I am frustrated with this book

[Shaukan-son-Hasweth he/him]

I finished it today and Im coming out of it unsatisfied. Because while I like a lot of it's parts, I do not like the whole thing.

First of all the ending. Of all the books on this arc it had the least conclusive ending. It felt like we left mid action. Before while there would still be stuff I'd be waiting for, we always ended at a point where the immediate action was taken care of.

 

Now it feels like we're in the middle of the trouble. I had hoped for a more conclusive ending, in case the next 5 books never come.

 

Then there are the visions. There were so many moments that I would have liked to see and that I imagined would turn out to be nice to finally see on screen.

 

The arrival of humans on roshar, the founding of the oathpact, the capture of mishram. All of these could have been amazing but they felt completely flat to me. The choice of having the characters interfere with the events because they are just so used to this stuff by now ruined it for me. All the mystery and awe this should have had after being hidden in the deep past was completely gone. 

Mostly because of the prose. It was never Brandons strong suit but this time I was constantly thinking "show don't tell". It felt like he was spelling everything out for us. 

Kaladin becoming a herald and in that combining the healer and the warrior in him is really cool. But did a book that calls every bird a chicken for immersions sake really have to call him a therapist? 

So many storylines felt needlessly long and embelished. I like Adolin and Sigzil as characters for example. But the stories were so uninteresting I wished they were as short as Jasnahs. 

The Wind as a character felt like it came out of nowhere. Which is weird because I think this could have been easily implemented in the earlier books.

I feel frustrated because there were many things/plotpoints in this book I really like.

 

Dalinar not taking up honor and basically breaking the cycle by making everything worse in the moment felt like the only appropriate choice for the theme.

I love that Mishram and Sja'Anat were in the end genuinely not completely evil. I had suspected their story would end by them being corrupted by honor and cultivation. Freeing them from Odium.

I really liked Szeths backstory. Not every beat of it. But it explained his character so well.

I like where the listeners are at.

In general I like that there are a lot of diffrent people approaching the situation differently.

 

Every other book I loved for what it was. Even if it might not have been perfect. This is the first time I wish he had taken more time with, or really done a different approach.

Edited January 6, 2025 by Shaukan-son-Hasweth

[Ahriman he/him]

I feel similarly. The visions were interesting to me but they didn't feel like they had the right gravity. And the prose was so much worse than usual, it's like there was no editing at all. Which made it harder to enjoy the parts that were mostly good.

[Nitpicking]

13 hours ago, Shaukan-son-Hasweth said:

First of all the ending. Of all the books on this arc it had the least conclusive ending. It felt like we left mid action. Before while there would still be stuff I'd be waiting for, we always ended at a point where the immediate action was taken care of.

We did stop in mid-action, because that's where we are structurally: the middle of a single 10-book story. I also wish there had been a satisfying conclusion, but I think it was inevitable we'd really get what we did: setup for another five books. Back when he used to be on Writing Excuses, Brandon would talk about try-fail cycles. The SA is a complicated plot, but he needed most of the plotlines to be in "fail" phase here.

[MagicMaggot]

I have to say, looking at the criticisms, I am a bit fascinated by how varied - and contradictory - from people who weren't happy with the book are. 

For example I've heard a lot of "the spiritual realm stuff felt flat, because the characters were doing so little and just watching exposition", while here we have the opposite complaint, or "everything was so slow and boring, except Sigzil and Adolin", when here we single them out as uninteresting. And there are people who seem very passionate about hating Dalinar's big decision, while here it is lauded as one of the positives that get lost under the muck. 

That kinda reinforces my belief that this middle-of-the-series setup-book (which seems pretty much unavoidable in any long-running series) never had a chance of getting a very favourable reception. I'm not saying that the criticisms are wrong (though I guess one will have to pick a team on the contradictory ones or go up one meta-level in the criticism), and there are likely some that most people will agree with (using the therapist-term seems to be pretty universally be seen as something between unneccessary and harmful, I guess) but I don't really think most of them hit why the book didn't land. And as others have said before, I think it's mainly because it was all about getting the plot to its destination. And that destination was a deliberate low point, not a high point, so "worried, but vaguely hopeful" was probably the best that could be done here.

Because, he thought, this is where the journey has brought me. The oath wasn’t journey without destination. And today … today was about where he’d arrived, and how the journey had prepared him.

The journey did not prepare the characters for a win against a god, only for being ready to flip the board.

Rarely, the wise will also seek—in loss—to flip the board and scatter the pieces. But if you do this, it is likely the last time you will play. This also is not an adage for towers.

[Shaukan-son-Hasweth he/him]

34 minutes ago, Nitpicking said:

We did stop in mid-action, because that's where we are structurally: the middle of a single 10-book story. I also wish there had been a satisfying conclusion, but I think it was inevitable we'd really get what we did: setup for another five books. Back when he used to be on Writing Excuses, Brandon would talk about try-fail cycles. The SA is a complicated plot, but he needed most of the plotlines to be in "fail" phase here.

Yeah that makes sense. And I think what happend to Roshar, while painful, is brilliant. It really is going somewhere new.

I think I just mostly understood him implying that while the story of Roshar is only halfway, the arcs of the characters that we followed would mostly be satisfyingly concluded. Opening the stage for the other 5 characters to step from the sidelines and take over.

And I think that's only really the case for Kaladin, Szeth and well... Dalinar.

For everyone else it feels like the post credit scene in finding Nemo, where they are all stuck in plastic bags swimming in the ocean

 

4 minutes ago, MagicMaggot said:

I have to say, looking at the criticisms, I am a bit fascinated by how varied - and contradictory - from people who weren't happy with the book are. 

Yeah. A lot of things are definitely down to taste. These books are huge and I've seen people hate everything I love about them and vice versa. 

For the visions I do agree with the other argument. The visions were neither cool reveals or epic moments, nor was there much to do for the characters.

 

 

Mostly I'd say I generally liked what happened in the book. I think the story is going somewhere interesting. The themes work for me and the messages are generally good ones.

I just don't really like the how. 

 

Idk. Every book so far had moments that I genuinely like coming back to. And parts that I think are pretty good writing. 

 

I think this book is lacking something that was so present for me in works like the emperors soul.

 

Let's see.

[QuantumAce]

14 hours ago, Shaukan-son-Hasweth said:

So many storylines felt needlessly long and embelished. I like Adolin and Sigzil as characters for example. But the stories were so uninteresting I wished they were as short as Jasnahs. 

I enjoyed Adolin's storyline because it was more focused, character driven. Plot may have been a little thin, but it was enough to keep me engaged. I needed it as a break from some of the other storylines that were focused on advancing the plot at the expense of the characters. 

15 hours ago, Shaukan-son-Hasweth said:

The Wind as a character felt like it came out of nowhere. Which is weird because I think this could have been easily implemented in the earlier books.

That was my first impression, but it fit with the "There is a lot more going on than we realized" theme of the book. Szeth's flashbacks and the SR visions answered questions and solved mysteries that have been teased for several books, while the Wind showed us there was a whole new layer.

Spoiler

Plus, I think Sanderson was just able to pick up the Wind as a free agent after Rothfuss let its contract expire.

 

[Nesh he/him]

15 hours ago, Shaukan-son-Hasweth said:

But did a book that calls every bird a chicken for immersions sake really have to call him a therapist? 

To be fair, that was a Hoid thing, a word he likely picked up on another world.  Kaladin just didn't have another word for what he was as he's inventing a new medical field on Roshar, and since Hoid said he was a therapist, it stuck.  It was even called out, by I can't remember if it was Ishar or Nale.  I'm paraphrasing here:

"What are you to him? (Szeth)"

"I'm his therapist."

"What is that?"

"I have no idea."

[coolsnow7]

15 hours ago, Shaukan-son-Hasweth said:

First of all the ending. Of all the books on this arc it had the least conclusive ending. It felt like we left mid action. Before while there would still be stuff I'd be waiting for, we always ended at a point where the immediate action was taken care of.

Actually this is my favorite part of the book: that we’re left with a real sad ending, with real problems, and an intimidating adversary heading into the future. It just removes all the stakes as a reader if everything gets resolved at the end of every arc - it’s like authors not killing off any characters. “Oh gee our hero really is in trouble, I wonder if he’ll make it out of this one - hah jkjk, he’s done so the past 100 times too.” What’s even the point of reading such a book?

15 hours ago, Shaukan-son-Hasweth said:

Kaladin becoming a herald and in that combining the healer and the warrior in him is really cool. But did a book that calls every bird a chicken for immersions sake really have to call him a therapist? 

This is 100% correct. I genuinely don’t know how this got past beta readers unless it was extremely deliberate in a way that will pay off down the line. 

1 hour ago, MagicMaggot said:

 

I have to say, looking at the criticisms, I am a bit fascinated by how varied - and contradictory - from people who weren't happy with the book are. 

 

IMO the adage “if you’re satisfying no one, you’re doing something right” is wrong - in politics as well as in art. If you make something beautiful everyone will be satisfied (or at least, your fanbase will be). If your creation is lacking, people will often struggle to put their finger on why they’re unsatisfied (kind of like how my 6 year old will be extremely hungry, but will instead blame every trivial cause under the sun for his discomfort rather than just eat) but the reality is the good parts of your creation failed to outshine the weaknesses (which every work of art has) so people point to the weaknesses. 

Edited January 6, 2025 by coolsnow7

[MagicMaggot]

9 minutes ago, coolsnow7 said:

IMO the adage “if you’re satisfying no one, you’re doing something right” is wrong - in politics as well as in art. If you make something beautiful everyone will be satisfied (or at least, your fanbase will be). If your creation is lacking, people will often struggle to put their finger on why they’re unsatisfied (kind of like how my 6 year old will be extremely hungry, but will instead blame every trivial cause under the sun for his discomfort rather than just eat) but the reality is the good parts of your creation failed to outshine the weaknesses (which every work of art has) so people point to the weaknesses. 

Not disagreeing with any of that. I was actually satsified with the book (within my expectations), though not without my own criticisms, and do find it kind of funny when people with a worse view of the book than I do like the parts I disliked, while being very critical of things I found worked great. I'm not saying it's all just a matter of taste, though that will play into it, and I'm not surprised that the dislike comes before its justification, but I do find the spread impressive here. And yeah, it's a bit of a jump from that to "those probably weren't the main reasons for the reaction to the book", but not a wholly implausible one, I think. 

[+robardin he/him]

I thought The Wind was telegraphed. Kaladin has always had a special feel for it, and for flying, and several times even very early on, before his Third Ideal, he felt like he was moved by the wind to dodge attacks "even with his eyes closed" (or so it felt to him), as if he were burning atium: on the battlefield when he saved Amaram from the Sharded-up Heleran, and again in the arena when he dropped in to help Adolin and Renarin in the 4-on-1 (then 4-on-2) duel in the arena.

That is NOT a Windrunner Thing. We have had Windrunner Combat POVs many times from other characters by now, none of them ever have moments like this.

That's the Wind. It's always been the Wind.

And we have also had numerous name drops that before Honor and Cultivation arrived to Roshar, the singers worshiped the spren of stone, storm, and wind. And also seen the stones speaking to Venli, showing her visions of those ancient singers using Surges unlike the ten now seen on Roshar. So "the Wind" being a long-muffled and forgotten spren that has some kind of prescient vision power, I would not say that "came out of nowhere".

What I found unsatisfactory (in being unexplained) was the implication Wit/Hoid had some kind of premonition that what was being "asked of Kaladin" in sending him to Shinovar would result in him dying, or at least, not returning (and technically he did physically die, leaving a body with burned-out eyes).

I can understand if the Wind, as a spren of Adonalsium, has some kind of extra-long-game sense, but what was the deal with Wit being so final with his goodbyes to Kaladin at Urithiru?

[scottos]

I loved the book and felt really satisfied with the way things wrapped. This gave me more closure than I expected for the end of act 1 and I love the way it sets up part 2. I was starting to feel concerned about what was left to explore in part 2. I love how Brandon turned everything on its head, making it really hard to predict the ramifications of the resolutions of W&T.

[Master Silver]

I kinda wish Brandon would take a year off, then take a year split this book in two flush somethings out and do some polishing of the prose. I love the quantity Brandon gives us, but this is why I go back to Tolkien over and over again.

[Nitpicking]

16 hours ago, robardin said:

I can understand if the Wind, as a spren of Adonalsium, has some kind of extra-long-game sense, but what was the deal with Wit being so final with his goodbyes to Kaladin at Urithiru?

Hoid isn't a Shard, but he is a Dawnshard, and he definitely has a connection to Fortune. He might have had a sense of what was going to happen.

[rabidhexley]

I loved the book on the whole, but I agree about the ending. My main criticism of the book is that the epilogue felt incomplete, given how things ended I almost feel like the Epilogue should have been a novella unto itself, letting us see how things end up for every character in the immediate aftermath and months following the challenge.

 

Like OP said, despite this being the end of an arc the ending felt like more of a cliffhanger than any of the first 4 books, which despite not ending the story, all had a very strong, conclusive feel to them. The ending itself didn't feel rushed or anything, but given how much was upended the curtains closed way to quickly.

 

Even though this is technically the halfway point of the story, we should have been left with a much stronger feeling of knowing where everything landed, even if we don't know where they are going. I think the point that Retribution is in hiding should have been better emphasized, and we should know how strong his direct influence on Roshar now. We should have ended with a better idea of the state of the various nations and their relationship to one another. We didn't even get a teaser for post-Winds Lift.

 

It's not so much the hanging plot threads, those are fine, but the fact that we now know the least about the present state of the world at large since the first book. The entire status quo has been upended, and I feel like we should have been able to end this book with a very strong feeling of how things are ending up prior to the time jump.

 

The fact that we know a time jump is coming is mystery enough alone to create intrigue for the next arc without obscuring so much about the actual conclusion of book 5.

Edited January 8, 2025 by rabidhexley

[Nitpicking]

@rabidhexley mentioning the epilogue made me realize something:

I really hated the "Hoid applies for a coachman job" thing. It was about three times longer than it needed to be, even if I concede that it needed to exist, which I don't.

[eriwancoselyn]

On 1/7/2025 at 12:20 AM, MagicMaggot said:

I have to say, looking at the criticisms, I am a bit fascinated by how varied - and contradictory - from people who weren't happy with the book are. 

For example I've heard a lot of "the spiritual realm stuff felt flat, because the characters were doing so little and just watching exposition", while here we have the opposite complaint, or "everything was so slow and boring, except Sigzil and Adolin", when here we single them out as uninteresting. And there are people who seem very passionate about hating Dalinar's big decision, while here it is lauded as one of the positives that get lost under the muck. 

That kinda reinforces my belief that this middle-of-the-series setup-book (which seems pretty much unavoidable in any long-running series) never had a chance of getting a very favourable reception. I'm not saying that the criticisms are wrong (though I guess one will have to pick a team on the contradictory ones or go up one meta-level in the criticism), and there are likely some that most people will agree with (using the therapist-term seems to be pretty universally be seen as something between unneccessary and harmful, I guess) but I don't really think most of them hit why the book didn't land. And as others have said before, I think it's mainly because it was all about getting the plot to its destination. And that destination was a deliberate low point, not a high point, so "worried, but vaguely hopeful" was probably the best that could be done here.

Because, he thought, this is where the journey has brought me. The oath wasn’t journey without destination. And today … today was about where he’d arrived, and how the journey had prepared him.

The journey did not prepare the characters for a win against a god, only for being ready to flip the board.

Rarely, the wise will also seek—in loss—to flip the board and scatter the pieces. But if you do this, it is likely the last time you will play. This also is not an adage for towers.

bruh, you say that like people can't be equally varied on what they choose to praise. there's some degree of personal interpretation in it, even if something more concrete is guiding the underlying dissatisfaction. 

idk why you are set in this idea that ending on a low point was always going to be a tough sell, words of radiance ended with the release of the everstorm and it's considered to be one of the best books in the series. if you're talking middle of the series specifically, how can you explain the love that empire strikes back gets?

[TheoreticalMagic]

For what its worth, the state of things at the end really works for me, because its the kind of thing I've been wanting to see ever since Mistborn. The Final Empire ended with a lot of big dramatic changes to the world as things were set right or at least made better for Scadrial's development.....but given that I remember that Brandon once described the premise of the first trilogy as "what if the Chosen One FAILED to save the world"....I was always fascinated by the idea of a story set right after Rashek did what he did to the ashmounts and everything.

And since Brandon loves exploring similar ideas/themes/startpoints taken in completely opposite directions, I was kind of always EXPECTING to at some point get a series that uses that point of 'the entire world/way of life being altered dramatically and not in a good way' as a major focus or setting. (Additionally, even if you set a story right at the crux of a massive global/societal shift, you need SOME midpoint or timeskip so the new status quo has at least a little time to set in and send out ripple effects the characters have to adjust to, otherwise you're not ever going to be able to make the most of such a huge, dramatic shift to a status quo).

So I both got what I wanted and was hoping to see, as well as always kind of expecting something like this from the series he cites as his magnum opus. I think that mindset probably has a lot to do with why it worked for me, but at the same time, it IS a very big swing to take, so I can understand it not landing well for others.

Edited January 11, 2025 by TheoreticalMagic

[AquaRegia he/him]

First of all, it's art, so all we really have are opinions.  Any attempt to "rationalize" or "logic" our feelings is pointless; it made you feel how it made you feel, and that's all there is to it.  Nobody's opinion is "wrong".

I loved a lot of things about this book.  Every single Interlude was amazing.  The broad strokes of the plot for each main character group were good-to-excellent.  For me, the biggest disappointment was the TONE, and this is (as OP notes) due in large part to the prose.  Roshar in The Way of Kings felt ENORMOUS.  Weighty, drenched in history, atmospheric, truly EPIC in every sense.  The rest of the Stormlight Archive, unfortunately, gradually lost that feel.  Now that I reflect on it, the Mistborn series shows a similar arc.  The first book gave us a Scadrial full of mystery and steeped in lore, all very serious and compelling.  The later books were anything but serious, and as the mysteries became smaller and more concrete, they also became less compelling to me.  I love Wax and Wayne dearly, but MB era 2 is a different genre than era 1 was.  The Stormlight Archive, in terms of tone, seems to have gradually shifted genres from book 1 to book 5.

On one hand, it's clearly a reflection of what I as a reader want and enjoy; if the series morphed into something I like less, well, that's on me.  On the other hand, "promising" one thing in the first book but delivering something wildly different in book 5 feels a bit like a bait and switch - "this isn't what I ordered."

On the Gripping Hand™, we all know by now what Brandon loves doing best: WORLDBUILDING.  I'd argue it's his superpower as an author (Sanderlanches notwithstanding); it definitely seems to be what comes easiest for him.  And it mostly happens in the first (and best) installment of a series.