Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive #3)

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⭐ 9.5/10

(Originally written by Will)

The Stormlight Archive is the absolute best high fantasy series happening right now, and book three doesn't disappoint. I just re-read/skimmed this one because book four has just been released!

If you're worried about starting a series that's not complete, Sanderson has plans to have some sort of ending with book five, so it won't be long now. And then he has another five book series planned after that, in the same universe!

I won't try to do a full review because it's long, but one of my favorite things about Sanderson's stuff is how he takes all the best traditional parts of the high fantasy that's come before him, and then manages to improve on so many aspects to make it all feel fresh again.

It's got magic systems, a rich in-universe history, different races & types of intelligent beings and all that good stuff, but it also has:

  1. Moral ambiguity! You rarely get a group of perfectly good people fighting against pure evil. Instead, characters on both sides of conflicts are complex in all sorts of ways, and are themselves struggling to figure out what they want to do when there's all sorts of grey area.
  2. Characters deal with common issues that have only recently become more acceptable to talk about in public, like depression and general mental health issues, drug addiction, self-confidence issues, etc.


It doesn't get a perfect 10 because it's 10% too long, but that's really the only complaint I could come up with.

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