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Warbreaker is a very amateurish effort though - I think a lot of people would bounce off it. I'd definitely suggest starting with Way of Kings, if that grabs a new reader then they can delve into the Cosmere before continuing on to Words of Radiance.

For something more fun to read than my intro try Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson:

https://www.watchwords.tv/read/Q6jQrky0m/Warbreaker

Oh, I love some good world-building, and especially when there is a set of rules that's followed to their consequences. [Ayuc sums it up nicely in this comment. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9056594 ]

If you look at it this way, it CAN be done in fantasy. Check out Brandon Sanderson's Warbreaker (a great one-off), or the Mistborn series. (There are quite a few similarities between them.)

Or Max Brooks' World War Z was great in this way, I think. Although it's been quite a while since I read that.

(I know this is an older thread, so I hope you'll find this comment. Made a HN account for this. :D )

I started reading sci-fi(mostly hard-sf) after I read the commonwealth saga, 'Pandora's star' and 'Judas unchained'. It was just really entertaining and unlike anything I've read. Also really recommend 'Snow crash'. Also adding a couple fantasy recommendations: Lies of Locke lamora, and any basically any novel by Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn: the final empire, Warbreaker, The way of kings etc.)

There's another Sanderson Cosmere book called Warbreaker which crosses over with Stormlight pretty heavily from book 2 onwards (it's also very possibly there are references in book 1 which totally passed me by). You'll definitely have a better handle on why a particular object which shows up in the Stormlight books is so scary if you read Warbreaker first.

Book 4 of Stormlight does have some pretty big references to the original Mistborn trilogy, too.

On the whole I try to read books in the order I bought them (ish), but Sanderson is one of the authors I'll just drop everything for when a new book comes out. Disclaimer: he does have some bad habits (mainly inserting "wise ass" characters who don't fit the tone or setting, and who I strongly suspect carry the author's voice a little _too_ directly). But he does epic world building incredibly well, and very different to just about any other author I've read. He also writes action exceptionally well.

I picked up Warbreaker early last year when a copy was on sale. I had never heard of Sanderson before, but I've been hooked since. I then read the Reckoners series followed by the Stormlight Archives. I'm currently reading Elantris.

I find his single universe building and the "rules of the Cosmere" draw me in more and more to his work. With the first couple of novels I didn't realize this was even going on; but as individual books they still were great standalone. As I became aware of the ties between the books I've just been more drawn in. These are some of the only fiction books where I find myself wanting to go back and re-read so that I might pick up on things I missed the first time through.

The series in question is the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher, read by James Marsters, If you're an audiobook fan, I also recommend looking into GraphicAudio. Unabridged audiobooks with a full voice cast, music, and sound effects.

The Night Angel trilogy by Brent Weeks is good in GraphicAudio, as is Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson. Warbreaker is stand-alone, so it may be a good starting point.

There are a few rough bits, but there always are; some sections with awkward musical choices, some re-used recognizable sound effects, but they're no more common than errors in standard audiobooks.

(Disclaimer: GraphicAudio books are abridged, but functionally unabridged. If it's raining, they play the sound of rain instead of having the narrator say "it was raining". By definition, that makes them abridged, despite no loss of content.)