Spoilers. Proceed with caution.
I’m sorry to say this was a disappointment. Generally, I think of Brandon’s books as very fun and with very interesting worldbuilding, though I wouldn’t call myself a fanboy. This one fell very flat for me.
The biggest problem was one of structure. This book was simply too big. A book needs a certain momentum, building towards a climax at the end. Sanderson has done a decent job of pulling that off with the prior three Stormlight books despite their size, but it didn’t really work for me here. There simply wasn’t enough buildup of story pressure, and the mini-climaxes (which tended to be unsatisfying) didn’t really help. Again, comparing to previous books, each pre-Interlude climax left me eager to keep reading. I’d enjoy the Interludes, but would be in a rush to get back to the main story. In this book, I didn’t want the Interludes to end.
There was a lack of balance in the different storylines. The blurb led me to believe that Adolin and Shallan’s plot would be central; it was almost relegated to an afterthought. Venli’s story was probably the most interesting, but I would bet Kaladin was the one with the highest page count. The way a book is marketed matters; if this book had been marketed as the Battle for Urithiru, I suspect I would have enjoyed it better. As it was, I kept expecting for Adolin and Shallan’s story to become the primary, and that left me wrong-footed.
I think I’m getting tired of the Cosmere. There is a scene at one point where Shallan thinks about the fact that Mraize is deliberately stringing her along with bits of information and promises of more. I don’t know how self-aware Brandon was in writing that scene, but if he wasn’t it’s deeply ironic. I found myself getting more annoyed by the bits of Cosmere info rather than curious. I kept being unsure what I was “supposed” to know. Like, I’ve read Warbreaker and Mistborn (both old and new eras), so when Nalthis and Scadriel get name-dropped I know what’s going on. I know where Nightblood comes from and I figured out pretty easily when the chapter epigraphs were written by Sazed. I deduced, clever fellow that I am, that the sand Navani uses in her experiments is probably talked about in White Sand, but I haven’t read that. Should I? Are there important things to know? Am I supposed to know who this Thaidaker person is? (I have since looked it up, and I know who Thaidaker is.) It gave me a feeling like I was in a group of people laughing at an inside joke I was ignorant of. Not a nice feeling.
A lot has been written on Brandon’s detailed magic systems and his long infodumps on them. This is the first time that sort of thing bothered me. I don’t think we needed the long description of how Navani’s airship works, or the many detailed descriptions of her assorted science projects that didn’t turn out. I generally find this kind of thing interesting, but here it broke up and slowed down an already bloated story. Write it and include it, but do so as an appendix of some sort. Let me read about the details of managing conservation of momentum and force vectors in my own time, and let the story go at its own pace.
Kaladin. I totally understand why Brandon didn’t want to have Kaladin swear the Fourth Ideal in Oathbringer and get into a pattern of one new Ideal per book. But the consequence of that is that his internal struggles felt like a retread. It was obvious what the Fourth Ideal was, and his struggles with it felt almost exactly the same. Journey before destination and all that, but it felt like the first 9 steps of this journey had been walked before. The fact that Kaladin was able to take step 10 instead of just us seeing what step 10 had to be wasn’t interesting.
On a similar note, Shallan. With her as well, I had a general feeling of “this again?” I know that Lightbringers have to face truths about themselves to advance, but that doesn’t have to mean a terrible secret or a repressed memory. How many terrible secrets can one girl have? She killed her mom, and her dad, and her first spren. Will book 5 be Shallan remembering the time she killed her beloved puppy? (or axehound. Whatever.) Shallan needs to discover some truths about herself, who she is as a person, not more secrets of her past.
I appreciate how Brandon treats mental illness seriously. Kaladin’s “battle fatigue” (aka PTSD) is given the seriousness it deserves, and the path to recovery is appropriately open-ended and uncertain. So far so good. Kaladin’s burgeoning career as a mental health care provider is also fine, though it felt … unearned is the right word, perhaps? Almost Mary Sue-ish. Oh, Kaladin also knows how to set up a PTSD support group on the first try.
Shallan’s mental health issues were much less well done. Having any kind of multiple personality disorder is not nearly as stable and functional as it is shown here. And everyone around her just rolling with it (“Oh, I’m talking to Veil now? OK, cool”) felt very unrealistic to me. People as a whole just aren’t that comfortable with that level of open mental illness. With the most loving relationships and best intentions in the world it can be a major challenge to treat straightforward depression with the seriousness it deserves. Rolling with someone just being 3 distinct personalities? It should not be nearly so easy.
Renarin was a Macguffin in this, pure and simple, and that bothers me. For those who haven’t spent many many hours lost in TvTropes, a Macguffin is an object that’s important to the plot but not important in and of itself. The One Ring in LotR is probably the best known example: it doesn’t really matter that the One Ring is a piece of jewelry, or how exactly it’s powerful. What matters is that everyone wants it, and that the baddies getting it would be a Problem, and that destroying it lets the good guys win. The briefcase in Pulp Fiction is a more obvious example. We don’t know what’s in it, and it doesn’t matter. Renarin plays an absolutely critical role in the plot, but gets almost no screen time and no character development at all. He’s the Radiant equivalent of running the shower during a clandestine conversation to keep any microphones from picking it up. Brandon could just have easily invented a fabrial that does what Renarin does, and that wouldn’t have been deeply unfair to a character that could be great.
Last major complaint is Lirin. Kaladin’s dad’s pacifism hasn’t ever really sat right with me, and I finally put my finger on why. Pacifism, as generally practiced by people like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr and Cesar Chavez, isn’t about avoiding violence as such. It’s about alternate methods of fighting for what is right. That’s not what Lirin pushes on Kaladin: in fact, he actively discourages Kaladin from standing up to injustice, ever. The extent of Lirin’s moral philosophy is, first, treat anybody, and second, no violence. He himself practices a bit of passive resistance in helping the Herdazian freedom fighters hide, but as presented he’s a total strawman. I feel like Brandon didn’t really handle the Tinkers well in the last three Wheel of Time books either, so I think this is a little bit of a pattern.
On to the good stuff: on a scene-by-scene level, this book was as fun as Brandon’s stuff always is. It was only when pieced together that I felt it didn’t work. The pieces were great fun as always. And despite my complaining about Brandon’s Cosmere teasing, I’m still super curious and am the Cosmere stuff I haven’t read (Emperor’s Soul, White Sand, maybe more? I dunno) up the TBR queue.
I also give great credit for the way Brandon is treating the whole “ancient war come again” trope. In most fantasy stories, when that happens, the new war is pretty much a retread of the old. (see “Brooks, Terry, Collected Works Of”) One thing that was made clear is how very different this war is from the previous Desolations (or Returns, depending on your point of view).
As for the ending and setup for book 5? I honestly don’t know how I feel. I shall, undoubtedly, Read And Find Out.
To sum up my feelings on this: this book was a disappointment, but I’m hopeful that will be rectified by book 5. A great deal of this could simply be the necessities of moving pieces into place that so many long series struggle with. Hopefully Brandon will stick the landing in book 5.
Lastly, as learned while writing this review, I am fundamentally incapable of spelling the word “rhythym” correctly on the first try. Rythym? Rythym? Rhthym? Rhythm? Ahh, there we go, that one isn’t red-underlined. I wish I was exaggerating, but I find rhythm every bit as hard to spell as beuaracracy. Beuraucracy. Bureaucracy. There we go, third time’s the charm.
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