Wind and Truth

An absolute disaster from start to finish. One thousand plus pages of Sanderson beating the reader over the head with a bat made up of woke nonsense and genuinely atrocious dialogue. It's one thing to be inclusive of people with diverse backgrounds and ideologies, and another entirely to define what were once complex characters by a singular underrepresented characteristic. At one point, Renarin was a solid character with a unique point of view. Now, he is gay. That's it. Every single Renarin POV is "I'm mega super gay." It is almost unreadable, almost. Unfortunately, the delightful world Sanderson had built and polished prose had me hoping there might be some chance Sanderson could right the ship. I was dead wrong. Sanderson spends the entire book destroying Kaladin brick by brick. Kaladin, our glorious bridge four captain, is reduced to a patronizing pacifist pussy of a therapist who spends the entire book spouting empty metaphors and meaningless garbage that's portrayed as profound and philosophical.

Don't even get me started on Jasnah. She is a bottom-three character in all of fiction, on the same level as Nynaeve of the Wheel of Time, but if you ask anyone on Roshar, she's the most beautiful, talented, and smartest person to ever fucking exist. In short, she is Gods gift to this world and we are all lucky that deigns to exist on the same plane as us mere mortals. There are a few who dislike Jasnah on Roshar, but that's because they can't handle such a strong, independent women in power. Not because she's exceedingly arrogant, not actually all that smart, and a genuine prick. She finally gets her comeupance after 5 books of just being absolutely the greatest person to ever exist and fucks up royally, dooming a good portion of the world and no one fucking cares cause it's Jasnah.
Not only has Sanderson destroyed all his beloved characters, he’s also destroyed his beloved writing style. He’s replaced deep and complicated dialogue with not so witty one liners and crude attempts at humor. At this point Sanderson might as well be a writer for a Marvel tv show.
All in all, this book just makes me sad. If Sanderson was gonna shit this out, he could have at least made it half as long because that probably would have made the book better, and I wouldn't have to spend an extra 5 hours reading it. Sanderson is washed and I'm utterly dissapointed.

Wind and Truth is disappointing and it makes me sad.

Stormlight Archive was Brandon Sandersons crown jewel, his magnum opus, his Fabergé egg. The first three books were standouts in the genre of epic fantasy. Stormlight was the gold standard that fantasy authers aspired to reach. Stormlight was more than just over the top battles with people bashing each other with absurdly large swords. It was about the deep characters. It was about the lows of the low in society, and the rulers and leaders of men. Sanderson took you to Roshar, so vividly dropping you right in the world, and made you fall in love with his characters. He made you care about their lives and relationships, their struggles and their victories. And this, is why it feels like so much more of a slap in the face to get Wind and Truth. It would be one thing if it was just a bad book, but to see the characters I fell in love with just become unlikeable caricatures hurts.

Lets not kid ourselves, Stormlight always had commentary about society baked into it. "Light eyes" and "Dark eyes" being a defining characteristic for social class - I wonder what he might be saying here. But it was done well. You could read the books and appreciate the commentary without feeling like the story was preaching to you. These were topics that were handled with subtlety and nuance. We witnessed Kaladin's struggle to survive. We saw his desire to save Bridge 4, his pain from watching the men he loved die, and the depression caused from his failure. Now we hear Kaladin's struggles with depression by him saying "Guys I am struggling with depression but thankfully this whole therapy thing works pretty well you should all try it".

Kaladin's story arc is such a travesty. I'm not against therapy, but I certainly am not reading epic fantasy so I can read 500 pages of Kaladin yap about mental health to a mass murderer who RIGHTLY FEELS TERRIBLE ABOUT WHAT HE HAS DONE. How the mighty have fallen.

And Ranarin - the gay autistic guy - has genuinely no personality beyond being gay and autistic. I'm not going to lie and pretend I was a huge Renarin fan before this, but like he certainly got worse in this book. His romance arc is also just bad. He falls in love with a character immediately at the start of the book, everyone is incredibly supportive and tells him to ask the guy out, and then of course his crush is deeply in love back. It's this kind of no conflict, no tension, woke propaganda that makes this book so deeply frustrating. Renarin is literally just a vehicle to preach to the readers that being gay is okay without any of the necessary complexity and depth to his character and story arc to make it compelling.

Jasnah is terrible to. I mean compare Jasnah to another of Sanderson's characters like Vin and it is seriously not close. Vin, the protagonist of Mistborn - a small woman who is an absolute badass - is actually a well written character. She struggles with being an assassin vs wanting to fit in to higher class society. Loves her husband but doesn't know if she is cut out for that kind of life. Her struggles feel real. Vin is more than her gender and she certainly can't do everything without the support of others. Jasnah is similarly supposed to be a strong female character - Sanderson will never let you forget she's beautiful AND smart AND strong. Unlike Vin however, Jasnah is at no point likeable. Jasnah's character arc is composed of being way smarter than everyone; she is just bogged down by all of the dumb stupid men who she has to deal with. Her favorite past time as an atheist is explaining to the sheeple why believing in god is stupid! She has no character growth. No personal development. Just quirky brilliant beautiful Jasnah being smarter then all the rest of us. And the time that Jasnah was called out for giving unsolicited military advice despite having no military experience or background. Well don't worry guys, the person who did it was murdered then brought back to life and stripped of all title and land and forced to live as a beggar. A fitting end to a misogynist. All of this of course was a part of Jasnah's 200 IQ plan as well because she really is just that smart.

And the list goes on and on. Dalinar is meh, Navani is meh, Shallan is meh. Sigzil and Wit are meh. Thank god Sanderson got rid of Rock - his character at least remains unmolested. Adolin is honestly the only exception. I thought his struggle was moving and heartfelt - it was probably the only character arc I actually enjoyed in this book.

The writing has also taken a step back. There are too many instances where his witty one liners are just not funny and the diction takes you out of the world. I mean it was never a strength of Sanderson but relative to the other Stormlight entries it is notably worse.

And thats about all I have to say. There are a few redeeming qualities, but for the most part this book is just disappointing. Like really deeply disappointing. And now I am sad.