An amazing book, and unquestionably epic. OB had everything: character growth, worldbuilding, heartbreak, spectacle. Once the plot geared itself into motion it hurdled towards the end. There's something special about the way Sanderson writes that the end product is so spectacularly satisfying. Everything just clicks together so well as if the story could only have concluded the way that it did. Despite that, it's not overly predictable.

I feel that, despite his huge success, Sanderson doesn't really get the credit due to him in some circles of fantasy readers compared to more "adult" writers with a grittier style. However, I think this is a disservice to the work he's done both to develop his characters and to evaluate and work with stereotypes of the genre. Despite building towards a war of mythic proportions, he's really undermined what I think of as the Dark Lord or Orc problem. There are no fundamentally evil people, bar perhaps Odium or Amaram, but varying perspectives and narratives that we receive through the characters. Moreover, this variety of experience and emotional development has been translated into the developing stories of our main cast in SA (imo): Shallan, Kaladin, and Dalinar. I've found Shallan to be one of the more annoying characters, and did not look forward to reading another of her chapters in WoR (or a Veil chapter), but she really came into her own in OB. The long arc of her character has bent towards progress in a satisfying way, and it felt good for her to make the personal breakthroughs she needed. Similarly, as much as I wanted Kaladin to make breakthroughs of his own, it made sense that he was not emotionally ready to take the next step.

It was a little too long though (heresy, I know). It could have been shortened a little I think in the first half, around Urithiru, and the journey through Shadesmar. I still blitzed through the book over my Thanksgiving break, and it really did start to pick up and soar after the first half, but it could have been tighter. The dialogue scenes are still the weakest: characters with affected language (Rock, Lopen) are manageable, but it's the Shallan scenes that are more difficult. The jokes don't land - they're a little too wink wink nod nod, which is a shame because I think Sanderson could write more naturalistic dialogue (though he should probably stay away from the flirty). There were also some places were I felt that the dialogue was a little too loose or slangy and it drew me out a bit. Lift is one of the big culprits here.