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Rhythm of war tor2/14/2024 The structure and writing of the book reflected Kaladin’s struggles with depression, and the waves of his moods. Its shape is that of a sluggish heartbeat, pulses upward followed by long, slow, painful persistence. In fact, I was literally 2.5 hours into this 57.5-hour audiobook when it suddenly clicked: It didn’t take a second, longer read for me to make the connection. And I wasn’t sure that 1) I liked it, and 2) that it would feel the same on a second, longer read. It’s not anything like those that come before it. Frustratingly contained, with new information that got caught in corners but with no resolutions (yet), emotions smothered: a picture-perfect model of a book, rather than the frenetic energy that I’d expected. Rhythm of War, for instance, felt like a glass cube or terrarium with structures inside, all lined up and regular and unable to flow organically because there were walls on all the sides to keep them held in. And I mean, literally see them that way, as in, when I picture a story, it has physical form that has nothing to do with the traditional book shape, or even the traditional story arc. I know that this is a bit of a weird thing and probably has to do with my synesthesia, but I tend to see stories as having shape. The reason that I don’t normally swallow 1200-paged books in two days is because then I’m too close to truly see them. I knew that I needed another, slower, audio reread to fully immerse myself into the world and begin to make connections. I knew this had a lot to do with how I read the book – the first 19 chapters over several months of pre-release, followed by a frantic two-day read of the remaining 900+ pages – and the fact that my favorite character (Shallan) was missing from a giant chunk of the book. My first impressions were of a book that was generally well-written, and which had lot of interesting new developments, but just felt off for me. Absolute shocker, yeah? On a book I expected to be my favorite of the year, and the one I’d literally been looking forward to for three years? But yeah. Let me start by saying this: On first read, I didn’t necessarily like the book. For another, it wouldn’t make any sense to people who haven’t read earlier books, and would spoil earlier books besides. I’m not going to write up a summary of this.
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