Magic of first 2 books

[Soccorro]

Way of Kings and Words of Radiance are my favorite books of all time. They made me love fantasy again. I was absolutely blown away. Unique world, interesting magic system, Radiant Orders and their Oaths. Shattered Plains setting was amazing. Great character study for Kaladin and Dalinar. 
 

And then the magic was gone. Oathbringer still has glimpses of it, it feels like a bridge between “old Sanderson” and “new Sanderson” but Rhythm of War and now Wind and Truth feel like completely different series. But the most interesting part is that I can’t properly explain why. What happen? What’s so special about first 2 books? I feel that something is off but can’t point out what exactly. Of course, I can figure out specific parts I dislike but I can’t explain the feeling that Magic was gone. A lot of people also say that WoK and WoR are the best. Maybe someone can explain  what’s their secret sauce?

[Lord Ruler Sylphrena He/Him]

1 hour ago, Soccorro said:

Way of Kings and Words of Radiance are my favorite books of all time. They made me love fantasy again. I was absolutely blown away. Unique world, interesting magic system, Radiant Orders and their Oaths. Shattered Plains setting was amazing. Great character study for Kaladin and Dalinar. 
 

And then the magic was gone. Oathbringer still has glimpses of it, it feels like a bridge between “old Sanderson” and “new Sanderson” but Rhythm of War and now Wind and Truth feel like completely different series. But the most interesting part is that I can’t properly explain why. What happen? What’s so special about first 2 books? I feel that something is off but can’t point out what exactly. Of course, I can figure out specific parts I dislike but I can’t explain the feeling that Magic was gone. A lot of people also say that WoK and WoR are the best. Maybe someone can explain  what’s their secret sauce?

I think its because we are learning the magic system along with the characters for the first two. Each development was fascinating and fun. I don't believe that the writing quality ever got worse but you can only raise the bar so many times and pull out so many reveals before it gets stale or at the very least familiar and expected. Kaladin swearing the 3rd ideal was probably my favorite moment in all of fiction but when he swore his fifth I just thought "cool". SA is still my favorite Brandon series but I love checking out everything he has written as each new series gives me the same wonderful feeling of discovering a new world and magic system as TWoK and WoR.

[Soccorro]

31 minutes ago, Lord Ruler Sylphrena said:

I love checking out everything he has written as each new series gives me the same wonderful feeling of discovering a new world and magic system as TWoK and WoR.

Which series would you recommend? I read Warbreaker and Mistborn and liked the first series about Vin and Elend but couldn’t get into Part 2 where main cast changes after big time skip. 

[Lord Ruler Sylphrena He/Him]

47 minutes ago, Soccorro said:

Which series would you recommend? I read Warbreaker and Mistborn and liked the first series about Vin and Elend but couldn’t get into Part 2 where main cast changes after big time skip. 

I like The Reckoners and Skyward even though they are non cosmere. Yumi and the Nightmare Painter and The Emperor's Soul are probably my favorite individual cosmere books.

[a Faceless Immortal he/him]

I see this sentiment everywhere, about many different media properties, from many different people. I think generally it boils down to a few things.

When you are in the beginnings of your journey with a new story, it's normal to enter with an open mind. Sure, you have some expectations that come with the genre or the medium, but you also expect these to be played with, and so largely you have no preconceived notions of what you are getting into. Because of this, everything the author does feels plausible and even exciting. The first few instalments are spent establishing the new world's most interesting settings, it's most engaging characters, and it's most enticing mysteries, and a property that does well at introducing this will be remembered fondly, carrying with it a certain nostalgia and sense of wonder, or sense of 'magic'.

From there, the remaining time spent is developing and answering the questions posed by the first instalments. The 'magic' breaks down here, because it's no longer an unanswered mystery; we get to peek behind the curtain and see the answers that were veiled from us. Things become a lot less interesting when they feel known and comfortable, but by virtue of spending time in a world that world will become less novel, losing what made it feel magical in the first place. With this in mind, it starts to make sense why people might dislike Rhythm of War, a book that is largely about science-ing up that magic and making an effort to explain everything.

Not only that, but in a long running project like the Stormlight Archive that will have long breaks between each novel I believe a certain amount of the magic is ruined by our own expectations. The huge amount of hype and discussion that follows a beloved piece of media makes it easier to believe that the next step will be larger than we have any reasonable right to expect. You quite often hear from fans of Stormlight that The Way of Kings (or maybe Words of Radiance) is a 'perfect book,' and that's a fine opinion to have, but if that's your opinion, how on earth is the next book ever going to live up to that? When you have this kind of history it's inevitable that any new works will be compared to the idealised experience people believe they had reading the earlier works.

For example, a lot of people have complaints about the dialogue in Wind and Truth. While I won't deny that the tone of the writing probably has shifted from that of the earlier books, I don't think the difference is as drastic as people think. A lot of the complaints about language that was too modern or too profane seem to miss that a lot of the language was already present in earlier books. A lot of people complain about Brandon showing and telling, especially when it came to the metal health focused parts of Wind and Truth, but seem to have forgotten that this was also a common complaint about the more politically involved segments of the first two books. People seem to think the dialogue has gotten too corny, but don't seem to remember that time Kaladin told Adolin that 'he had traded his sense of humour in a long time ago' and got 'scars' in return, which seems pretty corny to me.

Finally, Brandon spent nearly twenty years writing Way of Kings. Of course that book will be a little more polished than the one that took four, but can you really expect him to take that long on each book? Is it reasonable to expect Brandon to spend two centuries (hyperbole, I know) writing just Stormlight? Perhaps he could have done a better job, but do I hold it against him releasing books that aren't perfect? Not in the slightest.

[Soccorro]

3 hours ago, Lord Ruler Sylphrena said:

I like The Reckoners and Skyward even though they are non cosmere. Yumi and the Nightmare Painter and The Emperor's Soul are probably my favorite individual cosmere books.

Thanks!

 

2 hours ago, a Faceless Immortal said:

I think generally it boils down to a few things.

Thanks for lengthy response, I think it makes sense

[Yomisma]

7 hours ago, Soccorro said:

But the most interesting part is that I can’t properly explain why. What happen?

Quantity before quality maybe? In the latest books there are a lot of words about literally nothing. The story itself would fit into a novella no larger than a Dawshard.

[Treamayne]

On 12/24/2024 at 11:53 PM, Soccorro said:

Of course, I can figure out specific parts I dislike but I can’t explain the feeling that Magic was gone. A lot of people also say that WoK and WoR are the best. Maybe someone can explain  what’s their secret sauce?

While I agree with most of @a Faceless Immortal's response says, I also will note that, for me, I think one of the factors was scope.

In the first book, we had the Shattered Plains (Kaladin, Adolin and Dalinar), and Kharbranth (Shallan, Jasnah) and we got to know the characters and the settings very well - with occasional glimpses (via Interludes) of the rest of Roshar. A well-done combination of intimacy and wonder. WoR collapsed this more, as Shallan moved through the Frostlands, until all of the major characters were in one spot, and the Interludes added Eshonai to further expand another aspect of the setting we knew.

Then everything changed. I think those people who rate one of the last three as their favorites are those that prefer open-world, wide ranging variety at the expense of fine detail (Oathbringer alone added Urithiru, Kholinar, Vedenar, Azir, Thaylenah, and Shadesmar as major settings); while those that prefer the first two are simply people who prefer a smaller-scope (even if not smaller stakes - Mistborn was a global scale essentially in one city for two books - only adding Fadrex and Urteau in HoA) with greater detail within that scope.

We will all have our personal preferences - recognizing those is neither right nor wrong, just an acknowledgement of preference and what stories speak to us most.

Edited December 29, 2024 by Treamayne
SPAG

[eriwancoselyn]

there's been a drop in writing quality. sorry about the terrible capitalization.

I've seen a comment above talking about writing so I'm starting here. writing, beyond just modernizing, has gotten quantifiably worse. dialogue, which was generally deep, subtle and thought provoking in book one has slowly mellowed out into bland, generic and uninteresting slop in the later books. not to say that there weren't cringe or on the nose things in book 1, there absolutely were. I notice this, 'but brandon has always had cringe lines in his books' sentiment rising up but it's never made much sense to me. no one is arguing that Brandon has shifted personalities overnight. he's still the same man who wrote the first two books, he's just grown as a writer. the issue is that his writing style has grown like an ingrown toenail, slowly his worst tendencies have gotten the better of his best ones.

meaningful character interaction is on the downturn. words of radiance is most notable for this being done right. most of the characters are together and they interact in ways that are meaningful, and thus thrilling to read. characters are actually capable of affecting one another, and that makes you care when something happens. for example, the chasm scene, and shallan / Kaladin's  changes within, is the apex of all the books for me. the way that they interact is like a feast for an invested reader who likes and cares about those characters. unfortunately, gone are the days when one main character could meaningfully change another. instead, now, most of the characters exist in their own little mini arcs, isolated from the other characters who are crucial for giving them texture. this is why rhythm of war is so hard to care about. it's not as bad in wind and truth, but it's still very much an issue.

deemphasis of character in general. characters are the feeling organs of a reader. if the character doesn't care, the reader won't care. the general trend of plot lines pulling away from characters has been one of the worst changes in the whole of stormlight archive. what I mean is that when shallan and Dalinar are walking around the spiritual realm, the readers don't care because neither of the characters have a real stake in the events we're shown. obv Dalinar has to get through this to find out what happened to honor but he doesn't care about the events themselves, he just wants the outcome. shallan is even worse. not only does she not care about the visions, she doesn't even have a real reason to interact with them. she just bumbles through until she finds mishram, then is promptly sucked out. the reveal of her mother being chana means nothing to her, has no effect on her outlook or her mental state.

world building only matters if the characters care. this is why it's so impactful when kaladin takes to the sky for the first time or shallan finds out that the parshmen are the void bringers. the knowledge that someone in this world can fly means nothing unless we get to feel it happen through someone that we care about. the idea of an enslaved race being a ticking time bomb to start a desolation is cool but it only works if someone we care about is effected by that desolation. so, could you imagine if a whole book was dedicated to doing world building while none of the characters were affected by it? this is part of why rhythm of war is such a disaster. side note, this is why the oaths worked in the early books. they were a fantastic combination of interesting world building bound by a tight mesh of character.

thanks for reading.

[+Child of Hodor]

I think a major difference between the first 3 (OB still really good imo) and the last 2 is the last two had flashbacks for characters that aren’t the main characters or even close to the main characters. 

The first three had strong themes connecting the present day and the flashbacks that resonated. The last two don’t resonate as strongly to me.

Another thing is the macro structural changes he made to the books. RoW had Part 1 be the climax to a book we didn’t see and a big lull in the middle. WaT he did the 10 days structure which is very different from the 5 part structure of the other ones.

Finally LENGTH! WaT is easily the longest book and was written in about the same time in years as other books when you factor in him not working on it much in 2022 due to Hollywood stuff.

There are more modern expressions and more noticeable continuity issues in this one than the others. It probably, in part, comes from there just being more words to write and edit in a similar timeframe. 

[Nitpicking]

@Child of Hodor, also they cut the Tor editorial staff out of working on this book. Tor has some amazing editors, who didn't get a chance to help this round. In my opinion as a reader of many books, that shows.

[Treamayne]

2 minutes ago, Nitpicking said:

@Child of Hodor, also they cut the Tor editorial staff out of working on this book. Tor has some amazing editors, who didn't get a chance to help this round. In my opinion as a reader of many books, that shows.

Do you have a WoB or source for this, please?

[Nitpicking]

3 hours ago, Treamayne said:

Do you have a WoB or source for this, please?

Mentioned on ShardCast.

[Treamayne]

1 minute ago, Nitpicking said:

Mentioned on ShardCast.

But was that their speculation, or did they have a source?

[nehalem]

I feel what you are saying.  But I am going to give a completely different answer.

The first 2 books were simply more relatable in terms of the world and the problem people faced.  

Basically we were given a world that maybe it had a weird ecology and shardblades, but was similar to our world maybe a couple hundred years ago.

In the next 3 everyone had magic powers and was facing off against demigods or literal gods and going to the cognitive realm and spirtual realm.  Also we lost a lot of the culture that was around due to the apocalypse.

Maybe Adolin put it best in book 5 when he kept talking about how it was the end of the time of shardbearers.  Things changed.

[Sedside she/her]

On 12/25/2024 at 11:53 AM, Soccorro said:

Way of Kings and Words of Radiance are my favorite books of all time. They made me love fantasy again. I was absolutely blown away. Unique world, interesting magic system, Radiant Orders and their Oaths. Shattered Plains setting was amazing. Great character study for Kaladin and Dalinar. 
 

And then the magic was gone. Oathbringer still has glimpses of it, it feels like a bridge between “old Sanderson” and “new Sanderson” but Rhythm of War and now Wind and Truth feel like completely different series. But the most interesting part is that I can’t properly explain why. What happen? What’s so special about first 2 books? I feel that something is off but can’t point out what exactly. Of course, I can figure out specific parts I dislike but I can’t explain the feeling that Magic was gone. A lot of people also say that WoK and WoR are the best. Maybe someone can explain  what’s their secret sauce?

I agree with you so much on this. Though I would probably add OB to the list, the only thing I don't like about it is a stupid love triangle nonsense that should have never been written. I also think @eriwancoselyn pretty well worded my thoughts about the reasons for it, but I still want to express myself as well, because it bothers and disappoints me, and I just want to talk to someone about it.

I have put a lot of thought into this issue after finishing WaT a couple of weeks ago. Here is the list of the reasons my analytical mind could extract from the chaos of my emotions. I am going to exaggerate a little, probably, but only to better express the main idea. It’s going to be quite a rant, I’m sorry for that, but I just want to let it out. I have included a TLDR in the end, so feel free to skip right to it if you don’t want to read my lengthy explanations full of current examples.

1. Characters are gone. Instead of characters we now have plot devices, almost indistinguishable from each other. As eriwancoselyn already said, characters are crucial to our investment in the story. We need to be able to identify with the characters, to feel their problems as real, and to see that their problems influence the story in order to feel emotions about what is happening. Problems can be external or internal, but they should exist and we should be able to understand them. Kaladin's inner struggles with his hatred for lighteyes in WoR gave us the amazing chasm sequence and his Third Ideal scene. His struggles with us/them in OB lead to Elhokar's death and major consequences for the world. Kaladin's PTSD in RoW leads to nothing. He just walks around thinking how bad he feels, but when it comes to action he is perfectly functional. In WaT Kaladin simply has no problems at all. Maybe some external ones, but they get solved pretty easily. Like if he kept coming to B4 in WoK and asking them very nicely to train with him, and at the third attempt they would say "all riiight, fine, will do". The same can be said about Dalinar and Shallan, Kaladin is just one example.

2. Climaxes are gone. I can easily remember 5 or 6 climactic moments in WoR alone, but RoW and WaT lack climactic moments, for me at least. In WaT the only two moments that felt somewhat climactic for me were Kaladin vs Nale and Jasnah vs Taravangian. In RoW it was Maya's speech at the trial, despite the fact I don't like Adolin and his arc in any of the first four books. But those aren't even a mile close to "you cannot have my pain", "stretch forth thy hand", or the original "Honor is dead, but I'll see what I can do". And my favorite "is it really this hard for you to let me win one single argument", of course. I can make an assumption about why this is happening. Somehow the way those climaxes are constructed got changed. True emotions cannot be caused by rational reasoning. If I have to think why in particular this moment has to make me feel something, it failed to make me feel anything. Emotions are universal and general, they penetrate language barriers and even barriers between species, it works the same for the books. I like examples, so let me give one. Let's imagine you have a friend who didn't read SA, or even any of the cosmere, or even any of the other fantasy books. And you try to explain some of the climactic moments to them. Will you be able to explain it simply, or will it need a deep dive into the world? Compare "a young woman has lost her memories due to a childhood trauma, and when her memory is back, she realizes she had accidentally killed her mother in self defense" and "a young woman breaks her oaths for the magical companion that gave her superpowers that eventually lead to her mother's death, and it causes this magical companion to become something like a zombie, and it's very sad, because she liked that companion, and also because her friends would condemn her for this deed, because they have the same magical companions as well, and they think it's very cruel to do this to them". And what I see is that starting with RoW we have almost no climaxes like the first one, and everything that is supposed to sparkle emotions in me either involves a lot of magic, or has to be explained in length.

3. Strong relatable villains are gone. Sadeas was an awesome villain. Amaram was ok, if a little bland. WoR/OB Taravangian was amazing. WoR/OB and even RoW Moash was great. I could understand their motivations, I could relate to them and even root for them sometimes, when they succeeded with their villainy deeds. But this glorious cast is gone. We now have cartoon villains like Lezian, Abidi, WaT version of Moash, and something indistinct like Raboniel and El. I don't want to talk about TOdium in this section, because he is not a villain for me anymore. I, a human from Earth, can't relate to the god of divine hatred who wants to conquer the universe. I can't fathom his godly problems. So he turned into some kind of an abstract evil, spherical evil in vacuum, not a villain with understandable and relatable motivations.

4. Moral dilemmas are gone. There were several awesome hard choices our characters faced in WoK/WoR/OB. The most prominent for me was ofc Kaladin and his Third Ideal. And, again, this is the kind of choice that can easily be explained to someone who has no idea who Kaladin is, what Stormlight is or whatever. And it is a really, really hard choice because the both options are bad even if Kaladin knows he will not die, which he doesn't. Compare this choice to his choice in RoW. On one hand he dies and also lets his father die with him, on the other hand they both survive. Isn't the result obvious? What kind of choice is that - between a good option and a bad option? I mean I understand that he has depression and so on, but it is again the point where I should involve my rational part into feeling something. And so it looks like an artificial obstacle to an obvious outcome, other than something I can fully relate to. I mean, understand me right, I don't undermine the influence of depression, I do have depressive episodes myself sometimes, I just analyze this from pure narrative standpoint. Can we imagine the opposite outcome of this scene? I don't think so, whether I can easily imagine Kaladin agreeing to let Moash kill Elhokar in WoR. It would be shocking, but the story could continue from that point, and if Kaladin had chosen to fall with his father in RoW, his story would just end abruptly and that's it. And also, please, don't tell me that Dalinar/Gavinor is a moral dilemma. It's not. In my opinion, of course. In my opinion this is just an artificially constructed stupid excuse of a dilemma, created with a sheer amount of pure eventuality and magic involved. Even the characters themselves admit it. And the "solution" to this "dilemma" is even more stupid, with more amount of magic involved, and it's an excuse for breaking our expectations for the contest, created using a bunch of deus-ex-machina-like bits of a new information, in order to free Dalinar from the obligation to choose between two distasteful options.

5. Show not tell is gone. eriwancoselyn has already mentioned the mystery of Desolations and Voidbringers, and what I miss the most is the Shattered Plains. It was so fascinating to feel like you are solving this puzzle together with Shallan. I was thrilled when she found out how to get to Narak with a little tidbit from Kaladin. She was also very interested in natural history, and she was trying to study chasmfiends and why they come to the Shattered Plains to pupate. And then... stones tell Venli where to go, and chasmfiends (???) tell listeners their story and about the Shardpool and the fourth moon and... what? I feel like I've been robbed. The same thing with the Wind telling Kaladin and Ishar where to go and what to do. It all feels like an NPC gives our characters a quest, all immersion is just gone.

6. Subtlety is gone. It's related to "show not tell", but I specifically mean it in relation to characters. In the first three books the characters were just doing or saying something, and we had to draw our own conclusions about how they feel or what they feel for each other. It left room for discussion and imagination. Now we have endless passages of characters reflection. "Kaladin felt good" is the first line of the first chapter. And then he goes into nuances of how exactly good he feels, etc etc. All right, maybe Kaladin is a very self-aware person, he is Roshar's first therapist after all, but he is not the only one. Shallan's personas now explain to us why exactly they have been created and which role they play for her character, and she is probably the least self-aware person in the series. I don't even want to talk about all these endless attempts of shoving the message "Adolin and Shallan are good for each other and very happy together" directly into my head. I feel like I am being treated like a stubborn child refusing to go to bed or something.

7. Stakes are gone. Even if we knew our characters couldn't end up dead mid-series, there still were some threats that felt real. Kaladin could lose his bond to Syl forever, Dalinar could give up to Odium, Shallan could join Ghostbloods or lose herself in her personas. But starting with RoW all of the threats were gone. Dalinar and Stormfather's death were kind of obvious, and I've expected at least one (better two) other major PoV character's deaths and at least one of the other major spren. None of that happened. Leyten is not a major character, it feels like an excuse like everything else. Like "someone has to die, let it be someone expendable".

8. Consistency is gone. In the first three books we had a strong moral/ethical basis of oaths, honor, doing what's right, taking responsibility and so on. What we end up with is that someone can commit murders in dark corridors, someone can't, and it's fine. Someone can break oaths, someone can't, and it's fine. Someone can throw away all of the responsibility and kick the can down the road, and the others should carry the whole world's weight on their shoulders, and it's fine. Someone has to swear oaths to gain superpowers, and others can just say "I don't like oaths", name themselves Unoathed and gain superpowers too, and it's fine as well. What destiny is assigned to you depends on pure luck. Someone will say "but that's how the real life works as well", but I don't want to read fiction books to experience the real life. A lot of things can happen in real life, like "(character) went out of the tower and suddenly a big boulder crashed his head, and he was dead instantly". Can it happen in real life? Of course it can. Will it be interesting to read? I don't think so. Sorry for the gore.

9. Mystery is gone. There are two characters I feel very disappointed about in this section. The first one is Wit. Wit was a mysterious figure that seemed ancient and wise, despite his sometimes awful jokes and blunt insults. His modus operandi was to pointwise appear in crucial moments and lightly push some character in the right direction. In this regard he was much more Cultivation-like than Cultivation herself. His stories were beautiful, and they were a puzzle. All of this was vulgarized in WaT. Wit turned into a regular character conveniently bringing bits of information or something else to the plot. He also turned out to be stupid. His insults are even more blunt than ever, especially that awful exchange in RoW with I-forgot-his-name-was-it-Ruthar? Wit brings info to Shallan, talks to Pattern, Wit comes up with those stupid contest terms, he explains the loopholes, he swears almost like I do, and all of his fleur of mystery is gone. The other character is Odium. I mean, listen, do you really think you can properly write something like the power of an endless divine hatred? There is a reason Sauron is written like he is. Yeah, I understand that there is a Vessel and a Shard, and they are not the same, but still, I don't want a god to read like a human in his PoVs, but he reads like a human. He thinks like a human. If you can't write a god to feel like a god - then don't write a god. Leave me a room for imagination to feel evil like something really ominous, not like any other mundane character, only an evil god.

10. What's not gone is the increasing requirement for the cosmere awareness. I’ve already mentioned this in the «unpopular opinions» topic, I’ll repeat it here. I understand that a lot of people on this forum are fans of Sanderson and have read everything or almost everything he wrote, but I’m not one of them. I don’t like Mistborn for instance, but it looks like I have to read it along with another 10+ books to be able to fully grasp the story in SA. Some people said that I can just ignore the cosmere stuff and still be able to understand everything, but then a large part of the book turns into white noise for me. As well as the advise itself is a catch 22, because in order to ignore the cosmere stuff I have to be able to tell the cosmere stuff from the Roshar stuff, and to do this I have to be cosmere aware. I see a lot of videos on youtube titled like «I’ve found all the cosmere mentions in WaT!» and bloggers showing the book stuffed full with bookmarks. It baffles me. Is this why I should read a book? To find the easter eggs from another books by this author? Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I think that everything that exists in the book or series should be relevant for the book or series, and also everything crucial to understanding the book or series should be within the book or series. It worked well in WoK/WoR/OB, even with Hoid/Vasher/Vivenna, as their off-world nature wasn’t known to me right before I came to this forum after finishing OB, and it didn’t bother me at all. But starting with RoW this stuff begun to multiply and actually annoy me. Seons, Ghostbloods, white sands, aviars, hemalurgy, feruchemy, too much of these, while some inner SA plotlines like Helaran’s death at Kaladin’s hands remain unfinished and look forgotten.

TLDR: The first three SA books were serious, well-structured, consistent books full of philosophy, moral and ethical questions raised, hard choices, and the stakes felt high. They had interesting and complex characters that interacted with each other and the world and their interactions had implications. They had real struggles, and those struggles influenced the plot. There was a room for imagination and discussion in these books. The villains were good and relatable. The last two books turned into plot driven unambiguous story headed to the one single predefined and predictable direction. Characters no longer mean anything aside from their superpowers. Everything is explained and shoved directly into my head, so I don’t have to solve the puzzles anymore. All I have to do is digest the cosmere-wide plot and read the other cosmere books to be able to fully grasp the story and find all of the easter eggs and crossover. And what conclusion I can make of this analysis, is that it looks like the serious and rather dark series turned into some kind of a graphic novel for teenagers, targeted at people specifically interested in this particular universe and what the author imagined for it. I’m not interested in unraveling the mysteries of some man’s imaginary universe if it doesn’t make me draw important conclusions that can be relevant for my real life by any means. In the first books the universe and magic were the scenery for the characters, in the last books the universe and magic became a thing in itself, and the characters are just the tools used to explore this universe and the magic system, which can’t be applied to real life or any kind of interesting thoughts or reflection. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just I don’t like it, and it feels like a broken promise to me, given what I thought about the series when I was starting reading it and what I’ve received in the end. I don’t know how it will go in the future books, maybe it will go back to the initial tone, but if it remains like this the series that felt like the best fantasy series I’ve ever read risks becoming the most disappointing fantasy series I’ve ever read.

[Asininity]

For me Oathbringer is where the series peeked. But you are right it's were the series took a bad turn.

In the early books, the tight focus on Kaladin, Shallan, and Dalinar allowed readers to deeply connect with their struggles, arcs, and growth. Throwing in occasional perspective shift to side character was fun. When you have 15 "main" characters it’s harder to build the same emotional attachment. Instead of savoring meaningful growth, readers are left juggling too many storylines, some of which may feel undercooked or unearned. 

With so many characters and storylines, the pacing inevitably suffers. Time spent introducing new characters or giving each their moment in the spotlight slows down the main plot and introduce unneeded cliffhangers. To make it worse, those subplots often have recycled themes, undermining uniqueness of previous arcs and cause fatigue.

The stakes became unclear and there's ad-nauseam repetition. Threats felt more tangible, survive the chasms, avoid getting swept by politics, uncover some mystery, all with apocalypse looming overhead. Then apocalypse happened and it turned out ain't that bad. Voidbringers turned out to be people, Desolation a nasty weather and Odium, would rather talk than destroy the world. The urgency is gone, replaced with some abstract conflicts. 

Ever escalating power creep eroded stakes and suspense. As characters became more powerful, the challenges lost their tension. Heroes are invincible and ironically it makes them less heroic, as heroism is rooted in vulnerability. When bunch of fledgling Radiants can repel invasion of world ending army how can you convince me that the struggle is real?. Intricate worldbuilding with its history, cultures, politics and awe-inspiring elements get overshadowed by next "epic climax" that feels forced. Somehow uniting the world feels less monumental than bunch of squabbling princes. 

Overexposure killed the wonder and magic. Many characters were built on aura of mystery. Stormfather with his cryptic and profound wisdom turned out to be grouchy old man with no real answears. Odium who terrified whole Cosmere became comical villain and ancient and clever Hoid bumbling idiot. Taking a peek behind the curtain revealed that the wizard is just a man frantically pulling levers.

[Nitpicking]

On 12/25/2024 at 9:41 PM, Treamayne said:

But was that their speculation, or did they have a source?

I'll be honest here: I do not have the patience to scrub through 8 hours of Shardcast trying to find the details.

[Treamayne]

3 minutes ago, Nitpicking said:

I'll be honest here: I do not have the patience to scrub through 8 hours of Shardcast trying to find the details.

No worries, I wasn't asking you to go searching, just if you recalled a source reference. Thank you very much.

[Acolyte of Radiance]

Nostalgia