Wind and Truth: Book Five of the Stormlight Archive

When I read The Way of Kings way back when it first came out, I remember a couple recurring thoughts popping up throughout the reading: "Wow, I'm X% through a 1000+ pg book and I'm sad I only have Y more pages of this awesomeness" and "Holy crap this entire book is basically a prologue to something bigger."Wind and Truth started slow. It felt like a soft lit reel of feel-good reflections by the main characters set to "Time of Your Life" by Green Day as they mournfully braced themselves for the epic final adventure. This bugged me more than most of my friends apparently.Me: "Ugh this is Brandon's slowest start to a book EVER. We get it. People have grown and changed and there's a lot of feels and goodbyes because probably people are going to die and the rest of the book is going to be insane non-stop action."Others: "I mean it feels appropriate and I kind of like it..."Me: [rolls eyes and looks elsewhere for commiseration]Given the context now of the, ahem, journey and destination, I'm allowing myself to feel the feels of those early chapters.Unsurprisingly for Sanderson, the master of sticking the landing, Wind and Truth delivers. In appropriate counterpoint to The Way of Kings, it feels like a 1000 page climax. That feeling that ultimately happens in a Sanderson book near the end where something VERY COOL happens alongside a surprising and satisfying conclusion? There were so many of those in this book starting around the halfway point. Taln on the pile of bodies and Ash's dying words... I almost jumped out of my chair. So much brilliant resolution of favorite character arcs (I'm left a bit breathless by Kaladin) - even the lingering unresolved tension in other arcs feels so very right (Shallan...).The significant criticisms are mostly true. Some of the writing felt slapdash. The book would have benefited from a powerful editor's red pen. There's a lot of telling rather than showing. There was some content new to Cosmere stories that made some readers uncomfortable (Rlain and Renarin's romance and the explicit "revelation" that some characters have sex). The mental health themes got a bit heavy-handed (Kaladin responding to Ishar "I'm his therapist" might be the low point of the whole series). And there wasn't as much resolution as many expected for the "end" of the five-book arc (I thought that was perfect, actually).Some of the criticisms are baseless contrarianism - as common as windspren when an author reaches a certain level of popularity. Stephen King writes great characters and sucks at endings. Patrick Rothfuss writes beautiful sentences but sucks at... actually writing. And for Sanderson, his prose isn't Dickens. But where he shines, he is brighter than Nightblood's self-perception. Sanderson uses the framework of fantasy to explore questions like "what is truth?" "what is good?" "what is leadership?" "how do people grow?" "why is there suffering?" and "what do healthy boundaries look like?" Rarely does he try and tell us what to think - even if a trusted character is coming to a conclusion, you can usually find someone else with a counterpoint or challenging a pithy answer with nuance. (A favorite exception in Wind and Truth is Wit's rant against the Thaylen Passions religion - a thinly veiled and fantastically vicious condemnation of health and wealth style religions.)This distinction is so important and addresses some of the gripes popping up in one star reviews. Is Sanderson "pushing" a worldview down his reader's throats? In my opinion, no. Do characters see particular worldviews as good and provide thoughtful reasons for them? Yes. It has always been that way in his books. Jasnah has been providing compelling reasons for atheism and Utilitarianism since The Way of Kings. Sazed argues for Universalism in Mistborn. Wayne (Mistborn Era 2) steals everything. I love Jasnah and Sazed and am not a Utilitarian or Universalist. I love Wayne and think his kleptomania is wrong. But I don't think I can believe in a thing if I can't provide compelling arguments for the opposing options. Part of why Sanderson's characters are so compelling is their willingness to think, argue, grow and change - just like us. What Dalinar was convinced was right and good changes as he learns and grows. Same with Szeth, Kaladin, Shallan, Navani, Adolin... you get the point. And the arcs are not necessarily linear - just like us they can be iterative and recursive. So to assume a character (or the author behind the pen) is telling you that their previously held beliefs are wrong because they've progressed to the next thing is an intellectual fallacy of progressive ideology (that Sanderson has already shown he does not fall for).Readers who are upset by Wind and Truth are reading fantasy for the wrong reasons. To be fair, the genre label is misleading. If you want saccharine thoughtless unchallenging escapism that fits and protects a narrow worldview, every flavor is available. But this is a series of books that is literally about people being challenged and growing.Seen for what it is, I think Wind and Truth is satisfying on a visceral "well that was freaking awesome" level as well as emotionally and intellectually. In my opinion, the people who don't like it haven't been paying close attention to the Cosmere books.No matter your opinions (and mine are high - it could be my favorite Cosmere novel to date), he has changed fantasy forever.

I adored this book, even more than I expected. Sanderson is one of the few authors who elicits audible reactions from me, and this book continued that trend. There are so many great moments in this book that I wish I could relive for the first time. The characters continue to be well done, and the pacing of this book was well-done to me due to the structure of the final 10 days. Sanderson neatly wraps up a lot of loose ends but leaves a big enough cliffhanger that I’m already craving book 6 and am sad I’ll have to wait so many years to interact with new Stormlight Acrhive material!

I woke yesterday morning to study all day for an exam due by midnight. I finished the exam by 9 pm and still managed to start reading. I had 4 hrs left in the book, but I figured with my now deep-fried brain, I might have an issue doing that.... I COULDNT TAKE MY EYES OFF OF IT! My God, that ending..The whole book was fantastic. Don't get me wrong, each perspective of each chapter was gripping. In the previous books, I had a little bit of trouble with the jumping around with character perspectives. Not the case with Wind and Truth. Each view point is pieced together into a really beautifully done ending of the first arc.Thanks to everyone who's made these stories a part of my life. May the destination not compromise the journey

Well, what a rollercoaster of a book this was for me! Wind and Truth from the one and only Brandon Sanderson, long awaited and highly anticipated book 5 in the massively popular Stormlight Archive series has landed and made its mark on us all...good and bad it seems so far.The conclusion to the first half of the Saga, in what will be a 10 book epic has us looking at a loooong wait to continue where book 5 leaves us, on the edge of a massive cliff, looking at a aggressive storm front... with more questions than ever before! 🥴With that said however, this massive volume is chock full of that next level world building, character depth, insanely deep lore and breath stealing twists and betrayals that we have come to expect and crave from Sanderson and his unparalleled skill with the pen. The unique magic system introduced in this world continues to impress and shock me, even 5 massive books in. Just when you think you've got the next couple steps figured out, you are knocked into another realm with no idea what just happened or how to navigate what is to come. Brilliant story arc weaving creates a beautifully woven blanket of PoV's that wrap us readers in a cocoon of trials, transformation and sacrifice that seem to demand so much attention, you can't help but to lose most of your day in this shattered landscape. Written in what was just a brilliant idea to structure a story, we are following our characters through a 10 day lead up to a chaotic and emotional final confrontation. The fate of Roshar is teetering on the edge of destruction...can the Winds of Truth usher in the answer needed to prevail?!During these ever expanding different paths our characters take us through is where I found my one and only issue (which I briefly saw in earlier books in this series) and that is, I felt at times, this book could have maybe been trimmed by about 300 or so pages. Perhaps just me, but the many PoV's all seemed to have quite a bit of (imo) too much unwarranted context that wasn't truly necessary to progress the story? Seemed like content fluff to pad the book size ..and good God why would we need that!! 😋 I at points started to ask myself if this was going to be the entry I might not resonate with and find disappointment...yea, there's the "rollercoaster" part of the review, boy did it prove NOT to be! The last quarter of the book grabbed me like a lashing and yanked my devotion and love of this world back on track! 🔥The ending is the other part of the earlier mentioned start of the review ...more questions. I guess I had my own ideas as to how this would wrap up by the end of this entry...but man, things just seemed to blow open and leave us scrambling to grab a hold of everything that happened and "try" to piece it together! 🤯Pacing at points and what is not a definitive conclusion by any stretch, should absolutely NOT deter you or your love of this Saga. As I stated, the level of story telling, character depth, world building and creativity from Sanderson will guide you through this all, and present you with a work of art that will continue to dazzle and change every time you look at it or discuss in forms for years to come. Thank God for this...as we are now looking at years before we continue our journey through the Cosmere. So break out your deck of cards and get your skill at Towers trained up...the battle will continue, will you be ready?! 💪4⭐ and man was that hard for me ...these are usually 5⭐ but between the "at times" bloated chapters, jaw dropping (but wide open) ending and the years till our answers, I landed on a rock solid 4 almost 4.5. Each journey is it's own...what will yours bring you? Enjoy my fellow Cosmere fans, this is far from over! 🔥🍻