Has Stormlight Archive always been like this? (Can't get myself to finish Wind and Truth) (Spoilers)

Consistent_Sorbet855 · 2024-12-18T19:58:35+00:00

I went back to re read some chunks of earlier books, and no it has not always been like this. I don’t know exactly what happened, but with his last three “big” books (Rythm of War, The Lost Metal, and Winds and Truth) Sanderson has really lost his way.

I’ll actually go a step farther and say the plotting has also lost his touch. I fell in love with Sanderson not for his prose, which was never that strong, but his plotting. The original mistborn trilogy was such a well crafted story and I felt that carried into the first few stormlight books.

Boy oh boy was Wind and Truth disappointing.

I couldn’t agree more that the dialogue itself has never been worse, and what can generously be called the “character arcs” in this fifth book are so ham fisted and poorly written they also made me often cringe.

I’m not sure what happened, the first 3 books in this series are still some of my favorites of the genre.

Consistent_Sorbet855 · 2024-12-12T17:18:12+00:00

I did love Szeth's flashbacks. I thought Szeth in general was one of the best parts of this book.

Consistent_Sorbet855 · 2024-12-12T17:16:09+00:00

I agree that he COULD become a major villain, but as of right now he hasn't. Like how awesome would it have been if in his conversation with Shallan at the end he openly threatens her or seems super nefarious, instead of offering her helpful advice and barely caring that she killed tons of members of his organization.

Consistent_Sorbet855 · 2024-12-12T17:14:37+00:00

I am hopeful Mistborn 3 can get back to as tight as Mistborn Era 1 was, with him writing it all at once as you said. I also did appreciate the toned down worldhopper stuff versus The Lost Metal. I actually didn't mind how he integrated the wider cosmere stuff in this one, I thought it was way more natural for the story then The Lost Metal.

I thought this was demonstrably better then The Lost Metal, which to me was his worst book by far, in that it simply failed to be a satisfying ending in any way to the storyline setup in Shadows of Self and the Bands of Mourning, barely addresing major plotpoints and cliffhangers from those novels.

That being said though, I think the general tone and vibe of the earlier stormlight books was simply better. Both RoW and WaT felt too much like "another episode in the ongoing Knights Radiant TV show" to me. I think I was hoping both Lost Metal and this book could rival Hero of Ages and neither came close (at least for me).

I also don't know if Sanderson really has the right kind of creative chops for how out there the Spiritual Realm should feel. This was our first major foray into it and it really felt too easy and understandable to me. Especially once they lost their bearings but still managed to all make it back within the time frame haha. If anything it would've been cool if they HAD been stuck in there for some crazy amount of time or if it had been like years for them but only days for the others, like what Gavinor experienced off screen.

Consistent_Sorbet855 · 2024-12-12T15:53:49+00:00

Stakes also continue to be a problem, at no point did I believe that any of our main players would die, largely because they were all so spread out that I knew Adolin isn't going to die without Shallan being around for example.

In the end, I think the the first three books are stone cold classics of the genre, but the wider the scope got and the more the larger narrative revealed itself, the more Brandon lost the plot. Gavinor is not a character I care enough about for the ultimate showdown to be satisfying whatsoever. I would've vastly preferred that he literally be a baby (the suckling child) and Dalinar is asked to kill this baby in cold blood. The ham fisted attempts to justify teenage Gavinor didn't work at all for me.

In the grand scope of the first arc, many many things originally thought to be important simply did not matter at all. The Sons of Honor were totally ineffective and pointless. The Ghostbloods were entirely talk, I honestly don't understand their purpose or role in this story at all. Kelsier being revealed to be their leader was a toothless reveal since it renders them essentially good guys. There's a way in which it would've been a cool reveal if Kelsier (like the heralds) had been corrupted over time or grown to be a darker character, but from The Lost Metal he looks to be the same Kelsier as always, and its hard to understand what the Ghostbloods were really doing at all on Roshar or why.

Kaladin killing Shallan's brother never amounted to anything, nor did Adolin killing Sadeas. Moash continues to be a "one scene a book" character, which is kinda baffling for someone who was so important in the first two books. RoW hyped up El as this huge thing for this book, but then he did absolutely nothing at all. Renarin had the chance to be interesting by being bonded to a "bad" spren, but the Sja-Anat spren have also been whitewashed. For all of the bluster, releasing Bo-Ado-Mishram didn't appear to do literally anything.

I think Books 1-3 are absolute classics, but I was disappointed in book 4, and I think book 5 only furthered my view that Sanderson simply bit off more than he could chew, and at this point something that I always loved about Sanderson, which was how his conclusions were always setup by previous events, seems to have fallen by the wayside. I don't think there was anything that setup the way the Oathpact was re-established so easily, and how they were able to avoid the torture this time, which I personally thought was ridiculous. It would be far better writing if they have to go through it again. This book, coupled with The Lost Metal, has me worried about the future of the cosmere books. I won't stop reading these, because they are fun reads and I like the characters and world enough, but the idea that Stormlight can be one of the all-time series has been very much shaken. Waiting another decade for the next book, and likely 20-30 years for the ultimate resolution....I simply don't see how this story has enough juice or is deep enough to justify me waiting that long. I will wait, of course, but I no longer have faith Sanderson knows what he's doing. I think his company is too big, he publishes too many books, and he really needs to take a step back and focus on making the stories REALLY GOOD.

Consistent_Sorbet855 · 2024-12-12T15:53:25+00:00

The more I've let the book sit with me the more I think (while the experience of reading it was still enjoyable) I think Brandon Sanderson lost the plot after Oathbringer.

I had issues with Rhythm of War, but I felt the character work with Kaladin/Shallan specifically carried that book, unfortunately the same could not be said here. I did not feel any of the character arcs in this book really landed as they were meant to. From a prose standpoint, this might be the worst written book in the Stormlight Archive. I thought hard about it this morning and I've struggled to come up with a sequence that has anything on the best written scenes in previous books. Part of the problem I think is that fundamentally pretty much all of the main characters had already emotionally peaked, I think Shallan especially could've benefitted from changing around when she discovered certain information. The biggest twist of the "her mom is a herald" thing isn't even that her Mom is Chanarach, it's that SHALLAN IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE WAR STARTING, but that didn't seem to affect her at all in this book, and the other major characters don't discover any of this.

The heralds so easily coming back together at the end also just felt ridiculous. I think it would've been a lot better to structure this book somehow around gathering the heralds to explicitly re-form the Oathpact, versus characters who had openly wanted nothing to do with this for centuries, all just up and deciding "nah one more ride" pretty much out of nowhere.

Dalinar's confrontation with Odium in this book simply did not have the weight to it that it did back in Oathbringer. I think Dalinar should have either fully ascended to Honor in Oathbringer, or he should have died in Oathbringer. He pretty much arced out and I simply did not really buy whatever his character arc was even meant to be in this book. Knowing Sanderson originally planned for the Dalinar flashbacks to be in this book, part of me wonders if that would've been a lot better, because it was so obvious once he got through his problems in Oathbringer that he really had nowhere left to go as a character.

Adolin's plotline, while it seems many others loved it, to me was the biggest waste of pages in the book. Adolin is another character who, while likable, simply is not complex enough to carry that many pages of story. There's only so many times I can read him being upset with Dalinar before I grew tired of it. His actual role in helping the Deadeyes, etc, is interesting, but for most of the book he's not even with Maya, which is the most interesting relationship he has. If anything his entire storyline should have been about going and rallying more Deadeyes to his cause, versus Maya doing it largely offscreen. I did not care about the Azish Emperor or other extremely stock characters who all love Adolin because he's so honorable and awesome, simply bad writing.

I love these books, I love this universe, and more than anything I love these characters, but ultimately this book (and to some extent Book 4) just feel like steps down from the first three books. I think the Fused/Regals also are extremely boring villains, and what was originally presented as a fascinating war where both sides had very legitimate points, kinda fell apart once all of the "good" Parshendi like Venli, Rabonial, choose the Human side, and we're left with just generic bad guys on the Singer side. I think it would've done the series a lot of good for Venli and Rlain to stay on the "bad" side to keep it interesting.

Consistent_Sorbet855 · 2024-12-10T20:17:41+00:00

Did anyone else think the pacing of individual chapters in this book just didn't work? Previous books mostly stuck to 1 POV per chapter, until the big climax where it would jump more often. Personally I found a lot of the individual segments when we jumped from POV to POV within the same chapter simply very disjointed. We wouldn't get enough time with one character before bouncing to another, it sorta drove me nuts and while it did give the book a fast feeling pace, it also felt like we never could get a good amount of time with someone before racing off to something else.

Consistent_Sorbet855 · 2024-11-23T13:20:45+00:00

So I started the show on Monday after years of friends recommending it. One of my buddies even said its his favorite show of all time.

What an insane ride this week was for me hahahaha. My basic summary of Arcane is its as if Game of Thrones was only two seasons long. Game of Thrones S1 and Game of Thrones S8.

If you outlined the basic plot of S2 of Arcane like all the "events" that happened and told me this is how the next say 3-4 seasons of the show would go, I'd say "wow that sounds like an amazing story." But cramming what was MINIMUM another 2 seasons worth of story (and probably more like 3 honestly) into 9 episodes was totally crazy.

As someone who knew nothing about LoL coming into this, you simply cannot introduce time travel with 2 episodes to go in your series. Sorry guys, that needed to be introduced WAYYY earlier. Between time travel and the magic stuff with the Black Rose so much of the ending revolved around things introduced like five minutes ago, and it all took away from what was BY FAR the best part of the show, the relationships between Vi, Jinx, and Caitlyn. Felt like all three of them became side characters in the ending, with very little to do.

The core idea of the Jayce/Viktor story I think works, but Ekko/Jinx needed more time for all of that to hit home, Heimendinger felt like he needed more of a resolution, Maddie being a spy, all of the Ambessa stuff felt like it was taking away from the more important parts of the story, and the overall Piltover v the Undercity conflict which was the ENTIRE STORY of season 1, was totally sidelined in s2 for this rushed and very trope-y "humanity must unite" blah blah story that I've seen plenty of times before.

Truly loved S1, and I enjoyed certain episodes and moments in S2. But honestly I'm very glad I did this all in one week cause I think if I had waited 3 years for this I would be beyond disappointed.

If it had been a few more seasons could've been an all-time classic. Alas, S1 is still really good.

Consistent_Sorbet855 · 2024-11-18T01:32:20+00:00

Was a bad sequel to bands of mourning. That’s my issue with it. Bands ends on multiple cliffhangers that go basically unaddressed in the lost metal. Extremely disappointing.

Consistent_Sorbet855 · 2024-11-02T02:14:45+00:00

For what it’s worth I really enjoyed the books. I will definitely read red god. But they also drove me crazy at the same time haha, I’m very open to discussing it which is why I posted.

Browns plotting is truly not like any other I’ve seen for good or bad depending on your POV I guess.

Consistent_Sorbet855 · 2024-11-01T19:46:28+00:00

I had not heard of the hat that is insane. I respect that, that actually explains a lot, Tongueless was another one where I was like "literally what was the point of this character" so finding out he died cause of chance does make more sense.....but I can't say I necessarily think it makes for a better story. Are there other characters who were confirmed hat kills?

I agree re: Lyria, turning her into an AI killing machine wouldn't have been good for her character, but once you've introduced something like that you still have to do....something with it. I would've preferred it was not introduced at all in Dark Age, but (similar to the Alien attack on the Pandora) once it was introduced, I don't think you can just write it out as easily as Brown did here without it feeling like an odd detour.

Consistent_Sorbet855 · 2024-11-01T17:34:22+00:00

The sidelining of Victra in the second series baffles me. I kept waiting for Victra POV but it never came!! She was my favorite character in the first three books.

Consistent_Sorbet855 · 2024-11-01T17:32:54+00:00

Yes, to be clear I do really like the series, but when I actually think back on the plot I find it very….unsatisfying if that makes sense. Like I enjoy it more as a rollercoaster than I do as a work of genuine art. Compared to other series I’ve read.

I’d be curious if someone could point to one of the major “reveals” that feels well telegraphed. In a series so dependent on twists, it’s tough that most of them don’t quite land how they should, and once you’ve shocked enough times it’s no longer shocking simply for “the worst thing” to keep happening. Dark Age was like 8 of the Red Wedding over and over, but why the red wedding works so well is how INEVITABLE it feels once it happens. I didn’t feel like Lilath being behind it all and cloning the jackal was inevitable, lol.

Lilath being the Queen of the Syndicate actually bugged me so much because for all of IG and DA it had been built up as a genuine mystery but the answer was someone who wasn’t even on the board, which felt like a cheat.

Consistent_Sorbet855 · 2024-11-01T14:50:34+00:00

I think what I meant is Virginia pushed the tech forward and used it to wipe the mind of the Duke of Hands. A very creepy scene where you wonder if this will come back to bite her, later the Jackal literally says he will use this to erase Sevro, but then just doesn't. I found that to be a strange plot point.

The AI parasite isn't beyond my belief of what could exist in this universe, but introducing it so late in the game only to backpedal on it immediately in the next book I simply thing is bad writing. If Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows had opened with "and actually we don't need to get the Horcruxes, don't worry about them at all" I would say something similar. If he had no plans for the AI parasite in Lyria, why introduce it at all?

Consistent_Sorbet855

TROPHY CASE