After pondering this for a while, I think I'm going to land on a soft 4 stars. I have had a complicated relationship so far with The Stormlight Archive, not because I dislike it at all (I really like it a lot!) but I feel there are so many technical components of Sanderson's writing that really hold this series back from its full potential. But I think a lot of my criticisms of the first two books were, in some part, addressed and changed for the better in the third book.

Firstly, the story moves as a much more consistently, engaging pace in this book. Action is dispersed throughout the story rather than being offloaded to the final 50 pages. There's a LOT of overarching story development taking place, making the reader feel a little less lost in where this big story is leading. The character development is really on point for our main cast. We see strong development for characters who have "resolved" arcs and some strong and interesting development for characters who were previously much less important to the story. Sanderson's character writing has always been fantastic (dialogue could use some work), and this book really showed it off.

However, with some of these improvements came some new challenges. The sheer amount of lore in this book had me confused a lot of the time. Despite its length, I had to constantly re-read chapters to get a handle on what exactly was happening and what the implications were. And while better paced, the various action scenes in this book did make it feel like it had a few climaxes which wouldn't give my emotions a break. Also, and I have said this every time, the book is too long. I appreciate the interesting POVs, but there were several chapters that seemingly had no impact to the story from either a side side side character, or a chapter from our main cast where.. not a lot happened.. This is a persistent problem with many of Sanderson's works, but it's particularly apparent in Stormlight. More isn't always better, and I think the quality of these books could really improve with some strategic editing down.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It revitalized my interest in the series after taking a year break between book two and book three, and I am planning on catching up before the year is out. The story has me intrigued and its leading to a highly anticipated year of Sanderson in 2023!