Reviews

i absolutely loved the way kaladin just joined the group voidbringers, and found a way to respect and friend them despite who they are supposed to be. his character is just so /good/. it was painful to hear how much pain he had when he realized that the people he was taught to kill his whole life have families and stories and aren’t as horrible as the stories. i wish we would have continued from this plot line for longer and we could’ve seen him with them for longer. but, i like the full circle moment we got with moash. he started to give up and just agreed with the primitive norms of the society, until he was reminded of the good that kaladin brought bridge four. i love how he just decided to rally the people who are now in the same place he was so long ago. i’m so sad that we stopped having kaladin’s pov :/ i love learning more about the rest of bridge four, all of the characters are unique and full of wonderful stories, but no one compares to kaladin. i still feel like whenever something interesting happens, it moves to a different pov, which is so sad. i wanted to see kaladin actually talking to the parshendi in bridge four, rather than just being told that it happened. despite the length of the book, we are missing the character dynamics and the wonderful conversations between characters that were so prominent in the first book.

shallan became one of my favorite characters which is super fun! i love how she’s splitting her personality into different people and how lost she is in regards to herself and who she wants to become. it was so interesting to see her mentor back in the story, and see how much shallan grew while she was gone. her powers become more and more intense, and i love that for her. it’s great that we still learn more about her history and what happened to her brother. i’m super excited to see what she would do in the future, especially now that she’s joining the group to kohlinar.

this book made me appreciate older dalinar much more, he was an absolute ass when he was young. i hate the gender roles that the author includes in the book. “he was a soldier. he knew battlefields like a woman knows her mother’s recipes”. i see that he tries to be revolutionary and make it so only women can read, but still men are the only ones that go to war to protect women.

dalinar’s present character is a lot more dynamic and interesting, and while i love learning about his past, the flashbacks are taking away from the person he is today. the moment he remembered the name of his ex-wife was INSANE, i never was this excited to learn more about something in the book. and i can’t believe he just met jealousy!! wow i can’t wait to see how they can defeat this guy. but, i don’t like the amount of foreshadowing for the death of dalinar. i like the talk about religion and how he just accepted that things needed to change.

we didn’t get enough adolin povs in this part of the book ☹️ i miss him, he had such good character development in the previous book.

the story becomes so complex and there are so many characters and story arcs to keep track of, it’s very ambitious, and i hope the ending would be worth it.

queen_melliott's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

3.5 stars. Sadly, this was the first Brandon Sanderson I didn’t love. For some characters, I didn’t like the direction their story arc is going (Shallan, Yasnah).

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