{"id":8839,"date":"2020-12-27T05:27:13","date_gmt":"2020-12-27T05:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/?p=8839"},"modified":"2021-01-06T11:29:04","modified_gmt":"2021-01-06T11:29:04","slug":"oathbringer-rhythm-of-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/oathbringer-rhythm-of-war\/","title":{"rendered":"OATHBRINGER &#038; RHYTHM of WAR"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Oathbringer-Book-Three-Stormlight-Archive-ebook\/dp\/B01NAWAH85\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The third<\/a> of Brandon Sanderson&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Stormlight_Archive\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Stormlight Archive<\/a> novels benefits greatly from having read both <a href=\"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/arcanum-unbounded-the-cosmere-collection\/\" title=\"Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Edgedancer<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Warbreaker\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Warbreaker<\/a> (which I thought I talked about before but apparently haven&#8217;t) beforehand.<\/p>\n<p>Sadly I&#8217;m not sure it&#8217;s really worth the investment; a good 90% of the book is essentially treading water with events and characterizations repeatedly progressing one step forward and then one step back (Shallan&#8217;s sections in particular become painful to read). Only the very last section is truly engaging&#8230; but it&#8217;s engaging in a manner that echoes a cliffhanger, coming across as deliberately manipulative (which of course it is) rather than feeling natural.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Rhythm-War-Stormlight-Archive-Book-ebook\/dp\/B0826NKZHR\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The follow-up<\/a> picks up after a 1-year time skip and starts off much better. Unfortunately it seems Sanderson can&#8217;t help himself here and once again reverts to character (Kaladin this time, though Shallan hasn&#8217;t improved) and event regression to pad out the novel&#8217;s length. Its finale isn&#8217;t anywhere near as satisfying as the prequel&#8217;s either, partly because yet another artificial extension has been introduced (related to Odium this time).<\/p>\n<p>All that combined with <em>Rhythm<\/em>&#8216;s foreword stating that the series is intended to be <em>ten<\/em> books long has me thinking I should just cut my losses now rather than continue to plod through thousands of pages of circular developments for just a couple hundred filled with excitement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The third of Brandon Sanderson&#8217;s Stormlight Archive novels benefits greatly from having read both Edgedancer and Warbreaker (which I thought I talked about before but apparently haven&#8217;t) beforehand. Sadly I&#8217;m not sure it&#8217;s really worth the investment; a good 90% of the book is essentially treading water with events and characterizations repeatedly progressing one step forward and then one step back (Shallan&#8217;s sections in particular become painful to read). Only the very last section is truly engaging&#8230; but it&#8217;s engaging in a manner that echoes a cliffhanger, coming across as deliberately manipulative (which of course it is) rather than feeling natural. The follow-up picks up after a 1-year time skip and starts off much better. Unfortunately it seems Sanderson can&#8217;t help himself here and once again reverts to character (Kaladin this time, though Shallan hasn&#8217;t improved) and event regression to pad out the novel&#8217;s length. Its finale isn&#8217;t anywhere near as satisfying as the prequel&#8217;s either, partly because yet another artificial extension has been introduced (related to Odium this time). All that combined with Rhythm&#8216;s foreword stating that the series is intended to be ten books long has me thinking I should just cut my losses now rather than continue [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[102,483,28,484],"class_list":["post-8839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-related","tag-brandon-sanderson","tag-cosmere","tag-fantasy","tag-stormlight-archive"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8839\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}