วีดีโอ

I cannot express how much I appreciate the correct pronunciation of The Gallant. I’m sick of hearing people talk about The GuLLaEAent or however that incorrect pronunciation goes…

Great video! Glad to have met you in 2024🎉!

Ooh! I'm excited to get to Feet of Clay! That's interesting about the audiobook experience. I sometimes find the right narrator can make the humor land for me more, but I also like to have my eyes on the page. Glad you loved The Gallant!

Awesome stuff Brian! I’ve never read the books of Babel series, and it’s been on my list for ages. I only read three books in December. Wind and Truth, which I feel only slightly better than you about lol. Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, which was great, and my favorite - Death of a Christmas Tree Salesman by Patricia Meredith.

I think you'll be thrilled with Tad Williams. Super video :)

Dude, that book haul was insane! I’m super jelly. Words of Radiance was my favorite of the month. I enjoy it more each time I read it. Happy that honest Wind and Truth review worked in your favor.

This is my favorite book of the year but i think this is a very fair review and you should do more book reviews. I largely agree with you on your criticisms, they just didnt bother me as much. Except the length- I think this is easily the best paced Stormlight novel. Most of the book was filled with absolutely insane shit so you didnt have to wait for the sanderlanche imo 😂 Minor correction, Brandon has rather famously NOT suffered from depression. He has talked a lot about he is generally always at a 7. So I do think that aspect plays a role because he is largely writing about depression from the viewpoint of other's explanations of it. (Although I think his depiction of depression is quite good. Therapist Kaladin is a different matter)

Awesome review thank you for sharing your thoughts!!

I'm reading "The Dragonbone Chair" very well so far!

I love those editions of Memory, Sorrow and Thorn. Ive thought about trying to read them in 2025. Tad feels like a huge blind spot of me.

It’s amazing that you made your criticisms and praises so concise and clear from just one take! I agree with your thoughts on Sanderson heavy handedness of the mental health themes in WaT. It feels like I’m getting slapped in the face with what is going through each characters minds. I’m not fully finished with the book yet (700 pages in so far) but I feel like the main beats of the story haven’t been hit yet and in my opinion that’s way too far in the book for me to feel like not much has happened regarding the plot. One specific complaint I have is Shallans split personality disorder. I suffered through that when it was at its peak in RoW and was happy to see that she got it mostly resolved with the banishment of Formless but then from what I’ve read it hasn’t gotten better in WaT which is frustrating for me. I enjoyed her chapters before her character became all about the other personalities. I’m not too sure if I’ll be continuing if Sanderson plans to keep up these heavy handed mental health themes

For me, this month I finished House of Chains and now I'm halfway through Midnight Tides. I will probably finish it in about three days or so. Actually, in Midnight Tides, it took me a while to get used to the new characters other than Trull Sengar, but it gets more interesting as it goes forward.

Agreed. Great review. A 3 from me as well for much of the same reasons. Too modern, not immersive enough. Too much internet culture coming thru

I tried to read Gourds! Gourds! in December, but it was just a bunch of pictures of squash and pumpkins and whatnot. I dunno what you all see in it, DNF'd at around ten pages. My December was pretty light on reading; my read of the month was easily Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which I read on paperback with the author's audiobook. Was an absolute delight.

Awesome book haul. Those Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn books look SO GOOD! And my most positive achievement of the year was definitely finishing the first draft of my novel. Excited about getting more into editing it this year!

Great haul, Brian! Since I plan to reread Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn in 2025, perhaps we can coordinate a buddy read if you’re up for it.

I started playing Elden Ring in December so my reading time was significantly reduced. Who could possibly have seen that coming.

Rivers of London was actually my very first read of 2025 and I enjoyed it a lot. I had a few issues with it but on and on a very promising start to a series. Comparing it to Verus, I'd say the tone is lighter and a bit more whimsical but still just as filled with darkness lurking underneath. I'll be curious to hear your thoughts about it.

It was the best of times for you in December my brother.

I think December book of the month for me has to be Empire of Silence. Oathbringer is a close second, but I was very impressed with the beginning of Suneater!

I think Allen says you should only eyeball Pratchett, the word play stands out on the page. I did that with my two favs, Wyrd Sisters & Guards! Guards!

I love the leather jacket Brian! Look Sharp! The purple blazer is pretty good looking too!

Goddman brian the intro was great🤣🤣 I might try gaurds! gaurds! from discworld too this month just I heard this series comedy is great and want to see how great it is

i finished it yeaterday, i remeber thinking at about the halfway mark that i was kinda bored because nothing of significance had happened. the first 80% was slow needless set-up to a concluson that happened far too quickly. most characters arcs just kinda fizzled out with a whimper. it was...meh. which compared to the other books made it highly dissapointing,

Glad to see someone with the same views as me, the quality of this series has really declined and this book is by far the worst. The prose has gotten worse and the editing feels like its none existent.

Thanks for the starting points. Dungeon Crawler Carl and New Era Online sound absolutely awesome, so I’m giving them a try once I finish Wind and Truth.

Great review! I think for me is that 90% of the book was a 10/10 but the other 10% was a 4/10 and that 10% really took me out of the book at times and overall over shadowed the good parts. I still really loved the book, but currently finishing up my re-read and this one will probably be my least favorite in the series

9:14 … so, so, so, so true, and I don’t see it talked about enough. While I definitely liked this book more than you, one thing that has annoyed me about Stormlight since book 2 is that the magic just… isn’t nearly as interesting as Mistborn or Warbreaker or any of the Secret Projects. I liked Navani’s magic engineering in RoW, but the surges just seem overpowered and one note. The spren have no rules and it’s hard to understand what they can or cannot do. The healing factor is so stupid and overpowered, it destroys all the tension that TWoK built up and thrived on, and turns the fight scenes into video games where you can just go into the menu at any time and drink potions till you’re full health. Don’t even get me started on the Fused, and that pursuer guy who acted like a Legend of Zelda miniboss with a weak point and three phases you had to fight to kill him. I’m excited to see if, or how, this changes in book 6-10

Great review

As someone who only has way of kings behind him, it still feels like you’re giving Branden his flowers here ina a Lot of ways. Still lookin forward to diving into the comsmere when that time comes

11:40 " YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES!" Is all I was told when it came to my fairly light criticisms of characters in Rhythm of War. I thought that, as fiction, there were a few characters who were undermining previous resolutions/arcs. Are things like depression a bit cyclical? Yes. It doesn't mean it translates into a huge series of 1,000 page fantasy books. It's become so overt now, its very hard to even talk about these characters without sounding like you're criticizing the health issue at hand.

Gotta say, I’m glad I only read the first book.

It was SO LONG. And the only characters that actually do anything IN THIS BOOK are Dalinar and Kaladin/Szeth. Why are there Jasnah pov's? Why are there Venli pov's? Shallan? Renarin? Sigzil? Most of them basically just felt like end-credit style Marvel scenes that are setting up for future books (or a previous book) but didn't actually affect Wind and Truth much at all.

I reread Shogun this year it is a great book and is in my top 10 for the year. I am so happy that Jake's campaign to get Booktube reading GGK has worked so well this year 😊. I've been reading him right from the beginning (35+ years😮) and he is a favourite author. Ive struggled to find anything new in 2024 that has wowed me. My top read of the year was a nostalgic reread of Julian May's series which begins with Many-Colored Land. I blame Jimmy for that one.... But I am excited to reread Memory Sorrow and Thorn in 2025 and then read Osten Ard for the first time. Happy New Year 🎉

It's finally good to see honest review on sando books, 😅

Sanderson has always been a pedestrian writer but must have been covered up by his editor Moshe. Now Moshe is gone Sanderson is free to publish his middle grade level prose. Sanderson is like Nickelback - it kind of sounds like music and it’s popular but it’s not music. Nirvana is music, and Rothfuss is Nirvana.

Spot on review. Exactly my thoughts.

Critical Failures series by Robert Bevan NPC's series by Drew Hayes

He who Fights with Monsters through book 10 was fantastic - 11 was disappointing. Agreed.

Great :) I agree on most every point. one thing I wish is that his fanbase wasn’t so sensitive. There should be no reason to spend 6-8 mins qualifying that you’re a fan and what you like about him etc. Almost everyone does this though - they walk on egg shells about criticism toward him. Your point on the Alpha/Beta readers is well done. He doesn’t really have readers that are focus groups - he has a bunch of fans that get to read his stuff early and because of the aforementioned sycophancy I don’t doubt at all that the feedback is weak if non existent. This video was great though. I hated about 70-80% of this book. i was too long by about 500 pages for me. Adolin was great , there was some awesome Cosmere stuff, and his ideas and a few standout characters are great toward the end. However, this is some of his worst dialogue I’ve experienced in anything he’s written so far. The mental health stuff was so poorly handled. Also, and this will likely upset people, but almost every female in this book has a weird arc. It’s just women screaming at and berating men during most of the thing. The stuff with gender was also very heavy handed for some reason. I don’t mind any of these themes, but, they were less themes and more a giant bludgeon. I’m personally disappointed as I was really hoping this arc would finish strong. We shall see how it goes I suppose :) thanks for the video!

Now you can't say that you don't do reviews and aren't good at them! I am perfectly fine not knowing how some aspects of the magic work-for once!! Thank you for all your thoughts! Maybe I won't read this one. 😬

I agree 100%. This was respectful and appreciative good feedback. The rest of the creators that I watched are not pointing at the obvious for fear of not being considered sando fans. I found the constant mental health assertions took away from a lot of the characters and I was annoyed by the end. I loved how he introduced it in the first few books

While there was some good, it was very scarce. The prose, which was already a weakness, somehow got even worse. Beloved characters, previously written in a consistent way, were suddenly changed-seemingly to add 500 extra pages. There are long books, and then there are LONG books. If you chopped out a third, or maybe even half of the book, I don’t think you would lose any meaningful plot development. The representation was also handled in a way that felt disrespectful. It was very surface-level, with no depth, as if it were an attempt to attract fans from one side without going deep enough to alienate intolerant fans either. I’m not a professional reviewer, so I have no clue how to talk about certain things or whether they count as spoilers, but, man, the humor was really bad as well. I’ll just leave it at that. I know it’s not the ending of the whole series, but for an ending to characters we’ve spent thousands of pages and millions of words with to boil down to basically a rip-off ending-executed much, much worse than one of Sando’s prior books-littered with about five complete cop-outs that felt like last-second additions is so heartbreaking. Truly.

So my problem with WaT is how disconnected it feels. Almost all of the plot lines while great in their own right really don’t impact the ending of this book at all. Which is really odd for Brandon Sanderson. If you can cut an entire plot line and put it in a .5 book after this one and change nothing about the book and it works perfectly something isn’t right there.

The way of kings 5 stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I agree with the length. I love this book but I’m not gonna lie, every stormlight book could’ve been 1000-1100 pages and it probably would’ve improved from that Book 2 for example, is much better paced. It does have a “sanderlanche” but it has epic moments throughout the book. I like the sanderlanche, wish there was more of a balance though