Note: This article does include spoilers.
Wind and Truth, the fifth book in Brandon Sanderson’s epic Stormlight Archive, doesn’t need fixing. It’s an international bestseller with 42,887 five-star ratings on Goodreads at the time of this writing (4.45 stars overall). The entire series has been a high-wire act with seemingly endless points of view and pages, all of which come together for famously bombastic endings at just the right time.
That Sanderson has been able to achieve this success while keeping to a tight deadline and writing other books in the meantime is nothing short of a miracle.
There’s no question that he enjoys plenty of support in his writing process. From his army of readers to his Dragonsteel team to his Tor publishers, there are a ton of really smart people who helped along the way.
However, of the relatively few negative reviews the book received (and what bestseller won’t receive some negative reviews?), there were a few common themes. Namely, complaints about length, the execution and fulfillment of promising ideas, and the general need for more powerful editorial oversight following Moshe Feder’s retirement from Tor.
But what exactly would that editorial oversight look like? As someone who works as an editor and has gone through multiple rounds of revisions for my own speculative fiction works, I can tell you that the process looks different from what readers expect.
Hopefully, this article gives you some insight into the editorial process, as well as something of a review for the book’s overall strengths and weaknesses (in my opinion).
What is an editor’s job?
Just like any job, an editor wears many hats throughout the publication process. When it comes to revising a draft from an author, however, I believe that the best feedback comes down to two fundamental aspects.
The first is understanding an author’s intentions. What makes a book unique? What sort of promises does the text offer the reader, and what does it need to deliver?
The second is advocating for a reader’s experience to the author. What parts are boring? What line was out of place?
It’s really difficult for an author to intuit what a reader might be feeling at any given moment. The processes of reading and writing are simply too different. For example, a book like Wind and Truth takes years to create, while you can consume it in a few days if you’re really dedicated. Scenes were likely written (or at least rewritten) out of order, character names have changed, and motivations shift over time. Sanderson told Esquire that he wrote four different endings for the book, and while they might be erased from the page, they remain in an author’s head like a jumbled mess.
Good feedback helps an author align their intentions with reader experience to tell a more satisfying and cohesive story.
What isn’t an editor’s job?
It’s not the editor’s job to write the book. Many editors won’t even bother with line-by-line notes—they won’t acquire a book in the first place if the prose is beyond repair. They have to trust an author’s prose and an author’s decision-making, even if the decisions are unconventional.
An editor’s feedback—especially for an author as popular as Sanderson—is often a suggestion, rather than a demand. Rarely will authors follow all of your edits blindly. They want to find their own path. That’s likely one of the reasons they started writing in the first place.
In his lecture series at BYU, Sanderson says that he takes about a third of the ideas from his reading group, which includes other published authors. He also says that when readers tell an author what’s wrong, they’re almost always right, but when they tell an author how to fix it, they’re almost always wrong.
By proving that you truly understand an author’s intentions, strengths, and staples, you can give yourself the best chance at offering feedback that actually gets implemented.
What are some of Wind and Truth’s staples?
Here are a few things that we knew to expect before we ever started Wind and Truth:
- The story takes place over the course of 10 days, given the challenge between Dalinar and Odium.
- The culmination of the plot is a contest of champions to determine the fate of Roshar, and Dalinar intends to serve as his own champion.
- The book is broken into multiple parts with world-building interludes in between.
- Wind and Truth tells Szeth’s backstory.
- The novel concludes the first arc of The Stormlight Archive.
And here are some of the promises the text made to readers in the early chapters.
- Kaladin will travel with Szeth to Shinovar and attempt to implement his rudimentary forms of psychological therapy with the former assassin.
- Dalinar will travel into the Spiritual Realm to discover the truth of how Honor died.
- A series of battles across Roshar will determine which nations fall under Odium’s control.
- The Ghostbloods will race Shallan and Renarin to find the hidden prison of Ba-Ado-Mishram, a powerful Unmade, in the Spiritual Realm.
We can see the smart and interesting ways that Sanderson tried to use those limitations and expectations in the book. Rather than breaking the work into five parts, as he had done before, he chose to break it into ten parts, reflecting the ten days. Simultaneously, he allowed himself some grace with the introduction of the Spiritual Realm, which exists in a sort of timelessness.
You can see how these three staples work together to support Sanderson’s goals. However, these choices also have drawbacks, which we can get into now.
How could Wind and Truth's staples negatively affect a reader’s experience?
As I dove into the book, I had three major concerns about how Sanderson’s staples might affect a reader.
1. Length
Let’s start with the obvious one. A book with 10 parts needs 10 arcs and 9 series of interludes. Naturally, this is going to increase the size of the book. The fact that the storylines are splintered—Szeth and Kaladin are on their own journey, Adolin is away from Shallan, Jasnah is on her own, etc.—only serves to extend that further. For example, you can’t develop Kaladin’s arc during Dalinar’s POV, as was possible in other books.
Some people will be eager for an extended story, given that it’s the last Stormlight book for a long while, but the series has already stretched the bounds of how long a story like this typically can be. Wind and Truth goes even further. It’s longer than all three of The Lord of the Rings books combined. It’s only natural that some readers will finish Day 1 and dread how far they have to go to finish.
The suggestions I would make to address concerns about length:
1. Watch for repetition in Szeth’s backstory and present. We know that the Stormlight Archive has a signature style: Each book in the series centers its backstory chapters around a single character or storyline. For Wind and Truth, readers were eager to dive into Szeth’s story as he returns to Shinovar.
However, this structure actually represents a shift in Sanderson’s style. Previous backstories were separated from current plotlines. Shallan was on the Shattered Plains when we read through much of the tragedy of House Davar. Dalinar was in Urithiru when we read about Evi and the Rift.
In these instances, the backstory allowed us some insight into internal conflict while the present story offered new challenges. Szeth’s return to Shinovar means he is literally revisiting his past—a past we may have read about only a chapter or two ago. This can feel more repetitive than previous iterations of the format.
Another issue is that as we get farther into the series, more of each character’s backstory is naturally revealed through the narrative. We may not know the specifics of Szeth’s banishment, but we know the general outline of the story from before we ever pick up Wind and Truth.
I would have recommended to shrink the backstory to the bare minimum, or perhaps to focus the narrative around a single character, like Szeth’s relationship with his father, and place the greatest burden of exposition on his journey with Kaladin through Shinovar.
Right now, the backstory chapters actually take up more of the book than the present. I would have liked to see that shift to a 75 percent split in favor of the present.
2. Try putting Dalinar’s or Tanavast’s chapters into the interludes. Sanderson already did something rather clever with the interludes in Wind and Truth by inserting Odium into each section. We get an inside look at our villain and his conflicting motivations, which helps drive intrigue.
In my opinion, it makes sense to pair those chapters with Dalinar or Tanavast. The story is about a contest between the two, so pairing their chapters together could create great opportunities to highlight differences and similarities while giving the reader a reason to keep reading.
Also, Dalinar’s position in a timeless Spiritual Realm is weakened by the 10-day structure. I wouldn’t want to get rid of that structure, but placing Dalinar’s chapters within the interludes better reflects the wonkiness of time within the realm.
3. Starting faster. Day Two is actually the longest out of the 10, and it feels that way. In fact, it’s about the same length as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. It’s at the end of Day Two that we finally enter the Spiritual Realm and Kaladin reasserts his conviction to help Szeth. These are fundamental to the book, and while it might be unreasonable to do all of that on the first day, a reader shouldn’t have to go through 400 pages to get to the premise.
4. Combining storylines and returning to basics. We’ll address this more in the next section…
2. Diffusion
An epic fantasy story, much like a comedy TV show, is often reliant on its ensemble cast. The best moments in these books often come when worlds collide—Bridge Four saving Dalinar in The Way of Kings, Shallan reaching the Shattered Plains for the first time and meeting her betrothed.
Many of the series’s famous “Sanderlanches” come when all of our favorite characters team up for that epic, Avengers-like feeling.
In Wind and Truth, these characters have teamed up for a common goal, but they are working individually or in small teams. You can see it in the breakdown of point-of-view characters: The Way of Kings had 18 POV characters, including the interludes. Wind and Truth has 34.
It’s also important to note how the increase in POV characters has decreased the amount of time we spend with our so-called main characters. In The Way of Kings, Kaladin’s book, we have 42 out of 88 chapters from his perspective—47.7 percent of the chapters! In Wind and Truth, Szeth’s word count leads the pack at 13.5 percent.
While we already talked about how this can increase the length of the story, it can also feel like a slightly watered-down version. For example, Jasnah’s arc is interesting individually, but she spends the majority of the book away from her family. Navani is with Dalinar in an entirely different realm. Perhaps the most notable interaction in the Spiritual Realm came from their time with a memory of Wit. There we saw the power of having all of our favorites gathered in one place.
Without that sense of reunion and rapport, an epic-length book can drag on even more. Even some of the combinations in this work, like Adolin and Yanagawn, while both are point-of-view characters, are not particularly compelling or familiar in my opinion.
The suggestions I would make to address concerns about diffusion:
1. Pair up some of our old favorites. Could Lift go to help her old pal Yawnagawn? I would love to see her make a greater impact on the story outside of the interludes. Perhaps that storyline could be told more quickly in the interludes if we don’t want to put Dalinar there.
Could Adolin be swept into the Spiritual Realm with Shallan? The married couple each account for 44 POV chapters in the book, the most outside of Szeth. The book could be greatly shortened if they were together, and I think it would be fitting for Adolin and Renarin to be with their father as he makes choices that will lead to his eventual demise.
2. Cut a couple of arcs. Is this the book for Ba-Ado-Mishram? What do we lose if we nix all of the sections about the mythical wind? Could we do without Sigzil’s point-of-view chapters or send Jasnah elsewhere? Can we concentrate the action around three or four storylines? Can any of the events happen off the page?
3. Tie the threads together before the end. These divided storylines add up to a larger picture, but it’s difficult for any one character to see it. No one witnesses Kaladin’s departure as a Herald. Adolin and Renarin never see Dalinar before the end. Can we more directly connect the Ghostbloods’ assassination attempt with Dalinar in the Spiritual Realm? By staging the wins and losses more evenly across the book, rather than saving them all for an end, you could free up page space and maximize impact.
3. Impact
Wind and Truth is the last of The Stormlight Archive that we’ll see for a long while, so it has to function in two distinct, almost contradictory ways: First, it has to offer an epic ending to the first arc. No punches can be pulled here. Second, it has to set up the next arc… and by necessity, can’t be the highest peak of the series as a whole.
This is a difficult, high-wire act, but Sanderson keeps things simple with his plotting method. He abides by the three Ps: promises, progress, and payoff. The Stormlight Archive has made several promises, and we have been making steady progress toward many of them. Now, it’s time for the payoff.
We’re ready to see Kaladin conquer some of his demons and ascend to becoming a Herald after seeing him swear the fourth ideal in Rhythm of War. We’re excited to see how Adolin and Mayalaran’s unique relationship develops. We want to see the death of Honor and Dalinar’s contest of champions. Some clever readers had predicted that Gavinor Kholin would become Odium’s champion and Chanarach would be revealed as Shallan’s mother.
Some of it might be predictable, but that’s because we’ve had a decade of foreshadowing. Delivering on those promises is an essential staple of a series-ender like this.
For the most part, Sanderson is headed in all the right directions. However, it’s clear given his altered ending that he was tempted to subvert expectations and take the reader by surprise. Some of the payoffs feel rushed or occluded for other reasons to affect a reaction, but in my opinion, they weaken the novel.
The suggestions I would make to address concerns about impact:
1. Increase the conversation around Dalinar’s decision to surrender the contest. It’s the most consequential decision in the entire book, and it’s made in a single moment without much dialogue or thought. We don’t even get much interaction between Gavinor and Dalinar, as Gavinor is frozen in time. This choice is almost a Deus Ex Machina, and in some respects it nullifies the entire plot of the journey within the Spiritual Realm. If Sanderson is intent on going in this direction, it can’t be a spur of the moment decision.
2. Take a second look at Kaladin’s therapy with Szeth. Kaladin has always been stubborn and convinced that he can save people. He was also suicidal about a day before this story begins. His interactions with Szeth, his attempts to solve decades of guilt in a matter of days, feels rushed and minimizes a character that many may consider the main character of the entire series. We’ve also got some lines of dialogue here that seem to be darlings that may need to be killed, like “I’m his therapist” or the reprise of “Honor is dead, but I’ll see what I can do.” Both may be good ideas on paper, but they took me and other readers out of the work entirely.
3. Let the Cosmere shine. We all celebrate Sanderson’s interconnected universe, and now is the time to show it off. Vasher has been established in this world as Zahel, Kelsier has made his appearance as Thaidakar, and Wit has been around since the beginning. There’s never been a better time to give them real roles within this conflict than now, but in my opinion, they’re still mostly relegated to the sidelines. Maybe Sanderson felt he needed to save the juicy parts for the Ghostbloods series, Mistborn, and other series, but if those characters never impact the larger plot, then they’re only cameos, not real characters.
The Stormlight Archive remains an iconic series of epic fantasy.
With or without these edits, what Sanderson has done with this series is truly remarkable. Everyone will have their own opinion on every character, storyline, and choice, but the best man for the job is already on the case. We all probably have a few quibbles, but we can also appreciate the sheer ambition and achievement that The Stormlight Archive represents.
