Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson
In Oathbringer, the third volume of the New York Times bestselling Stormlight Archive, humanity faces a new Desolation with the return of the Voidbringers, a foe with numbers as great as their thirst for vengeance.
In Oathbringer, the third volume of the New York Times bestselling Stormlight Archive, humanity faces a new Desolation with the return of the Voidbringers, a foe with numbers as great as their thirst for vengeance.
Read: 2018-01-21
Rating: 5/5
Pages: 944
isbn: 9780765399830
The first book I completed in 2018 was a monumental undertaking, weighing in at just shy of 1,250 pages. This is Brandon Sanderson’s long-awaited return to the Stormlight Archive, itself just a fraction of his Grand Overarching Cosmere Project. If you’ve not heard of it, the Cosmere is the underlying universe which ties all of Sanderson’s Fantasy works together. Currently stretching to 12 novels and a fine collection of shorter fiction, these connected worlds share a cosmology and a magic system, but each world can be read separately.
That background allows Sanderson to fully explore his Universe, and provides a level of depth and detail which I haven’t read anywhere else in Fantasy, save Erikson’s similarly mighty Malazan Book of the Fallen. The problem is that, as with the Malazan series, sometimes the complexities of holding together such an immense body of work can overpower the narrative of any individual book, and there certainly is at least a hint of creakiness on display here. Some of the decisions made and situations experienced are those which have already been determined or experienced elsewhere in the Cosmere - I’m thinking explicitly of the climax to the Mistborn Series where the protaganists faced off against Ruin, an almost point-for-point version of Roshar’s Odium.
While the first two books of the Stormlight Archive, Way of Kings and Words of Radiance, were explicitly about humans struggling against other humans, here the stakes have been raised sufficiently that the humans are struggling against Odium directly. In that, the Roshar series has lost much of what made it unique, and made it Just Another Cosmere Book.
It is to Sanderson’s credit then, that Just Another Cosmere Book happens to be one of the finest Fantasy Novels I’ve read in a while. Where Kings or Radiance built to incredible climaxes, here the entire book is a sequence of set-piece bravura displays. The Battle for Kholinar, for example, would be worthy of an entire novel by itself, here it happens just halfway through the book, and is just a framing event for the true climax of the book.
Our primary viewpoint characters are, as previously, Kaladin, Shallan and Dalinar, and Oathbringer marks Dalinar’s turn for detailed back-story. This doesn’t disappoint for a moment, and we discover his past in much the same way and at the same time as he does. This leads to some incredibly satisfying moments, such as when, at one point, Dalinar recovers a memory of something utterly terrible from his own past, and the character is as utterly broken and debilitated by this knowledge as is the reader.
Kaladin and Shallan aren’t forgotten, and there is some wonderful development of both characters. I’m not ashamed to say that I disliked Shallan intensely when I first read Kings, while by this point I think she is probably my favourite character on Roshar. This is all down to Sanderson’s skill as a writer, probably assisted by the fact that there is just so much that the characters are allowed to do that they can be explored to an unprecedented extent. The minor characters are so well drawn here, perhaps more so than before, which just adds to the enjoyment to be had in their company.
The book, in its juxtaposition of the gathering doom of Roshar and slow awakening of Dalinar’s past, confronts questions of identity and self-knowledge. It asks questions which are all too often ignored in fantasy, and it doesn’t pretend that any of these can be answered in simple black-and-white terms. None of this is to pretend that there isn’t action in this book - there is plenty - just that the action is part of a whole which features philosophy and identity. It all builds in a dizzying (sometimes confusing) whirl to a climax of shocking intensity. I just didn’t want it to end, even though it took me nearly a month to read it.
That background allows Sanderson to fully explore his Universe, and provides a level of depth and detail which I haven’t read anywhere else in Fantasy, save Erikson’s similarly mighty Malazan Book of the Fallen. The problem is that, as with the Malazan series, sometimes the complexities of holding together such an immense body of work can overpower the narrative of any individual book, and there certainly is at least a hint of creakiness on display here. Some of the decisions made and situations experienced are those which have already been determined or experienced elsewhere in the Cosmere - I’m thinking explicitly of the climax to the Mistborn Series where the protaganists faced off against Ruin, an almost point-for-point version of Roshar’s Odium.
While the first two books of the Stormlight Archive, Way of Kings and Words of Radiance, were explicitly about humans struggling against other humans, here the stakes have been raised sufficiently that the humans are struggling against Odium directly. In that, the Roshar series has lost much of what made it unique, and made it Just Another Cosmere Book.
It is to Sanderson’s credit then, that Just Another Cosmere Book happens to be one of the finest Fantasy Novels I’ve read in a while. Where Kings or Radiance built to incredible climaxes, here the entire book is a sequence of set-piece bravura displays. The Battle for Kholinar, for example, would be worthy of an entire novel by itself, here it happens just halfway through the book, and is just a framing event for the true climax of the book.
Our primary viewpoint characters are, as previously, Kaladin, Shallan and Dalinar, and Oathbringer marks Dalinar’s turn for detailed back-story. This doesn’t disappoint for a moment, and we discover his past in much the same way and at the same time as he does. This leads to some incredibly satisfying moments, such as when, at one point, Dalinar recovers a memory of something utterly terrible from his own past, and the character is as utterly broken and debilitated by this knowledge as is the reader.
Kaladin and Shallan aren’t forgotten, and there is some wonderful development of both characters. I’m not ashamed to say that I disliked Shallan intensely when I first read Kings, while by this point I think she is probably my favourite character on Roshar. This is all down to Sanderson’s skill as a writer, probably assisted by the fact that there is just so much that the characters are allowed to do that they can be explored to an unprecedented extent. The minor characters are so well drawn here, perhaps more so than before, which just adds to the enjoyment to be had in their company.
The book, in its juxtaposition of the gathering doom of Roshar and slow awakening of Dalinar’s past, confronts questions of identity and self-knowledge. It asks questions which are all too often ignored in fantasy, and it doesn’t pretend that any of these can be answered in simple black-and-white terms. None of this is to pretend that there isn’t action in this book - there is plenty - just that the action is part of a whole which features philosophy and identity. It all builds in a dizzying (sometimes confusing) whirl to a climax of shocking intensity. I just didn’t want it to end, even though it took me nearly a month to read it.