Words of Radiance: Book Two of the Stormlight Archive (The Stormlight Archive, 2) Hardcover – Lay Flat, March 4, 2014

Sometime later on in Words of Radiance, during one of the many Interludes that appear between each of the behemoth novel's five sprawling parts, a character named Lift ambles up the side of a castle wall using powers we'll leave here unspecified on her way to steal. Soon thereafter, a boy joins her side and asks her how she managed to scale the wall, as there was no ladder for her to do so, and he himself needed a rope that she lowered down to him. "Gumption and spit," Lift replies, before traipsing onwards towards her destiny. Gumption and spit, indeed. Here is a marvelous combination of things that can result in magical things - even if the final product is a bit messy.Over one year ago, I wrote up my thoughts concerning Brandon Sanderson's entry volume to the Stormlight Archive, "The Way of Kings" and had a blast lauding the book, not to mention infuriating fans of Dune everywhere. The Way of Kings was (and is, upon re-reading) one of the best fantasy novels I have ever read - heck, one of the most best books I've ever read, period - and I gave it a 9.5/10 (a 5/5 by Amazon's star system) after desperately pruning it down from the 10/10 I initially wanted to give it by taking off half a point for Kaladin Stormblessed's face palm worthy emo moments and Shallan Davar being...well, herself. In short, The Way of Kings was one of my favorite books of all time, in large part because of the series it promised.So, the question I needed Words of Radiance to answer was, "Is the series still promising?" And the answer is "Yes." And that's a good, good thing - a relief, even. Following my tradition, the first paragraph of this review is about as closer to a spoiler as I'm going to get - fear not, wary reader. No spoilers follow for Words of Radiance...but if you haven't read the Way of Kings, I'd recommend not going any further than this. I will address subject matter you probably don't want to know. Come on back after you've read the first book and the series, and we'll talk.For the rest of you, we'll go ahead and get the brass tax out of the way up front here - Words of Radiance is a good book. I'd give it an 8.8/10 on my scale, or about a 4.5/5 on Amazon's star scale. Amazon doesn't seem to see the need for half stars in their options, so in an effort to not under-represent this book, I'm marking it as a 5/5. Technically, it's closer to a 4/5, but that 4 star rating just looks bad, doesn't it? Frankly, I don't have the heart to mark Words of Radiance down that far. It is, by all accounts, a better book than its predecessor, and Sanderson has clearly grown as an author, his prose and descriptive power reaching very good levels. So why the negative hullabaloo from the Way of Kings' self-professed biggest fan?Well, I guess it's just because I didn't like this book as much as the first one. Not by a long shot, actually. In fact, so long as we're being honest, I thought parts one and two of Words of Radiance were two of the bleakest, most "oh my God not Song of Ice and Fire syndrome please Sanderson no" pages I've ever trudged through. It was, for lack of a better word, a frightening time in my life, having been excited for this book since I first left Roshar so long ago. I had recently returned from a deployment to Afghanistan, and I had more wrapped up in the Stormlight Archive than a simple thirst for entertainment. It was the first book I read upon returning to the States, and there's something...special, maybe, about that. That, and this book series is going to be ten books long. I will grow up with it, in many ways, as will we all. I was pretty frightened that the Way of Kings might have been a fluke, and the nine books that followed it were destined to be more like the middle of the Wheel of Time or the last two iterations of Ice and Fire.Be at peace, readers. Parts 3, 4 and 5 of Words of Radiance are all truly wonderful, and Sanderson seemed to get his mojo back by the time I hit them. The book earns the five star rating I've awarded it, and its because of its moments of sheer brilliance that I find myself disappointed and genuinely baffled by the unnecessary moments of tedium that drag the book as whole down away from its predecessor. Ultimately, the Stormlight Archive is, at the end of Words of Radiance, in very good shape. There are places for it to go, questions for it to answer, battles to be fought and mysteries to be unraveled. That's all that matters, really. This was Shallan's book, and thus the book most of us were most wary of to begin with. She was a frustrating character in the Way of Kings, and in some ways she's even more frustrating here, but for very different reasons. I didn't particularly like her in the first book, and I liked her even less by the end of this one. I can't help but wonder if my relationship with the book was in large part due to my relationship with her.My biggest complaint about Words of Radiance is actually directly connected with its biggest strength. It is a massive tome - a sprawling behemoth of a book, and as a result we get to see more of Roshar than ever before. More of its politics, its mysteries, its religions, its cultures, its landscapes, its magic. Thank God for that, since I love this world and I never want to leave. But Sanderon's pacing here is...well, off. (The witty banter is also painful to read, at times, but it adds to the charm of the characters, in its own weird way.)What I mean about the pacing is this - parts one and two trudge along at a snail's pace, getting bogged down by high prince politicking (that ends up being unimportant come book's end), Shallan lying to herself and to the world, and Kaladin returning to his fantastically emo roots, and Adolin channeling a G-rated Jaime Lannister minus Cersei. Dalinar recedes into the background a bit here, but I don't mind this as much as I thought I would, Jasnah continues to be a great character, Lopen gets funnier, and Shen proves to be more elaborate than he originally seemed. Rock remains a good cook.We see much more of Parshendi culture, learn more about the lost city of Urithuru, and of Taravengian's evil plan to save the world. We learn about the nature of spren early on, and about the nature of shard blades late in the book. Part five of Words of Radiance is arguably the best part of the bunch, and is also the shortest - by a LONG shot - and could have easily been a hundred pages longer. Should have been, I'd venture to say, as the first 90% of the book leads up to the climactic final 10% - but when the revelations finally emerge, they're given maybe a page or two of attention. It startled me. The twists you came to find out - predictable or not - should have been given much, much more space to breathe. I would have loved that. In an effort to counterbalance this paragraph of nay saying, I will say that there are a couple of duels / battles in Words of Radiance that had me smiling like a blithering idiot. Sanderson still knows how to write a fight. Man oh man oh man.So does Words of Radiance reveal too much or too little? Both, I think - Sanderson shows us so much in this book, yet it feels like he's trying to fit in as MUCH as humanly possible into a tiny space, which baffles me, since he just spent a thousand pages building up to those reveals. It was like he lost a little faith in the fact that his world is interesting enough as it is without having to try and elaborate what makes it interesting, and as a result he worked and worked and worked on parts of little consequence, exposing the clues too neatly, and when it came to the parts that really, actually mattered, he was out of both time and space.There was no need to try and recreate the mind breaking ending of the Way of Kings, but I do appreciate the effort to do so. Maybe it'll be something we can expect in every book, a final hundred pages of twists and twists and twists. At best, this could set the Stormlight Archive aside from its contemporaries in wonderful fashion. At worst, Sanderson could...*lowers voice to a conspiratorial whisper* go the way of the Shyamalan. I know, blasphemy. Honestly, though, the Shyamalan effect is the deadliest enemy facing the Stormlight Archive on the whole right now. Hopefully the twists we find in book three of the Stormlight Archive are more satisfying.I wonder, honestly, if Sanderson himself is very aware of the book he has wrought. He's a very perceptive man, and being a professor at Brigham Young University has allowed him to organize his thoughts on writing with the clear efficiency only someone who teaches writing could muster. I cannot help but assume that, post publication, he looks at Words of Radiance the way a professor might. The world of Roshar is still here, still full of surprises, still full of characters who will do things that surprise you. The characters are still (thankfully) themselves, and the magic is still really, really cool.Yet something is lost when we come into this book expecting twists around every corner. It makes the moment when they finally come so much less remarkable - indeed, I actually predicted almost every twist before I ever cracked the book open, and I'm not always very good at that. I wonder, therefore, if part of the reason I didn't enjoy Words of Radiance as much as I had hoped I would is simply because I spent the whole book reading between the lines, searching for assassins in every shadow, for twists in every ambiguous statement. If it's possible for the quality of the book to lie in the reader, then that has been exemplified here. This brings me, at last, to the part of the book that astonished me most.The character of Wit - who I am of the opinion acts almost as an avatar for Sanderson himself in the world of Roshar and Shadesmar - comments on the flaws and nature of the book surrounding him at the end of both the Way of Kings and Words of Radiance. He usually reveals the best twists in the midst of leaning on the fourth wall, and comments on what he perceives to be injustices in the world of art. In the Way of Kings, Wit argues that originality is what humanity values most, and in Words of Radiance, he argues that all art is subject to perspective."Give me an audience who have come to be entertained," Wit says in the epilogue, "but who expect nothing special. To them, I will be a god. That is the best truth I know."Fellow readers, my advice is simple. Go into Words of Radiance looking to be entertained. Don't look for the twists. Looking for the twists is like sneaking a peek at presents the month before Christmas. Just wait, let the day come, and then tear the paper to pieces and scatter it all around, feeling the rush of not knowing what lies within. Sanderson is crafting for us a master series, and has eight more books to present. I for one am breathless for the continuation of the series, and have full faith in the author to turn this series into something very, very special. I'll see you all at the end of book three, which I am already hungry for. And, finally, to Mr. Sanderson himself. Thank you, sir, for welcoming me home.8.8/10

This is by far my favorite fantasy series…and I have read a lot of them! Very well written, clean, entertaining, and engaging. I love it when I can’t put a book down, even on the 4th or 5th time reading it!

How dare you, Sanderson! The blind men story and Jushu’s story! Had me bawling. I came here for action but was served up a three course meal made up of family relationships, political drama, spiritual/religion complexities and so on! Absolutely phenomenal just like the first book. I can’t wait to dive into Oathbringer.

I loved this book almost as much as the first. It was fun and kept me guessing in so many places. I love the characters and how much it got me to think of their moral dilemmas. It was a joy to read and I can’t wait to start the next one!

I struggle a bit with what to say about a 1,080-page book that took me a month and a half to read. That it took me so long is not a negative comment on the book so much as it is a reflection of the reality that life's other pressures often get in the way of reading.I read "The Way of Kings" back in January 2011 (the first book I read on a Kindle, and as with my review of that book, I will conclude this one with a particular Kindle-related comment). I found "Words of Radiance" to move at a faster clip than "The Way of Kings" and to overcome Brandon Sanderson's self-admitted tendency for his books to take a couple of hundred pages to get moving. The last several chapters of "Words of Radiance" are as gripping as anything I've read in several years. Not as frenzied a pace as the 100+-page chapter of "A Memory of Light" narrating Tarmon Gai'don, mind you, but then that sequence was the summation of a 14-book series as opposed to the conclusion of the second of a projected ten books.I enjoy that the characters in this series are not perfect. I find it unrealistic when a character is too perfect or doesn't make mistakes or the like. In this volume, that imperfection is the source of some level of agony, especially when the reader understands what the characters are doing wrong. I suspect this imperfection may be a particularly significant source of problems and tension for the characters going forward, though I also know Sanderson loves to throw in plot twists (meaning my guess may be 100% wrong).I have only one hesitation in recommending this series to new readers: Pace of publication. The first volume came out in 2010 and the second in 2014. I recognize there were extenuating circumstances there because of Sanderson's commitment to finish the Wheel of Time and the massive amount of time that effort required, so I hope the third volume will be published more quickly (I've seen rumours of spring 2016). You have to recognize this is planned to be a ten-book series, so it's going to be a long time before it's finished. My impression, based on some of Sanderson's comments and interviews, is that he has a pretty firm idea of where he wants this series to go, so I am optimistic the pace of publishing won't be glacial, but I've also seen how some other authors (George R.R. Martin and Kristen Britain come immediately to mind) go several years in between books. I raise all of this because the Stormlight Archive is a complex story to the point where after a few years' delay between books it becomes necessary to go back and refresh yourself a bit on the previous volume. If you're the type of person who hates long waits between books, or who doesn't like to go back and refresh yourself, you may want to wait a few more years before beginning this series (however, be aware that because there are eight more books planned, you could be waiting a long time).Regarding reading this book on a Kindle, in my review of "The Way of Kings" I made a comment about how the Kindle is not well-suited to displaying the artwork that appears throughout this book and about how the Kindle is utterly inadequate when it comes to displaying the world map. The same is still true three years later. The following is a re-written version of my prior comments with some updated thoughts:"I would have given this book five stars, but I took off a point for the Kindle edition because I found the maps and illustrations extremely hard to read (in some cases, almost impossible). I would have liked to have studied the map of Roshar in detail, but the Kindle simply doesn't allow you to zoom in enough to do this in the level of detail I'd prefer to do. There is also some artwork throughout the book that contains text annotations. From having read Brandon Sanderson's other books, I strongly believe that artwork can be expository, but if you read the book on the Kindle, as I did, don't expect much in terms of the artwork. The inability to zoom and move around the images seems to be a limitation of the Kindle. As a workaround, I tried downloading this book into the Kindle app on my iPad since that DOES allow zooming and panning, but it didn't solve the problem because it simply made the images too grainy."I think on the whole the illustrations aren't a huge issue and so I'd probably take off half a point, but Amazon does not allow half-star values in rating books. Therefore, I gave four stars because I didn't think it was right to give five when I thought there was a negative that bore mention. I don't want any potential Kindle reader to get put off by my comments about the illustrations. It's still well worth the read, and it's beyond dispute that reading a 1000+ page hardback is a lot easier when you read it as an e-book compared to hauling a hardback around everywhere you go."If someone who works with or for Brandon Sanderson or his publisher is reading these reviews, I'd like to suggest the map and illustrations be made available on Sanderson's website, perhaps behind a page with spoiler warnings if you think that appropriate. It would be a help to those of us who buy the e-book release.EDITED TO ADD: A comment left in response to this review states the maps and illustrations are indeed on Brandon Sanderson's website. I have not yet looked at them, but it's good information to have. It's still too bad the Kindle can't handle this sort of thing better, but since that's a device-specific limitation, I applaud Sanderson and his publisher for providing this workaround.

The world building and character development of Brandon Sanderson is unmatched. Highly recommend to all fantasy readers out there. I still slightly prefer the Mistborn series, but it’s getting closer…

No time for a long review. This is another great book in the series I'm going to start book three as soon as I finish this post!!!

One of the best books I’ve ever read. Easily the most hype I’ve ever been during this book it is great.