#cheru.review

[cheruim]

Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson | 4.5 out of 5 stars

I’d read a lot of opinions about Oathbringer & talked to friends who’d either read it or were reading it before I’d even really started, so my view of the book is a little biased. Most of those opinions said that this book was long, and hard, and that I should probably take a break to read Mistborn Era 1 before continuing. Now, I’m not a quitter. I’ve never been a quitter in my goddamn life. But three out of three things are correct: Oathbringer was long, it was hard, and I’ll probably read at least Mistborn: The Final Empire before carrying on with The Stormlight Archive since my library only has one copy of Rhythm of War as an ebook specifically & I have to wait seven more weeks to get it because I put it on hold through Libby. Let’s dig in!

Things I Liked:

This is an easy category for me, simply because there are a lot of things to Stormlight that I particularly enjoy, and Oathbringer is particularly huge. It's not an overstatement to say that anything that isn't in the 'Things I Disliked' section & isn't mentioned here was also something I enjoyed to some extent!

We really did get to see a lot more character relationships evolve and grow, and we also got plenty of new dynamics to explore! Stormlight Trio aka Shakadolin aka My Wretched Polycule had multiple chapters dedicated to developing their dynamics together (Kaladin and Adolin’s easy camaraderie, Adolin and Shallan’s blossoming romance feat. Adolin being the most patient man in the world, and… well, the last pair is better handled in the second section). Shadesmar Roadtrip, you will always be in my heart.

We got Dalinar and Lift, daddy-daughter Radiant duo! We got Dalinar and Navani, serving political power couple (and they’re married now, which is awesome)! We got more of Bridge Four operating without their Captain’s leadership, something that I’d actually been wanting for a while to help flesh out those characters out! Obviously, my favorite out of all of them: SZETH-SON-SON-VALLANO & NIGHTBLOOD BUDDY-COP COMEDY DUO. Yes. Give that horribly depressed man a sentient sword with whimsy in its heart. I don’t know, I just like sentient weapons, okay? There were plenty others I could’ve mentioned, but like I said, there were a lot of new bonds forged during Dalinar’s attempts to ‘Unite Them’.

Speaking of Dalinar, this was the Dalinar book (rounding off our original focus characters), and I won’t be the first to say it: I loved the flashback chapters. Seeing him at the start of his story versus how we’ve known him for the past two books truly was like seeing two separate characters. I also now have context for why Sadeas thought Dalinar had gone insane—I’ve been poking around The Way of Kings again as a comfort re-read, and.. YEAH, BUD. I get it now. His brother-in-arms organized a razing of Rathalas, accidentally killing his wife in the process, and then turned around to say 'Erm, actually, the end doesn't always justify the means!' after becoming fantasy-Catholic in an almost-overnight process. I'd be confused too.

It’d be in poor taste if I didn’t at least mention the second honor moment of all time ala “You cannot have my pain!”/Honor’s Perpendicularity. It helped that Shallan, Kaladin, and Adolin all jumped out like superheroes to save the day, of course, but like I said: I’m biased towards them. Dalinar’s great. No one is doing bad fatherhood like him. #myblorbos

The Sanderlanche in Oathbringer bumped this rating up from a 3.5 to a 4.5, by the way. A whole point up from just the last 200–300 pages. This is a feat that I believe only he could pull off, but that’s more or less just because he’s well known for the tactic of “big book with big pay off at the end”. I’m also not as well read as I’d like to be, so maybe that opinion will change later down the line!

Things I Disliked:

God, this book felt simply bloated with detail—one of the downsides to having a huge book to read. One of my friends who’s reading the series because of me told me that it felt ‘ambitious’, which I thought was a kind way of describing it. The biggest issue, to me, is if you’re going to be as ambitious as Sanderson was, you need to commit to following through. The following items, in my opinion, were dropped in such a manner that felt unsatisfactory to me:

Adolin’s murder of Torol Sadeas. He actively benefits from this decision in the end (not ascending the throne) and bears little to no consequence over it. For someone who spent the first part of the book agonizing over this decision, Adolin sure doesn’t think about that for the rest of it!

Shallan’s… Lightweaver-thing with the Unmade in Urithiru. I’m not sure how else to put it. Coppermind let me know that the Unmade was named the Midnight Mother, but my point is that the thing she does is so vague and hand-wavey that it stuck out as wrong. After all, Sanderson is the hard-magic system guy! My best guess is that it was there as a way to explain her gambit in Kholinar, but whatever, I guess.

Queen Aesudan’s transformation after attempting to consume Yelig-nar. We can pretty handily guess that she’s, y’know, fucking dead, but… That’s the Queen. That’s the whole-ass queen of the goddamn nation. There has to have been fallout in the kingdom after her death! And we’ll never get to know, because she’s unimportant in the grand scheme of things. (That also bothers me. She shouldn’t be inconsequential, but she is.)

…and more, probably! God. There were so many things that got dropped for the sake of moving the plot along. The stone thing that Dalinar did (his entire power set, actually), Drehy’s queerness being a few throwaway lines, etc. Candy for fanfic writers, though—they’re the ones that profit off of dropped plots to pick right back up in their own ways.

And then there were some things that just flat out bothered me. Like many others, I felt that Syl’s characterization—especially near the beginning of the book—was in direct conflict with her characterization in the first book. She wouldn’t say that it was alright to kill the Parshendi, just because they were different? Who the fuck is that, Sanderson? This doesn’t really come up again as far as I can remember, so I can’t tell if it was just a one-off (based off of improper information/bias coming through the Nahel bond) or if Syl is doing baby’s first racism. I hope it’s the former.

Here’s the big one, though: Shallan was bad in this book! I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I do actively like Shallan and try to empathize with her, but her struggle in this book fell flat with me. I get that she has fantasy OSSD-1b/DID/something similar to the two—Veil and Radiant both have different preferences and make their opinions well known throughout the book as different people. But they’re still ultimately fragments of herself, and Shallan is a deeply flawed, broken character that simply cannot shine as well as she did when she was given the center stage (see my Words of Radiance review for more on that.) Her being mean to Kaladin felt trite, the will-they-won’t-they romance between them was only fueled by Veil being Horny™, and she was sort of a hot mess the entire time. 

To be fair to her, it was kind of the point for her to be a hot mess, but regardless: I want to see more from Shallan in the next book, and luckily, I think I can look forward to that thanks to reports from my friend. All in all, I think he tried to do too much with too little time, which is an objectively hilarious thing to say about a 1,200+ page novel—but he was ambitious, like my friend so kindly said. I'm going to cross my fingers and hope against hope that he reins in that ambition a little for the next one.

Things I Got, Perhaps, A Little Fucking Autistic About:

Guys, it’s still Kaladin. It’s still Kaladin Stormblessed. We got a scene with him reminiscing on his old love, Tarah, and I made an embarrassing squeaking noise in real life. I’d actually been curious about her since TWoK, given that she comes up a couple times in the novel and never got introduced. Also, in my defense, the following passage came directly from Sanderson’s heart, presumably inspired by his wife:

“...Slightly plump, with a round face and firm build, Tarah’s beauty was a subtle thing. Like an uncut gemstone. The more you saw of it—the more you discovered its natural facets—the more you loved it. Until one day it struck you that you’d never known anything as wonderful.”

[INSERT LONGING SIGH/GIGGLING/TWIRLING OF HAIR/KICKING OF FEET HERE.] Let’s have a moment of silence, shall we?

…

I did this bit in the last one. Whoops! Anyways, we're moving on now.

I’m not over Elhokar! I don’t think I’ll be over Elhokar for a while. He went from ‘annoying little greaseball of a king’ to ‘pathetic, sopping wet beast of a man’ to ‘wait he’s actually kind of okay now?’ across the past three books. I was actually starting to fucking like him, and then MOASH (that bitch, I like him so much) KILLS HIS ASS? When he was this close to saying the Words? I understand the narrative decision there, I do, but GOD! Gentle readers, I had to physically shut the book and put it down for a while! Whatever. Lightweaver Elhokar, you’re probably out there in some fix-it fic, and if not, I’ll do it myself.

Conclusions & Predictions:

No predictions from me about the next one, given my general knowledge of the Cosmere! I know we’ll get to do fabrial physics in Rhythm of War, which I’m personally super excited about as a science nerd, and I hear that we get a fight scene (or multiple) between Kaladin and Leshwi that is considered ‘erotic’, whatever that means for Sanderson. I’m personally hoping that we get to see a scene about Jasnah being crowned the monarch of Alethkar & Hoid applying to continue to be the King’s Wit. That’d tickle me for sure.

Despite all the flaws I found, I really did enjoy myself reading this monster of a book. And as always, I’m excited for what the next one has in store for me! Gentle reader, if you’ve made it this far: thank you very much for reading through this. I’m not quite sure I’ve had anything of import to say, but it was humbling to see a handful of comments on my last review. You guys are very sweet to me—cheers, and I'll see you in the next one!

[cheruim]

Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson | 5 out of 5 stars

This is technically the second book in the Stormlight Archives, but the first book review that I’ve ever done for social media, so bear with me as I meander through plot points. The general gist of it is that it is an amazing sequel. The first book does a great job of setting up the world, introducing you to characters that you will care about - all within very isolated settings (i.e. Bridge Four for Kaladin, Kharbranth for Shallan, the Shattered Plains & the Brightlords for Dalinar and Adolin, etc.) Words of Radiance takes that a step further and puts all your little blorbo bleebi within the same 500 meter radius to tremendous effect. Sanderson is playing Barbie dolls, just like the rest of us, except he gets to put unfathomable amounts of trauma onto them because they’re on Rockworld with Endless Natural Disasters and Permanent War. There’s a Homestuck reference somewhere there, I’m sure. Anyways… [HEAVY SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT.]

As is Stormlight tradition, we open with another POV on the night of King Gavilar’s murder. Now, at this point, I kind of know that Gavilar probably had shit going on under the table that makes him a dickhead, but I don’t know exactly what. Jasnah is a perfect character to maintain that careful ruse for just a little bit longer. That’s her dad! She respects him, she wants his praise and love, which from what I could see, doesn’t seem like it was withheld from her. The Kholin family is built on a lot of mutual respect for eachother, despite all the war crimes. Most interesting thing that is established here is the fact that we get a peek behind the curtain of Jasnah’s inscrutability. This is a woman with feelings - like, a lot more feelings than you ever get the impression about in WoK.

So when Jasnah is presumed dead by Shallan in the early parts of Part I of the book, it really threw me off my game! I’ll put a note here that I did have previous knowledge that Jasnah was fine - she’s on the cover of Oathbringer, and I bought both WoR and Oathbringer together because I was worried I’d get impatient - but it was still a ruthless move on Sanderson’s part. If I’d been reading this when it originally released, I would’ve lost my shit. Crying, screaming, telling my mom how it was so unfair that Miss Jasnah was dead now to her polite confusion - the whole nine yards, y’know? 

SIDEBAR: I’ll also reveal that, embarrassingly, I’m a very vocal reader for these. I apparently make a specific noise that my co-workers have begun to associate with me seeing Kaladin on the page. Gentle reader, I ask you this: is it my fault that he’s so cool? NO. It’s Sanderson’s. End of story, moving on!

During some initial research (aka: I fell into a rabbit hole trying to find out as much as I could about the series without spoiling myself) I found out that this would be the Shallan-focused book. And as much as that inspired a small twinge of disappointment for me, I had trust in Sanderson to deliver another amazing novel. Let me tell you: this is the Shallan book. The amount of growth and development that she undergoes from the first novel is incredible. She goes from being this shy, timid 17-year-old girl that has no choice but to steal from the most influential woman in the world to a more confident, if not still scared, Lightweaving badass.

…And she’s still, like, relatively believable of being one of the youngest persons in the cast! She blunders a lot, socially; she picks fights with people when she really doesn’t have to; she does truly stupid things without thinking first because, whaddaya know, that’s sort of what happens when you’re psychologically used to danger at every turn! Without saying too much, most if not all of Shallan’s backstory is revealed in WoR. And like many of us, she has a fraught relationship with her father. Whoa! Daddy issues? In my epic fantasy novel? More likely than you think. 

Something something, her mom and her mom’s lover were killed by her father while Shallan herself was in the room, it tore the family apart, Shallan’s the only person that has the ability to fix it - normal kid stuff. (Note: this is the piss on the poor website, so I have to say that I don’t actually think this is normal kid stuff.)

Because she has a background informed by trauma, it’s no wonder she feels so much pressure to do what the only positive mentor figure informed her to do before that mentor figure died! Which is… drumroll please: marry Adolin Kholin. I’ll be honest! I didn’t think that Adolin and her would be a good fit, because he’s Roshar’s biggest fuckboy and I didn’t want him anywhere near her. I’ll be the first to admit that I was wrong about them, though. Their romance is very much in line with the ‘nice jock next door & cute nerd’ tropes. He’s willing to support her needs and doesn’t mind that she’s a little selfish, she is enchanted with the fact that he’s not possessive and is willing to listen to her talk.

Romance is not these books' strongest suit, though, and it doesn’t need to be. It does so many things so excellently that its weaker scenes are pretty easily forgiven. There’s a larger plot at play, and we do NOT have time to make out freaky-style about it! This is the part where I get to talk about ✨Kaladin Stormblessed ✨. Everyone, be very nice to me, okay?

[TEN MINUTE INTERLUDE OF BARKING AND GROWLING SOUNDS.]

Ahem.

No, but forreal: as I’ve told most of my friends at length, I am enamored with his specific brand of mental illness. Kaladin’s mental health issues - mainly C/PTSD and depression, though I’m sure some second-year psychology student could do better with nailing it down - are a large part of his depiction. He’s been oppressed for most of his life, through either circumstance (in Hearthstone, Roshone was exiled there by chance) or through malicious action (Brightlord Meridas Amaram) and no one but Dalinar Kholin has given him cause to believe that the upper class might have his best interests in mind. This leads him to be excessively vigilant, paranoid, and terse with everyone from the men under his own command to strangers.

It makes him the perfect bodyguard, is what I’m saying, and leads to some truly hilarious interactions between him and Adolin (or him and Shallan). It leads him to relapse into a depression spiral after he gets thrown into prison, after the honor moment of all time. I just really, really adore the fact that he’s not getting better any time soon. It’s not sexy, it’s not something I want to emulate - it’s just raw feelings and bad coping mechanisms that he hasn’t been shown he can rid himself of just yet. Does it make him a little bit of a Debbie Downer sometimes? Absolutely. That man needs to go talk to his friends and fix his Mega Depression. But it’s real, and it hurts, and it’s important that more people like Kaladin are shown in media.

All that to say that the fact he swears the Third Ideal at all (“I will protect even those I hate, so long as it is right”) is both shocking and satisfying. He hates what lighteyes stand for, hates the system and the monarchy and the way that people like him have been treated for so long. He has every reason to let Moash kill Elhokar - the same guy hurt both of them through Elhokar’s actions, after all. But he doesn’t - he won’t - because he’s healing and growing. He sets aside personal bias and stands up to do the right thing, over and over.

There is still so much that I could talk about - but we’re pretty much at 1.5k words here, so I’ll leave y’all with some closing thoughts. I don’t agree with everything that Sanderson puts in his books. All of the characters I’ve mentioned so far are so traumatized, and in so many different ways, that it wouldn’t be possible for them to exist on Earth. That’s why they’re on Roshar - because without the perpetual warring state of the world, they would not have the correct kinds of environments to develop in that way. 

But the mystery and the intrigue just keep on growing. The interludes do a great job of giving us a vital insight into Parshendi traditions and cultures, and why they’ve been acting the way they have been for the last couple of books. I am so unbelievably thrilled to see where the books take us next, and I’m sure that I’ll grow even more unwell about these guys as the story keeps progressing. But until then: a sincere thanks for reading through this. I’m pretty sure I’ve said all of this at some point to people, just more or less concisely, so my apologies that this isn’t anything new. Such is the pitfall of liveblogging the experience, I suppose! Anyways, I’ll see you all in the next one, where I hopefully have more interesting things to say about Golden Son.