By Brandon Sanderson
Read by Michael Kramer & Kate Reading
Reviewed by Gabby
Get Words of Radiance on audio here
Words of Radiance Overview:
Book two of the Stormlight Archive. From the best-selling author who completed Robert Jordan’s epic Wheel of Time series comes a new, original creation that matches anything else in modern fantasy for epic scope, thrilling imagination, superb characters, and sheer addictiveness. Return to a planet swept by apocalyptic storms, a world tipping into war as aristocratic families move to control the shard blades and shard plates, ancient artefacts from a past civilisation that can win wars.
Words of Radiance Audiobook Review:
STORY
The Good:
This series looks like it’s going to be one of my all time favourites. If you haven’t already bought Words of Radiance (WoR) go ahead and do so now. This is one of the highest rated audiobooks on audible! It is an absolute masterpiece and the characters and world are so easy to love. The sheer scope of his world building and all the different plot lines absolutely blew me away. I’m so curious to see how some of the seemingly random interludes actually fit into the story. I’m interested to see what all the passages quoted at the beginning of a chapter might really mean. There’s so much to think about! Which can be both good and bad. The good thing about having complicated plots and sub-plots is it keeps the reader/listener interested, to see how the author is going to tie everything together (Sanderson is brilliant at this) but it is also bad in the way you start to feel bogged down with all this information to keep track of. Personally I think that you might just need to listen again to really understand the significance of these little interludes. BUT not everyone has that kind of time. This audiobook is long and that’s amazing. It really didn’t feel like it dragged at any point or that things were being drawn out. Not once did I think ‘I wish this would hurry up and finish’. Some people might not like this, but I was so spell bound by the story that i consistently listened to it for at least 4 hours a day.
If you feel intimidated by the largeness of this audiobook, don’t be. The story is complex, but wonderfully easy to follow, I’m fairly certain that a lot of young adults could tear their way through this without a hitch. This whole audiobook is a roller coaster of emotions from start to finish and the last 20% of the book will have you fist pumping in the street. It’s that good. The character development was intriguing. Kaladin, the star of Way of Kings, is shown to be weaker, full of self-pity and anger. He shrinks into himself and becomes a bit lost. Shallan on the other hand almost becomes a new woman. She is master of ‘fake it till you make it’ but she’s also extremely clever, witty and not afraid to give anyone some lip. Dalinar is still awesome, I love Dalinar. The great thing about this series is that whilst you have a handful of main characters, you still become interested and emotionally invested in the minor characters. For example I love Rock. He’s such a good hearted giant and Michael Kramer gives him this sort of low but jolly voice. He’s also very funny. We learn about a whole lot of characters, occasionally hearing from new perspectives like Navani or Eshonai. A lot of people want interludes to be over and done with, but I was always excited when they came up, you never knew what little secret might be revealed.
Now that everything is converging on the Shattered Plains and all the characters story lines are starting to connect, the story seems more cohesive. Something big is going to go down between people and Parshendi, but there’s also other conflicts to think about- squabbles between High Princes and the Assassin in White. It just blew my mind the amount of detail and awesome sub-plots and storylines there were. 10/10 would listen again.
The Bad:
A lot of the problems people had with the book simply didn’t bother me, but i’ll make a note of them anyway. The passages at the beginning of each chapter are very different in style to the storyline itself and sometimes that can break the flow of things. But honestly what a stupid thing to complain about, those passages are there and don’t quite fit with the story for a reason! The other issue some may worry about is that the audiobook is too long. But persevere, it’s not a hard story to follow, the people who can’t finish it are probably the same people who thought Fifty Shades of Grey was quality writing. I’m not going to go there right now though.
There was one passage which didn’t sit right with me. It was an interlude with the girl lift. Firstly, out of all the names, in this wide, weird world of yours Sanderson, why did you choose Lift? The issue I had with the passage was that it seemed childish. As if a young adult had written this passage for Sanderson, it was such a stark contrast to all the other chapters and it didn’t make sense. It seemed like that interlude was shoved in there for no particular purpose (although of course there will be). I think that maybe Sanderson tried too hard to write from a young child’s perspective. So instead of focusing on what a kid might actually say, he just wrote like a kid.
IDEAS
I looked at the world building and all the ideas behind The Stormlight Archive and explained my thoughts thoroughly in the first review. If you’re interested you can see it here. I’m only refraining from adding more because
a) there wasn’t many new ideas introduced (with the exception being the giant crab shell thing that nudists lived on- that was a bit odd)
b) if I mention all the new things I’ll give away some spoilers.
Try Audible and Get Two Free Audiobooks.
CHARACTERS
The Good:
There’s no doubt that Shallan steals the show in this audiobook. She really comes into her own and goes from strength to strength. Although it might not seem like she does much, Shallan is very brave in her own right. She’s inquisitive and bold. So bold in fact that she tries to play Ghost Bloods. As the audiobook progresses, Shallan’s story really unfolds and we gradually learn about what really happened to House Davar. The scene with her father where Shallan sings him a lullaby is absolutely heart wrenching because **SPOILER** she’s just killed him and she’s obviously just so devastated by it. The moment was both tender and horrific. I got the distinct impression of a young girl doing something that she didn’t really want to do, but knew she had to for the good of her family and house. *END OF SPOILER* Shallan clearly has a lot more guts than many other characters who like to skulk behind their court politics. Shallan is a woman of action! Girl power, yeah! Her banter is fun and creates a much lighter tone at times, it’s nice for things not to be doom and gloom everyday. She also has this great relationship with **SPOILER** Pattern, her Spren, who starts off as this kind of mindless amusing pet (like if you kept a pet beetle for example) that slowly develops and starts to understand things, like Syl did. Patter answers some interesting questions and is also a big part of Shallan’s past. *End OF SPOILER)* All in all I love Shallan. She’s got red hair too. Red hair is cool.
Rock, I mentioned him before and he always made me smile. I simply love the voice Michael Kramer gave Rock, it just makes me think of this giant, viking like, red headed man who could squish you with a fist but instead cooks stew. He’s a solid character and although minor is still very much involved in the story. He centres Kaladin whenever he has a tantrum and is always sensible and reasonable. He tries very hard to do things right and it makes him so likeable. Even though I don’t know much about him, we got some tidbits of his history and he’s part of the original bridge crew! The crew is like a close knit family and it’s so nice, there’s a real feeling of friendship and loyalty to the crew that Sanderson failed to convey in some of his other books. (See Mistborn for a great example). There were only a handful of ex-bridge men we get to know, but I feel like Rock is… well, their rock! (Especially when Kaladin gets a bit depressed and can’t lift them up).
Dalinar! He’s my favourite, I love the Blackthorne and how he has this habit of doing really dramatic stuff. **SPOILER** When he gives Sadeas his shard blade in return for the Bridge men, showing he’s a man of his word and of honour, but also the whole scene was so dramatic, but that’s his style. It translated to this in my head: Sadeas: ‘there’s nothing you can give me that will make me release the Bridge men’. Dalinar: ‘ Oh yeah? What about my fucking shardblade? *Drops mic and Blade, cue dramatic exit* *END OF SPOILER** Sometimes Dalinar gets completely played by the other High Princes, but he always gets back on his feet, ready to make things right. On another note, when it comes to making things right, Dalinar isn’t afraid to beat the crap out of someone if need be. He’s incredibly smart and also kind hearted, but he has a ruthless streak that I suspect will learn more about in the next audiobook.
The Bad:
Kaladin. Kaladin, Kaladin. You were my hero. You were the star of Way of Kings and now you have been surpassed by Shallan. I don’t think Kaladin was a weak character at all. In fact I think Sanderson was very brave in what he did with the character. He took the guy we all loved and made him really dislikable. But the thing is, Kaladin wasn’t acting like a petulant teenager because he’s a bad person. It’s because he’s human. He’s very distrustful and reserved. He never confides in people about his problems, he has major trust issues with all of the light eyes, and yes it’s immature. But I think what listeners have forgotten is that Kaladin is really young and he was betrayed terribly by the light eyes. He thought his brother was going to be ok, but the light eyes let him down and he couldn’t save Tien himself. So he’s never forgiven the light eyes and never forgiven himself. So get off his chest, the poor guy was 16 or 17 when everything happened, of course he’s going to have issues. Rant over. Anyway I can’t defend him too much because I didn’t really like his character in this book. He was sulky, whiny and childish most of the time. He shows little respect to Dalinar when he should be grovelling at his feet for all things he did for Kaladin and his crew. He’s constantly trying to follow his own agenda, always wrapped up in ideas of revenge and his immediate dislike of anyone with light eyes puts a huge strain on his relationships with them. He makes the stupidest decisions ever. Giving away things he’s earned, chasing revenge. It’s no wonder that Syl starts to get impatient with him. Kaladin makes virtually no progress in temperament and sense of right and wrong until the final 15% of the book. He took far too long to pull himself together and he’s always moping when he should be out having a good time. All in all, Kaladin’s character was annoying, but I understand that it was kind of necessary for his character development and helping us understand him. I just think he could have gotten cooler much faster.
NARRATOR
The Good:
These narrators are so good. I like that there’s a good balance between male and female, although there is crossover (mentioned below) it’s nice for the female characters to be given a softer, female voice. Often times it suits the character better as well. Just like it’s sort of necessary to have a male narrate the low rough voices of soldiers. I’m not being sexist, just logical.
Both narrators read beautifully, their pace is similar, Reading is a little more articulate than Kramer, but not by much. They do great voices for all their characters, Kramer in particular makes it very easy to distinguish between the many characters. Reading brought this amazing tenderness to Shallan at times and you could truly feel the emotion. She was so good, she really gets into the character but it’s not over dramatic. She reads very realistically, easily incorporating the characters emotion into the dialogue.
The Bad:
The issue with the narrators (and it wasn’t even that bad) was that when crossover occurred. Reading is not going to be able to give Kaladin and Dalinar the same voices Kramer does- the ones we’re used to. Just as Kramer won’t truly be Shallan’s voice. That’s the trouble with having two narrators. If you have a whole cast for every single character it’s great, but otherwise there will always be some cross over. It wasn’t much of an issue for me. Although Reading is excellent, I also think that her voices for the men were a little too similar. Not for the main characters, but minor male ones all seemed to have a very similar voice. I think that could be improved, a little variety is a good thing!
I hope you enjoyed our ‘Words of Radiance’ Audiobook Review, come back soon!