2020 December
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Rhythm of War is book four in Sanderson's epic fantasy Stormlight Archive series. Goodreads tells me I read the prior book Oathbringer back in Nov 2017, but didn't bother writing a review, so I had to make sure I'd write one now. The book's launch day kind of caught me a bit unexpectedly so I didn't bother doing a re-read of the previous three books. Which given an epic fantasy series of this scope might have been a mistake, but watch me do it again for book five. No review meant while reading every so often I'd stop and be
2017 November
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View all my reviews
2017 August
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The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson My rating: 4 of 5 stars It was ok. Some tropes turned around. Kind of frustrating how a lot of stuff just dragged out until the end. The identify of the Hero of Ages pretty much given away early on by the flavor text at the start of each chapter. I finished it in two sittings so that's something View all my reviews -
The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson My rating: 4 of 5 stars I finished Well of Ascension only two days after finishing The Final Empire. I think I enjoyed it a bit less than the first book - mainly because there's a lot of self-doubt here among the protagonists, a lot of paragraphs of "why am i doing this? I'm not good enough, etc". The plot also takes longer to solidify. Unlike the first book where they had a very solid objective until the end (the downfall of the Final Empire), the protagonists spend most of this book running -
The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson My rating: 5 of 5 stars Great book. The story's pace was a bit slow at first as Sanderson was doing his excellent worldbuilding and introducing us to the magic system in his world (he's good at that sort of thing!), but it picks up about a third of the way through. A lot of the plot twists and character developments are handled very well. The pace proceeds fairly quickly towards the end - I burned through the last third of the book in one night because things were escalating quickly. Looking forward to
2016 January
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Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson My rating: 5 of 5 stars The first book I read for 2016 was Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson second book of the Stormlight Archive. It's a huge book, and the first half took me more or less three weeks to slog through (I started it in late December), but by the time I got to the middle of the book, a lot of exciting things were happening and my pace improved considerably. I finished the second half of the book in around 2-3 days. The great thing is that the book resolves
2015 November
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Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is my second Sanderson book after The Way of Kings, which made me a fan of his world-building. Given that this book is set in a dystopian near-future, the scale of the world-building here isn't as large as that fantasy epic, but still gives Sanderson enough room to carve out a unique setting in the city of Newcago.Newcago, yes, that name is ridiculous. A lot of the Epic names are ridiculous actually, and the protagonist himself points that out at some point. The plot is fairly straightforward, with a
2015 June
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Due to an inordinate amount of time spent in a waiting room, i managed to finish Sanderson's Way of Kings today. Great book that I really enjoyed despite taking three months to finish it. The author shows off some great world building and gives us great protagonists to follow. Hopefully I can find a hardcopy of the second book somewhere
2013 January
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It’s a satisfyingly good ending. The book is action-packed, with 80-90% of the book just bloody, bloody fighting, and very little of the whiny manipulative bitchiness that characterized some of the weaker books in the series. As far as I can tell most of the dangling points are wrapped up neatly, many characters get to be heroes and die, etc. Part of me wonders whether I’d be this satisfied if Jordan had managed to finish everything himself.