4 stars

Only very minor spoilers ahead.

It took me seven months to read this book, which is quite excessive even for a 1,200+ paged book; Words of Radiance was 1,100 pages long and it only took me about 10 days to read it. I can't tell if that's because I read more slowly now than I did in 2019 or because Rhythm of War was less engaging than Words of Radiance. Probably both.

A lot of Rhythm of War was quite repetitive, and although the many scenes of Navani and the fabrials and emulsifiers and whatever else was probably interesting the first time, but after 10+ variations upon the same scene, it got boring quickly. Also, Venli's scenes, even the flashbacks, weren't very interesting to me, while in the earlier books the flashbacks were usually some of the most interesting chapters.

In many ways, this book was definitely the weakest installment in the series, but I'm not going to rate it less than four stars for a number of reasons:

1. Jasnah is canonically asexual. I repeat, my queen Jasnah Kholin is canonically asexual, confirmed by Sanderson himself. Obviously this is of interest to me because I am biased here, and also because Jasnah has always been an icon even before this revelation.

Spoiler

Also, Wit x Jasnah is the best romance subplot Sanderson has ever written and you can't convince me otherwise.

2. Kaladin and Shallan get some lovely character development, as always.

3. Even though Rhythm of War was a lot weaker than the previous three books, it still managed to impress me with its intricate world building and massive, sprawling plot, so I figured if it can impress me, it deserves four stars.

I am most definitely going to read book five whenever it is released, but I'm worried that it's going to be even slower than this one was, because I thought Oathbringer was slow and then Rhythm of War ended up being even slower.

My ratings of the previous books in the series:
The Way of Kings: 4.5 stars
Words of Radiance: 5 stars
Oathbringer: 4.5 stars