shai uses it for theft and amusement, but she's highly skilled at the little details other people seem to miss. She's a perfectionist. She doesn't just Forge a broken table into a sturdier model, she Forges it into something it can be proud of, something that speaks to its 'soul' and sense of being. By contrast Gaotona, and the whole Empire Shai is being blackmailed into saving (kind of), view Forging the same way people view reproductions of artwork or sculptures. Its there to please the eye, nothing more. The debates the two get into are intriguing. Shai's people believe everything has a soul and its important to respect that. Gaotona's internal debates on whether or not what they're asking her to do--that is save Ashravan by Forging his soul--is ethical is what makes up the meat of this book. I won't say what the end result is. Its unexpected in many ways and yet suits the story. Though many of the other characters are thinly written, and the world isn't as well fleshed out as his previous works, this is still a solid reading experience. This may in fact be a good book to hand to a Sanderson newbie--its short enough that they won't feel intimidated, but gives a good accounting of his writing style to lure them into his longer works.
Review: My first Sanderson read, and it won't be my last - I had heard a lot of good things about Brandon Sanderson’s works and have been trending more into the fantasy and science fiction realm in recent years, so picking up The Emperor’s Soul to read seemed like a no-brainer. I had started The Wheel of Time series, reading the first two books in the series and thoroughly have enjoyed them and saw that Sanderson had collaborated with Jordan on finishing the series. The Emperor’s Soul, as readers say, is a shorter novella and a good entry point into Sanderson’s style of writing. “To forge something, you have to know its past, its nature.” The basis for the novella concerns Shai, a master Forger who had been caught stealing and is awaiting execution. She is given an opportunity to win her freedom, however, when presented with the opportunity of forging the soul of the Emperor, who is in a catatonic state after an assassination attempt. Those who offer her the deal want this to be a covert undertaking, as they hope to avoid a civil war and save their own skin, but tell her that they want this to be finished within one hundred days. While Shai is an expert at the craft of forging, this is an entirely new type of unprecedented forgery that pushes the envelope and that she has never performed, so she must work diligently and expertly to accomplish this, all the while with a timeline over her head. “No matter how good you were, someone was better. Live by that knowledge, and you would never grow so confident that you became sloppy.” This is one of those reads that took me a while to get into, but I really was very invested as the book progressed. By novel’s end, it was a very enjoyable and satisfying read. I think it takes the reader a little bit of time to wrap their brains around the entire concept of the forgery magic system, but once the story gets going, things fall into place nicely. I liked the intriguing aspects of how Shai has to walk a delicate line between completing her task, and also thinking about her freedom, understanding what those who are forcing her to do this are capable of. She has to navigate carefully. It was also interesting to see how she had to do her research and reading and learning with such precision, digging into and exploring the Emperor’s life to create the proper seal. Shai has to get inside the Emperor’s mind, so to speak, to try to recreate his stamp, his soul. At any rate, this short work offers a lot of food for thought about important themes like identity, originality, ownership, and the art and value of taking something to create. In our day and age of artificial intelligence and the issues with it, this novella works nicely as a discussion piece into such subjects and topics about the ethics of such modern technological advances. A very engaging and interesting read, and I now have Mistborn: The Final Empire on my to-read radar.

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #50,328 in Kindle Store ( See Top 100 in Kindle Store ) #1,208 in Epic Fantasy (Kindle Store) #2,102 in Epic Fantasy (Books) #16,173 in Literature & Fiction (Books) |

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## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Wish it was longer
*by L***G on December 17, 2012*

By now its pretty obvious I'm a Sanderson fangirl. He ranks in my top 5 favorite authors and is an insta-I'll even pay full cover price for the hardcover buy. This isn't to say I think everything he writes is perfect (I had some issues with The Alloy of Law for instance), but by golly his writing makes me excited to read every time. This is his second stand alone novella of the year (after the contemporary mystery/urban fantasy Legion, which I have yet to review) and I think this one fared better then Legion. Not just because its longer (edited to add: You can see in the comments, EMPEROR is much longer than Legion), but because it played more on his strengths. The magic system here was as intricate as they come--in about 140pages he conveys a system just as detailed as anything in Warbreaker or The Way of Kings. Unfortunately unlike his longer epics the information is more or less explained to us instead of organically weaving itself into the plot. That's okay though, this is a much shorter work so I expected that. This is loosely tied in with Elantris (as in, set in the same world, but not the same characters, setting, magic system or tone at all) and for his eager fans that bloody trickster that runs throughout all his books (tied in with the Cosmere at least) gets his due here as well. Sanderson approaches this magic system from a more philosophical bent. Forging is, in essence, re-writing something (or in this case someone's) history. Shai uses it for theft and amusement, but she's highly skilled at the little details other people seem to miss. She's a perfectionist. She doesn't just Forge a broken table into a sturdier model, she Forges it into something it can be proud of, something that speaks to its 'soul' and sense of being. By contrast Gaotona, and the whole Empire Shai is being blackmailed into saving (kind of), view Forging the same way people view reproductions of artwork or sculptures. Its there to please the eye, nothing more. The debates the two get into are intriguing. Shai's people believe everything has a soul and its important to respect that. Gaotona's internal debates on whether or not what they're asking her to do--that is save Ashravan by Forging his soul--is ethical is what makes up the meat of this book. I won't say what the end result is. Its unexpected in many ways and yet suits the story. Though many of the other characters are thinly written, and the world isn't as well fleshed out as his previous works, this is still a solid reading experience. This may in fact be a good book to hand to a Sanderson newbie--its short enough that they won't feel intimidated, but gives a good accounting of his writing style to lure them into his longer works.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ My first Sanderson read, and it won't be my last
*by F***9 on May 26, 2026*

I had heard a lot of good things about Brandon Sanderson’s works and have been trending more into the fantasy and science fiction realm in recent years, so picking up The Emperor’s Soul to read seemed like a no-brainer. I had started The Wheel of Time series, reading the first two books in the series and thoroughly have enjoyed them and saw that Sanderson had collaborated with Jordan on finishing the series. The Emperor’s Soul, as readers say, is a shorter novella and a good entry point into Sanderson’s style of writing. “To forge something, you have to know its past, its nature.” The basis for the novella concerns Shai, a master Forger who had been caught stealing and is awaiting execution. She is given an opportunity to win her freedom, however, when presented with the opportunity of forging the soul of the Emperor, who is in a catatonic state after an assassination attempt. Those who offer her the deal want this to be a covert undertaking, as they hope to avoid a civil war and save their own skin, but tell her that they want this to be finished within one hundred days. While Shai is an expert at the craft of forging, this is an entirely new type of unprecedented forgery that pushes the envelope and that she has never performed, so she must work diligently and expertly to accomplish this, all the while with a timeline over her head. “No matter how good you were, someone was better. Live by that knowledge, and you would never grow so confident that you became sloppy.” This is one of those reads that took me a while to get into, but I really was very invested as the book progressed. By novel’s end, it was a very enjoyable and satisfying read. I think it takes the reader a little bit of time to wrap their brains around the entire concept of the forgery magic system, but once the story gets going, things fall into place nicely. I liked the intriguing aspects of how Shai has to walk a delicate line between completing her task, and also thinking about her freedom, understanding what those who are forcing her to do this are capable of. She has to navigate carefully. It was also interesting to see how she had to do her research and reading and learning with such precision, digging into and exploring the Emperor’s life to create the proper seal. Shai has to get inside the Emperor’s mind, so to speak, to try to recreate his stamp, his soul. At any rate, this short work offers a lot of food for thought about important themes like identity, originality, ownership, and the art and value of taking something to create. In our day and age of artificial intelligence and the issues with it, this novella works nicely as a discussion piece into such subjects and topics about the ethics of such modern technological advances. A very engaging and interesting read, and I now have Mistborn: The Final Empire on my to-read radar.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Sanderson delivers his usual epic excellence in novella form
*by G***T on October 30, 2012*

Though known for his epic fantasy, Brandon Sanderson has now released The Emperor's Soul, the second of two novellas scheduled for late 2012. While the first, Legion, was fun, it was too short - at 88 pages - to let Sanderson really develop the story as well as he usually does. In The Emperor's Soul, Sanderson takes a more robust but still quick 176 pages to tell a fantastic story that really gets you into the protagonist's head, while also giving fans of his previous works some fun ties to his first novel, Elantris. Sanderson seems to have found his novella "sweet spot" with The Emperor's Soul, and it's well worth reading. Our protagonist is Shai, a master Forger who is caught by the palace guards during a heist. Fortunately for her, instead of being executed outright, the Emperor was recently seriously wounded in an assassination attempt, leaving him alive but a vegetable. The Emperor's closest advisers, despite their repugnance at her skills, are desperate enough to ask Shai to Forge the Emperor a new soul. Shai takes the job because it's better than a short drop an a sudden stop, hoping to find a way to escape while working on the impossible task before her. Instead, the challenge consumes Shai, and we learn a lot about who she is, why she does what she does, and how her talents work as she works away at the problem. No simple thief or charlatan, Shai considers herself an artist, and we see just how accurate that appraisal can be as she approaches the Forging of the Emperor's soul. Shai is the focus of the book, but the secondary characters are well-rounded, especially considering the space Sanderson has to work. We learn as Shai does just who the Emperor really was, and we get a lot of interesting interaction between Shai and Gaotona, on of the Emperor's advisor's, and Gaotona himself is very compelling, given his personality and role. The other characters are less of a focus, but Sanderson still develops them well, giving the reader a good view of everything from the politics of the Empire to why the guard captain especially doesn't like Shai. As I mentioned, there are ties to Sanderson's first novel, Elantris. If you haven't read Elantris, don't worry, that won't slow you down at all. If you have, you'll appreciate the little touches that show the Empire is part of the same world, even if far away, and you'll have fun puzzling out how Shai's Forging ties into the magic system seen in the parts of the world depicted in Elantris. Sanderson always delivers great magic systems in his fantasy books, and the magic here is different enough from Elantris to be interesting while still be consistent with the logic of the other book. Sanderson has done an amazing job with The Emperor's Soul. It retains the brevity and speed of a good novella, while also delivering deep characters, an interesting plot, and great world-building. Sanderson manages to get a lot more of his usual talents to come through in this novella than his first attempt at the shorter format in Legion. Maybe it's a matter of size, with this book being twice as long, or that it's fantasy, which Sanderson does more of than the science fiction / thriller genre of Legion. In any case, Sanderson knocks another one out of the park with The Emperor's Soul, and I'm much more excited about the idea of novellas from Sanderson now than I was after Legion, which was fun but just felt too short and not quite as deep as I'm used to from Sanderson. If you're a Sanderson fan, you'll enjoy The Emperor's Soul, and if you're not, it's a good way to give him a try without committing to one of his longer epic novels or trilogies. Either way, I highly recommend The Emperor's Soul.

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*Product available on Desertcart Finland*
*Store origin: FI*
*Last updated: 2026-10-25*