(Spoilers ahead)
(This is gonna be a long one.)
Since the book is so big, I think it’s only right that I give a review that’s of a respectful size, so here I go.
Patronising. Shallow. Self-serving. Bloated. Boring.
These are the Five Ideals I use to define Wind and Truth (WaT), and thank Honor it’s over.
To encapsulate my full thoughts on WaT, I have to talk about the series as a whole. I was favourable toward this series for the first two books, but the part 1 conclusion of this ten-book series really solidified some opinions I have of Stormlight Archive and of Brandon Sanderson as an author.
Change in tone, the emasculation of Kaladin, and a patronising portrayal of mental illness and queerness
Firstly, I noticed a change in tone and direction in the third book, Oathbringer, which brought about a significant reveal about the Heralds, the nature of the world, and of man’s place in Roshar. This is when the series started to stray away from hard fantasy into a strange mix of YA fantasy and sci-fi, and since then, it has devolved even further. It started off as men in full-plate armour bashing each other with giant swords, and ended with the main character being a therapist whose main weapon is making battle-hardened men cry with empty, patronising quips. I’m not kidding, this is literally what happens in WaT.
Now cue this gem of writing from one of the fantasy genre’s premiere authors:
“How?” Ishar repeated. “What are you?” He gestured toward Szeth. “Are you… are you his spren? His god?”
“No,” Kaladin said. “I’m his therapist.”
- Chapter 139, p. 1256.
This is the type of sentence I’d expect from an angsty teenager that has just begun their journey into creative writing — never mind the fact that Sanderson is a creative writing professor. It’s the same type of immature, ham-fisted and poorly-constructed writing that made me put down Bradley Beaulieu’s Twelve Kings of Sharakai series, which in itself was completely ruined by horrible editing. People have noticed a dip in editing quality since Sanderson changed editors for this entry, but that’s the least of this book’s issues.
Let’s round back. I tend to not involve myself in modern culture war stuff, but when it takes over a host and gets shoved down my throat, forgive me for my inclination toward strong opinions.
“It’s a bigger statement not to include queer characters than to include them.”
-Brandon Sanderson via Esquire.
With that being said, can I please go two seconds without someone trying to push me off my fence? It’s the same meandering rhetoric as people that say ‘ermm, actually, EHEHE, everything is about politics *SNORT*.’
Listen asshole, are you upset that I’m comfortable here? Do you hate happy people? Do you not realise that when you push me, I fall to the other side?
Well, so be it. Here I am on the other side, and here’s my first utterance after standing up: Sanderson has taken his own IP and replaced its artistic soul to cater to the ever-elusive, politically-correct “modern audience”. Yep, you wanted me to be here, so here I am.
Exhibit A: Kaladin, the founder of the concept of therapy. The dumbass spends the entire book doing literally nothing other than mumbling nonsense words to people. The only time he’s somewhat proactive is when he fights Nale at the end.
Picture this. Kaladin’s moment comes after some amount of being hyped up by best friend Szeth, and finally, after exactly 1021 pages of doing nothing, he confronts Nale the Herald in an epic one-on-one fight.
Kaladin proceeds to get swiftly and soundly beaten in a couple pages and thrown to the side like a rag doll.
Oh, but wait! Nale forgot about Kaladin’s secret weapon. That’s right, the power of therapy!
A flute starts playing in true Hollywood fashion, performed by the new ex machina character Wind, who, you guessed it, is the wind. The flute distracts Nale, and Kaladin bullies him into tears with empty words and catchphrases. Nale then crawls up and sobs.
Thus concludes the epic duel.
wow.
And now we come to Renarin, our resident gay. Like with every other bad writer, those three letters now define his character completely and utterly. Gay. Why? Because according to the modern audience, when you’re gay, there’s nothing else that defines you. Every time he is mentioned, we’re reminded by Sanderson that he is gay. Every time we see his perspective, he gushes about Rlain, who now, of course, is also gay, because if he wasn’t gay, then how would we get our pages and pages of exposition about how Renarin is gay? (By the way, Renarin is gay.)
Despite his multiple lectures and pieces of advice about writing characters, Sanderson has fallen victim to the cardinal sin of caricature. Both Kaladin and Renarin have been shoved into stereotype moulds that were crafted by someone who has a PhD in Wikipedia. They have no regency beyond these characterisations, and it’s a shallow portrayal of people that actually have these traits.
And now there’s transgenders in Roshar, too. I don’t have a problem with this, but it’s so ham-fisted and out of the blue that it feels patronising.
Adolin stopped by one taller woman, with good muscles on her, the strongest he’d seen so far.
[…]
“Like I’ve told the other women, if I let you in, you’ll have to live and work around men in what might be embarrassing situations.”
“I’m used to it, sir,” she said. “I have the papers.”
Papers? He hesitated, then glanced at his scribe.
“One who has filled out the forms,” Challa the scribe whispered, “to live as a man.”
Ah. He’d heard of that. Well, the Azish did things their own way, didn’t they?
“Good to have you, Sarkuin,” Adolin said to the man, and moved on.
- Chapter 60, p. 588.
I have this image in my mind of a rainbow-coloured wacky inflatable man in front of a store, waving its arms in the air, trying to grab the attention of everyone within eyesight as if to say, ‘Look at me, I’m so progressive!’
It’s the equivalent of Sanderson silently driving in a car with a black guy, turning on rap music at the end of the trip, and saying ‘this one’s for you.’ Sanderson then abruptly stops the music, turns off the car, and leaves with a giant smile on his face while the black guy is still sitting there wondering what the fuck just happened.
All that aside, this type of discourse is not the reason why I started this series. Forcing this type of content on a dedicated audience out of the blue makes them feel alienated. This should be a no-brainer, but it’s a phenomenon the current entertainment-scape continues to ignore. This includes movies and video games, which offer a plethora of recent examples. If these themes had been introduced at the start of the series and not obviously shoehorned in, then I wouldn’t be complaining. Instead, here we are at the last book, and only now are we having this discourse dumped on us. If writers want to incorporate this type of discourse into a franchise, it needs to be treated with the respect it deserves instead of used as a tokenised attempt to virtue signal.
What happened here? What happened to the soul of this series? The main themes of war, conflict, and politics have been grown over by mental health with a side of feminism and a hefty seasoning of queerness. Yes, the characters have always had their own demons, but these singular aspects of them didn’t completely consume their narratives like it does here. Kaladin’s first arc was all about camaraderie and overcoming his demons, about being a pillar of strength for downtrodden men while maintaining regency as a rounded character. Now the once-complex hero is a one-sided, condescending muppet with zero dynamism.
But enough about that. Let’s move on.
Convoluted plot
It was obvious from miles away that Kaladin has to join Szeth simply to act as his therapist. I’ve made my thoughts clear on this point, but I want to drive home the fact that this is literally Kaladin’s only purpose. Not only that, but this is a childish portrayal of a therapist.
Sanderson’s idea of therapy is beating people over the head with words, contradicting them, patronising them, and dictating who they are and how the world is. There are pages upon pages of this. Not only that, but Szeth has been dumbed down into a narcissistic, fatalistic sourpuss whose only purpose is to be a catalyst for Kaladin to be what Sanderson thinks a therapist is.
Kaladin even therapises a spren, and the Heralds don’t escape, either (the spren conversation is too long to show, but it’s on page 852).
“I will not lie,” Kaladin said, “and promise you that all future days will be warm. But Ishar, you will be warm again. And that is another thing entirely to promise.”
“I… I don’t know if that’s true,” Ishar whispered. “It’s different for us.”
“It’s not,” Kaladin said.
- Chapter 139, p. 1256.
Ishar [seized] his blade. He looked to Kaladin. “But… even so… I might lose myself again. Not all of the rot upon my soul was because of the power of Odium, Stormblessed. I… am weak. Of mind.”
“I will help,” Kaladin promised.
- Chapter 145, p. 1299.
These excerpts help colour the one below, because when he becomes a Herald, his head goes up his ass and his idea of therapising them is to talk down to them.
“Jezrien was the greatest of men,” Ishar said. “Our guide and our leader. I prepared Szeth for over a decade. You cannot take the place of a king like Jezrien.”
“To think,” Kaladin said softly, “that you have lived millennia and you haven’t learned a simple truth.” He then pulled a deep blue cloak from the pack, the tower and the crown emblazoned on the back. “Nobility has nothing to do with blood, Ishar. But it has everything to do with heart.”
Kaladin stood up and threw the cloak over his shoulders. It swept through the air, and he felt the Wind making it float around him.
- Chapter 144, p. 1291.
Damn. So cool and brave for him to be more knowledgeable and learned than people that have lived for generations. I’ve seen this type of lazy writing before, where a character will ascend in power and status and suddenly become an all-knowing asshole. The guy doesn’t even spare a thought for his family, who he likely won’t see for a very long time. I don’t even want to mention the cloak part since it’s so embarrassing to read.
But enough about the inventor of therapy, because now that Kaladin is no longer a fighter, the only male characters that fight are Adolin and Sigzil—the latter of which having recently been elevated to ‘important character’ status. Every other male character is inert or disabled, and even Adolin becomes disabled. And what’s more, since Stormlight goes extinct at the end of the book, that means those who are disabled can’t heal their missing limbs anymore. It’s easy to assume this is another politically-correct nod, but whatever.
Let’s take stock. No one cares about Sigzil, Kaladin is a therapist, Szeth is disabled, Adolin is disabled, Renarin is a gay pussy, and Dalinar’s still inert.
Hey, let’s talk about Dalinar for a moment.
A plot point that doesn’t make sense is that Dalinar, who is competing in the contest to decide the fate of the world, suddenly decides to go into the dangerous Spiritual Realm despite the fact that if he dies or can’t make the contest, he will doom everyone. And why does he decide to do this? Because a god appears literally out of nowhere, tells him to do it, then disappears. This is straight out of a DnD campaign where the GM is upset that the players are doing something he doesn’t want them to do, and so tells them what to do through some heraldic figure that suddenly appears and is never seen again.
Dalinar hasn’t been on active fighting duty for years at this point, and he’s in the latter half of his life. Anybody in this position would either choose someone more capable to take his place, or they would start training like hell. Instead, he goes on a halfhearted excursion just so the plot can introduce variables and exposition. Kaladin is now obviously a capable fighter, and the conceited plot about his battle shock has worn off, but instead of competing in the contest, he gets sent away. Yeah, okay.
Anyway, after the contest, the entire nature of the world changes, and Stormlight is no more. Stormlight was one of the things that made this story world unique and different. Not sure what’s happening here, but perhaps there is some kind of payoff knowing that a big aspect of Sanderson’s famed magic system is gone. We’ll have to wait eight years until we know as the next book is due in 2033, or perhaps it’ll be revealed in one of the 50 books he’ll release during that time.
Speaking of time, I don’t like it when stories mess with time. The whole time jump, time warp thing is messy, and I can only assume this was done because it’s necessary for the overarching plot of the Cosmere. Wit is now in the current Mistborn timeline where technology is advanced, so it definitely has something to do with that, and we finally get a decent glimpse of Thaikadar aka Kelsier. Fans also surely appreciate the appearances of the Warbreaker characters, and an Avengers scenario is sure to happen eventually.
Way too long, and a bland, self-serving style
I’ve read a couple reviews, and they are consistent with my own views — the first of which being that this book could have been way, way shorter. It’s an accepted truth that WaT can be shortened significantly without affecting the story, which, I think, is true of every book in the series. I’m not gonna pull any punches, this book could have been 60% shorter and still be the same story.
Not only that, but the physical act of holding what is essentially a large block of wood is simply unpractical. It’s downright comical to see people trying to hold up this massive book with one hand while reading it.
I recently read the Dandelion Dynasty, and those are big books with a lot of significant events occurring in each entry. The first book clocks in at just under 600 pages for the standard-sized paperback. Meanwhile, SA books are twice that size, and significantly-less events occur in each SA entry. There are caveats for this point, sure, but I think the proposition that they’re too big for their contents size holds true.
I know Sanderson takes pride in the fact that his Stormlight books are big, but it shouldn’t be a point of pride. The entire The Lord of the Rings trilogy is shorter than WaT, and significantly more events happen in the former with an infinite amount of depth. So many pages were wasted in WaT with pointless meandering and empty exposition, and there were even some chapters and sections where virtually nothing happened. It’s as if Sanderson were using the words as a way to map out his own thoughts about what direction to take the story. It’s almost like he was using the characters and the dialogue to talk to himself. Very often a character would ask a question, to which another character would give an excessive answer, followed by narrated description. This process is repeated over and over and over.
The plethora of chapters that served as dead weight to an already bloated story compounds an issue that Sanderson himself educates his students in, which is moving the plot forward. I thought it was a basic tenant in writing that every chapter should be meaningful. Considering this, there’s a reason why most authors cut their drafts significantly when going to print, and WaT is a prime example.
Sorry for being crass, but Sanderson is in a position where he can shit out anything and sell it. He can riff off book after book, releasing multiple a year, without paying extensive attention to the quality of his writing that other less-privileged authors have to. He can’t be manhandled by hardboiled, no-nonsense editors like other authors are, and this position is to the detriment of any artist that has an audience to cater to. Fighters lose their fire when they’re too big to care (why put your all into it when you’re already gonna earn millions?), and many novelists lose their gusto in the same scenario.
With this type of practice, reason dictates that there will be a drop in quality, and explains why other authors aren’t in the same camp of shitting out multiple books in the span of only a few months. Most prominent fantasy novelists, at most, release a book every two or three years, and the quality of writing is, for the most part, consistently decent.
Another issue and a big criticism of Sanderson tends to pertain to his writing style. I like his philosophy of invisible prose, but the problem is when the prose isn’t invisible, and this approach philosophy compounds his practice in poor, bloated writing.
Speaking of prose, Sanderson is known to jump to a YA tone at the drop of a hat with cringeworthy humour and style. I’ve heard some critics call it ‘pastor humour’. In this case, one of the prime offenders is the character Lift.
The other Navani was halfway through a meal[…] Her eyes opened wide as she saw Navani, and she froze there, juice dripping off the bread and onto her cheek.
“Lift?” Navani guessed.
“Told you,” the younger guard whispered to his companion from behind. “Brightness Navani would never spend so much time staring at my ass…”
“Oh flaps!” Lift said. “Seventeen bakers and one whore! Uh… I mean… uh, hi, Navani! Um… I did a real good job a[t] bein’ you…”
It was surreal seeing herself quickly wipe her hands and scramble over—hitting her elbow on the desk, then cursing and kicking it, then cursing and hopping on one foot from the pain.
[…]
“She didn’t moon anyone, did she?” Navani asked.
“Hey!” Lift said, scowling. “I’m not that bad.”
- Chapter 114, pp. 1059-60.
I mean, I feel actual YA authors have more respect for their audience than this. Keep in mind, this is meant to be epic fantasy.
Unfortunately, Lift isn’t the only one subject to Sanderson’s sense of humour.
“So, you have a spren friend, [Hesina] said. “Did you ever ask her that vital question you always asked when you were little?”
[…]
“Dungspren,” she said, poking him. “You were always so fascinated by the idea.”
“That was Tien!” Kaladin said. '“Not me.”
Hesina gave him a knowing stare. Mothers. They remembered too well. Shamespren popped into existence around him, like red and white petals[…]
“Fine,” he said. “Maybe I was… intrigued.” He glanced at Syl, who was watching the exchange with wide eyes. “Did you… ever know any?”
“Dungspren,” she said flatly. “You’re asking the sole living Daughter of Storms—basically a princess by human technology—this question. How much poop do I know?”
“Please, can we move on?” Kaladin said.
Unfortunately, Oroden had been listening. He patted Kaladin on the knee. “It’s okay, Gagadin,” he said in a comforting voice. “Poop goes in potty. Get a treat.”
- Chapter 2, pp. 33-34.
Who is the audience for this type of writing? The book is 1.3k pages long, so it’s not teens and young adults. Even YA readers within the appropriate age range would cringe at this. It would get a rise out of very young children, perhaps. I can imagine being in Infant School and having this make a couple of my classmates chuckle.
And this is interspersed among artificial chunks of dialogue that feel like we’re watching puppets being pulled along by strings. There is little to no nuance in his writing, and no depth to his characters. It would likely take an author multiple years to write a book half this size, but it took Sanderson under two years. I know it’s a fear of his that he’ll never get to write all the stories he wants to write, but the guy needs to slow down and focus on quality over quantity. This isn’t Hollywood.
On that note…
Bad endings, and the push for Hollywood
Oathbringer’s ending had Hollywood written all over it. Each book ends with a frantic action sequence that serves as the denouement’s peak, but Oathbringer was eye-rollingly special. Many people have expressed discontent at the ending of WaT, and I think with good reason, but I’m not too bothered.
On a side note, Brandon Sanderson turned down Henry Cavill’s interest in playing Kaladin because Sanderson wants the character to be Asian, despite the fact literally every artwork of Kaladin depicts him as an angular Caucasian man. I still don’t know how to feel about that, but it’s obvious from Sanderson’s writing style and his assertions on his podcast that he is really pushing to make an entry into Hollywood. Considering his cinematic, Hollwood-esque endings and the amount of politically-correct nonsense littering this book, I doubt he would have a hard time beyond finding a cast that suits his palette.
Pushing men out of their spaces
To end things, I want to mention the following because I think it’s a prevalent issue, but feel free to skip to my conclusion.
At the end of Rhythm of War, Sanderson sticks it to men by telling the reader that the women are the real rulers of Rosharan civilisation and the men just think they rule it. Why? Because women use important military documents to gossip with one another like girls passing notes in a classroom. And the best part is, wait for it, teehee, the silly men can’t read!
Misandry is in chic in the 21st century, but what Sanderson thinks is a ‘look at me, I’m an ally’ moment is actually borderline misogynistic. How patronising to suggest that women will scribble on important documents to gossip with one other. Let’s ignore the fact that men are spending their entire lives on the frontline to protect these same women who, instead of being professional in their padded critical communications job, are instead gossiping about what Betty Buttfuck wore to the ball. And yes, some of their comments I’m sure are genuine criticisms of certain things, but if they’re hidden and not shared with the male population, then it’s nothing but classroom gossip.
Not only that, but now our resident girl boss Jasnah is leading these same men to war. That’s right, likeable Jasnah “Poindexter” Kholin, the smartest person in Roshar who talks down to everyone and who doesn’t understand the concept of sex (she’s not like other girls, you see).
While Rhythm of War saw Navani taking charge of the defence contingent instead of men who live and breathe by the sword, Jasnah is now the frontline leader of a division. Not only can men not read, but now they’re being told what to do by women that have never led an army before. Yes, I know what the excuse is. In Oathbringer, she was an unstoppable, all-powerful force that was stronger than everyone (because women strong!), but that doesn’t give her the merit to lead an experienced armed force. At least when men are being treated like lint in someone’s pocket, they have a sense of camaraderie in standing side-by-side. But now they’re not even allowed that, and are instead stood over for the sake of feminist messaging.
Let me digress and step into the real world for a moment. I know it’s offensive by modern standards for men to have opinions, preferences, and spaces, but now they’re being bullied out of one of the very few series currently on the market that appeals to them. While every male space has to be inclusive lest the word misogyny gets thrown about, female spaces remain exclusive. A lack of books that appeal to men has been a point of discussion in the book world very recently, and the simple fact is that they’re not interested in books that appear targeted towards women.
From Stormlight’s recent content, it doesn’t take much guesswork to know which feminist will take over the series when Sanderson dies, and the good news is that Samantha Shannon seems to have jumped the gun and already given us a taster of what she has planned. You know, the writer of that patriarchy-hating book that’s always at the forefront of the fantasy section despite being several years old? Not sure why it’s always there, but the next time I’m in a book store, I’ll walk past the shelves upon shelves of adultery romance and BDSM erotica, Pride and Prejudice reprints and gender studies books to the counter and ask one of the twenty women on the roster why that is.
Closing thoughts
I doubt many people have read this, so I’m going to be as indulgent as I wish. I tend to be scathing in my reviews, but there honestly isn’t much about WaT that I’m happy with other than the fact that the series will no doubt be finished in the future. That’s not a conceited statement as Sanderson is consistent in starting and finishing his projects—no doubt a benefit of his high output work ethic.
If Sanderson were to ask me how to make his book better, I would say get a strict editor and cut it by at least 40%. At the very least. I would also tell him to cut the patronising droning that’s found in Kaladin’s chapters, and to respect the fact Renarin has more dimensions to him than his sexuality. Other than that, there is simply too much to mention and I’ve already talked a lot.
It’s kind of a sad situation when people ask me if I recommend the series since it takes such a strange turn. I would say if you didn’t enjoy Oathbringer, then stop there, but it’s a pointless assertion since you may as well read the rest to get a sense of closure. I can see how easy it would be for people to feel duped after reading the first two books, so I really can’t recommend this series to anyone. If it wasn’t so big, then sure. But I know people still like these books, so to each their own.