Shallan is a scholar under proclaimed heretic Jasnah, but only because she needs to steal a religious artifact from the princess. Now he’s headed to the Shattered Plains as a slave, with only an unusual windspren to keep him from madness. Kaladin is the son of a surgeon who went to war. The huge scope of the book makes it 1,252 pages in the paperback, but don’t let that deter you. That helps give the book a wider range, making it more of a world than the journeys of a few characters. Also in the interludes are characters you pretty much never see again that give little hints of information pertinent to the plot.
Each has different goals, and all are separated, though their paths and pasts do intertwine. It follows three people (plus flashbacks) through four parts, and one more character through the interludes, which are set between the parts. Cryptic, isn’t it? This novel is what you’d call epic. Surgebinding and Shardwielding can return the magics of ancient days can become ours again. The last is the highprince, a warlord whose eyes have opened to the past as his thirst for battle wanes. The third is the liar, a young woman who wears a scholar’s mantle over the heart of a thief. The second is the assassin, a murderer who weeps as he kills. The first is the surgeon, forced to put aside healing to become a soldier in the most brutal war of our time. But ignore the steel long enough, and it will eventually rust away. Or was that victory an illusion all along? Did our enemies realize that the harder they fought, the stronger we resisted? Perhaps they saw that the heat and the hammer only make for a better grade of sword.
Nothing, it appears, is more challenging to the souls of men than victory itself. A time when there was still magic in the world and honor in the hearts of men. The age before the Heralds abandoned us and the Knights Radiant turned against us. I long for the days before the Last Desolation.
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