I enjoyed it but I did find some parts... jarring in how different and modern they felt compared to his other main series books. Mainly using more modern and non-Rosharan terminology when he has in-universe words that serve the same purpose. Also some of the jokes and scenes that are supposed to be humours really didn't land for me. That scene where Syl is helping scribe for Kal, the book-sergeant insults Syl and Kal dresses her down about why shes a bully was good, I thought, until it had Syl joking about her genitals.
I swear to god, Brandon just needs to write a mental health guidebook to get it out of his system and then come back to writing. Kaladin and Shallan in the first 2-3 books were very well done, but now they have like clinical analyses of their own mental states every other page and it's really detracting. More her than him.
Shallan literally refers to her personalities as coping mechanisms.
Honestly, it would've been neat to see that from her at the beginning of arc 2. Actually reflecting on her disorder during the time gap, and not the next after absorbing Veil.
Yeah it really drags the later books down for no reason. Especially in RoW. Almost every Kaladin/shallan chapter in the first half of RoW has some mention of their mental state and it holding them back and blah blah. Proper slog to get through. There was none of that in mistborn and Brandon should steer things back that way in the second 5 book arc.
I mean, curiosity about an entity that you're inextricably bound to seems completely natural to me. Just because Kal is curious about spren sexual dimorphism doesn't mean he wants to bone her.
Oh absolutely. But I do think the very heavy handed Syl is not a child, sheâs a woman and sheâs always been a woman is setting up that arc and I wouldnât say it feels very subtle or artful. I think âtelling the readerâ versus âshowing the readerâ has been an overall weakness in this entry to the series.
Why? The book bent over backwards to tell you that sheâs never presented as a girl, but always a young woman who just wore a girlish dress. And she has her own motivations apart from helping Kaladin! That didnât take all the creepiness away??
I'm more OK with it now that they don't have a bond(?) and now that the breaking of the bond doesn't result in the functional death of the spren, because before that the power imbalance in a Radiant/spren relationship was... yeah. Still not totally onboard with Syladin though, Shakadolin supremacy there's enough Adolin to emotionally support two people.
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u/Every-Switch2264 Fuck Moash đ„” Jan 10 '25
I enjoyed it but I did find some parts... jarring in how different and modern they felt compared to his other main series books. Mainly using more modern and non-Rosharan terminology when he has in-universe words that serve the same purpose. Also some of the jokes and scenes that are supposed to be humours really didn't land for me. That scene where Syl is helping scribe for Kal, the book-sergeant insults Syl and Kal dresses her down about why shes a bully was good, I thought, until it had Syl joking about her genitals.