This review contains spoilers, though without climatic plot details

Those halcyon days of 2017 and 2018 were foundational towards my enjoyment of fantasy as a literary genre, and Brandon Sanderson was at the centre of it. I read the entirety of the published Cosmere, and I was around for the release of Oathbringer, the third volume in the Stormlight Archive. I thought fantasy just couldn’t get any better. But I was also young, and impressionable.

In the intervening years, however, I slept on the author a bit, being more interested in the Malazans and Witchers of the world. Stormlight #4, Rhythm of War, came out in 2020, and despite acquiring it then and there, I had it sitting on my shelf for 4 long years. The pandemic all but destroyed my passion for reading, and a 1200-page tome wouldn’t be the way to break out of that slump.

It was in the eve of the release of Stormlight #5, Wind and Truth, that I finally got the motivation to go back to reading Sanderson in earnest, and to go through the behemoth that was Rhythm of War (henceforth abbreviated as RoW). But it was also around this time that the wisdom of crowds started to turn on Sanderson, accusing him of everything from subpar and puerile prose, to bloated plots, and even to an overreliace on knowledge of events from other Cosmere books. The latter is a criticism I had of The Lost Metal, the only Sanderson book I read in the interim between my first read and the present time: the book took way too long to come out, and by the time it finally did, I just didn’t care much for that one specific story. It was too little, too late, and the book was insistent on holding back its most interesting aspects in lieu of Cosmere connections that also only raised more questions than they answered. Truth be told, The Lost Metal simply didn’t feel like it was worth the wait. But would RoW be similar?

To put it succintly, my opinion on RoW is broadly positive, although I do believe the book is bloated in bizarre, unexpected ways, while losing some of the charm of the first volumes. The book is split into three major plotlines, split geographically, plus the usual flashback chapter sequence and interludes. It is the first book in the series to have a timeskip, as every book so far has started almost immediately after the previous. We are set against a world embroiled in a protracted war, one year after Oathbrinter, and while there are references to the events that happened during this period, there is a deliberate sense of exhaustion and stagnation. The situation our characters find themselves in is that a pot full to the brim, and almost ready to burst (the Dawnshard novella is set during this period, and it is fantastic; however, it does not have any significance to the plot of RoW, and is only occasionally referenced). Given this, I will go through each plotline, from the shortest to the longest, and try to establish my rationale for why I feel the way I do about this book.

The shortest plotline puts the “War” in Rhythm of War, and because it is so short, each chapter feels monumental in its importance. We focus on Dalinar leading the Coalition’s armies against the forces of Odium, out on the field. Jasnah (my favourite!) and Wit feature heavily in this sequence, and while our Queen only gets very few point-of-view chapters of her own, the result is nevertheless phenomenal: Sanderson knows how to write an open-field battle, and Jasnah at the centre of one is all I needed. Dalinar’s participation is scant, but it does build towards a proper climax. This whole plotline is terse and tight, and suffers only from not delving a lot into the environment they’re fighting on: they’re liberating the country of Emul, and yet it seems that this country only has a single small town of note. It could have been my backyard, for all I know, and the story would have been the same. It is a weird restraint in worldbuilding on a series that never shied away from it. Furthermore, I almost forgot about Renarin’s involvement in this plot, which is something I share with the author himself.

The second plotline sees Adolin, Shallan, and their entourage go over Shadesmar to convince the Honorspren at Lasting Integrity to start bonding Radiants again. This might sound like nothing to you if you’re wholly unfamiliar with the series, but you can see it as the closest thing there is to a classic adventure story, not far from something you’d find in the Wheel of Time (a very clear inspiration for the Stormlight Archive, I might add). While we learn a lot about spren during this plotline, the focus is on Adolin and Shallan as characters: Adolin wants to prove that he is his own man, to show that he can take the initiative and do something outside the yoke of his father, while also working directly for him. Gone is the charming but vain buffoon of the previous books, and in is this newly reforged (but still charming) character that just gets it done, even if he himself doesn’t quite understand how. Shallan has fully embraced her personas, borne of a dissociative personality disorder, and it is interesting to see how this condition is reframed in the context of a fantasy world. I was one of the three fans of Shallan in the entire world back in the day, and I was served right this book. My main critique is that this plotline just sort of ends. Unlike previous books, there is no “Sanderlanche”, where every plotline converges into one major climax. Adolin and Shallan’s plotline ends in a bittersweet note, with their mission half-accomplished, and with no final wrap-up of any sort.

The third plotline is the big one. Centered around the tower-city of Urithiru, and the characters of Kaladin, Navani, and Venli, it tells the story of Odium’s forces invading and occupying the tower. Navani is made a prisoner and forced to work towards the enemy, while Kaladin is the only Radiant that can fight. Comparisons to Die Hard are adequate, and my boy is put through the ringer with this one. His story is perhaps the most predictable, but not in a way that feels dissatisfying - much to the contrary, you get to pump your fists the moment the thing you expected to happen finally happens. Navani is, surprisingly, the main focus of the book, as while she had a modest number of chapters on the previous three, she is promoted to the same level of page presence as Kaladin or Shallan on this one. This is where Sanderson fully embraces his magic system: Navani, a self-made scholar in denial, goes deep into the nature of the magic of Roshar, while balancing her own discoveries with what she can safely give away to the invading forces. Sanderson is a mad, mad person, and it is actually scary how detailed and scientifically consistent his magic system is. It hinges on you being able to accept and conceptualize faux-physics, and I can understand why that turns many people off. For me, however, it is part of the reason why I got into Sanderson to begin with, and that has not changed with the years. I just wish more of these discoveries had been relevant to this book’s climax.

The flashback chapters are odd: not only do they focus on two characters, Venli and Eshonai, instead of just one, but they also seem to be very, very short as a whole. Most if it happens quite by numbers, too, without any major surprises. Whatever idea you had of the Parshendi in the events leading up to the series and during the first two books, is probably accurate. They feel like an afterthought, something that had to be written just because the story was setup that way, and not because it was absolutely needed. This book is also devoted to the order of the Willshapers, and we’ve not learned much about them at all. Venli is one, of course, but by the end of the book, she is only beginning to embrace her powers. But the ultimate embodiment of the order, that of building the structures that enable all levels of freedom, is strongly represented in the both the flashbacks and the modern day story of Venli.

Finally, the interlude chapters focus predominantly on Szeth, Taravangian and Odium. Gone are the interludes devoted to random characters halfway across the world, and they will be sorely missed. I understand why Sanderson had to devote the interludes to these characters, as they have very important things to do in this book, but it still stings. There is one new character, but even he ties directly into the events at Urithiru, and is just another pair of eyes offering a new perspective. We need more whimsy!

Summarizing, I enjoyed most of RoW’s plotlines, even after having last read Stormlight in 2017. The same feeling of disconnection I had from reading The Lost Metal was thankfully not present. The flashbacks and interludes left a lot to be desired, though, and it feels like part of the Stormlight I loved is missing from this book. Above all, though, the story feels small and intimate in a way that I wasn’t expecting for the 4th book in an epic fantasy series. Maybe it is the lack of locations (indistinguishable battlefields, the monotony of Shadesmar or the tower of Urithiru), or the lack of a grand narrative tying all these stories together in a climax.

In a way, RoW reminds me of another 4th book in a 10-book fantasy series: Steven Erikson’s House of Chains, part of the Malazan Book of the Fallen. Just like that story, it is all about well-paced and focused military engagements after an explosive 2nd and 3rd books. But unlike House of Chains, Rhythm of War does not feel like it earns its page count. Sanderson’s utilitarian prose goes a long way towards making it an easy read, but there is a strong feeling that things are not moving as fast as they could, or that certain events are being repeated ad nauseam without much justification. For instance, one major plot point in the Urithiru plotline is that there are four nodes that the enemy needs to find and destroy, and they seem to always be found at convenient times in the story so that Kaladin can swoop in and save the day. There is no major twist, no major subversion, as things go by and large exactly as telegraphed. And while they don’t retract from the spectacle of the climax, I am still left wondering if I could have been more surprised by them. Maybe I’ve grown wiser to Sanderson’s tricks, or maybe that was the intended experience. Maybe all of this wouldn’t have mattered on a shorter book, but when you sell yourself as the largest book in the series so far, while having the least amount of things to show or say, I do grow just a little bit concerned.

And that’s it, my unbridled thoughts on Rhythm of War. I have read Tress of the Emerald Sea in the interim, and I have to say that one is just delightful. Maybe that’s where all the whimsy lacking in RoW went to flourish! As I write this review, I am 300 pages into Wind and Truth, and I can already tell that is going to be a very different book from Rhythm of War.