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.