I just finished Wind and Truth (5th book of The Stormlight Archive), and…. I didn’t like it that much. Pause here if you don’t want spoilers, from now on I am considering everything fair game. I feel like it was largely too indulgent of what I find least interesting about Sanderson’s work, and light on what I think is his most compelling skills. Put more simply, I thought there was too much talking and not enough fighting. I will go through what I consider most of the main plot points and explain why I was overall disappointed.
Let me start by saying that in general, I do not like to be a negative person, and there were still parts of this book that I really liked. So in the spirit of that, I want to start and end my diatribe with highlights. And in particular, I want to start with Adolin, because his plot line was easily my favorite of this book, and a perfect example of why I became a fan of Sanderson to begin with. Adolin’s quest to realize his worth not as a radiant, but as a man, and deal with his complicated relationship with his father, was so compelling. His understanding that radiance was not for him because he disagreed with how they viewed oaths was really inspiring as a reader, and made me really question the implicit trust and respect I gave every Radiant up to that point. And to my earlier point, the battle scenes of him in this book were incredible. Busting in to the back fortifications of the enemy to wreak havoc and save his fellow shardbearer, taking out the Thunderclast, and the brutality of serving on the front line as an amputee, all followed by the incredible finale of taking the throne with the return of Maya, easily made his chapters my favorite to read through the entire book. Adolin is a perfect example of why I read and love Sanderson.
Adolin’s dad on the other hand….. oh boy. My interest in Dalinar as a character has wavered through the series, generally starting low, getting higher, and then dropping to possibly an all time low by the end of book 5. A truly ungodly amount of pages in this book were dedicated to Dalinar’s journey (and Navani’s, and Shallan’s, and…., but let’s be real, it was about Dalinar) through the spiritual realm, and I never found a reason to care about it. It felt so reminiscent of the dreams he endured earlier in the series, when I also didn’t really care about his character, and I found myself getting increasingly disappointed as the end drew nearer and it became clearer and clearer that the “battle of champions” was never going to be a battle and it would largely come down to talking and mystical forces that no one understands. It felt like he had the realization of “I’m a tyrant who punches my way through problems but I need to not be” 5 separate times in the spirit realm, and his general self-loathing was exhausting to read at times.
This seems like a good place for me to pause and acknowledge that I honestly do not really care about the connectedness of the Cosmere between series. Is it cool when I read another book and I notice a connection, or I realize something about the shards of Adonalsium that explains a bit of a previous book? Sure! But I really don’t have interest in the deep lore that connects everything, and even as someone who has now read nearly every single work by Sanderson, I just don’t get why I should care? A huge chunk of this book was spent on the relationship of Honor and Odium, and it just wasn’t something I found myself caring about. I don’t know if it’s that Sanderson is better at writing it or I am just more interested in reading it, but I will take the finale of The Way of Kings where Bridge 4 saves the day with an epic march over Hoid quipping about some in-joke that I have to reread Elantris to even begin to understand any day.
While I am on the negative trend, let me also gripe about Shallan. What a waste of potential in a compelling character! I really struggled in the earlier books to stay connected with her through the Veil/Radiant/Formless arc, but with the progress she made in this book I was finally coming around to her. And in this epic conclusion of a 5 book series… she doesn’t do much, and never even gets out of Shadesmar. I will say: I am so glad the Ghostbloods saga is over (but why it ever even needed to be a thing at all is another problem I have, related to my above apathy about the Cosmere in general), I like how her personality has developed, the reveal of her being a herald’s daughter and the handling of that was so cool, and the Testament realization was super interesting. But man I wish she would have been more relevant to the main plot line and gotten a more satisfying conclusion in this book.
That actually segues nicely into my biggest complaint with this book, which is that nothing really felt like it wrapped up. With how it was pitched, I imagined book 5 would wrap up at least most loose ends nicely, setting up the opportunity for a bunch of new stories in the second half. Nope! I actually can’t think of one thing that “wrapped up” in this book - even Dalinar didn’t really die, because his spirit was captured as a general or something?? Cause why not let Taravangian do that?
That brings me to the last serious complaint I would say I had with this book, which is that it feels like we have kind of “jumped the shark” with the magic system in the Cosmere now. My first Sanderson book was Mistborn, and I loved it foremost for the genius magic system where I got to imagine Vin bouncing around the city with clever uses of pushing and pulling. Similarly, I loved learning the surges of Windrunners with Kaladin, and finding yet another cool way that Cosmere characters can experience flight. But by the end of Wind and Truth, with most of the focus on the fight between Honor and Odium, I didn’t feel like I had any sort of a grasp on what a vessel of a shard could do, and so I was just lost in the scenes, forced to accept whatever I was given, because, hey, God’s have Godly powers, so who needs to build a tight system with really fun extralapotory use cases for them, right! The only real examples of the surges being compelling magic systems we got in this book seemed to come from Szeth and Kaladin, which…
Ah, the Szeth and Kaladin plot line. I wanted so badly to find this one compelling, and I did at times, but I think it struggled from many of the same issues I’ve already touched on. The expository of Szeth’s earlier life was pretty interesting, but really dragged on, and felt like it could have been quite a bit less of the book (which, by the way, was an insanely long almost 500k words, so some trimming might have been nice!), and I was really disappointed to see Kaladin sidelined from any action for almost the entirety of the conclusion. The quest to retrieve the swords was cool in theory, but as a reader I really have no interest in Shinovar, or for that matter Ishar. And again, to that earlier point about Shallan, this plot line also didn’t real end up mattering for this book either! It seems to serve as more setup for the rest of the series with Kaladin joining the Heralds, which don’t get me wrong was actually a pretty satisfying conclusion for his character, even if it is gut-wrenchingly sad for him at the same time, but like…. I really, really wanted an epic conclusion if I was going to put in all the work of reading this.
I’ve been pretty negative for a bit here, so let me pause to say that I really enjoyed the progression of Renarin and Rlain, both as characters and as a couple. Rlain, in particular, was fleshed out in really interesting ways - the backstory of him being the outcast of the Singers and having feet in both Human and Singer worlds was really interesting! I would have liked to see some evidence of their attraction in previous books for it to feel truly authentic I think, but even still I liked how they progressed through the spiritual realm together for the most part, how they learned their Truthwatcher abilities together, and where there story ended. They were minor enough characters that I was ok with them not being more involved, and off on their own little Sja-anat adventure. This is also easily the most prominent same-sex (and maybe also interspecies?) couple I know of in the Cosmere so far, and that’s pretty neat.
Let me continue with another positive: Jasnah losing her non-religion religion when confronted with Taravangian’s logic and being forced to tell Fen to side with him was fascinating. It was the first we really got to see the way she thinks, and it was really compelling to watch her bravado slowly fade as she realized she was outmatched in every way, and that as a result she had to acknowledge what a hypocrite she was about things.
I could go on for way too long about this. But let me go rapid fire while I still have this all fresh in mind: I was also let down with Venli’s somewhat anticlimactic conclusion after what I hoped was going to be some truly clever scheming, I didn’t like how little of a role Navani played after being almost the entirety of Rhythm of War, I was disappointed Lift played essentially no role either, and I am honestly a little bit over Moash just being like, comically evil. I did enjoy the insights into Taravangian as Odium slowly getting more drastic (at least in part because it took up so much less time than Honor’s backstory), I enjoyed the scenes of Sigzil leading the Radiants at the Shattered Plains and the heartbreaking sacrifice he made, and the reveal of Gavin as the champion (for like, a minute until Dalinar switched it up) was a super cool twist.
All of this ranting to say: I think the series is still strong, I do not regret the read overall, and I see a lot of potential for where Sanderson can go next, but I can’t help but leave book 5 feeling pretty disappointed? I’d say I’d put it 4th of the 5 Stormlight Archive books so far, going 1) Way of Kings, 2) Oathbringer, 3) Words of Radiance, 4) Wind and Truth, 5) Rhythm of War. I can’t help but feel that so much of modern media seems intent on keeping you hooked for the -next- thing and always having some cliffhanger, and while I knew that ultimately this was book 5/10 and not book 10/10, I still can’t help feeling let down that this book felt like it did that too.