Wind and Truth: Book Five of the Stormlight Archive

I really really wanted to love this book. I've enjoyed Brandon's work through the Mistborn series, into Robert Jordan's bloated fictional work, and beyond... But this... this is just... It's just a shade too far on the indulgent scale. Too long to reach the conclusion, too much background exposition balance against the characters, and ultimately too much of a loss in term of the key cast. I want to believe he can land this, but I'm sorry, I just don't. He wanted the ability to say after the ending, stay with me for another five books and I'll get you there, but we all know what he can do with a traditional trilogy. There's just NO NEED for this kind of bloat. I'm not going to say it's a bad book. It's got great characters doing amazing things (IF YOU STARTED WITH THE BEGINNGING OF THE SERIES, & NOT OTHERWISE), but at this point the feeling I have is that he's just milking the series. It speaks of shades of Jordan with Nynaeve, Egwene, and Elayne walking around sniffing and dragging out the book not talking to each other. Sorry, just cannot recommend this one...

This could be edited to 300 pages of original content. I skipped over 100 pages and missed no plot points. Much of the book is filler comprised of details you have already read in the previous books. About 1/3 through I started to wonder when Egwene would show up, stamp her foot and sniff. Not entirely predictable ending, not particularly satisfying either. I really enjoyed the first 3 books but book 4 and then this book have put me off the series entirely. It should never have made it past first draft. I would have rather waited another 3 years for a good book.

Amazing! This is a highly satisfying end to the story begun by Way of Kings. While there will be another arc, this book stands on its own to wrap up many of the themes of this arc and, brilliantly, positions new starting points for the second half.