 Okay, so I finally finally got through Rhythm of War. It took me longer than other booktubers because I didn't get an arc, but you know I'm not I'm not salty about that at all. The point is the book is phenomenal. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. Okay, so this one it's a little too big to just do a regular review So we're gonna have non-spoiler spoiler section non-spoiler. Let's go So this is a stormlight archive book, you know If you are at all familiar with the stormlight archive if you've read through it already You have a pretty good idea of how this one is gonna go. It's gonna start off Relatively slow. It's gonna jump around between a couple of big characters and then you'll get one or two chapters from more minor characters You're gonna get flashback sequences, which are a mixed bag in my opinion And then at the end there's gonna be a big climax and some sort of big twist which will leave you wondering well, where's the series gonna go after this and This one it does mix up the formula a little bit. I'll get to that in a minute But overall it just it does that extremely well The events of this one pick up about a year after the end of oath bringer So, you know the forces of odium and the boy bringers and all them are still attacking They still hold most of Alec car, but also the night's radiant and everyone else are fighting back against them But things have kind of deadlocks now neither side has made all that much progress so both of them are looking for ways to move things forward and so Dalinar takes Pretty early on he takes most of their army and goes to azish Which is in the western part and they're gonna try and free up some territory so that they can have Almost complete control of all of southern Roshar Meanwhile Adolin and Shalon go into Shadesmar because they need to talk to the honor spren because the honor spren really don't want to Bond with radiance anymore And so they can't really make any more windrunners and in fact the other types of spren that make the other types of night nights radiant are also not really Well, they're not excited about the prospect of bonding with humans because last time it happened a whole bunch of them died and they're just You know, they're wary about it so Adolin and Shalon are basically a diplomatic mission going there to try and fix things and also Caledon that after this really big action sequence which most of the book starts off with we see that Caledon is Really starting to get affected by all the things he's seen and they call it battle shock in this but it's pretty clearly post-traumatic stress disorder and So he is just taken off the front lines and he goes back to being a surgeon for a little while and Granted that's like 200 pages into the book But my general rule of thumb is that the first 20% of the book is fine to talk about in a non-spoiler context And this is 1200 pages long. So even though it takes a while to get to that point I think it's fair to talk about that. So all the great stuff in this is mostly stuff That was great in the first couple of books like Caledon is still my favorite character like it's still Granted a lot of people aren't gonna want to see him just some would say moping or groaning or whining or something like that, but I enjoy watching his emotional turmoil and his general inability to find a purpose in life even though He wants to protect everybody. That's why he became a windrunner in the first place But yeah, he's he's a little lost and it's nice to see him Find ways to deal with that loss. I'm sorry words are hard sometimes But I'm trying to word this in a way which doesn't give away too much information Because like I said, he goes back to being a surgeon But then there is some more beyond that that he works on and then obviously some shit goes down and the characters all get in their own brand of trouble and So we have to see them all try and get out of it now of all the Stormlight books This one is the least action focused which includes the climax by the way Like I'm not saying the climax is bad not by any means But if you're expecting the traditional like sander lance where there's huge epic battle and a whole bunch of plot stuff happens And you know people die people are triumphant they kill a couple of villains But the villains still live to fight another day and the heroes are possibly set back some still like, you know If you're expecting that it's a little different like it's more Plot focused and a little bit more subtle like there's still some battling at the climax but really not that much and I'm not upset by that because Some of the things that happened there. I was really not expecting like they're Every Stormlight book has at least one or two. Holy shit. I wasn't expecting that to happen moments And this definitely has a couple of them some are more in the middle and some come right at the end the rest of the book though It did Okay, I'm not gonna come right out and say it dragged a little Because it's not that bad like even even oath bringer was worse in this regard I think because of like that whole going to Kohlanar and then going to Shadesmar like that was that was really obnoxious And kind of difficult to read an oath bringer whereas in rhythm of war There is less action in the middle. Yes, but there's still stuff happening. So it didn't bother me that much However, once in a while there would be just like one chapter and they're usually not long chapters They're less than ten pages where I'm just thinking man This is this is kind of dull and I wish that it had just been Folded into the last chapter that followed this character I think that if we just cut a few things out here would have been better and It's not that there's any like specific plot points or anything that I think we could cut because I don't think we can I think We need basically all of those but when you consider this is longer even than oath bringer an oath bringer was already ridiculous in terms of length like you could have shaved a little bit off here, so You know I I'm trying I'm trying not to make it sound like a bigger deal than it is because it's really not that big of an issue Like I said, it's just the occasional couple of pages once in a while would drag but for the most part Pacing's really good as for the flashbacks. Those are They're not bad by any means, but I do think they're the weakest of the flashbacks We've seen so far because you know, they've all had their ups and downs a little like calibans for the most part Is pretty great, but there are one or two chapters which just felt a little repetitive there like it's oh, okay He's trying to be a surgeon, but he's also a sad boy And he doesn't want to fight but then he winds up having to fight and it felt like they went into that a little too much So it went down and then back up a little bit Shalons had much more up and down, but overall was good Dalinar's was across the board great and then this one follows each and I and Venley who are not Bad characters by any means, but they're nowhere near as interesting especially since we like Eshan is already dead we already know she's gone and Venley while she does get some interesting development following her both in the past and in the present She's still not as good as the other three. I don't think and This one like the flashbacks start off kind of weak but after the second or third one they do jump up a little and they don't take up that much time in the book actually like I Don't think they come up until you're like halfway through and even then there's not that many of them so Overall like again that I think the flashbacks are The worst part of the book, but they're they're really not bad the second worst part of the book is the bit with Adolin and Shalon and Shadesmar and Again, that's not bad. I think it was really interesting. It's just They don't focus on it that much like I think Book three in this or part three in this does not follow them in Shadesmar at all like there's an entire section of a couple hundred pages where we don't see anything that happens there and I Mean once we get to it. It's pretty good like we get to find out more about the spread and how their society works and we find out some stuff that went down with the Recreants and like when the Knights Radiant Cast off their armor and that destroyed their oaths and or broke their oaths Excuse me and all that. We find out some more about what went down there, which Interested me a lot But again, we'll say that for the spoiler section and I want to give huge props here because This book takes a character which was not very important before Nivani who is Dalinar's wife now formerly his sister-in-law now his wife That's a little weird, but we'll move past it and it takes her She was a side character in the first couple of books and in this one She becomes a major presence and she is Awesome, she really is awesome. Like she's intelligent. She's determined Well, I'm trying to think of a way to put this without just listing more positive attributes But like she is a very very good character like she goes through She goes through a lot of shit in this but she still comes out on top and she winds up being one of the big heroes here And I think that's phenomenal. I think it's amazing that they were able to do that now for the recommendation part Obviously if you've read the first three Stormlight books read this one You'll you'll love this one if you have not read any of the Stormlight books so far then I mean obviously I recommend them They're super super fucking long So I wouldn't really say that for casual fantasy fans But if you're looking for really big epic fantasy that plays around with some of the tropes and ideas and has Like really powerful themes and really powerful characters then I would say yeah go go for it and go check it out However, I will say that before you read Rhythm of War You should read some other Cosmere stuff because this one is much more Cosmere Aware I guess is a good way of putting it like there's a lot of smaller plot points and characters and such that Tie into the wider Cosmere in fact There's one character who just at one point pretty early on outright tells Shalon like look There's a lot of other planets with humans on them out there and I'm from one of them And it's not even treated as that big of a deal in the story. So with this one I would recommend reading some other Cosmere stuff before you get into it Specifically, I think read Warbreaker and If you want to read some other stuff read the original Mistborn trilogy mostly Warbreaker though Because that one plays a huge part in this and even though Warbreaker is Probably the weakest Cosmere book so far. It's still not bad. It's just Not as good as the others So now for spoilers The first thing I want to talk about is how Caledon after he leaves the battlefield he decides he wants to start Helping people not just with physical ailments because you know he's a surgeon, but with mental ones as well He wants to help people who have Depression or depression as we know it they usually refer to it as like the darkness or something like that But he wants to help people who have that he wants to help people who have battle shock aka PTSD and He is experimenting with ways to do that and mostly he's just bringing them out and having like seminars where they all talk with each other About their issues and stuff like that and that seems to help and I think that's amazing. I I like that Sanderson put that in I like that he shows. Yeah, even if you Learn to live with your mental illnesses. They don't just go away. They still have some Serious problems that you have to learn to live with and I was I was happy that they decided to add that but they also showed like there are ways to deal with it and I liked how Caledon didn't just stick with that the whole story because if That was if he just went from being this super badass warrior to completely not fighting anymore I would have been a little upset because like watching Caledon fights really fun, but Partway through this book the void bringers managed to take over your theory Which is the center of all the night's radiance operations And they managed to take it over and get rid of the radiance powers and Caledon is one of the only people there That's trying to fight them off and trying to make sure they can't solidify their control and actually that's a huge part of the book So we do get to see him not only fighting again, but we get to see him fighting without his powers which forces him to Be a little more strategic in his thinking which is a lot of fun. I really liked seeing that I like seeing him Isolated I think like not 100% isolated cuz he does have a couple of allies in the tower But cut off from most support cut off from the other nights radiance cut off from most of his friends And he doesn't even have his powers anymore, but he's still continuing to do all this cool badass stuff I I liked that a lot and it continued up through the end of the book when he Finally said the fourth ideal the fourth night's radiant ideal and I'm oh Man that was just so cool like every time he's sworn one of the ideals It's gotten cooler and cooler like from the end of the way of Kings when he said he protect those that won't protect themselves And they had that huge battle where they thought they were gonna die But they managed to pull through that was fucking awesome and then when he Decided he wanted to protect King Elocar and he fought Seth it or set the Seth I'm actually not sure how to say that in the middle of the high storm like every time It's just get been getting better and so Caledon's character arc in this even though he has progress to make like I don't think his character is just gonna stop here and say Yep, we're done. It's just getting better and better and I loved that but obviously the big big big twist in this book and the big spoiler which like for real if you haven't read this leave now is What happens with Taravangian and Odium? because Okay, so near the end of the book Odium and Dallin are finally come to an agreement on a way to stop the war and It's basically they're going to have a contest of champions and whoever wins the contest They have a specific contract drawn out so that Even if the good guys win Odium will still hold on to some of his lands and he'll He'll he won't be able to escape Rochar completely But he will still have some power and he'll have made some progress where and the opposite is also true Like if they're good guys lose then they aren't completely dead but Anyways, the point is that not long after Odium makes that he goes to Taravangian Who is imprisoned at this point because he betrayed Dallin are and the others not long earlier and I Okay, long story short Taravangian kills rays who is the vessel for Odium You know, he's the human that took on the power of Odium and Was doing all this shit like he kills him, but Odium's power is still there So Taravangian takes it and he is now the vessel of Odium. He is now Not only the main bad guy of the Stormlight Archive But he seems to be shaping up to be one of the antagonists of the Cosmere as a whole now Like for the longest time while reading I've been thinking that Odium was going to be the big bad of the entire Cosmere I wasn't exactly sure how it was going to work out But I was fairly certain that's how it was happening and now I'm almost 100% certain that that's how it's gonna work out except Odium is Well, he's he's a bit different now. You know, he's no longer Rays Odium. He's Taravangian Odium who has somewhat of a different personality Which was actually the plan a whole long turns out cultivation was trying to manipulate events for this to happen and Taravangian he has different motivations for what he's doing like he no longer wants to just save Roshar or even save his city, Karbranth But he now knows about a whole bunch of other stuff going on in the Cosmere about how there's total chaos and everything's ruled by Broken half-dead gods and he's thinking near the end of the book. He's thinking, you know, I think I Think I can I think I can fix this but before I can get to that I have to break out of my prison which means he has to finish all his shenanigans on Roshar because he just like how Odium was imprisoned in that system Taravangian is also in prison or Taravangian Odium. I don't know they're Calling him Taravangian kind of feels like dead naming at this point. So just based on that I have no fucking clue where this series is going to go next like there's a million directions It could go I know that Sanderson said he had to finish up the next Mistborn book before he could do Stormlight 5 Which I was already excited for the next Mistborn book, but now I'm super excited for the next Mistborn book but I'm not sure what information we're gonna see there that will Force us to or that he has to get out before he can do this one. We'll we'll just have to wait and see But oh my god, I did not see that one coming that one that one is amazing and Frankly, some of the stuff that went down in this book not just that bit with Taravangian, but also Knowing that apparently the Knights radiant and their spren Broke their oaths on purpose and their spren agreed to it. They sacrificed themselves to protect humanity from Something we don't know precisely what I think it has something to do with the the Don shards which are what destroyed the humans previous home Ashen and forced them to come to Roshar It might have something to do with that but we're not completely sure yet and Just based on that and the fact that Taravangian is now odium and actually the epilogue of this is terrifying because it shows wit aka hoid aka Whatever other name he decides to go by in the other books it shows him and he meets up with odium slash Taravangian and He's talking to him and he's realizing you know something's wrong here something seems off and For a brief moment. He realizes. Oh, this is somebody else somebody else got the power But then odium Erases his memory somehow and this is the first time we've ever seen hoid not only get scared but get outs out smarted and Oh dear right like Taravangian odium is ten times scarier than raise odium and so oh Man, I'm just gonna be rambling on forever if I let that happen But man like this is the best stormlight books since the way of kings because I think way of kings is still just a tiny bit Better than this one, but they're both like ten out of ten hundred out of a hundred million out of a million Awesome very few problems here and those problems that I have are just so minor compared to the good stuff if you Want to read just just read stormlight, okay read stormlight archive then gets a rhythm of war and that's all bye Hey patreon patron the oppo Savalain and Eva tumor brother Santotis Christopher Quinten Deanna Day him Mbis Emily Miller Joel Carcat Kitsune Lawrence Hicks Lisa Ruta Kova Madison Lewis Bennett microphone Rizia roll sad martigan tobacco crow Tom beanie vacuous Silas Bay Victus You're all pretty cool if your name isn't on here then sign up for patreon give give me money please I I need want you more money now and Subscribe and channel like video stuff. 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