That was not the case.
The broadstroke details of the conflict on the Shattered Plains and the major players are easily remembered and Sanderson does a good job filling in the minor details or prompting the reader a bit to jog a memory loose. It speaks to how well Sanderson has been able to flesh out the fantasy world of Roshar. Besides the main plots, there are a number of seemingly unrelated interludes interspersed throughout the novel that pad out the page total but also offer significant details about how the world functions. It's not all about conflict with the Pershendi amid violent highstorms. There's insight into trade and the extent of the Spren crossover allowing regular humans to take on superhuman abilities by absorbing stormlight and involvement and the importance of Surgebinding.
These extra details don't take away from Sanderson's ability to write very good fight scenes. He's able to keep battles -- intimate battles between a handful of players or army-sized conflicts spread across multiple fronts -- directed and understandable.
Just an example of an intimate battle, without giving too much away, there's an arena battle involving protagonist Kaladin and a couple of High Princes in shardplate versus three opponents in shardplate that manages to keep the pacing and orchestration of a really good action movie being described to the visually impaired. The fight also showcases how much Kaladin has progressed in his understanding of how stormlight can be used to stick to walls and "lash" his movements to unleash momentum that even Shardplate has difficulty absorbing. (Along the margins of these pages I pencilled in "like Wolverine playing Portal.) It's less an origin story this time around and much more about his natural abilities, particularly during the climatic battle at the end of the story with the Assassin in White.
The story also wanes with calmer exploits -- subterfuge and stealth -- with Shallan as she begins to learn more about her abilities and the potential those abilities offer her as she talks her way through a lot of situations, including being pursued by a chasmfiend.
It's the dialogue and talking that might be the weakest part of Words of Radiance. When conflict, visions of machinations are discussed by royalty, dialogue is readable, but far too often during personal exchanges it falls into step:
- Serious dialogue
- Pithy response
- Serious response to pithiness
- Moderately serious response
- Pithy statement
The five points roll over each other constantly and get tiresome but I never felt I could skip anything because buried in the lines there might be something important. It's irritating enough to make me want something to explode so the dialogue can be crashed against a wall of spears or an assassin's blade.
As much as Sanderson is slowly building momentum toward some epic end point toward the conclusion of the novel, probably the last 75 - 50 pages, it feels like there's a rush to tumble pieces into place to clear the deck for the next book. A character that churns things up constantly is murdered; a character though dead returns; new technology is discovered. If the rest of the novel took the same pace, the page count would have been halved!
Words of Radiance, it has half the staying power of the first book (and it does), the memories will be enough to keep the story clear in my mind. That's a good thing because if the gap between Book One and Book Two is anything to go by, it'll be 2018 before we see Book 3.
- Aaron Simmer
