REVIEW: Words of Radiance (Stormlight Archive, #2)

Two years later, and Stormlight Archive has Lashed my hype to the moon.

For a bit of background, I first started my Stormlight Archive journey two years ago.

I bought The Way of Kings physically for my 17th birthday, and even though it was insanely good, it took me two months to read. Once I finished, I wanted to try reading some other smaller stories before I continued with the Stormlight Archive series.

Then months passed.

Then two years.

It constantly hung in the back of my head to continue, even as I read The Sunlit Man and found out it was actually the last story in the Stormlight Archive. But, every time I thought about continuing, I remembered just how long the first book felt.

So, after finishing this past semester, I thought “Why not?” and got Words of Radiance to dive in, starting at the beginning of May.

After finishing, I can confirm, this is one of the worst books I’ve ever read, and somehow it’s beat out Ready Player Two as a purchase I genuinely regret making.

Nah, I’m playing.

5/5 stars, no contest.

I LOVED this book. On my last day of reading, I was on page 800-something out of 1000, and I had to specifically pick the time that I started reading, ‘cause I knew that, with so much going on, once I started, I didn’t want to stop.

So I read the last two hundred pages in one sitting.

I don’t have much of a goal with how I organize this. I know that I’m late as hell to the Stormlight Archive party, but I just want you guys to reexperience the magic of reading this for the first time — ‘cause there was MAGIC in the experience, especially in the last half.

Words of Radiance easily tops The Way of Kings for me. Sure, it’s been two years since I read it, but even after checking the summary, most of WoK felt like everything happened in its own corners. Shallan and Jasnah’s plotline was largely unrelated to Dalinar’s plotline, which was only tangibly related to Kaladin’s plotline. Obviously, yes, by the end, Sanderson went sicko mode, Dalinar bought Bridge 4, and Shallan and Jasnah started to head for the Shattered Plains, but that doesn’t change that, before then, everything felt like it ran in its own lane, and there was a large lack of magic.

Being an epic fantasy series, I know that Stormlight Archive has a way longer timeframe to scale its “magicness”. If it’s gonna be a ten book series of tomes, of course I don’t think the characters should be reaching the pinnacle of their power by the first. That’s why, for The Way of Kings, the most “magic” were Shardblades, Shardplate, and Szeth (more on him later). In the context of the setting, “magic” and the Radiants were gone, betrayed their oaths, and Surgebinding, the magic system the series largely focuses on (as far as I know), was almost non-existent in the present time.

I’m a huge fan of magic systems and fight scenes and magic-fueled fight scenes, so even if I loved The Way of Kings, even if the plots themselves were gripping, I spent most of the book waiting for what came next, when the “magic” and the interconnectedness of the plotlines finally turned up to the next level.