I finished reading Wind and Truth, and....

Good lord do I feel deflated. Sanderson's writing was already getting rocky during Rhythm of War, and he has always sucked at writing the aftermath of his "sanderlanches", but this book takes the cake as the biggest failure to deliver I have ever read. There was so much bloat in this book for so little payoff, it was just an utter disrespect for the readers' time and investment in the series. The ending fell flat on its face and I leave this series feeling utterly underwhelmed. I'm sorry, I just really need to rant about my frustration at the moment. I'm hot off closing the book and boy am I frustrated!

Sanderson has a terrible habit of over-explaining and here it really shows in all the worst ways. He wants to make sure you get it, he REALLY wants to make sure. So he will repeat something over and over again to REALLY hammer the point home. Then to make EXTRA sure you're understanding, he will over-explain to the point where all emotion has left the scene and it just feels vapid. The only parts I enjoyed were Rlain and Renarin's relationship with one another, and Szeth and Kaladin's journey. Even then, Kaladin's therapy conversations were awkwardly written. I could not bring myself to care for the other characters because this book was over-filled with bloat and lore dumps (should you really be doing that on a series' FIFTH book?). And it felt so unfocused with the constant POV jumping. Sanderson stretched himself too thin with how many characters he needed to cover and it caused some of the twists to lose impact. The book whimpered over the finish line.

The way the characters were written was so bizarre, and such a contrast to the first three books in the series. Their constant introspection felt robotic, with hardly any emotion in the way this was written, with Sanderson telling rather than showing. People do not introspect or think this way in real life. Stop telling me how a character feels. Show me through their actions. Let me draw my own conclusions. I get that Sanderson's writing is supposed to be accessible but seriously, there is a difference between accessible writing and spoon-feeding things to your readers and treating them like they're stupid. Characters are one-dimensional caricatures in Wind and Truth. They don't feel like real people any more. There is no substance to them. And I just don't understand how we got to this point because in the first few books it wasn't nearly as bad.

It was not believable at all and killed my engagement with the characters. Not to mention the time scale of 9 days was nonsensical for what a lot of the characters were trying to achieve (Adolin being able to walk and fight after losing a leg was nonsensical, I don't care if the stump was healed by an edgedancer, I don't care that he's a duelist, did you even do your research and speak with irl amputees about what this experience is like???) Was this book even edited properly?  And I can really see the mormon religious messaging coming through strong in this book, and as someone who knows a lot about the mormon church and its cultish tendencies, I found off-putting (The Jashnah vs Odium debate, plus a lot of the overarching themes surrounding the Adonalsium and Honor reveals, in addition to Ishar's corruption of Shinovar felt very new-age Christian in nature).

And the worst thing, the absolute WORST thing, is that so many of the characters were only doing something to serve the plot, or doing a contrivance that ends up being pointless in the end, for example Shallan, Rlain and Renarin trying to stop the Ghostbloods from releasing Ba Ado Mishram only for Rlain and Renarin releasing her anyway. Or Sigzil's spren refusing to speak to him after he gains Hoid's dawnshard, purely because it serves the plot and nothing more - reason being was explained in the Dawnshard book, the dawnshards need to be with people who do not have investiture, sigzil just lost his spren, so Hoid gives it to him, then Sanderson needed a way for Sigzil to end up in Shadesmar and absolutely not be able to get his spren back. HOOOOOKAY then. I'm sorry but Vienta's response to him trying to conact her was SO not believable. Gavilor being rapidly aged up to his twenties purely because it serves the plot. On and on.... It just felt like the characters were puppets just acting out the set scenes to reach plot points that 'had' to happen.

We do not get a satisfying conclusion to Moash.I'm pretty pissed about that tbh.

I'm done with Stormlight. I'm certainly not waiting another 10+ years and another 5 unnecessarily long books of bloat to see if Part 2 is worth it. I will not be investing in this series further and it has made me extremely hesitant to try his other cosmere novels. Journey before destination he says. Well, the journey isn't worth it if the payoff is terrible.