Book Review - Oathbringer: The Stormlight Archive, Book 3 - by Brandon Sanderson
In total, this book took me a little over a year to finish reading.
No, I don't read that slow, lol.
About halfway through the book is when I was ready to publish my debut novel, so I stopped reading for a bit while I focused on getting my first novel prepared for a successful launch. Fast forward a couple months after Sins of Greed, the name of my first novel, was released, and I finally found the mental space to begin reading again.
So, this book felt like a LONG journey to me. And I would venture to say that even if I read the book through in one straight shot, it still would have felt the same. Sanderson's novels, like most Fantasy authors, are GINORMOUS. Bible-length sagas of wonderfully woven world-building.
I have only one con about this book, and about Sanderson's writing in general - it can be pretty easy to get confused. At least for me. The reason that is, though, is not because he's not descriptive enough in his prose or anything, but simply because his worlds are so COMPLEX. There is SO MUCH going on. It's all taking place in a world called the Cosmere, but within the Cosmere is dozens upon dozens of planets and universes and alternate timelines. This character was born here, where he was a god, but here he's just a regular person, oh and over there he has a splinter of himself that is him, but not really, more like a version of him, etc. etc.
Don't get me wrong - it's SICK. This guy has an imagination. And he managed to weave all this together, miraculously, with NO PLOT HOLES. That I can find at least. That's real talent. It's just that for new bloods to the genre of fantasy, starting with a Sanderson novel may be a BIT overwhelming.
The good news is that this same con opens the door to a myriad of different pro's. The many facets of things and places and people in this book, and in the entire series of The Stormlight Archive, made me often put down the book while I was reading and get on Google to search up the lore of a specific person or place simply because how interested I was in it, and how hungry I was to learn more as quickly as possible. Sanderson's writing, for me, gave me an appetite of his world that made me voraciously want to discover new things.
That's the beauty about reading - it opens up so many doors in your mind of intellectual consciousness.
So, all in all, I would HIGHLY recommend Oathbringer, the entire Stormlight Archive series, and any Sanderson novel (I think they're ALL based in the Cosmere, from what I've been able to ascertain) to die-hard fantasy fans. I would also recommend it to newbies just getting into the genre, though I would preface them with the same aforementioned warning - you MIGHT want to start with something a little less daunting, because you may not be ready for this.
Happy reading! :-)