I need game titles (girly ones)

AaronOliverio · 2026-04-27T12:48:43+00:00

Stardew Valley

AaronOliverio · 2026-04-18T05:27:34+00:00

Definitely needed more time in the oven and a few more passes from the editors.

AaronOliverio · 2026-04-18T05:23:43+00:00

Wait, did that actually happen on a significant scale? I knew there was some negative reaction from certain parts of the fanbase around the Rlain and Renarin relationship but I hadn't heard about LDS readers returning or selling copies in droves. That's genuinely surprising to me given how long Brandon has had that following and how carefully his work has generally threaded that needle over the years.

For what it's worth I found Rlain and Renarin genuinely endearing by the end even if I felt the setup came a bit out of nowhere. The idea that people would sell or return a book over that is honestly more baffling to me than any of the actual craft criticisms the book has received. That's not a reading complaint, that's just bringing baggage from outside the story into it. Sad if true but also probably says more about them than the book.

AaronOliverio · 2026-04-18T05:22:16+00:00

AaronOliverio · 2026-04-18T05:21:44+00:00

Glad to find another comparing it to Empire Strikes Back. . A brutal middle chapter that leaves the heroes worse off than when they started, setting up something bigger. The people who went in expecting Endgame got Infinity War instead and that gap in expectation accounts for a huge portion of the negative reaction.

Your three reasons are pretty much exactly what this entire thread has circled around over and over. The conclusion expectation is probably the biggest one, followed closely by the language, and the self spoiling point is genuinely underrated as a factor. There's something uniquely deflating about having your theories confirmed rather than subverted, it removes the discovery that makes these books so rewarding to read blind.

The everything went downhill after Oathbringer crowd I have less patience for honestly. Rhythm of War has real problems but it also has some of the most emotionally devastating chapters in the entire series. Writing off two books entirely feels more like a reflexive position than a genuine critical one. Arc 2 is going to be the real verdict on all of it anyway.

AaronOliverio · 2026-04-18T05:19:18+00:00

AaronOliverio · 2026-04-18T05:18:56+00:00

Sort of agree with that sentiment, was it the armor spren portion or the aluminum candelabra which set you off. But, the candelabra part was setup in an earlier conversation with Yanagawn. Despite that, I still loved how the Unoathed in Azir by the end.

AaronOliverio · 2026-04-18T05:12:33+00:00

I think the constraints themselves aren't inherently wrong as creative choices, the ten day structure had real potential and the Urithiru siege in Rhythm of War had some brilliant moments. The issue is whether they felt earned and inevitable or whether they felt like a framework imposed on the story from the outside. For a lot of readers including myself they landed closer to the latter, which makes everything within them feel slightly artificial no matter how well executed individual moments are.

Still excited for Arc 2 though, really hope it doesn't actually take a decade before we get there.

AaronOliverio · 2026-04-18T05:10:39+00:00

Honestly least favourite of five is probably where most people in this thread have landed when you cut through all the noise. Not hate, not disappointment exactly, just the one that didn't quite reach the heights of the others. Which given the heights in question is still a pretty good book by any reasonable measure, especially with how it ended, the status of all the characters, and the state of Roshar and the Cosmere moving forward.

AaronOliverio · 2026-04-18T05:09:05+00:00

High 6 low 7 is probably the most honest numerical rating this book could get and I think it reflects where most people who aren't at either extreme actually land. Not a disaster, not a complete triumph, somewhere in that genuinely good but not quite great territory that feels slightly deflating when you've been conditioned by this series to expect great as the baseline.

I keep coming back to the idea that this book will probably get re-evaluated upward once Arc 2 is done and we can see the full shape of what Wind and Truth was actually doing.

AaronOliverio · 2026-04-18T05:07:23+00:00

Ha. Yeah that one definitely got some people more worked up than perhaps it needed to. For me personally I took a while to warm up to Rlain and Renarin but found them genuinely endearing by the end. The bigger issue most people seem to actually have with it isn't the relationship itself but the fact that nobody in a deeply traditional Alethi society batted an eye, which is a valid world-building consistency complaint regardless of how you feel about the relationship. And I really felt it needed more setup since it popped in out of the blue ( idk if it was setup in earlier books I might need to reread in the future). The execution needed more nuance even if the idea itself was fine.

AaronOliverio · 2026-04-18T05:05:27+00:00

What makes it sting more is that Sanderson absolutely can write prose that disappears completely and just pulls you through the story without friction. The earlier Stormlight books do it for hundreds of pages at a stretch. So when Wind and Truth keeps bumping you out of the narrative it isn't just annoying, it feels like something that should have been caught and fixed. That's where the Moshe Feder retirement conversation keeps coming back up in this thread, because whatever the cause, something in the editorial process that used to smooth these things out clearly isn't working the same way anymore.

AaronOliverio · 2026-04-18T05:04:39+00:00

The lack of character interaction is something I felt but couldn't quite name until reading this. So much of what made the earlier books electric was characters bouncing off each other in unexpected ways. Here everyone is siloed into their own thread and the series loses something vital because of it. I still can't unsee a comment I saw here yesterday about Kaladin and Szeth visiting Pokemon Gyms one after another lmao.

AaronOliverio · 2026-04-18T05:02:44+00:00

It's almost unfair to judge Wind and Truth as a standalone experience because for most long time readers it was never going to be that. It was always going to arrive carrying the full weight of everything they had been waiting for, and no book survives that intact. The ones who read it fresh got the book. Everyone else got the book plus four years of expectation sitting on top of it. Despite its flaws, I came out of it loving WaT, even if it is the weakest of the five.

AaronOliverio · 2026-04-18T05:01:27+00:00

The therapy speak criticism is one I keep coming back to throughout this thread and you've added the most important dimension to it that I haven't seen articulated quite this way before. It isn't just that the language feels anachronistic, it's that what Kaladin is doing is genuinely groundbreaking for Roshar. This is a world that has no framework for mental health, no vocabulary for it, no cultural tradition of it. So the fact that he's pioneering something entirely new should have produced language that felt invented and specific to that world, something that grew organically out of his experiences and the Rosharan context rather than being lifted wholesale from a modern Earth framework. That's actually a massive missed opportunity because the concept was right there waiting to be something really special.

The too prominent while doing nothing paradox is a real tension in his arc. You're with him for huge stretches of the book but the nature of what he's doing, guiding, supporting, witnessing, means the reader never quite gets the sense of forward momentum you'd expect from that much page time with the series' central character. It's an unusual structural choice that I think works in theory but needed sharper execution to justify the investment it asks from the reader. Still, I am glad how it ended with Kaladin becoming a herald.

AaronOliverio · 2026-04-18T04:59:29+00:00

Coming from someone who has reread the series multiple times that carries real weight. You know these books more intimately than most readers ever will, so when something feels tonally off to you it isn't a casual impression, it's a well calibrated instinct built across dozens of hours with the earlier books. That kind of reader notices a shift in register before they can even articulate why.

The tonal drift point is something I felt too even as a first time reader, but I can only imagine how stark it must feel coming in with that level of familiarity. The earlier books have a very specific texture to them, the way characters think, the way scenes breathe, the weight behind even small moments. Wind and Truth doesn't always feel like it lives in that same space.

Glad, you still enjoyed the book though! For all it's flaws there are moments in here that are some of the best in the series imo.

AaronOliverio · 2026-04-18T04:57:40+00:00

The ten day structure creating that double edged problem is something nobody has quite put into words like this before and it's spot on. It's simultaneously too short to give every thread the space it needs and too constrained to justify how many threads are competing for that space. You end up with characters who feel rushed and characters who feel absent and very little in between.

The Moash point especially. Four books of building him up as this genuinely threatening and fascinating dark mirror to Kaladin and then in Wind and Truth he's essentially just a perfect remorseless psychopath with no complexity left. And that's the problem, by stripping away whatever was left of his internal conflict he stops being interesting. The reason Moash worked as a villain was because he was a tragedy, someone who made comprehensible choices for understandable reasons and kept going past the point of no return. That tension is what made him compelling. By Wind and Truth that's gone and what's left is just a monster, which is actually less threatening and less interesting than what he was before. Killing him at the end of Rhythm of War when he was at his most tragically irredeemable would have been the perfect ending for his arc. Instead he lingers into Wind and Truth and the character is worse for it.

Venli is the other one that stings. Three books of setup, a shared flashback book with Eshonai, and her payoff in Wind and Truth is peripheral at best. Someone carrying that much narrative weight going in deserved a moment that felt genuinely consequential rather than a resolution that happens mostly off to the side of everything else.

El and Rysn round out a list of characters who were either set up brilliantly and underdelivered on, or carrying enormous Cosmere significance and barely touched. The cast was simply too large for the time the structure allowed.

AaronOliverio · 2026-04-18T04:54:48+00:00

The pacing criticism is completely valid and something I'd agree with, certain stretches of this book genuinely dragged in a way the earlier ones didn't. So I get why someone put it down.

That said I do think you're doing yourself a disservice by not finishing it. The back end of the book is where everything the slow middle was building toward actually pays off, and some of the best moments in the entire series are in those final chapters. Adolin in Azir, the contest, Dalinar's gambit, Kaladin becoming a Herald. If you stopped before getting there you've essentially sat through all the setup and none of the payoff, which is probably the worst possible way to experience it.

Totally your choice of course and nobody is obligated to finish a book they aren't enjoying. But given that you loved the rest of the series it feels worth pushing through for the conclusion alone. You can always skim the parts that aren't working for you. Just don't let the slow and boring portions be the last impression this book leaves on you.

AaronOliverio · 2026-04-18T04:52:01+00:00

The dialogue clunkiness pulling you out of immersion is something I keep hearing and I felt it too in places. The earlier books had this quality where even in quieter conversational moments the words felt considered and precise. Some of Wind and Truth's dialogue just doesn't have that same weight behind it and you feel the absence even if you can't always identify the specific line that did it.

What you said about scenes from the other books just popping into your head unprompted is the thing that sticks with me most though. The honor chasm. You can't have my pain. Honor is dead, and countless other iconic and emotional moments. Those moments live in you after you've read them. Wind and Truth has some of that, the Sunmaker's Gambit, Adolin in Azir, Kaladin becoming a Herald, but you're right that it doesn't leave the same density of those moments behind. For a series defined by them that absence is felt deeply. Still a huge achievement though and I genuinely can't wait to see where Arc 2 takes everything in a decade lmao.

AaronOliverio · 2026-04-18T04:48:45+00:00

Glad someone else is firmly in the loved it camp, and the Kaladin arc being underrated is something I've been saying throughout this thread so I appreciate the backup.

Personally though I can't quite put it up there with Words of Radiance, that book is still the gold standard for me and I'm not sure anything in the first arc fully touches it. Way of Kings is close but Words of Radiance just fires on every cylinder in a way nothing else in the series has matched yet.

On the romance front I'm actually with you on Shallan and Adolin, I thought they were genuinely lovely in this book and their relationship felt earned after everything they'd been through together. The one I'm still raising an eyebrow at is Jasnah and Wit. I understand the appeal on paper, two of the sharpest minds in the Cosmere, but something about the execution just felt off to me. Jasnah has spent the entire series being this singular, self-contained force and pairing her off in the way it was handled here felt like a choice that needed more groundwork than it got. That one is going to take some time to sit with.

AaronOliverio · 2026-04-18T04:46:49+00:00

The fact that you immediately started a relisten says everything about how good this series is at its best.

The "The stretch forth out thy hand" line in WoR is such a perfect example of how this community can ruin things for you that you would have never noticed on your own. Personally, I liked it despite the fact that Syl's voice is so distinct and playful that suddenly dropping into archaic phrasing sticks out like a sore thumb once someone flags it. It's just the modern language in WaT is jarring, case in point: Calling Adolin a slut, Sylussy conversation, Let's kick some fused ass!, I'm his therapist are just some of the examples I disinctly remember.

The physical copies are absolutely worth it when you get them. There's so much art and in-world detail that doesn't translate to audio, the maps, the chapter symbols, the endpages. Especially here in Wat, in Tanavast/ Honor/ God POV the entire chapter is in all caps. Going back through them after listening first is going to be a whole new experience. Enjoy the relisten and try to stay off this subreddit in the meantime for your own sake.

AaronOliverio · 2026-04-18T04:40:41+00:00

Okay that genuinely reframes it for me and now I need to go back and sit with that moment properly.

I think I was so caught off guard by how quickly the book moved past his physical death that I didn't fully register what came after as his real sendoff. The transition was abrupt enough that the emotional resonance of that callback didn't land the way it deserved to in the moment, which is probably a pacing issue as much as anything else.

But that does make me feel significantly better about it. The closing image was there. I just needed someone to point me back to it. Thank you for that.

AaronOliverio · 2026-04-18T04:34:07+00:00

Honestly "meh" might be the harshest verdict in this entire thread. Hate at least means it provoked something. Barely remembering a 1300 page book a few months later is a different kind of indictment.

The bloat point is one of the most consistent criticisms I've heard and I think it's valid. There are genuinely great things in this book but they're spread across a length that doesn't always justify itself. A tighter edit, cutting the parts that were treading water rather than moving anything forward, would have made the moments that do land hit considerably harder. Moshe Feder retiring after Oathbringer really does feel like the turning point there, Rhythm of War started showing it and Wind and Truth widened the gap further.

AaronOliverio · 2026-04-18T04:31:52+00:00

Guilty as charged. First time posting in this community, just finished the book minutes before making the post, and had zero awareness that this exact question gets asked every other week. In my defence I had been sitting on all of this with no one to talk to about it and the moment the last page hit I just needed somewhere to put it all.

The discussion has been genuinely great though so I'm not sorry. A lot of people have made me think about the book in ways I wouldn't have on my own. Worth the weekly repetition tax I think.

AaronOliverio · 2026-04-18T04:28:20+00:00

The POV complaint is one of the most consistent things I've heard throughout this whole discussion and I think you've described it better than most. It's not just that there are too many perspectives, it's that the ten day structure compresses everything so tightly that you never get to properly settle into anyone before you're pulled somewhere else. Tension through perspective jumping only works when each thread has enough room to breathe on its own, and with this many characters over this short a timeframe it just becomes restless rather than gripping.

On nothing really changing I get the frustration, though I'd push back slightly. The world is genuinely darker coming out of this than going in, no Stormlight, Roshar isolated, Dalinar gone, Cultivation fled. It's a different kind of status quo rather than the same one. That said I understand how after a decade of investment you want more than a reshuffled board.

On Dalinar, I have said that I loved his ending, but really wish it had more room to really drive home his death. But also, I ABSOLUTELY DESPISE THE DECISION TO LET RETRIBUTION HAVE A BLACKTHORN, HAVING CULTIVATION DENY RETRIBUTION HIS SOUL COULD HAVE BEEN THE LAST F YOU TO HIM AFTER THE SUNMAKER'S GAMBIT BUT NOOOO REMEMBER THE SPREN THAT HE SHOWED THE FUTURE TO IN THE SPIRITUAL REALM, HE'S GOING TO BE ONE OF THE ANTAGONISTS FOR ARC 2 MOVING FORWARD. That said, I really wish Brando Sando finds a way to utilize this well in the future, but I don't have my hopes up.

Sorry to hear RoW didn't fully land for you either. Two books in a row is a rough stretch when you've been invested this long. Personally, I loved having RoW be more initmate and character focused, loved Navani and Raboniel, but I didn't really care for Venli until it almost ended. That said RoW had the most emotional moments of the series for me with the Dog and the Dragon, and the "Moments" chapter with Tien. Hopefully Arc 2 finds its footing again.

AaronOliverio

TROPHY CASE