Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive #4), by Brandon Sanderson

  Rhythm of War feels like a setup for something, like an interlude. Also, while it largely expands the scope of the story, it relies a lot of existing characters and their stories in previous books, without doing that smart thing Brandon Sanderson usually does to remind people what they were. I don't even know if it's possible with this large of a story. And remember, this is just the fourth in a ten book series!

  And so my reading of this book suffered from two things: I didn't quite remember what everything was about and the story just got too large! Meaning that I have to choose whether I care about individual characters and the sides they take or if I see everything as a big saga where people don't really matter. At this point, though, the choice is very difficult to make.

  To summarize, I loved the book, but not as much as I remember liking the previous three. The pace was slower, the implications grander, but also not reaching closure. A lot more characters, types of spren, gods, realms and bindings were revealed, but now I have to wait another two years to see what they were actually about. And Kaladin's pain now went into some weird directions, like battle schock and psychological help and accepting limitations in order to go forward. Was everyone depressed in 2020?! I thought Sanderson was immune to depression.

  Anyway, it seems to me that I will have to plan well the arrival of the fifth book in the series, probably by rereading the first four. Only then will the story click as it should and not make me feel like a stupid Taravangian.