“Oathbringer” by Brandon Sanderson
Spoiler warning: This post contains spoilers for the following books by Brandon Sanderson: The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, Edgedancer, and Warbreaker.
If you’re a frequent reader, you may have picked up on the fact that Brandon Sanderson is one of my favorite authors and that the Stormlight Archive is my favorite series written by him (see my reviews of The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance). So to say that I was eagerly awaiting the release of Oathbringer would be a gross understatement. Tor.com had been releasing preview chapters every few days until the book was released but I managed to stay away from reading them because it would have been slow torture not to be able to read on. I was so happy to finally get my hands on the book.
The world of Roshar changed irrevocably at the end of Words of Radiance – the Everstorm sweeps the world heralding a new Desolation, the Parshendi are transformed into monsters, Radiants publicly reveal themselves, and the lost city of Urithiru is discovered at last. Now that everyone knows that the world may be about to end, they have to figure out what to do about it. Dalinar tries to bring together the nations of Roshar via diplomacy, an initiative that is unlikely to succeed because of his reputation. Shallan tries to hold herself together after the revelations that she comes to terms with and jumps into helping any way she can at Urithiru. Kaladin travels home to warn his family of the Everstorm and scout out the Voidbringers.
Every Stormlight Archive book features the flashbacks of a single character and this is Dalinar’s turn. We finally get a look into how his reputation as the Blackthorn was made, and it’s more horrifying than we can imagine. We see everyone around Dalinar treat him like he’s some kind of ticking time bomb even though he seems perfectly reasonable whenever we see the world through his viewpoint. Well, it turns out that there are legitimate reasons for why people are so wary around him. The longstanding mystery of his visit to the Nightwatcher is solved and ties in beautifully to his character arc. This is his book to shine and he does so magnificently.
There were a few threads at the end of Words of Radiance that I wasn’t really looking forward to picking back up because I was anticipating all sorts of melodrama from them: Shallan’s lack of knowledge of Kaladin’s involvement in her brother Helaran’s death, the brewing Shallan-Adolin-Kaladin love triangle, the murder of Sadeas, among others. I should have had better faith in the author, though. None of these issues are ignored but they get resolved naturally and without compromising the integrity of the characters.
In general I was impressed by the characters in this book. I usually associate Brandon Sanderson with amazing worldbuilding, intricate plotting, and truly cinematic action scenes, but I’ve found his characterization unremarkable. That was not the case with this book. I’ve talked about Dalinar’s arc already but it’s Kaladin and Shallan that I found the most surprising. The first two books have seen them struggle against their personal demons and win, but as Kaladin says to Teft in this book, becoming a Radiant doesn’t change who you are. Kaladin and Shallan are both incredibly broken people that have not yet learned to live with themselves in peace, and they don’t have much to distract them away from that fact anymore. Kaladin continues to grapple with his depression and Shallan is in the process of fracturing her personality into various personas so that she does not have to deal with herself as a complete and complicated person. I don’t think I’ve related to any of Sanderson’s characters before, but I certainly understood exactly how Kaladin and Shallan felt from various points in my life and it made me feel a lot more invested (no pun intended) to them. The other characters all feel more fleshed out as well as well, especially Adolin who just keeps getting better.
It seems like the Cosmere and other planets in the shared universe are taking a bigger role in events; the book was prefaced with an explanation of the Cosmere. Of course we see Nightblood whenever we’re seeing Szeth’s viewpoint but we also run into Vivenna from Warbreaker and she is a major side character! I figured out who she was almost immediately and was thrilled. I was also glad to have read the Lift POV novella Edgedancer beforehand because she has graduated from just showing up in interludes to being part of the main story, and it also helps explain Nale’s behavior towards the rest of the Skybreakers.
There were some genuinely sad and moving moments in the book, which I can’t really talk about since they would spoil things. Not everyone makes it out of the book alive, and some people make it alive that I really, really wish didn’t. The interior art is beautiful, I think there’s more of it than the previous books had. The endpapers have in-world representations of the Heralds that were especially pretty.
I could go on forever about things I loved. This series just keeps getting better and I can’t wait for more.