Adam Oldham

After several let downs - specifically in terms of editing and what I experienced as a bumpy inconsistent increase of the cosmere lore crossovers in his books - I am glad to see Brandon pulled off a comeback with his (5th?) secret project. Emberdark reads like classic Sanderson - insanely immersive worldbuilding, engaging magic systems, and a coherent theme and story arc accompanied by characters that likewise have great arcs of their own. Were there pockets of lore-dumping exposition? Yes. Were they distracting from the story? Not really. Is this a big deal? Oh yes, because unlike The Lost Metal, these moments didn’t feel like fan fiction. Seriously - this is a substantially better book in the way Brandon treated cosmere lore and crossover info. While to me The Lost Metal was the worst offender, this issue was present in The Sunlit Man and especially in Wind and Truth. I cannot stress just how grateful I am to have experienced the master executing his craft effectively again. C’mon, why am I criticizing some of those other books in a review about Emberdark? Because it stands in stark contrast to those books: Awkward humor? Almost nonexistent. (“he he punched a person wasn’t that unexpected? hey laugh guys it’s my funny humor” was the only real hint of that corrupted Wayne/Lift voice, and I admit it’s even a stretch to compare this to that; it wasn’t here and it wasn’t missed). “Modern” language usage? None of that (save one “That sucks” oh wow blame the language translation technology throw away explanation, but that DIDN’T really break immersion at all, and I’d put money on Brandon smirking with the “see fans I said it was the translation thing notice I didn’t over do it throughout the book?” Yeah Brandon we noticed and APPRECIATED that!) What about vulgar language? We returned to form with nothing beyond “Shards…” which was much more in line with the classic Sanderson bibliography (save one brief moment of “you ol b*****d” Hoid, which Brandon seems Intent on being feather ruffly outside social conventions because he’s a loose cannon irreverent character). Forced representation of identity groups? Folks, Brandon managed to do a very effective story about cultural intersection that felt authentic, without a hint of preachiness. In fact, the “indigenous vs colonizer” dynamic felt pretty mature and was portrayed consistently from start to finish. What about the prose complaints from Wind and Truth? As one of the more vocal critics of this editing issue in his last book, THIS is what we meant. Emberdark felt polished - even the flashbacks that incorporated the short story. Nothing felt choppy or wordy or over the top or stilted and flat. This book was consistent and PROFESSIONALLY DELIVERED as a well-oiled story. Dusk has steelpushed his way into the top of the cosmosphere as a clearly new fan favorite character. I’ll say he’s the best character Brandon has written since Dalinar’s character growth in Oathbringer (and that was several years ago folks). You’ll appreciate this book more with cosmere background knowledge, but it also explains itself well. I highly recommend this book!

This book was 1,330 pages long, and only about 300 of them were meaningfully part of the story Brandon Sanderson started in The Way of Kings. This was a major step down in writing quality from the first three books in The Stormlight Archive, and several of the plot lines were bloated beyond redemption. The attempted humor was not funny. The “representation” felt forced and pandering. The amount of recycled content from previous books felt cheap. The number of swear words (used so out of character) broke the story immersion every time they were used - and they read like someone who doesn’t swear trying to sound cool by swearing. A huge portion of the book felt like the annoying fetch quests from any video game (let’s travel to all ten locations - and actually walk to every one of them!) Unlike seeing each horcrux origin in Harry Potter, the monasteries were painfully repetitive, with minimal, if any, value to the plot or worldbuilding. The nuance of mental health that was so masterfully illustrated in the first three books of this series was cast away in place of shallow, inauthentic, poorly written, surface level nonsense. There’s a line (this isn’t a spoiler because you’ll literally see this kind of nonsense the entire book) that goes “What are you? His spren? His god? No, I’m his therapist!” It’s so cringe I’m still rolling my eyes - it overshadowed all the really neat worldbuilding and plot that tragically didn’t happen until the last few pages of the book. I really hate saying all this, but I feel strongly enough about it to write a review. Brandon, please - spend the break you plan to take (and seriously deserve after the insane amount of writing and production/fulfillment you’ve committed to over the last couple of years) focusing on the polish your stories had so distinctively up until recently.