Rhythm of War, Part Two (The Stormlight Archive, #4, Part 2)
Brandon Sanderson
After forming a coalition of human resistance against the enemy invasion, Dalinar Kholin and his Knights Radiant have spent a year fighting a protracted, brutal war. Neither side has gained an advantage, and the threat of a betrayal by Dalinar's crafty ally Taravangian looms over every strategic move. Now, as new technological discoveries by Navani Kholin's scholars begin to change the face of the war, the enemy prepares a bold and dangerous operation. The arms race that follows will challenge the very core of the Radiant ideals, and potentially reveal the secrets of the ancient tower that was once the heart of their strength. At the same time that Kaladin Stormblessed must come to grips with his changing role within the Knights Radiant, his Windrunners face their own problem: As more and more deadly enemy Fused awaken to wage war, no more honorspren are willing to bond with humans to increase the number of Radiants. Adolin and Shallan must lead the coalition's envoy to the honorspren stronghold of Lasting Integrity and either convince the spren to join the cause against the evil god Odium, or personally face the storm of failure. The story will continue . . .
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Overall this book (both parts) felt a little strange to me. It’s
Stormlight, so it still slapped, but like Oathbringer I feel like a lot of strange choices were made regarding balance of ‘screen time’ and how certain important beats were basically handled off page. So much of this book worked for me - I bawled at the conclusion of Kaladin’s arc - but I found it hard to connect to certain parts, like the majority of Venli and the Fused stuff. I think that’s more to do with how the Eshonai/Venli story was presented in the previous books and the over-complexity of the Fused’s hierarchy however. The expansions on the magic and science systems were really wonderful.
I have more spoiler thoughts, but I suppose the main point is that while this book did have some problems for me - it’s probably my least favourite in the series so far - when it worked it really worked. Realistically most of my issues are ‘I wish we had more time with x’ but given how long this one was (the middle really dragged for me at times to be fair) I’m also glad that temptation was resisted.
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