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tapleycronier 's review for:
Wind and Truth
by Brandon Sanderson
Yep this is the greatest series I’ve had the pleasure of reading. Before I go into my BIG review I’ll give a short little basic version. This book was great (as expected) and somehow made 1300 pages feel like nothing. Probably my favorite conclusions to one of Sanderson’s books (keeping in mind it is TECHNICALLY not a full conclusion, but the end to this first major arc in this planned 10 book series). While I did really enjoy the book, I will admit it wasn’t perfect all the way through, but even in the moments where it wasn’t perfect, I was still enjoying it and the ending made up for it ten fold.
Now for the nitty gritty.
I’ll get into the flaws first. While the pacing for this book is strangely really good, and the 1300 pages never feels like a slog to get through or boring to read, it honestly could’ve been shorter. And while I do love a super long book, and I’m more than thankful we got the 1300 pages we did, there were some moments that just felt a bit repetitive to me. This book serves as a final step for a lot of plot points that have been set up, and that in turn means that a lot of characters are going off and having their own stories be told. This means that a lot of the narrative is spread wide, and as opposed to the previous books dedicating one chapter to a single character’s pov, each chapter in this book swaps POVs constantly. While I can see how this helped the pacing never bog down, there were some instances in which a character would have their pov for about a page and a half, reflect on the situation they were in, and then switch povs, ultimately adding not much in that one moment. Instead of repetitive moments like that, I would’ve rather had chapters stay focused on the story, telling a large chunk of that character’s arc, then swap over to the next pov. The swapping povs mid chapter isn’t really a bad thing, and I think it worked really well for the final part of the book, but in earlier parts it just made the story feel a bit jumbled and repetitive at times. Another thing that I missed from this book was the character relationships. Sanderson’s strongest aspect by far is his characters and the relationships he crafted for them. And while this may not be the end of the story, it is the ending of the story for SOME characters. A big problem I had for a majority of this book is the fact that some of my favorite relationships in this series aren’t explored, and each character basically goes off to their own story arc and don’t really come together in person. This kind of felt upsetting to me, as I would’ve liked to see more of their interactions between characters I’ve come to love and care for, but instead everyone is off on their own. THAT BEING SAID, after having finished the book, I now understand what Sanderson meant when he said this is not a FINAL final ending to the story, and so I can accept to see these characters come together again in what will likely be the actual final conclusion of the story. Meanwhile some of the characters who unfortunately don’t make it to the end of this story, their lack of interaction with others is painted as a tragedy, and seems intentional, so I forgive them.
Now for the things I loved.
Once again Brandon Sanderson is a fantastic character author, but also an amazing plot author. The story of this book was very well paced, and while it may have slowed down a bit in the middle, “slow” is only relative in comparison to just how fast paced some of the stuff gets in this book. There is a constant building of tension, and you really do feel that until the end of the book when everything breaks loose. The characters remain some of my favorite in fiction, and this book actually does a really good job of fleshing out some of the more minor characters from previous books. I want to give a special shoutout to the standout of this book: Adolin, a character who has been a pov since the first book but has never felt like he’s had THAT much to do. Even in his pov chapters he felt like an outsider looking in. This book, he was probably my favorite character to follow along, and his character arc overall was probably my personal favorite within this story. Embracing the outsider looking in, and somehow clawing his way through past other characters to become my 3rd favorite character in this series. Sanderson’s depictions of other topics such as mental health and sexuality are also both fairly well done within this book. Therapy quite literally being invented before my eyes in this fantasy story was really nice to see, and as a psychology major myself it really resonated with me to see my personal favorite character embrace mental health and his desire to help those who struggle with it. Sanderson’s depiction of gay relationships (mainly the one he makes a major plot point in this book) was also incredibly tasteful and well integrated. The depiction of this relationship is not one of a forced agenda, or politics, or even just throwing one in there for brownie points, but genuinely a connection between two characters who have grown to understand and accept one another. It’s truly one of his better relationships that he’s crafted to this point I would say, and seeing these characters grow together in this book makes me excited to see where their story goes from here.
And for the final part, I want to just nerd out about how much more invested this book has made me into his extended universe of novels. Particularly in the last few chapters, seeing how this story fits into the larger universe he’s built, and how it sets up so much more stuff that will connect his future novels, just gets me so excited. With the final few chapters of this book, I can actually begin to see the threads that will lead to his stories to start connecting into one cohesive narrative in future books, which as someone who had read every single one of his books in this universe, fills me with joy.
Unfortunately I won’t be getting the next book in this series until 2031. But it’s ok because his next big series in between will be the new Mistborn trilogy which I can’t wait for. So uhhh
5/5 STARS BABY.
Now for the nitty gritty.
I’ll get into the flaws first. While the pacing for this book is strangely really good, and the 1300 pages never feels like a slog to get through or boring to read, it honestly could’ve been shorter. And while I do love a super long book, and I’m more than thankful we got the 1300 pages we did, there were some moments that just felt a bit repetitive to me. This book serves as a final step for a lot of plot points that have been set up, and that in turn means that a lot of characters are going off and having their own stories be told. This means that a lot of the narrative is spread wide, and as opposed to the previous books dedicating one chapter to a single character’s pov, each chapter in this book swaps POVs constantly. While I can see how this helped the pacing never bog down, there were some instances in which a character would have their pov for about a page and a half, reflect on the situation they were in, and then switch povs, ultimately adding not much in that one moment. Instead of repetitive moments like that, I would’ve rather had chapters stay focused on the story, telling a large chunk of that character’s arc, then swap over to the next pov. The swapping povs mid chapter isn’t really a bad thing, and I think it worked really well for the final part of the book, but in earlier parts it just made the story feel a bit jumbled and repetitive at times. Another thing that I missed from this book was the character relationships. Sanderson’s strongest aspect by far is his characters and the relationships he crafted for them. And while this may not be the end of the story, it is the ending of the story for SOME characters. A big problem I had for a majority of this book is the fact that some of my favorite relationships in this series aren’t explored, and each character basically goes off to their own story arc and don’t really come together in person. This kind of felt upsetting to me, as I would’ve liked to see more of their interactions between characters I’ve come to love and care for, but instead everyone is off on their own. THAT BEING SAID, after having finished the book, I now understand what Sanderson meant when he said this is not a FINAL final ending to the story, and so I can accept to see these characters come together again in what will likely be the actual final conclusion of the story. Meanwhile some of the characters who unfortunately don’t make it to the end of this story, their lack of interaction with others is painted as a tragedy, and seems intentional, so I forgive them.
Now for the things I loved.
Once again Brandon Sanderson is a fantastic character author, but also an amazing plot author. The story of this book was very well paced, and while it may have slowed down a bit in the middle, “slow” is only relative in comparison to just how fast paced some of the stuff gets in this book. There is a constant building of tension, and you really do feel that until the end of the book when everything breaks loose. The characters remain some of my favorite in fiction, and this book actually does a really good job of fleshing out some of the more minor characters from previous books. I want to give a special shoutout to the standout of this book: Adolin, a character who has been a pov since the first book but has never felt like he’s had THAT much to do. Even in his pov chapters he felt like an outsider looking in. This book, he was probably my favorite character to follow along, and his character arc overall was probably my personal favorite within this story. Embracing the outsider looking in, and somehow clawing his way through past other characters to become my 3rd favorite character in this series. Sanderson’s depictions of other topics such as mental health and sexuality are also both fairly well done within this book. Therapy quite literally being invented before my eyes in this fantasy story was really nice to see, and as a psychology major myself it really resonated with me to see my personal favorite character embrace mental health and his desire to help those who struggle with it. Sanderson’s depiction of gay relationships (mainly the one he makes a major plot point in this book) was also incredibly tasteful and well integrated. The depiction of this relationship is not one of a forced agenda, or politics, or even just throwing one in there for brownie points, but genuinely a connection between two characters who have grown to understand and accept one another. It’s truly one of his better relationships that he’s crafted to this point I would say, and seeing these characters grow together in this book makes me excited to see where their story goes from here.
And for the final part, I want to just nerd out about how much more invested this book has made me into his extended universe of novels. Particularly in the last few chapters, seeing how this story fits into the larger universe he’s built, and how it sets up so much more stuff that will connect his future novels, just gets me so excited. With the final few chapters of this book, I can actually begin to see the threads that will lead to his stories to start connecting into one cohesive narrative in future books, which as someone who had read every single one of his books in this universe, fills me with joy.
Unfortunately I won’t be getting the next book in this series until 2031. But it’s ok because his next big series in between will be the new Mistborn trilogy which I can’t wait for. So uhhh
5/5 STARS BABY.