The Bottom Line: only word word will suffice: Epic!
For the uninitiated, Oathbringer is the third volume of the New York Times bestselling Stormlight Archive. The epic fantasy series began its live on a website and is now a runaway bestseller. Roshar is the native name for the planet on which The Stormlight Archive is set. It is also the name of the supercontinent on which the main events of the series take place.
Is this a good starting point for newbies? Nope. It would be like starting Game of Thrones in season three – completely disorienting. It’s also a complete fail for anyone that isn’t a hardcore fantasy genre fan. But veteran fans, however, may find that this is the best volume yet.
In the new book, humanity faces a new Desolation with the return of the Voidbringers, a foe with numbers as great as their thirst for vengeance.
Dalinar Kholin’s Alethi armies won a fleeting victory at a terrible cost: The enemy Parshendi summoned the violent Everstorm, which now sweeps the world with destruction, and in its passing awakens the once peaceful and subservient parshmen to the horror of their millennia-long enslavement by humans. While on a desperate flight to warn his family of the threat, Kaladin Stormblessed must come to grips with the fact that the newly kindled anger of the parshmen may be wholly justified.
Nestled in the mountains high above the storms, in the tower city of Urithiru, Shallan Davar investigates the wonders of the ancient stronghold of the Knights Radiant and unearths dark secrets lurking in its depths. And Dalinar realizes that his holy mission to unite his homeland of Alethkar was too narrow in scope. Unless all the nations of Roshar can put aside Dalinar’s blood-soaked past and stand together—and unless Dalinar himself can confront that past—even the restoration of the Knights Radiant will not prevent the end of civilization.
