Wind and Truth – Day Five Review

It’s been months since my last Wind and Truth post, and I confess…

I’ve cheated on this book.

I’ve released reviews on Defiant, Bitten, and the whole Darkest Powers trilogy since I started reading Wind and Truth.

Despite the hype that I’ve tried to maintain across my Day 1-4 posts, the person I’ve been trying to fool is not you, dear reader, but myself.

You see, I really wanted to love this book. After already investing so much time and energy into these doorstop epics, over 4000 pages, I was desperate to enjoy the finale. This desperation was worsened by my difficulty in securing a specific English copy in Switzerland.

I was incredibly invested in the idea that this book would satisfy me.

Unfortunately, the reality is that I do not love this book. Truth be told, I am really bored, and at page 600, I’m dropping it.

I can’t bring myself to spend another 1000~ pages struggling through it when I could be falling in love with something else.

So… what are the problems with Wind and Truth that brought me to this realisation?

Wind and Truth – Issues?

I’ve hinted at some of the issues in my reviews of Day 1 through 4, but here I’ll be more blatant about how much it’s affecting me.

Depictions of Autism

Firstly, as a woman who resonates strongly with autism, the depiction of Renarin in Wind and Truth is extremely grating. I enjoy genuine narratives about autistic difference, but every moment with Renarin in Wind and Truth reminds me of the author’s hand, insincere.

Stormlight Book 5’s Renarin regularly conjures the image of Sanderson looking to the camera and winking. It tells me, ‘I know what autism looks like’, without really capturing how it feels. It feels forced. Renarin was one of my favourite characters in the previous books, and I feel so frustrated by this perceived change in book 5.

For representations of autistic characters that I have enjoyed, I would recommend The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time and Mistborn Era 2—which confuses me even more, because Sanderson has previously crafted one of my favourite intentionally neurodiverse characters in all fiction! Why is the depiction of Renarin so ‘nudge-nudge wink-wink’!?

I’m sure there are some people who feel seen by Renarin in book 5. To those people, I am happy for you, genuinely, and I wish I could have felt that too.

Repetitious Arcs

Many of these characters have already climaxed their character arcs more than once, and by book 5, it feels like Kaladin, Adolin, and Dalinar have fallen into a routine. I would also accuse other characters in SA5 of this flaw, but none so strongly as these three.

Adolin in particular must shoulder my readerly wrath as his chapters devolve into wondering how Shallan is getting along, followed by various battle preparations. I have little interest in his tame struggles with the Azish.

Dalinar’s stubborn inability to delegate could be coming to a head later in the book, but by Day 5, I am tiring of his perspective. I enjoy how his portion of SA5 is revealing new fallacies of the Stormfather, however, I resent how much Dalinar I must wade through to get there.

Lastly, Kaladin. He’s a secondary character to Szeth, but lacking all of the wry wit to carry the observation of Szeth. He’s certainly no Nick from The Great Gatsby. I am still deeply curious about the romance blossoming between Kaladin and Syl, but the focus is on Szeth, and thus, I am tired of Kaladin’s chapters, too.

(I never liked Szeth’s chapters, and while I enjoyed them more in SA5, I still struggled).

Characters arcs that seriously bored me in SA5 include Sigzil’s—needlessly stretched out—and Jasnah’s, which I was very excited for but have been extremely disappointed by. I anticipated her break-up with Wit, but then I felt that it was poorly done and very rushed, which seems ridiculous in such a girthy book. Why am I reading about Adolin yet again shoring up the defences in Azir, but I get scant crumbs from the emotional turmoil between Jasnah and Wit? Why!?

Overall, I would describe this book as self-indulgent. In my opinion, it needed a lot more cutting before becoming the final product, and maybe that shows in its Goodreads’ score—Wind and Truth currently possesses the lowest score amongst the main Stormlight books at 4.39.

However, it’s still 4.39, so it’s clear that a lot of people still found this to be a great book, and I am possibly in the minority in my critiques here. Or, perhaps other readers enjoyed it despite the flaws. Perhaps the high points were enough for them.

While I’m being so negative about SA5, I would like to add that Mistborn era 1 remains my favourite book series of all time.

Character Arcs I enjoyed in SA5

Character arcs that continued to interest me include… Shallan and Syl. That’s the end of the list.

I may finally finish the booking by skimming everything else and reading only Shallan, Syl, and Jasnah’s perspectives—because Jasnah used to be my favourite character and I still have some vain hope that the book could pull it back.

This would be a terrible abuse of this novel, but it’s possibly the only way I’ll see the end of it.

It probably goes without saying, but I won’t be posting further reviews of Days 6-10, because I won’t be reading them closely enough to do them justice, assuming that I read them at all.

For more positive reviews of Sanderson novels, please check out our website’s book reviews for Brandon Sanderson! I’ve enjoyed every other novel of his that I’ve read, with the exception of Frugal Wizard…

I look forward to bringing you a review of Robin Hobb’s Assassin’s Apprentice soon, the first book in The Farseer Trilogy, and an honest-to-goodness, thoughtfully-written, traditional fantasy escape.