PSA: I did not like Rhythm of War, and the more I think about it the less I like it, so this review will be ranty and rage-fueled. If you liked RoW, or want to read it and enjoy it, you’re better off not reading this. This more of an “I need to get this out of my system” post.

In fact, do not read this review rant if you haven’t read RoW as it will have spoilers unhidden.

Me writing reviews of books I love: 300-400 words. 

Me letting the hate flow through me: 1800 + words

And yes, I do see the irony of writing my longest review ever to bitch about how this book is too damn long. If he’s not gonna edit it down to something reasonable, neither will I. 

For context, I read all of Sanderson’s available books around 2014ish and I loved them. I thought he was the best thing since sliced bread. Then I read Oathbringer in 2018 and … I didn’t remember much of it. The only thing I did remember was the huuuuge revelation that the humans were the outsiders here, which blew my mind. So for RoW I went I read summaries of the previous books and a chapter by chapter summary of Oathbringer. When I went in I was expecting to like it, I wasn’t very much in the mood for such a chonker but I wanted to see where everything was going and was expecting maybe a 4/5 experience overall.  I knew my tastes had changed somewhat since 2018, but I didn’t realize it was this much. A major factor is that I used to prize worldbuilding above all else, I was really into all those little details, now I’m very much not.

So I was up-to-date, I was ready, I remembered who people were and how they’d gotten there. I started with the preview chapters that were free on Tor.com. Reader, I was bored out of my mind. The book opens with a long fight scene, I think it’s kinda impressive how Sanderson managed to take something as cool as a high-speed flying magic battle and make it one of the most boring scenes I’ve read. For one thing, it was far too long. For another, it felt soulless, and that’s a big complaint I have with the book, so so much of it is mechanical, mathematical, inhuman. And then in the middle of it, we’re told it doesn’t matter at all, so here’s a pages upon pages long battle, with no emotion and no real stakes.

I’ve seen people say “he meant to write it boring” but I just don’t buy that. If the point was to show how Kaladin is depressed and just going through the motions there would’ve been better ways to do that other far fewer pages. Opening a 1200 page book with something that is meant to be boring doesn’t make any sense.

So the book and I clearly got off on the wrong foot, but there were still 1000 pages left for it to turn things around. There ended up being a few things I enjoyed, some I even thought were great. But that only left more annoyed because I kept thinking, how there’s a great book hidden under all this bloat and how good it could’ve been if trimmed down and polished. The word “editor” came to mind often. Balancing the highs and the lows, this time the lows won.

The parts I liked:

Kaladin & mental health care

The first bit of the book I liked was after the battle when Kaladin’s in the depths of his darkness, but he’s got the awareness to recognize that and opens himself up to get help from his friends. That was strong and emotional, I’d even say beautiful The scene in the bar with Adolin and Veil trying to cheer him up is great.

It gets even better when he single-handedly invents therapy and group therapy. It works well because he’s got the medical and patient care background and first-hand experience with trauma and depression.

Adolin  growing into his own and his trip to Shadesmar

Adolin’s parts in this book focus on him growing out of his father’s shadow and deciding who he wants to be. He’s chapters are fun, I loved him being the Roshar Fashion Police, whenever he meets someone he’s all judgy of their outfit. Adolin and Shallan are adorable dorks together. The last part of his trial is one the few parts of the book I truly enjoyed.

Navani and Raboniel

I loved how their mutual respect and mutual distrust were constantly ebbing and flowing, and how they were working together, even if their goals didn’t ever really align. I thought it worked so well with the solution being them working together.

Right, that’s it, back to the ranty parts

The worldbuilding

We’re on book 4, we’ve spent thousands of pages in this world. I do not want to spend hundreds more just learning worldbuilding detail number 1487. It often felt like characters were doing things to show off the world, instead of the world serving the story. This was most grating to me in Venli’s chapters, when she keeps describing all the new Fused to the reader, and in Navani’s fabrial studying chapters. Another thing that bugged me, was how there was too much science in the magic. For instance the bit about The Deep Ones flowing in the spaces between atoms … how do you know that? Your technology is not advanced enough for these notions. It’s like Sanderson is so in love with his world that it gets in the way of telling a compelling story.

The Cosmere

This no longer feels like the story of Roshar, but the story of the Cosmere. It’s gone from a few Easter eggs to being a real focus. Which sort of alters the scale in a way that I didn’t feel did the book any favors. These characters that had been built up as giants are now small and fleeting in the big scheme of things. Which might be philosophically interesting, but I didn’t find it satisfying to read. And it sort of went from “rewarding the careful reader who can catch a reference” to “frustrating the casual reader for not remembering something from a different series”.

The prose

This is something I’ve seen mentioned a lot but never noticed for myself before. To be fair, I think a big part of why I noticed now is because I switched from audiobook to ebook. I no longer agree that this is “windowpane prose”, that window is dirty and it took me out of the story a few times. Things like repeating the same thing 3 times on one page, or using turns of phrase that seemed very modern and out of place.

It stood out in the fight scenes as well. Especially Adolin and Kaladin’s fights read like they were narrated by a less-than-enthusiastic sports commentator. “Limb went there, weapon went there, he spun then kicked there” and so on and so on for pages with very little substance. The one exception was Jasnah’s fight scene which felt about character, not choreography.

The spren also got annoying. I’m not one to parrot “show don’t tell” at every chance, I think there’s a place for both. But using spren as a way to pretend you’re showing has gotten old.

I remember after reading the scene with Raboniel and Navani figuring it out, I was thinking how strong and majestic that would’ve been if written by someone else. There was so much potential there, and Sanderson did not rise to the occasion.

The bloat and pacing

I’ve mentioned this above but it deserves its own heading. I’ve seen various estimates of how much you could cut from this book, but somewhere in the 300-400 seems to be what most people go with. There’s so much minor detail, so much repetitiveness, going over things that we’ve been over in previous books already. And whenever the pacing gets above a crawl – bang interlude/flashback chapter cutting it down again.

I don’t think of the Sandvalach as a good thing anymore. Most authors can write a book that’s well-paced throughout and still have an exciting climax. There’s no need and I don’t see anything praiseworthy in having it be slow-slow-slow-slow-slow-slow-boom. By the time I got to the long, oh so long, awaited avalanche I was so done with this book that I was unimpressed. A lot of stuff seemed more like a click-done than the culmination of something built through the entire book.

I felt like there was a strong conflict between how many pages there are and how much story and character development there is. It just doesn’t add up. Now, I don’t mind slow books. I love slice of life. One of my recent favorites is just two dudes very slowly learning to trust each other and fall in love, no action, barely a smudge of a plot. But the characters constantly grow, they’re impacted by everything that happens and you can see that impact as a real development that affects the book. Here, when Shallan went back to memory issues after we’d done that for an entire book I just about yeeted (yate?) my kindle into the sun. I get how it might make sense for that character, but as a storytelling technique, I thought it sucked. When there are so many words I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect changes to be gradual, but all too often, things are the same for a long time, and then change in a burst, a revelation, which ended up falling flat for me.

The flashbacks

I just could not care about the flashback chapters. I think they could’ve easily been condensed into 1 -2 interludes. In a better-paced book, I might not have minded, but here I just thought they hurt the book more than they helped.

Dalinar

I could not get into Dalinar’s story in this book at all. He’s far away, we know his big military campaign there’s a sham. He spends most of his time trying to learn to use his radiant powers but we don’t actually see that bit. He storm-ex-machina saves Kaladin a couple of times. Then he has that bit at the end at the herald’s camp where he finds those experiments which felt stuck on with sticky tape at the end. To me, it felt like he went from being the most important character to a sideplot.

Navani

I know I said I liked Navani, but it was just her parts with Raboniel that I liked. I hated her first few sciency-chapters. They just felt purposeless, and I’m not happy with how she ends up bonded with the sibling. Though I’ll grant that might make for a very interesting relationship in further books.

In conclusion

Really it comes down to this. If the book were uniformly mediocre, I wouldn’t have minded so much. I would’ve said, oh well, that’s the best he can do, byee. But some parts are great, the potential is enormous, and I don’t think it would have taken that much to whip this book into shape. I just get angry when I think of newer authors who go through so many rounds of edits and turn out well-polished books and they get nowhere near the level of hype or industry support.

If after all of that you’d like something more positive Brandon Sanderson related, check out my Mistcloak Cosplay.