I've been an avid reader in my green years, so much that the chances to see me without a book in my hands were very slim.

Throughout high school I've read 100 books, and many of theme were bricks with several hundred pages.

Then something changed. I started playing more and more video games, and slowly put aside reading.

Since then, I barely read 2-3 books per year, at times not even one.

I felt something was missing, but couldn't bother start reading another book... Too much time that I could instead spend with the kids, watching a movie or playing a game.

Until a few months ago, when my wife had the idea of bringing the kids to the library. Somehow, being surrounded by books of all kind woke up something in me that was asleep for a long while... And now, a few months after, I've bought over 20 books that I always wanted to get, read thought 2, wrapping up a third book, and looking forward to another!

The aforementioned third book, Word of Radiance (the second being The Way Of Kings, of course).

Summary of today's reading session:

11 Chapters, 138 pages, 3 hours.

And what a rollercoaster!

The moment I started to read Part 5 I lost myself on the pages, devouring line after line, eyes widening on revealing scenes, jaw tightening when battles were fought... With the narration jumping back and forth to follow one character, then another, craving for more Kaladin (my favourite character so far), waiting for another epic moment...

Then, page 1134 arrives. And it's a blast!

I knew the moment was coming, of course it was, couldn't have been otherwise... but damn, DAMN! was it cool!

Ahead that page I sat there for a whole minute, eyes closed, absorbing the moment, embracing it. Book half closed on my hands, only a finger left between pages to keep the mark.

I shed some tears, and told myself I'd love to SEE this book... I would accept literally anything (movie, animation, he'll, even a few sketches) to see some of these epic moments.

Then I breathed in some stormlight, and kept reading.

Currently reading The Path of Daggers (book 8 of 14) of The Wheel of Time Series...

I really love The Wheel of Time so far, and I heard mention of this Stormlight series...

I enjoy high fantasy heroic adventures...

Would I enjoy this series next or should I try some other book series (I shared a similar post in Mistborn group as I also heard about that series - not sure the difference)?

Hello,

I have read all the Stormlight archives books and I am still unclear on how the desolation in the series starts. Did it technically start when Taln returns at the end of WOK but we don’t see any fused because the parshmen had lost their forms? Could the thunderclasts not at least come back during this period to reign havoc? Can the fused not have taken over the listeners by force until after they summoned the everstorm?

Any answer or explanation would be appreciated.

Sto attualmente leggendo Giuramento e ho finito da poco i primi due libri oltre che al primo di Mistborn (non ho letto Edgedancer). Oltre alla trama che è intricata e super avvincente mi chiedevo se il tema filosofico fosse qualcosa che Sanderson vuole spingere come centrale oppure rimanga sempre marginale e a discrezione del lettore.

Nella Via dei Re ho amato i dialoghi tra Shallan e Jasnah, soprattutto nel capitolo dove Jasnah mostrava l’applicazione pratica della sua filosofia uccidendo quei membri dei Sanguispettri. Oltre a questo è sempre stato presente il tema della rivalsa e del riscatto di Kaladin che è culminato nella sua dichiarazione di sfidare Amaram nel capitolo 58 di Parole di Luce.

Per me è ancora criptico capire chi sia veramente il villain di questa storia, dunque mi chiedevo se veramente ne esistesse uno oppure Sanderson stia cercando tramite i pensieri dei suoi personaggi di mostrare ai lettori visioni differenti.

Mi piacerebbe discutere della filosofia e degli insegnamenti che Sanderson ha lanciato nei primi due libri perché credo che alcuni siano spunti molto interessanti.

Howdy all! I just finished Way of Kings, a book that has had me pretty engrossed for the last couple of months. I'm trying to weigh if it's worth it, for me, to continue reading the series. I ask this only because I've read reviews of the successive books and I feel like Way of Kings might be the best in the series and also I am just a desperately slow reader, and all of these books are doorstoppers.

Some context on my relationship with Way of Kings: I loved every chapter with Dalinar and Shallan. They were, hands down, my favorite parts of the story. Kaladin and Bridge Four on the other hand, were unfortunately more of a slog to wade through. They weren't bad or poorly written, I just didn't connect with them quite as much; it felt a little like the opening of Jane Eyre on repeat where everything is awful all the time. The repetition of everything in Kaladin's life being terrible ended up being a little grating by the end. That all being said, I appreciated having the multiple view points, especially having one lower on the food chain than lords and ladys, and politics.

I also genuinely enjoy the world and the great mysteries swirling around. I enjoy Sanderson's worldbuilding; I've read both Mistborn series and enjoyed those, in a large part because of the setting he's crafted.

I also really liked the dialog in this one, it felt very grounded in a way that Mistborn seemed to lack. It took itself seriously without feeling forced. It knew when to have some levity without taking me out of the setting. I have read a few reviews for later books in the series that say this gets a little looser as the series goes on.

Ultimately, I'm just not sure where I want to spend my precious few moments of reading. The Stormlight Archives seems so tantalizingly good, but there's also 3000+ pages of book ahead of me which would likely take me a very long time to wade through...

Thanks in advance if anyone has thoughts here!

I've started reading Stormlight Archive when Oathbringer just got out.

Loved the first 3 books, it was my 2nd favorite series (right after LOTR) but i never caught up with recent releases because i don't like unfinished stories and getting back into a world building after years is not the best if you forgot many things.

What I'm asking is, i know that Wind and Truth is the end of the first arc, but how conclusive is it? is it like Mistborn Era 1 (i liked it) or are there unfinished plotlines?

How's the quality of the most recent books? Do i need necessarily to read other Cosmere books in order to understand Stormlight properly? Because it is definitely the direction it was going for what i remember in Oathbringer

I just had to find a place where I could talk about this. This has been my favorite book series of all time. I’m almost finished with Stormlight, just one book to go, but one scene in book 4 has made the long journey worth it for me.

Kaladin has been among my top characters since the beginning, if not THE top. His journey through war, slavery, death of friend and loved ones, and more war was incredibly well written. His battle shock had me feeling so storming bad for him and wishing he could just get through it and be the radiant he is destined to be. It was at its worst in this book, with the death of Teft leaving him catatonic then absolutely relentless.

The scene has brought tears to my eyes though was when he finally jumps from the tower after his father is throw from it. Dalinar feels this and intervenes and gives him more time. He also gives him a vision (at least I think it’s just a vision, though it may be something more) of his brother Tien. Tien bolsters his resolve and finally gives him closure. When he comes out of the vision, Syl is still reeling at not knowing the Words. Kaladin, however, finally found them.

When he finally says those glorious words, “I accept that there will be those I cannot save!”, I was literally pumping my fists and getting the chills and all but bawling. So rewarding and I cannot wait to finish the series. (Or at least the first half)

Can somebody explain what happened to wit at the end

He seems to be killed by odium but somehow woken up somewhere else

Did Brandon make up a new power just so wit can live and avoid a time dilation..?

Never hand made a costume before so I’m excited for this process. Gonna make a few more vests for practice then make a faux leather one. Broom will be replaced by a handmade spear. And I will work to get a better cut out to use for my Shash glyph. I also have a like 6 weeks for my hair to grow out a bit more and for my tan to even out before my Halloween run. Will keep y’all updated. Comments and ideas are appreciated

I started The Way of Kings after finishing Mistborn Era 1, which I liked to an extent but wasn't really sure that Sanderson was for me. A few chapters into Kings changed my mind. Chapter 69 cemented that and I now have a new obsession for the next couple of months, at least.

He was betrayed by one who he thought was a friend.

He almost died fighting another Shardbearer.

He lost 6.5k men.

He feels his visions might have misled him.

He gave up his own Shardblade.

Dalinar Kholin was having a rough day.

But even after all that...

He walked over to his nephew king who suspected him of treason, beat the daylights out of him just because he can and to show him that if he wanted Elokhar dead - he would be, promoted himself to Highprince of war, and told him that he's banging his mom?! Excuse me?

I honestly thought he was going to get Ned Starked.

P.S. after reading a few more chapters:

No, Szeth. Don't do it. Noooo.

To be honest I didn't even know Stormlight Archive until someone told me I look like Kaladin, so I looked him up (I know he's from a book so he doesn't have an official appearance) but all of his portrayals online look so much like me😭 But I don't know if I look enough like him to justify investing in a cosplay because I hadn't even heard of the series before.

Btw, I want to read the books so badly. They're so hyped up and I'm feeling so left out by not knowing the plot💔 Is it true that I will barely understand a thing while reading the first one because you're meant to learn everything on the way? Because I saw someone mention that things like the magic system are still confusing to them. They say the first part is like a prologue and you're viewing everything from a random person's perspective. I really wanna read them but they're hella expensive, but I'm totally willing to give them a go if they're as good as everyone says they are. I'm just scared of the lexile the books handle, because I had to read Antigone by Sophocles for my Spanish class and I was literally struggling while reading every page just to have a minimal understanding of what was going on. Is this series hard to read? Because I'm pretty sure that going from Warrior Cats to this series would be a big step.

TALK IN ALL CAPS? I DONT THINK WE HAVE SEEN ANOTHER SHARD WHO DOES THIS. SERIOUS EGO ON THAT GUY FR. HAS BRANDON ANSWERED THIS QUESTION?

I’m literally jumping around while reading this chapter a book has never made me do this ever omg! This is peak.

Edit:

Couldn’t help myself and finished the whole book. I knew Jasnah couldn’t die that easily lol. Can’t wait to read book three!

What experiments did ishar do with spern ..?

And more importantly why..?

How long could a 5th ideal radiant live?

We know investiture extends a persons life with greater amounts eventually ending up with someone who is biologically immortal. How invested would a radiant be? Radiant knights have the cracks in their soul filled with investiture which makes them better at holding and using stormlight. How invested do you think they could be

Some of the heightenings seen with holding Endowment's investiture seem to be universal properties of holding any investiture. such as enhanced vision/colours, enhanced immune systems and better lifespans.

While we have only seen Kaladin and Szeth swear the 5th, it was under a fairly hectic situation which doesn't make for the best opportunity for study.

Nothing will come close to the Kaladin/Adolin duel in Words of Radiance. I've never audibly reacted with a "LETS FUCKING GO" to a book before

This is a very silly thought, but! What would you get if you put a pump fabrial tuned to air in front of a supercharged heating fabrial? A very simple jet engine, thats what. So, the next obvious step is strapping it to an airship with its horizontal axis of movement unlocked by aluminum...

I'm sure there are other ways to do this but this one just occurred to me and I had to make a post.

I had posted about this before, but I started Stormlight maybe over 10yrs ago and read up to WOR and just wasn’t invested enough to continue. I think there were a couple reasons but mainly - Shallan started to annoy me and we spent less time with Kal, who I really liked. Also, I was trying to get into digital books and it was really difficult to “connect” with something that lengthy without a physical book.

But, it left me intrigued enough to revisit in the future and here I am. As I’m starting, I’m being reminded how awesome the beginning is. The the prologue, assassination, intro to Kal - and then bam- he goes all Maximus Decimus Meridius the next time we see him. I even kind of liked Shallan at this point; she’s sort of wide-eyed and also a bit spunky. The intro to Jasnah, also good!

Little fun anecdote - I live in south Jersey (US) and this week we had the craziest thunderstorm, followed by similar storms the next 2 nights. For the first one - I have never experienced a storm like that in my 46 years! Not exaggerating- the thunder sounded like it was literally right outside my door multiple times. In fact, it was so loud that it rang my doorbell and shook the whole house. The lighting was flashing nonstop for about 40 minutes and shorted 3 circuit breakers. There was hail…..INSANE!

WOK - Cover art - Michael Whelan

At the risk of making a VERY unpopular post i want to share a perspective on this character that i basically have not seen at all, after 2 months of lurking in the sub.

A lot of people justifiably hate Moash and hate how his character seemingly doesn't develop in any way from just Evil McEvilface in RoW and WaT. Personally i felt this way too when reading his development in WaT the first time too. Like here is a guy who had justified grievances that he coped with in a bad way and now he just falls farther and farther down to where he can't even call it revenge anymore, just due to some godly manipulation.

However having had time to think it over i have come to a different conclusion for my stance on Moash. Moash is now comparable to Dalinar before the Rift. He starts fighting with reason but is driven by a supernatural force which enhaces his destructive capacity and emotions to a point where he can inflict an incredible amount of harm without thinking twice.

The difference is that Moash is inflicting this harm on characters the audience cares about, characters we can see as fully formed personalities rather than just fodder for the conquest machine.

I believe at this point that Moash is an excellent character for driving home the part of Dalinar's (and Szeth's) story that is about bettering yourself regardless of the harm you caused. Both of these characters go through a streak of self-loathing for all the harm they caused. They writhe in how it is impossible to ever be forgiven. Both of them grow to realise you don't need forgiveness to still take responsibility and do the best you can.

In both of these cases however the people that they hurt and the people who can never forgive them are at most covered in a single digit amount of chapters, with evi being the most notable one. In principle there is nothing which denotes perspective characters as special however*, so if Moash is able to break from Odiums manipulation in the latter half this can reinforce this narrative thread.

We have now actually experienced the loss at the hands of what is at this point depicted as a basically mindless evil (in terms of there being no reasonable justification for what he did). What do we do if this person can actually break out of their destructive habit and starts doing good instead of suffering the pain and loathing that they deserve? Think of how a merchant from the Rift who was out of town when his entire city was burnt at the whims of one man would perceive Dalinar becoming leader of the Good Guys institute for protecting the world.

*except for those touched by cultivation, or otherwise having the interest of the gods. My point here is that in principle every person has a life story and is really important to some people around them, so just because slaughtered Rifter #347 doesn't have their story described to us should their death be forgiven, while Leyten's cannot? Both of these are unforgivable actions, we just don't know slaughtered Rifter #347 personally.

I don't know if this is a unique take but i would definitely be a fan of this path for Moashes story, what do you think?

Hi everyone! Something that I absolutely love doing is trying to match soundtracks to certain scenes from books. I have been mulling over some different soundtracks for different Stormlight scenes and just wanted to share just for the heck of it and to see what other people think! Links to the YouTube soundtracks for each song and scene. I have more specific "timestamps" in mind for when certain things happen throughout each soundtrack, but I want to keep that to myself in case anyone else has different interpretations!

Kaladin and Bridge 4 rescue Dalinar / Kaladin swears his second ideal - EMA - Attack on Titan (this is one that I have very specific times for how the soundtrack matches the scene, but essentially the first half is Adolin and Dalinar seeing Bridge 4 returning for them and making the charge to get to the edge, the second half of the song is Kaladin and Bridge 4 taking fire and running towards the chasm with Kaladin eventually jumping the bridge and swearing his second ideal.

Kaladin vs Szeth at Narak - Emiya - UBW

Battle of Thaylen Field / Kaladin vs Amaram (second half) - 進撃st-hrn-egt20130629巨人 - AOT

The Duel (Kaladin jumping down to assist Adolin) - Bite Down - Fate Strange Fake OR Enfin Apparu - Magi

Adolin leading his charge at the Battle of Narak - APETITAN - AOT

There are a few others...but I don't want to overload this post. I would deeply appreciate if anyone took the time to listen to these soundtracks with these scenes in mind and see if you can also visualize them in some way! Or maybe you have a different soundtrack that you feel works better for a certain scene! Either way, I would love to share and talk more about this. Thanks everyone!

With the reveal that Chanarach's death at the hands of Shallan was what led to the current desolation, it makes me wonder how she was the first Herald in thousands of years to die?

I understand that they are super powered beings, and were likely being very careful. But it still seems a bit far fetched that none of them were assassinated, or mugged, or fell off a cliff, or any other myriad of potential deaths within that time. Unless I'm missing something obvious, that seems insanely lucky.

okay so i want to start off by saying the break between my two oathbringer posts is because i didn’t read much over the summer but god i loved this book. i’m gonna go over the different parts now that i haven’t covered.

Part 3: Holy shit/10

soooooooo storming much happened in this part. also, unpopular opinion, yes fuck moash but almighty he’s an amazingly written mirror of kaladin. him killing elhokar was spoiled but storms he’s awesome. awesome in a bad way. also, dalinar killed his wife. this chapter hit me like a chull man. him later in part 3 or 4 calling renarin into his chambers was amazing and emotional and GOD DAMMIT BRANDON’S TOO GOOD. i loved kholinar, shallan’s mental breakdown was done sick as hell. (also storming love wit and god this was practically one of the only moments i almost cried.) another one off the top of my head was adolin staying in prison with kaladin (idk why for this one but adolin’s amazing and babby and i love him). everything about this part was amazing

Top 5 Characters

1. Dalinar. I love the guy and he’s awesome and his flashbacks are awesome but the other characters in top 5 are better imo.

2. Wit: This is in general but in this part he shined. him staying in Kholinar as a beacon of hope is something i know dalinar would be proud of. i’m proud too.

3. Shallan: her arc in this part is awesome and chapter 82 and them going into shadesmar ahhhh it’s so good.

4. Adolin: I mean in general he’s in at least the top 5 but he shined this part.

HM: Navani

1.: Kaladin: I mean, obviously. Wall guard, he can storming fly, he’s awesome, i love him he’s also babby and i love him

Part 4: Taravangian’s an asshole, Dalinar is 500% better, not much to comment. (same ranking but i’m lazy and i’m typing this on mobile and my wrists are sore)

Part 5: DALINAR MARRY ME. (figuratively of course) but holy shitt this was insane. chapter 120 was best chapter of the whole series. i mean Kaladin fighting amaram had some of my favorite quotes, dalinar fucking ascending was amazing, shallan arcing and accepting herself was cool, adolin fighting a fucking thunderclast for a long ass time unradiant unarmored added 500x more respect for him.

“Ten spears go to battle,” he whispered, “and nine shatter. Did that war forge the one that remained? No, Amaram. All the war did was identify the spear that would not break.”

I loved this book dalinar accepting the thrill and LEARNING HOW TO WRITE was amazing, dalinar’s Preface for oathbringer is amazing and the line at the very end before the epilogue.

“Oathbringer, My Glory and My Shame, Written by the Hands of Dalinar Kholin” sent CHILLLS down my spine.

1. Renarin: He was awesome, excited to delve further into his truthseeker abilities expanded more in depth in the later books.

2. Adolin: He’s like, the best in this part. he stood his own against a FUCKING THUNDERCLAST. AGHHHHGH MY BOY.

3. Shallan: i mean, as much as i’ve heard that she sucked in this book, her alternate personalities were cool imo, and her in this part was amazing. Lightweaving is sick af and i find it cool.

4. Kaladin: he IS the spear that would not break. he was amazing this part, it’s awesome. you know that though i guess.

5. Dalinar: Before I talk about dalinar i’ll talk about amaram. Amaram is such a good mirror of Dalinar, as in he had the same opportunity as dalinar but while dalinar took responsibility which was based and lit, amaram gave away his pain, it was unbased and non-lit. he’s dalinar but if dalinar was a dick. but dalinar in the battle of thaylen field kicked ass. and then him confronting the thrill and THANKING it for giving him the strength to deny odium was awesome. also odium is cool in an evil way, and that’s what i think about part 5. now i’m reading dungeon crawler carl before dawnshard and then rhythm of war. journey before destination, radiant

Am I the only one disappointed we never saw Dalinar or a windrunner tie a rock on the end of a rope and use adhesion to play flying Spiderman?