During the Fall semester of 2020, one of my three favorite authors released a new book and when they do, I always try to buy it and read it over the intervening break. Unfortunately, one of my three is semi-retired and even though she has a series still in progress, she’s not really writing it at a normal pace anymore. My other favorite writer has returned to a series that I’ve loved from my childhood, but while I enjoyed the novella setting up the story, I’ve found that he’s almost pulled a “Disney Star Wars” routine where the main characters have had a crappy life so as to focus your attention on the new, upcoming coming characters and I HATE when authors/creatives do that. I much prefer the “Lucas Star Wars” way of doing things which is skipping the intervening time periods, catching us up on the current status of the characters and then letting the story flow organically from there. We can also do prequel/far future, and we can do near future, but the “gritty, hard life” after setting up “hope” at the end of the trilogy really ruins the story for me because it is like the previous story/trilogy meant NOTHING to those characters (a very “Grimdark” way of doing things–which is a pet peeve of mine). So, that leaves my third author, who, luckily, is writing in an epic style in full on professional writer mode and with no “hint” of Grimdark anywhere around–even though the book is probably one of the “darker” entries in the series. So, I set out to read Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson over my Christmas Break. At over 1,000 pages, I have to say that it took me a little longer to finish than the 3-4 weeks of Christmas–I actually only finished about a week and half ago and I’m sitting down now to write down my thoughts about it.
The Good
I really liked the way that the story continues. In an age where George R. R. Martin’s popularity is finally starting to slip (at least until the next GoT series rears its ugly head), fantasy is beginning to turn away from its “Grimdark” obsession (again, for now). Sanderson was one of the few authors not seduced by the “dark side” of GoT‘s popularity and money and wrote epic fantasy with complex characters, worlds, and plot lines, that were still fun and didn’t wallow in the tortuous Les Miserables “everything’s dark and grim” fantasy like so many others.
I really liked the way Sanderson inhabits his characters. I liked most every scene in which the viewpoint characters interacted–sure, in a book with over a thousand pages, there were several times where one storyline or another wouldn’t grab me, but every time I thought that I wasn’t interested, Sanderson had a twist (either in plotting or characterization) that made me perk up and take notice of what was happening. I can say that his characters, unlike Robert Jordan’s sometimes, don’t fall into stereotypes or caricatures. They may be of a type, but they definitely are true “characters” who have motivations and desires and their actions stem from those elements. The hero isn’t always “good” and the bad guy isn’t always “bad,” but for more complex reasons that have to deal with personal history rather than the “Grimdark” philosophy of “gray” characters. Sanderson is much more like Tolkien in this manner, drawing from the world’s history and the character’s personal history to add in complexity rather than just having a character be mean to his/her fellow characters “just because they can” (which in many authors and critics point of view makes the character “oh, so complex” (when it doesn’t–it just makes them a jerk!)
The Bad
Okay, so there’s not really much bad here–I love this series and I love the author’s writing! While my favorite authors tend to fluctuate based on the projects that they write and the way they execute them, I can easily say that Brandon Sanderson is easily in my Top 3 pretty much all the time. However, this is the first book in the series that didn’t earn 5 stars from me. So, what gives? In a word: pacing. In the Stormlight books, Sanderson must balance the POVs of several major characters (anywhere from 2-5) per book while dealing with a handful of minor characters (again, in that 2-5 range, not including the one-off POVs that may come in during the Interludes). Taken all together, you get a full story and rich picture of what’s happening in the book, where each main character has a huge piece of the puzzle/discovers a huge piece of the puzzle, and the minor characters have smaller slices that, once are integrated, give you the complete story. Usually, Sanderson is able to pull off these stories in the correct proportion, but this time, I felt that he didn’t quite get the proportions just right–the struggle seemed to go on for too long and the resolution and redemption arcs weren’t as developed as I would have liked. Sanderson likes to “reset” the hero to zero (almost like a video game) for each book, but during the course of the story, the hero learns some piece about themselves, which allows them to “level up” so to speak and push forward. This happened in the book, but the resetting process and discovery process came at the expense of the resolution process where the characters come to an understanding (and in this series of books), really learn how to use their new knowledge to beat back the inner/outer darkness. While this still happened, I felt like it seemed a bit rushed and wasn’t as satisfying as in previous books. For me, a lot my investment in this series is the way that the main characters actually get to express their heroism and the way they get to be heroic. Even outside of the “Grim Dark” sub-genre, the fantasy genre, as a whole, has drifted away from idea of the protagonist (male or female) as “heroes.” To be edgy or hip or modern, or relevant, far too many published authors in the genre have moved to what I’m calling the Battlestar Galactica (remake, not the original) mode where they take the heroes, still keep them as heroes, but make them do and act in despicable ways in order to show their “conflicted nature.” This series doesn’t really do that–it shows that the people of the world have problems, some internal, but mostly external that they are struggling against. However, in the final third, they usually rise above their problems, internal or external, and become something greater. In this book, rather than the last third, it is more like the last tenth of the book–it is still there, but greatly diminished, so I didn’t really get the same sense of enjoyment at seeing the characters get to be as heroic as they were in other books of the series.
The Ugly
To be honest, I thought the decision-making of some of the characters was really questionable at points in the story. There are several characters who either do things, or don’t do things, that seem strange in this particular book in the series. Maybe I’m being hyper-critical, but there were several times when I was thinking to myself, why are acting this way or doing this. Or for another character, I was saying, “tell them already!” In the end, when the resolution actually came, all the things that the characters were not doing, they did, or things that they were doing them, they stopped, so it seemed like many of the “wrong-headed” decisions of some of the characters were there to enhance/draw out tension, but many of these decisions had to do with internal struggles rather than external ones, so it felt like a bit of a cheat. There’s one specific instance that involves the god Cultivation very late into the book that just completely baffles me. I can’t go into detail because of spoilers, but it is implied that she had foreseen the consequences of earlier actions in series that led up to this particular instance in the book. However, the decision that was made was so horrendous, so bad for the heroes and the world, I (personally) have trouble believing that one could foresee this particular thing coming to pass and not understanding the ramifications of it for the heroes, the world, and the Cosmere itself. I think I spent the next twenty to twenty-five pages after the event passed, shaking my head and wondering how on Roshar this decision could have ever been thought of.as a good one. I think this, more than anything else, made me stop and examine some of the flaws that I saw in the decision making processes of some of the characters and while it comes later in the novel, it was still enough to make start to wonder about why I wasn’t having quite as much fun reading this book as others in the series.
Overall Rating
It probably sounds like I hated this book. Far from it! This is still my favorite series and the only one that I can depend on not to (at the moment) succumb to the numbing idea that’s pervading Speculative Fiction at the moment: except for superhero movies, there are no heroes anymore. That is ALL the rage in popular culture these days, and I find this series a refreshing breath of fresh air that sweeps that sentiment aside. It’s just that with the shortened time allowed for characters to be heroic by the fairly quick resolution and the incredibly wild decisions that some of the characters make at times, this is the first book in the series that I’m not giving an unqualified 5 stars too–and that makes me a little sad.
Maybe the next book will alleviate my concerns and give me a longer resolution where characters don’t make inexplicable decisions, but based on the final scene in this book (no spoilers), I’m not too hopeful. It was this final scene that truly illustrates why Cultivation’s decision was so bad and so uninformed, even as she said that she foresaw this eventuality that made me begin to question the decisions of earlier characters which had only been small little rumblings of discontent up until that point.
Again, I really liked this book! I just thought that it didn’t quite match the heights of the previous books in the series.
Sidney
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Currently Working On (March 2021):
- Unhallowed (Weird Western Story)
Out to Market - Starlight, Starbright (Science Fiction Story)
In for Revision & Editing - The Independent (Science Fiction Story)
Out to Market - To Dance the Sea of Storms (Fantasy Story)
Prewrite: Completed, Plan & Outline: Completed, Write a first draft: Completed, Revision: In Progress
OtherWorlds: A Science Fiction & Fantasy Web Journal 