Words of Radiance

by Brandon Sanderson
1080 pgs  (The Stormlight Archive #2)

To give you an idea of just how far down the fantasy-geek-rabbit-hole I've descended, I decided I needed to reread The Way of Kings before starting Words of Radiance. That's saying something when each book is over 1,000 pages long. But I did it, and I'm glad I did. It had been about 3 ½ years since Sanderson wrote TWoK and with that much time having passed, I would have been spending a lot of mental energy trying to recall what happened in it while reading book 2 and I wouldn't have been able to enjoy it like I did. That being said, Sanderson has said that there won't be that much time between books going forward, which I'm going to hold him to. I will not let myself become the type of person that rereads a series from the beginning every time a new installment comes out--hopefully.

I'm not going to provide any type of summary of the book. It doesn't make sense to try to do so in my opinion. While it's a huge book, it's only a small part in a much bigger story that Sanderson is writing. Its scope is remarkable and Sanderson does a masterful job of telling it. Lots of times the downfall of large books like this is in their pacing. They take too long to get moving (Clancy) or they have repeated lulls in the story (Hugo). But Sanderson avoids those pitfalls by quickly jumping back and forth from multiple viewpoints to his story. He's also using each book to tell the backstory of a different central character. This way you don't get bogged down early in the series with the history of each of the main characters. In TWoK we learned Kaladin's story, in WoR we learn Shallan's. I'm hoping that book three will tell Szeth's--the assassin in white.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★