agrabes

Here are some of my own thoughts on what made Oathbringer feel weird to me. Part 1 was great, it was a continuation of WoR and felt like part of the same story as the first two novels. The ending was great as well, a classic Sanderson ending. The middle parts in my view were not as good. They almost felt like a different story entirely from WoK, WoR, and Part 1 of OB. I think the main reason I felt that way was that I didn't like Shallan's arc and how it impacted the main thrust of the story. If you compare and contrast Shallan's OB arc with Kalladin's OB arc I think you'll see my point: Kalladin - Has done a lot and slain a few of his personal demons by the end of WoR and by early OB he seems to be in a pretty good place. Then, he gets hit in the face with new, more difficult problems and fails to rise to the occasion. He picks himself back up after his failure and keeps going, learning a few things along the way. This to me was satisfying, I enjoyed Kalladin's OB arc. Shallan - Has also done a lot in the first two books and is seemingly on a continual upward path at the end of WoR. Early in OB, you start to see a few cracks form around the edges and through the middle of OB she is sliding slowly downward. You feel like she is just about to really have a failure, but doesn't really fail and also doesn't really recover. To me, this was not satisfying because it seemed like the plot was setting up the expectation that Shallan was going to do something spectacularly wrong like Kalladin's part in the assassination attempt on Elhokar or even paralleling Mistborn's arc for Vin in Book 2 where she is temporarily led astray by the forces of evil until she realizes the error of her ways. Instead, Shallan lost control of herself mentally in the middle of the book and was able to stop the bleeding by the end of the book. It's implied in the book that she's OK by the end, maybe not fully 100% better but out of the woods. I personally would have found it more satisfying if she had not been OK by the end of the book - still out of control with a real implication that she was likely to get worse before she got better. To me, I would have preferred it if it felt like her downward trend was still continuing as the camera cut away at the end of the book or if she had fully recovered or was on a path to recovery that felt satisfying. That would set up great expectations for her character in Book 4, setting the stage for her to rise up and overcome or fail completely. The second thing I didn't like about the middle parts was that it felt like Szeth became shoehorned into the main cast without earning his place. I know this has been discussed at length, but I really think Szeth's story would have been more enjoyable to me if he had remained a neutral 3rd party for a while with both Nale and Dalinar trying to win him over. That said, I still enjoyed OB overall and will read it again. I'm not going to dictate to Sanderson how he writes his story, I'm sure this will all pay off in the end.

I agree on the part of Amaram, but I disagree about the Sadeas soldiers. I think their turning with little direct, personal build up was entirely the point. Team Dalinar just assumed that all the Alethi armies would fight on their behalf because they did not realize the influence that Odium can gain over people. There were hints throughout the series up to this point - Sadeas encouraging brutality, having his soldiers open up to the thrill, essentially promoting the value of competition and victory for yourself above all else. Sadeas' army was being groomed by Odium for years and I think the book establishes that well. It isn't Sadeas' death or Amaram's turning that caused Sadeas' army to turn. It was the fact that they had been systematically molded into a tool for Odium to take over over the course of a decade or more. Once their minds were aligned in that way, it opened the door for the unmade responsible for the Thrill to directly control them. This wasn't even a story about how Dalinar and the Kholins ignored and belittled the human concerns of the soldiers, killing their high lord and just assuming they would keep going along because they had no other choice. This was supposed to be Odium's master stroke: he'd prepared Sadeas' army to cave in to his influence at a key moment and he also thought he had prepared Dalinar to convert as well, sealing his victory. I felt like this was strongly implied, if not directly stated in the book. To me, that was satisfying and it explained why Sadeas' army was so terrible. I'm not sure if you (or others) agree with either my interpretation of the army's motivations or if you feel it was satisfying/unsatisfying. Overall, I'm glad the OP started this thread. Count me in the list of people who was left with a weird feeling after OB and this thread has put into words some of the nebulous feelings I've had about the book. One of these days I'm going to reread it, because I think I'll get a lot more out of it now that I know what to expect.

What sticks out to me is that I feel like over time his characterizations and character motivations have become more influenced by stereotypical "nerd culture." This expresses itself the most in interactions between characters. It's not always there, but you can catch the hints of it a lot of the time. What I mean by that is there is a group of people who are super fans of sci-fi and fantasy to the point where they don't have many other interests. I am not saying these people are bad, heck I'm probably halfway in that category myself. However, they are small group and they don't represent the way that most people interact. I think most of us who care enough about a book to be on this site know what I'm talking about and either have friends who are like this or we are like that ourselves. I feel like over time Brandon may interact with people outside that "bubble" less and less, resulting in a shift in his reference point for how people in general act and what motivates them. Then again, I could be completely wrong about this as I have no knowledge (and no desire for knowledge) of Sanderson's personal life.

The point I'm trying to make though is that most of those items you listed could have been done by Adolin without being seen through his point of view. In fact, many of them already were actually seen through other POVs. There are other characters who do a lot of important things in the story who don't get many POVs, like Jasnah. I'm not sure I agree that he is the 4th most important character in the story though either he or Szeth would be the fourth most "known" character, because again he is mostly providing insight on other characters and rarely takes initiative for himself. There's nothing wrong with that, and again I still like him as a character and I want him to maintain some viewpoints in the story, but I don't want to have a campaign to expand his viewpoints. No, it's not that we don't know anything about Adolin but we don't know enough about Adolin for him to be fully fleshed out. We know about the part of him that is concerned for the Kholin family's status and the health of his father. We know he is loyal to his friends and we know he loves dueling. We don't know that his family is his only (or even primary) motivation in life. We don't even know much about how he really feels about Shallan, we only see that through her eyes. I know that Adolin fans feel that is a flaw in Sanderson's story telling, but that is a personal preference which comes back to the central question: how much of Adolin should be in the story? If he is supposed to be a major character then we should see more of him and his feelings. If he is not supposed to be a major character, then we should not get too invested in his emotions. I don't think that we should shave off 5k words here or there from the other main characters and "give" them to Adolin. That just doesn't make sense in my opinion and is the kind of thing that I believe would degrade the story if we did it. What are the 5k words you would cut from Dalinar or Shallan? Does their story still work with a chunk missing? What does Adolin do for those additional 10k words? The story is crowded already with tons of things going on. I could maybe see cutting other minor characters, but not other major characters. I just want to re-iterate that I like Adolin as a character and I like him being in the books, but I like him as a secondary character. If he had maybe 5-10K more words cut from Bridge 4 or Szeth, I would be on board, but no more than that.

I just want to be clear, I'm not saying this as a personal attack against you, any other posters on this forum, or even Adolin's character. What I'm pointing out is that there are a lot of people in the fandom who really like Adolin and really want him to be treated by the books as a main character. Sanderson has directly said that he does not view Adolin as a major character and only gave him a viewpoint originally because he needed a lens to view Dalinar's fears of going mad from the outside. I think you are confusing being a viewpoint character with narrative importance. You can be a viewpoint character but not be a driver of the story, and you can be a character like Jasnah who has very few viewpoints (1 or 2 so far in the series?) and be a significant driver of the story both from the grand narrative of the plot and in terms of interpersonal relationships. I like Adolin as a character and enjoy reading his chapters, but the story isn't about him and I don't want it to become about him. People love secondary characters because you can read just about anything you want into their motives. For the most part, we do not see how Adolin is feeling or get his motivations behind what he does. Yes, Adolin is fleshed out more than many of those other characters in TV Tropes but he is still clearly not on the same level as the primary characters within the Stormlight Archive. I'm not saying that to be mean or dismissive of him as a character, but you have to put him in context as a character in this series. For myself personally, the reason I don't say that I believe others are overvaluing other characters such as Jasnah or Renarin is because for the most part people on this board have not been demanding that there be increased viewpoints and roles for those characters in the story. I have seen people saying that they wish Lift had a smaller role, but there aren't many people who want to change her role at all. For Szeth I personally wish he did have a smaller role in the story, though I've never posted anything about it. And I have said I felt that there was too much focus given to Bridge 4 in OB. Frankly, I would have rather seen 1 or 2 Adolin additional chapters rather than Bridge 4 chapters. The point is - people say that they don't want Adolin's role expanded because there are some loud voices who say they do want it expanded. I don't think any of us are being rude about it -at least I try not to be-, but the bottom line is that if Adolin's role increases then someone else's role has to decrease and the story has to change. I don't want that and so I want to make sure that my opinion is heard as well.

I think that's exactly what he is saying: Sorry, I care about your feelings but it's my story and I have to tell it how I feel is best. He is right - even if he did choose to totally restructure the story to give Adolin a bigger role, it would not work out how you think. Sanderson has a story in mind, and changing things up like that is not going to improve the story even for Adolin. Personally, I think Adolin is a classic case of the "Ensemble Darkhorse" trope http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EnsembleDarkhorse. He works great as a secondary character and part of what makes him great is that we don't know too much about him. Some people on this forum have read a -lot- into Adolin and his feelings and emotions. There's nothing wrong with that, but they are not based in the actual text on the page and you take a risk that Sanderson has other ideas for the character. In order to bring him further into the spotlight Sanderson either has to shift him to become more like a traditional Sanderson protagonist and potentially lose the traits we like about him, flesh him out with his same or similar traits that might go in different directions than his fans want or expect, or just give him more screen time but leave him as a kind of flat character. I'll be honest - I really don't care how Adolin feels about murdering Sadeas or how he might feel about finding out his father's role in his mother's death. I only care about it in terms of how it impacts other characters that I do care about. I'm willing to change my mind and probably will if there are well written scenes about that in Book 4, but I'm not expecting it.

I agree wholeheartedly that I wish there had been some kind of scene where Kaladin and Shallan had at least -partially- expressed their feelings for each other. I understand why it didn't happen and the situation with Shallan and Adolin being engaged already at the outset makes it hard for someone with Kaladin's personality to ever try anything (i.e. valuing loyalty very highly, both his own loyalty to Adolin as a friend and the loyalty between Shallan and Adolin). Heck, Adolin knows more about Shallan's feelings for Kaladin than Kaladin does and no one other than Syl knows Kaladin's feelings. I never really thought about what Shallan thought about Kaladin's feelings, but it's a really interesting idea. I think you are right - Shallan would not know that Kaladin was interested in her at all. During their interactions, Kaladin was always careful to not cross the line beyond very minor, mild flirtation that might not even be considered flirtation depending who is looking at it. That also changes my perception of Shallan's reactions a little bit. I still think the main thing driving her is that she believes she needs to honor her commitment to Adolin, Jasnah, and house Kholin, but it piles on another layer of why she would be even less likely to try anything with Kaladin - she just couldn't be sure how he would respond. My ideal situation at this point is that Sanderson retcons the "instead, he felt agreement?" line (which felt to me like the Deus ex Machina voice saying the triangle is done so forget about it) like he did Szeth's death and Kaladin actually does feel sad and a little awkward about Shadolin and he starts avoiding seeing the two of them together to the point where Shallan notices and takes him aside and they talk and bring some closure to the arc. I'd settle for any scene where at least one of them knows and understands the other's feelings for them. Unfortunately, I think this just isn't that kind of book and it's not really Sanderson's style. I've lurked in this thread since the beginning, so I know there are a lot of people here who think there is good evidence that Adolin and Shallan may split up, or Adolin may die, etc and Shallan and Kaladin may get together in the future. I think it's definitely possible, but I don't want to start expecting that because if it doesn't happen and I start to expect it I will be pretty annoyed. SLNC Re: Dropping the Ball - I totally get where you are coming from and generally agree with your analysis, but I also think you have to say that it is still dropping the ball. Even if Kaladin's view of the situation and general attitude have been more "correct" in terms of what is best for Shallan especially in terms of what he knew at the time, he still dropped the ball because his approach was exactly the worst thing he could have said to her at the time. He didn't know it, but if he wanted to be able to advance his relationship with her he had to have known or should have put more weight behind her distress about shoving things to the back of her mind and asked questions about why she thought that was such a bad thing. It's not fair at all, but it's just the way relationships work.

Since this thread is the appropriate place to discuss this, I'll throw out a few of my thoughts on the subject here: I feel like you and I have very different views of Kaladin as a character. For example: the idea that Kaladin doesn't openly express concern for Shallan or try to make open moves to become closer to her in a romantic sense is true but is also missing a key aspect of the situation. Kaladin knows and respects that Shallan is engaged to a friend of his. Out of respect for both of them, he is not going to make any moves that could be interpreted as anything other than friendly. He directly discusses this with Syl in Shadesmar. So, yes he has to keep his distance because that's the kind of guy he is. Syl eventually convinces him that he needs to take a shot at it anyway and he gives it a try, but screws it up because he doesn't know her well enough. A complaint I have about OB is that suddenly Shallan started viewing Kaladin as a "bad boy". He's really not at all, and she never thought this way about him before in WoR. In general, her feelings toward Kaladin felt very awkwardly written in OB. That may have been intentional though, as an attempt to show that her mind is fractured and only certain aspects of her personality are interested in him. I think you are right about one thing though: Kaladin and Shallan do tend to be pretty self absorbed. I felt that in the WoR chasm scene, they were starting to break that down in each other, especially Shallan to Kaladin pointing out that he is not the only one who has faced terrible suffering. So, in that respect I thought it would make sense if they did get together because both had tough lives and could call each other out on their BS and self absorbed natures - each pointing out to the other that they need to think beyond their own suffering. That may still happen, but in the context of friendship. I'm not one of those rabid shippers who just strongly promote one pairing over the other. I would have liked to see a Shallan/Kaladin pairing, but I also think that in context of the story Shallan/Adolin makes more sense due to the fact that they were already engaged by the time Kaladin even met Shallan. I just would have preferred the story leading up to it and the story getting out of it to be developed better. As for who I think Kaladin needs to be with - I disagree that he needs to be with someone strongly duty oriented. I think the opposite is true - he needs to be with someone who can reign in those overly duty-obsessive tendencies of his. He needs someone who has a strong enough personality to reign in his character flaws. Who that is - I'm not sure.

Fair enough, not everyone likes that stuff. I wouldn't call people who like it a "Kardashian Audience" though - I mean I liked it and definitely can't stand reality TV of any stripe. I also wouldn't call it a cop out. It just makes sense and to me it adds to the story. I think you are misunderstanding Kaladin's character if you think he doesn't care about romance. It's one of his major motivations - most of the time when he thinks about his motivations and himself he thinks about his past romances. In another thread, people pointed out how Syl often represents Kaladin's repressed emotions and desires. He has a lot of things that he wants for himself - happiness, family, love, respect, but he will often place his duties first. I think a major theme in his character development is going to be learning how to balance those things - keeping duty as the most important thing in his life but learning that it's ok for it not to be the only thing. Syl will point out to him that he is interested in someone like Shallan or Laral and he denies it even though it's obvious that he is interested in them. She wins the argument against him when he tries to say all he needs are his brothers in battle and he acknowledges that he needs more than that. All shipping aside, Kaladin will almost certainly have a romance arc of some description. Personally, I like to see some romance in most books I read. I like it as a minor subplot, but I like it to be there. To me if I like a character I want to see a romance arc for them if it makes sense based on who they are and where they are as a character. If you don't feel that way, I understand.

Another issue to me about Amaram was not just his own sudden turn but also the turn of how characters acted around him. The scene with Amaram and Jasnah in particular just felt wrong. Amaram pretty much confessed what he did and why (at least the surface layers that he took the shardblade and plate because he felt he was the best person to use them) which, while mean and petty are probably not all that out of line from the way many of the nobles felt and acted. And yet, instead of polite distaste and distance like the way they handled Sadeas who did things that were just as morally wrong the "good guys" are yelling out juvenile insults at Amaram. It seemed out of character to me, way too "on the nose." Anyway, to turn all this back to the original point of the thread, I'll say my order liking the three SA books is 1 WoR, 2 WoK, significant gap, 3 OB. I was pretty disappointed in OB, I still liked it but felt it was a significant drop from WoR and here are my reasons: 1) The story lacked focus and spent too much time with minor characters like Bridge 4. I like Bridge 4, but let's keep them where they were before: essentially accessories to Kaladin and his stories. 2) Shallan's regression. I don't think it's unrealistic and I do agree that it is character development, but it wasn't pleasant to read. Not only was it not pleasant to read, but I felt like there wasn't a big payoff to that. I could have gotten behind it (though been very sad) if her regression led to some real consequences for her or the anti-Odium alliance. Like, for example, if Shallan had given in to the Unmade during a low moment or Veil had actually taken over completely and become the "main" persona. Instead, we had an arc where she did have a lot of problems and struggles but they never really came to a head with major consequences and she also never made significant progress in getting over them. 3) Szeth's entire plotline. I liked Szeth as sort of an independent character who had his own loyalties and morals. Moving him over to the "good guys" without a significant feeling out period felt unearned. I wanted to see plot lines with them Szeth and Dalinar each doing what they think is right in their own way and butting heads before eventually teaming up or becoming enemies. 4) This is super subjective and there's an entire 90+ page thread on this, but the love triangle resolution bothered me quite a bit. It felt good and mostly natural up until Kaladin's little reflection at the end. The line about Kaladin feeling "agreement" felt like Sanderson basically saying "Ok guys, this love triangle is done, I'm serious." I would have rather seen the Shalladin ship, but even if it turned out with Shallan/Adolin I would have rather seen Kaladin sort of upset over it for a while. I would have liked a plot line in Book 4 where he intentionally avoided seeing the two of them (Shallan/Adolin) together for a while, which eventually Shallan picks up on and they have a scene together where they finally talk for real and have some closure. Instead, we got a Deus Ex Machina voice saying "This is how it is and all the characters are OK with it. There will be no further advancements on this front, so deal with it." I may or may not be right about that and we don't need to rehash that here, but that's how it read to me.

Exactly - well written series of books but completely not to my taste. I might have liked the books better if they had been a series of prequels - if I knew and loved the end point of where they were going and was looking forward to learning how they got there then I think I might have liked them better. As it was, I just wasn't interested due to the fact that the books were not character driven and learning about the plot itself was not enough of a payoff for me to keep reading.

I think I read the first two full books, then quit somewhere in the third. I wouldn't say that Malazan was too complicated for me to understand, but I would say that by the point where I was in the story I just wasn't enjoying it. The reason for that is that the books up to where I was in the story did not tell a continuous story about a few characters - it told the story of an entire world and what was happening in that world. I would get to a point where I was finally warmed up to a certain character and looking forward to reading about his/her story and right at that point they would disappear from the narrative. It was like someone telling a history of a country and trying to explain why things were a certain way - you can't tell the history of China without fleshing out Ghengis Khan and the Mongols, but you also have to make sure they are only a small part of the overall story and they are completely out of the picture once their part is done. If you really care a lot about the story of China overall the Mongols are just a nice bit of flavor to an overall great story. On the other hand, if you're just looking for a good story you'd rather hear about the Mongols or the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and less about the many minor wars, conflicts, and periods of social strife over the thousands of years of Chinese history. Malazan is the complete Chinese history being thrown out with no introduction. There are a lot of people it's just not going to appeal to. I have heard that a lot of the characters who appear to be complete throwaways eventually come back and that some characters eventually become true major characters who drive the story. I just wasn't willing to continue to put in the time to get to that point. I get that for fans of the series the selling point is that this whole huge, seemingly unconnected set of stories all comes together at the end, but for me I could not push through to the point where things started coming together because the lead up was not fun for me to read.

I agree with your points, especially about Adolin. The big issue people are having with his OB storyline is that they want him to step into the spotlight and become a major character. It's just not going to happen and people need to come to terms with it. He's a secondary character, a good one, but still secondary so his issues are going to be dealt with from that frame of reference. I still agree somewhat with the OP though - I felt like after "Book One" (the promotional material released slowly on Tor.com), OB really started dragging and becoming unfocused. For as much that happened in OB, and a lot did happen, it felt like the story barely moved forward. The whole book was building up to a huge climactic battle with Odium, which turned out to be fairly anti-climactic because it didn't really lead to any changes other than Dalinar's own personal development as a character and Amaram's death. I guess you could say the success was that they stopped Odium's advance, but I would almost rather have seen the book end with them losing the conventional battle for the city of Thaylen because then something climactic happens: Dalinar gets a huge power up and resists Odium, but it's still too little too late and Thaylen has already fallen to the conventional troops and the Alliance has to retreat back to Urithiru licking its wounds with Odium only barely staved off and ready to come back at them at any moment. Also to the OP: This is not a shot at you at all, but I'm curious as to why you find the character development in this book lacking while being a huge Malazan fan. That series seems to be 100% devoted to the overarching story of a world over the story of characters. Those books are unappealing to me because I prefer books which are about characters and how they react to events in the larger world and (IMO) the Malazan books treat characters as a lens to view the world and its developments. So to me, one reason I find OB a little disappointing is that it seems like Sanderson is sliding more toward that style of writing (has a big story of an entire universe to tell and that is increasingly becoming his goal rather than telling the story of Kaladin, Shallan, Dalinar, etc), but Malazan has always been written in that style.