** 79th book of 2020: Rhythm of ‘body keeps score’, followed by the rhythm of bore. **
Too often in fantasy, the hero’s journey consumes so much available bandwidth that, that the difficulties of high stakes situations are lost in the compression algorithm of novel writing. Elements like individual trauma or coalition politics are ignored entirely , leaving readers with conversation chess robots who plan every social interaction 4 moves in advance and stare at defeat and carnage unfazed in and deftness that mere mortals cannot dream of.
Rhythm of war starts on a strong note by dealing with trauma more directly, and perhaps in a way more adroit than other genre novels I’ve read. Kaladin is tired, has some form of PTSD, and needs to be demoted by Dalinar in order to maintain his sanity. Shallan, master of avoidance, has regressed in her progress of dealing with childhood trauma, going to such lengths as using multiple personalities to avoid memories and realities that are too painful for her to face.
Also encouraging, the coalition politics and technological advances felt like an interesting analog to world war 1, and in the same way that GRRM remixed the war of the roses. This is what we should get out of long fantasy series, the ability to explore stories that take a step off of the hero’s journey path, since the reader now has an understanding of the world and characters that authors have given us over the previous few thousand pages.
**Spoilers **
The high point was when Navani contemplates the downfall of Urithiru, and surmises ‘surrender was an option’. Battles only feel real if every once in a while our heroes lose, and I was hoping for this book to be one where the protagonists take a real drubbing. Defeat is just as interesting a story as victory and sadly we get so few stories of the former. But if I had put down the book when Teofil fails to retake the pillar it would have made for a better read.
At this point in the book, all of the plot lines were set in motion, and each resolved in a predictible way. Kaladin defeats the pursuer, and says the 4th oath on the edge of defeat. Shallan is successful in her subterfuge, faces formless, and gets allies from the honorspren, thanks to help from Maya Navani invents some more new things and successfully frees Uruthiru Venli manages to break away from the fused.
We are exposed to many Checkov’s spren throughout the book, and the MacGuffins in Uruthiru are repetitive enough to feels like the library level in Halo 1. I suspect this will be where I stop the series. There are some interesting ideas pursued in the book, but not enough to warrant 1200 pages: at that level of investment I’d rather read the history of civilization.