None
4 stars
Honestly, for most of this book I felt much the same as Well of Ascension. Maybe even a bit worse. The world was ending and it was taking bloody forever to resolve any even remotely relevant plot point. Half of the worldbuilding was fit into the pre-chapter writings of this book's spoiler character, and we'd basically watch the characters catching up to those preambles throughout the book. It honestly felt like Sanderson had built too much around his central conflict and that he couldn't quite get it to come together.
Then once we finally get back to the saving the world stuff, Sanderson reveals that he actually had such a ridiculously firm grasp of everything going on that the previous complaints feel silly. Everything from the inconsequential character quirks to millenia of detailed worldbuilding come together in a flurry of reveals, twists, tragedies, and triumphs that might be the most …
Honestly, for most of this book I felt much the same as Well of Ascension. Maybe even a bit worse. The world was ending and it was taking bloody forever to resolve any even remotely relevant plot point. Half of the worldbuilding was fit into the pre-chapter writings of this book's spoiler character, and we'd basically watch the characters catching up to those preambles throughout the book. It honestly felt like Sanderson had built too much around his central conflict and that he couldn't quite get it to come together.
Then once we finally get back to the saving the world stuff, Sanderson reveals that he actually had such a ridiculously firm grasp of everything going on that the previous complaints feel silly. Everything from the inconsequential character quirks to millenia of detailed worldbuilding come together in a flurry of reveals, twists, tragedies, and triumphs that might be the most satisfying conclusion to a series I've ever read. The epilogue puts such a beautiful bow on the whole thing that I actually cried.
The ending is the easiest five stars of my life. It is truly masterful. However, even if the previous 500 pages turned out to be integral to the whole thing, it really didn't read very well in the midst of it. I was pretty worried about how it was all going to shake out until it all started shaking out.
