Review of Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive, Book 2)

I just finished reading Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive, Book 2) by Brandon Sanderson.📚

In the Stormlight Archive’s second issue, we follow Kaladin and his bridge four crew, now guardsmen for the king. Kaladin is still not clear what he wants from life, but he needs to find an answer and solution to fulfilling all his obligations.

Then we have Shallan, who gets further instruction from Jasna and needs to leave her old self behind to solve her task, to find a fabled city.

And the war on the Shattered Plains changes in intensity as the Parshendi start to change their strategy, ignoring the deadly side effects for the world.

Opinion

Please note that from here on out, the text can contain spoilers of the book.

I liked this book but reading it felt like reading multiple different stories at the same time. I think I got my bearings faster with the second book as I understood the world better now.

In this book, I came to like Shallan, contrary to the first book where I always waited for the POV to switch back to Kaladin. Here it was nearly the opposite. Throughout this book, she has grown a lot, and I liked her development from a shy little girl into a leader.

Kaladin also did some growing, but it felt smaller as he already did a lot of this in the first book. I’m wondering how all the new Radiants now will work together. Now that they are all on the same level.

And a big question to me is how Adolin will handle his new position, especially now that his brother, of a sudden, is higher than him. I strongly hope he will manage and not start to go over to the dark side out of spite or something like this.

I’m curious what will happen in the next three issues because, in a way, this book already felt like reading book fourteen of the Wheel of time ;-) I understand that we are only at the beginning of the bad things that will happen. But the stakes were already high here – I have no Ideas how Sanderson will be able to raise them more. But I’m convinced he will manage to do this.

• /review
• /the-stormlight-archive
• /book-2