However, hundreds of pages concern small adventures in which little snippets of knowledge trickle down to us and the characters. Speaking of world building, that is a primary concern of Oathbringer as a novel. Sanderson generally does a good job in adding layers of morality to both the heroes and the villains and making his characters question their own actions. They also become much more interesting morally with a good backstory that also ties into the larger worldbuilding surrounding the spren and the Heralds. The Parshmen become much more imposing as an adversary and that is very welcome, because the previous books did lack that urgency of a dangerous force. I think Sanderson could have made greater use of that to make Dalinar a more compelling character. That, however, isn’t what happened, but I wish it had. To become the version of himself that he has disavowed. So, once his efforts to unite the world peacefully seem to fail, he is forced to confront the alternative: to conquer. He is essentially painted as a very different character than we know him he’s Conan the Barbarian. The flashbacks (yes, here they are again) of Dalinar’s past (Dalinar this time this is his book) are quite unsettling. There are some known mysteries about Dalinar’s life that we will get some answers to. Sanderson again takes his sweet time with a story that slowly nibbles its way forwards. Now that Kaladin and Shallan are growing into their powers, the third Stormlight novel is set to be the novel where the story would finally come into its own, isn’t it? The Parshendi didn’t inspire much fear and awe, but now that they changed form and now that the Everstorm has broken out, things are finally getting real. There was no Sauron to beat, or no Daenerys to return just a bunch of lords arguing amongst themselves. Dalinar, however, I found the most compelling, so knowing that Oathbringer would focus on him raised my spirits.Īnother major point was that the series was lacking a real antagonist so far. I thought Kaladin was dumb and annoying in his pigheadedness Shallan seemed a random collection of character traits thrown together and I know that she is supposed to be a broken person struggling with her past, but I just didn’t understand her or her actions. After two Stormlight Archive novels and more than 2,000 pages, I still wasn’t feeling that awe of epic events and I had some misgivings about the characters and plot.

Perhaps I should start with what I hoped that this book would achieve.

Oathbringer series