Mild Spoilers
In a dive into epic high fantasy, my husband and I finished reading Brandon Sanderson’s Rhythm of War. I felt like this book has met my expectations for the fourth book in Brandon Sanderson’s series. I really wanted to see Kaladin’s arch resolve in this one, since it didn’t in the last one. I also enjoyed reading from Navani’s perspective and reading about her growth. I really didn’t want Dalinar to come in and save Navani when the tower is taken over by the enemy, and that didn’t happen. So that was super satisfying.
I was expecting a little bit more out of Shallan’s growth and for Adolin’s arch. In this book no victory comes without a cost or without qualifications, which is great. However, the qualifications tacked onto Shallan and Adolin, made their victories not as awesome as they could be, AND I was hoping to see their victory tie into some of what was going on at the tower more.
That being said, there was significant progress made there, so perhaps it is a minor nitpicking thing. Like I said, Kaladin and Navani’s archs were super satisfying. And the expansion of what is going on with the spren, including Dalinar’s pov, really added to that.
In this book, Brandon Sanderson expands his world to a cosmic level, not yet taking us off planet but discussing about how different worlds exist, that Wit is from a different planet (although that’s been suspected for a while) and that Odium has plans of cosmic proportions. I’m not quite sure, as a reader what I feel about this yet. I will have to wait to see how Brandon Sanderson builds it out from here, but a part of me was kind of sad. I liked the world and conflict on its own terms. I was ok with the humans coming from another planet to this one, but I was a little disappointed for the conflict to turn cosmic even though its been hinting at that since book 3. Whatever happens, I hope the main conflicts remains rooted in Roshar at least for the next book or two.
As always Brandon Sanderson’s world building is amazing if not a bit long winded at times in the description department. His character archs are awesome and the complexities he deals with are very well done. And even though his books are long, he does a great job of keeping your interest and building tension into a very satisfying resolution.
I keep using Brandon Sanderson’s stormlight archives books as examples in my writing group, even though I know I am the only one who has read all of them! Haha! Maybe because they are the only books I’ve been reading for a while, but I think there are writing concepts that he uses so well in his books that are demonstrative of certain writing aspects.
I look forward to reading book 5!
To check out more of Brandon Sanderson’s writing click Here.
JA Curtis 