Oathbringer

Oathbringer, Brandon Sanderson, 1243 pages

The third book in the Stormlight Archive series, Oathbringer picks up where Words of Radiance left off: the Voidbringers have returned, bringing a new Desolation with them. Kaladin Stormblessed searches for his family in overrun Alethkar, Shallan Davar hunts a mysterious entity haunting the ancient tower of Urithiru, and Dalinar Kholin struggles to forge a grand alliance while long-lost secrets of the Heralds and the Knights Radiant begin to come to light.

This is an absolute doorstopper of a book – I read very fast and still barely finished before the lending period expired. As with many massive series such as the Stormlight Archive, picking up the threads of the story can be difficult, and from here on out I plan on waiting until the whole series is out (an estimated seven more books) and read it in one go, which worked very well for Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. Mostly this book was enjoyable, full of twists and turns, character growth and crushing defeat, but on occasion the extreme length made reading it feel like a slog – surely a thoughtful editor could have trimmed the book down to a measly 900 pages? Or better yet, broken this into two shorter books (only 600 pages each!); it felt like several of the plot threads resolved in the middle and then new ones began.

If you like massive, sprawling epics, you probably already love Brandon Sanderson, and he does have a way with words – there are some beautiful, surprisingly inspirational sections in here, and the plot is generally well-constructed. But if you aren’t willing to devote weeks to a single book, there are much more tightly-written, equally imaginative high fantasy books out there (The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin springs to mind) that are more worth spending your time on.