Some of my works can be very intimidating, partially because of the length and the worldbuilding involved. Particularly the Stormlight Archive can just look overwhelmingly large. Beyond that, many of my works are part of unfinished series in various places. Like Stormlight, we only have three of the books out, and so recommending that someone jump in and read something that they may not get an ending for many years—that’s always a little uncomfortable for me to do, because they don’t know if they can trust me yet to deliver. So I like to recommend something that is self-contained, but yet does all the things that I like to do in a smaller package.
The Emperor’s Soul still does all of my favorite things in storytelling. It deals with an interesting magic system, an interesting situation, and what I hope is an interesting take on a fantasy story. It’s about a woman who has the ability to alter the souls of objects, and she uses this ability as a thief. She gets captured doing this and is told by the people in charge that they need her to make a copy of the emperor’s soul, because the emperor has suffered a dire affliction and is basically brain dead—their healers can heal his physical brain, but there’s no soul in there that they can find. So they want her to create a duplicate of his soul and insert it in his body so that they can continue to have an emperor. It’s a very different sort of story in that regard, but it also deals with all the things that I think are strengths to my writing, and it does it in a novella-sized package. That’s why I recommend it.
I do think the Stormlight Archive beginning with The Way of Kings is probably my best series. But like I said, you have to dive into the deep end not knowing what’s underneath the water in that case, so I usually pitch The Emperor’s Soul instead.