Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson - early thoughts

 It doesn't seem like 10 years since I got my grubby claws on an arc copy of Way of Kings, the first in Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archives but I guess it must be. And now the much anticipated 4th enormous volume, Rhythm of War, is out. I was fortunate enough to be offered a sample of the first 100 or so pages last week for review so, obviously, I snapped it up.

 So, here we go. RoW starts, as all volumes have so far, with the prologue which gives another point of view telling of the events that kicked this whole thing off. This time it is Navani we follow on the night of Gavilar's murder... and a very interesting POV it is too! Nope, no spoilers here, sorry. 

 Then we move on to the story proper. Unlike previous volumes which carried straight on from the last (more or less) RoW kicks off around a year after the events of Oathbringer but there's not a lot of time for catching up. Straight from the off we are into the action with Kaladin and his Windrunners battling a host of Fused. I would say this is what Sanderson does best, the big epic battle scenes but to be honest that's only a part of it. His world building is off the chart, his character development up there with the best of the best. And it's not just the big part characters - even lesser players in this tale feel like they deserve to be there. 

And then... The SkyBarge. Just WOW!! That's all I can say really (y'know, the whole 'no spoilers here' thing). 

 I know the majority of Sanderson's work ties into his Cosmere and there were moments here that reminded me of his Mistborn series. It's going to be interesting to see see how the whole thing develops over the years. 

 But anyway, back to the book. The sample I recieved is only a small part of RoW but there is so much there that when I get home tomorrow and start on the book proper I'm going to start right from page 1 and experience all this awesomeness again. 

 Once again Mr Sanderson you have knocked it out of the park - and then some

Thank you to Gollancz and Will O'Mullane for the sample chapters and the invitation to join this Blogtour. Please visit the other bloggers (below) to see what they thought