JPK, on 08 January 2025 - 04:44 PM, said:
I know several of you have been working on the newest Stormlight Archive book for awhile now. Without spoilers, how're you liking it? Has there been any improvement to the common criticisms regarding slog and bloat that arose back around OATHBRINGER or is he continuing to double down on his bad habits as an author?
I may be about to jump off the SLA entirely...I'm slogging through it worse than I did with RoW. There is stuff to enjoy, but the change in editors between OB and RoW is still so evident here and letting Sando just run without a tether is hindering him. Like a certain character has the same internal revelation thought about 6 times...I was like "Didn't they already come to this realization?"...there's a repetition here that is similar to Kal's CONSTANT repetitive "revelations" about himself in RoW on his way to Therapy-land....it's an editing problem.
The "ten day" narrative confine of this one is doing it no favours as well as it constrains it a LOT.
There is only one truly entertaining storyline and even then it's not WoK or WoR level...there's a lot here that is setting the table for the cosmic cosmere fight and it's losing me as a result. I liked this series more when it was about Roshar and its individuals alone and I liked the intermittent "so and so shows up from Mistborn or Warbreaker" before, but it's become a rather dominant aspect now and I think the series is moving into a spectrum I care less about?
I dunno. The good news is that it's going to be a decade before books 6-10 start coming out, so I'll have a long ass break after this...but so far WaT is as much of a slog as RoW was if not more of one...YMMV. I think Abyss is enjoying it, so his take may be different from mine.
I think these are 600page books pushed to 1300 by a lack of bravery on the part of the new editor.
This post has been edited by QuickTidal: Yesterday, 07:14 PM