The Problem With The Stormlight Archive

Well this isn't the video I'd expected I'd be making with the release of Wind and Truth, but here we are!

Want to send me something?

PO Box 36776
430 E MCKINLEY AVE
DES MOINES, IA 50315-4205

[nikosbookreviews]

Hello all, there were a fair few comments concerning my brief comments in the video on diversity and inclusion, so I thought this was a great reason to do a fill video on that topic as it relates to my specific Stormlight thoughts and Fantasy in general! It's out now!

[jackt]

I agree with all of this. I saw someone saying he’s spent too much time on Reddit and just ticking boxes for what a vocal minority want. The therapy talk etc is so patronising

[innocentsmith]

I'd like to know why things that get popular need to change to appeal to wide audiences. They already appeal to a wide audience. That's how they got popular?

[Subvisual]

His religion is Reddit, Mormonism is his tribe.

[hammerandthewrench]

I hate to say it because I've spent so much time reading this series, but I just don't like where it has gone and I lost interest in the characters. I just didn't care when I finished RoW and WaT. I will not be reading the second arc. I also get exhausted of the long investment for the "sanderlanche." it gets to a point where the routine is just not for me anymore.

[TheHi_King]

I am just relieved to see what I have been witnessing since Oathbringer. I was labelled crazy, and a hater and just plain wrong for having all of these opinions years ago. Finally some vindication for readers seeing how sloppy Sanderson has become with his story telling over the last few years.

His new editor has let him get away with his bloated prose for too long. A large part of what initially turned me off from the SLA anyway was the Marvelification of the series well before his writing tanked.

[rachelmarks]

Yeah, I agree, Brandon kinda lost me with the whole focus on mental health being so all-consuming. It was just too exhausting to read. I want mystery and intrigue and twists and turns—I want to escape—I don’t wanna feel like I’m having a struggle session with a bunch of random people in some fantasy world I’m still trying to understand. 😵‍💫

[callum]

I agree with this 100%. I love some of the twists and the final 60 pages of wind and truth but the execution and getting there was so rough. The humor and dialogue was downright bad sometimes. 95% of kaladins arc in this book except the very end is just really poorly written introspection which feels like it was just taken from the cognitive behaviour therapy wiki page .This was a noticeable step down from even early books like Elantris imo.

[rymdalkis]

I've noticed these tendencies too. It's like the story's become more and more artificial, as if Sanderson is so hyper-aware of all the individual parts and technicalities that go into a fantasy novel that he's no longer able to let it develop organically

[Montie-Adkins]

Sanderson is a good writer. he builds worlds and characters well. But Stormlight has a Stephen King issue. He types too much. Andrew recently commented about a theory he has, and one I have had, that at some point a writer can get so big editors do not really edit and just accept every word and line.

[bugtrapper]

Sanderson is definitely easy to read, in a literal sense. But reading what has essentially become the epic fantasy version of the MCU just becomes mind numbing.
Diving into Malazan, Steven Erikson gets a bit more "flowery" with his prose but you trust him to bring everything together and he does.
Joe Abercrombie feels very straightforward as well but god damn dude can write, especially characters.
With Sanderson the "growth" or change were seeing is shower sex scenes, adolins spren calling him a slut and syl talking about her vagina.

[craigmetallaw]

I held out a lot of hope until the end, and then the ending killed it, just so unsatisfying, in a way that really feels like a betrayal to the readers given the expected arcs and how much suffering there was in this book.

[johnhogue]

When he started using a lot of modern American terminology and verbiage in the early chapters, it really took me out of the experience. How were these things not caught by the beta readers? If they were caught, why didn’t Sanderson fix it? I’m still not all the way through part one, but so far it hasn’t been as bad as those early chapters. Btw, I’m the past with all the stormlight books, I devoured them as fast as I could. For this one, I’m much less motivated. Still enjoying it overall…but I do feel it needed some more editing.

[emosongsandreadalongs]

I must say I agree with just about everything here. I'm about 10 hours into the audiobook and nothing is hooking me. Glad to hear I'm not the only one who thinks the prose quality has actually gone down.

Characters don't feel distinct anymore and all of them seem to have gained mentalities and viewpoints that they didn't have before

[johnmoss]

are we 100% sure he actually wrote this book? how does a writer actually get worse with more experience?

[jamesmansfield]

Seeing a pattern between Sanderson and big-name game developers such as BioWare and Bethesda. It’s alarming.

[johns.]

This book broke me. Such an utter failure. I’m a cosmere god in my friend group. I’ve reread every cosmere book multiple times. But WaT is analysis paralysis at its worst. By the start of WaT we’ve read over 4, 000 pages of stormlight books, you dont need to explain a characters reasoning for every action, we know. You don’t need to say why this moment matters, we KNOW. For one who writes about broken characters who embrace setbacks but strive to change and be better - it’s unbelievable how little he’s invested in trying to be a better writer or find a capable editor. Quantity > Quality by Brandon Sanderson.

[pogicus]

I’m really glad I’m not the only one who’s been thinking this. The scene from finding Nemo when the Dad’s faces slowly degrade from excitement to confused disappointment is a good visual of how it feels to read this book. I’m not even halfway through and I’m not sure if I even want to finish it.

After the first few chapters I thought I had just outgrown Sanderson. I’ve read a lot of other books since RoW including blood meridian and Thus Spoke Zarathustra, so I thought my tastes had just evolved to want a higher level of prose. Then I realized that Sunlit man isn’t that old, and it had barely any pitfalls present in WaT. Yumi and Tress had wonky dialogue, but they still had a decent hook, a sense of adventure, and a genuine feeling of satisfaction after finishing them. There is very little of that in WaT if any!

What sucks for me is I was really hyped about Shinovar. It was the Japan but with white people of Roshar for me and I was excited to see how it functioned. It blows my mind how Sanderson was able to make both Shinovar and the backstory of my favorite character dull and boring! Maybe more happens later in the story but atm it’s a boring Banjoe Kazooe fetch quest.

[Cableguy]

I feel the writing has been downhill starting with Rhythm of War. And that goes for all of Sanderson's work, not just Stormlight. Not a steep decline, but a decline nonetheless. Yumi was good, Tress was decent, but I was a little shocked at just how little I cared about Sunlit Man, especially considering who the main character is. I chalked it up to Sanderson being better at longform writing. I'm over halfway through Wind and Truth, and I started looking online at reviews to see if I was being too critical or if this book was another step down. You hit the nail on the head with this book.

I think the biggest issue is that everything feels foregone, predictable. Did I want to know exactly what happened with Honor's death? Sure, but it felt obvious from the early chapters that he was not quite as great as people made him out to be. Saw Shalan's big twist coming from a mile away, too. The sense of mystery and mind-blowing conclusions from the first three books and Mistborn is gone. It becomes a little more frustrating when, instead of building on new mysteries or giving satisfying answers, Brandon wants to talk about everyone's mental state in excruciating detail. Let's take Jasnah for example. She has basically done nothing since Oathbringer. It feels like Brandon doesn't know what to do with her. Yet we are being given all of her inner thoughts, strategies, and insecurities for pages and pages, all leading up to her having one strategic breakthrough that ultimately makes no difference for her side. lol Now, I'm up to a part where it looks like she'll have a confrontation with Odium, but is that really going to be a defining moment? Especially when her uncle is going to face him like a day later anyway? This is just one example of how the story is being bogged down by things we don't need to know.

And the reason Renarin's romantic subplot feels forced is because he comes from an extremely strict culture where women have to wear a glove on their hand or it's as bad as being nude and each gender has extremely strict guidelines to follow or you're seen as a freak by the general public. Yet, everyone Renarin comes into contact with encourages him, pushes him toward it, and is happy for him. He faces zero pushback from a society that cares about whether women wear a freakin' glove. Where's Sadeas to be a jerk when you need him? lmao This, and the general real-world language that some characters use, are great at taking me out of the story. There was one point when Syl said, "That's kinda racist, " and I think my eyes rolled into the back of my head. Brandon has said that he's just translating Roshar phrases into English, but coming from the closest thing to Robert Jordan, coming from the guy who made up a thousand swear-words and phrases for his worlds, I think that's BS. It's lazy writing but thankfully balanced out by much better writing for different characters.

Maybe the second half of the book will be better, and it's not like it's bad or anything. It just hasn't felt as strong as previous Sanderson books.

[wyrmfeast]

I've been struggling to get through Wind and Truth since release. It feels like when a show suddenly shifts tone and focus going into a new season with new writers. Like the wind fell out of the sails in the final leg of the journey.