Reviews and Comments

My favorite books in the Stormlight Archives are the first 3. The series really shines at "EPIC" character moments, and snowballing through them towards the ending. However, as the series has progressed, characters have gotten especially powerful and that makes conflict much harder to showcase. There's not much that can scare or threaten the characters by the start of the 5th book, and that results in the conflicts coming from headspace instead of meatspace.

As a result, the strongest arcs in this book are from the "weakest" characters - Adolin and Venli. Kaladin and Shallan's arcs cover much of the same ground we see them tread in the previous book - dealing with trauma, self-reflections, (self-sabotage in the case of Shallan). Dalinar's arc is that of learning, and Navani doesn't get to do much. Szeth's arc is lovely to read, and the most telling.

However, at times it feels like we're rushing through plot at too fast a pace to make sure that the reader gets all the knowledge they need. Felt like some of the flashbacks (Dalinar/Szeth) should have been part of previous books somehow.

I was unprepared for the time-dilation twist at the end, and that gives me hope for the series - it keeps everyone on their toes, with Roshar rushing towards war.

I'm reading this after almost a decade, and it was still quite fun, after having explored so much more of the cosmere. Hoid barely has a cameo in this one, and the heist went well. One of the rare times I didn't have to use Fictionary for checking up on old characters, since everyone is a first-time character.

I was watching out for mentions of shards, and Ruin but not a lot of that. I really liked the pacing of the book - it lets you breathe at just the right places, and Vin's growth shows very nicely.

One complaint I have with the novel is missing women characters. The entirety of Vin's old and new crews is male. The only other women we meet are unnamed skaa in a prologue, and a few noblewomen - one of which is dead by the end, with barely a few words. It does pass the Bechdel test on a technicality, but not really.

There's always another secret.