This article contains SPOILERS for The Stormlight Archive through book 5, Wind and Truth.
From the start, fantasy author Brandon Sanderson knew that his novel Wind and Truth was going to hit the fandom like a highstorm. Sanderson is an author with dozens of books under his belt, but The Stormlight Archive holds a special place in his career as his self-proclaimed magnum opus. Beginning with 2010's The Way of Kings, this series spans thousands of pages and includes thousands of characters, immersing readers in the storm-racked world of Roshar and its struggle against the godlike being known as Odium.
The main sequence of The Stormlight Archive is slated to span 10 novels total, split into two distinct arcs. As such, there was a lot of pressure on the fifth book, Wind and Truth, which released in December 2024. It wasn't only book five in a long-running series, but the culmination of the first arc of the series, which had been building for nearly a decade and a half. On top of that, the story had wild implications for the wider Cosmere, the interconnected universe where all of Sanderson's epic fantasy stories take place.
Fans have been divided over the book. As of this writing, Wind and Truth is the lowest-ranked mainline book in The Stormlight Archive on Goodreads, and there's been an uptick in critical reviews in spaces like BookTube. But even that relatively low Goodreads is still higher than 4 out of 5 stars, so a lot of people obviously liked the book. As a longtime fan of this series who enjoyed Wind and Truth quite a lot, it's been interesting to watch.
Last month I had the opportunity to sit down with Sanderson for a far-ranging, spoiler-filled interview about his work, which we'll be releasing later this week. Each day until it drops, we're posting excerpts which highlight a different project or topic Sanderson discussed. Yesterday we dove into Ghostbloods, Era 3 of his Mistborn series. Today it's Wind and Truth...because I couldn't resist asking Sanderson how he's feeling about the fan response to the book now that it's been out in the world for a while.
Brandon Sanderson was prepared for Wind and Truth to be controversial
"Largely, I feel very good about it. Because I do such extensive BETA reads, I know what people are going to say, and I'm usually targeting those emotions," Sanderson said. "Wind and Truth, when I was working on my original outlines, was the one that I knew would probably be the most divisive. And looking at the responses, [they] have been divisive in the ways that I expected and wanted, and so we're good."
"It's interesting, each book of The Stormlight Archive I feel needs to reinvent itself," he continued. "They are so long. I write them as if I were plotting a trilogy, each volume a trilogy, and I feel they would get stale really quickly if they didn't reinvent themselves periodically, with each volume. And so there's things I did in Wind and Truth very specifically to make people uncomfortable. And maybe that's not a wise choice, but it definitely was the artistic choice."
Sanderson broke down a specific example of one of the decisions he expected to ruffle feathers: the sidelining of Kaladin Stormblessed. The Way of Kings centered Kaladin as one of the lead protagonists of the series, but by the time of Wind and Truth, he's no longer on your typical Joseph Campbell-style Hero's Journey.
"You've had Kaladin as your main emotional through-line through the series so far, and he's not in book five, which is instantly gonna make people feel like something's off, something's weird about this book," Sanderson explained. "Kaladin's taking a backseat suddenly, and actually Adolin is doing the kind of plot structure that is typically a Kaladin plot structure, in book five."
As far as Sanderson is concerned, these sorts of daring choices were necessary, not just for Wind and Truth but for The Stormlight Archive as a whole. "There's a lot more that are kind of like that, that I hope, you know, readers who don't even see structure are gonna be like, 'Something's weird about this book.' Because I want the book to be the one when people get done, that they're just not quite sure what's going on and where the series is going anymore, because I knew the series needed that book five sort of change of the status quo if I was going to do 10 books."
The Wind and Truth criticism that surprised Brandon Sanderson
Something that makes Sanderson so unique as an author is how active he is in communicating with his fans. From releasing weekly YouTube progress updates to expansive yearly State of the Sanderson blog posts to popping onto Reddit to answer questions, Sanderson operates with a level of transparency that's rare among high-profile creatives. As such, he's well aware of the conflicted response Wind and Truth has gotten. And while much of it was along lines he expected, there were still criticisms he didn't see coming.
"[T]here is one piece of feedback I've gotten that has surprised me, and it's very rare that I'm surprised...and that's the prose in book five feeling a little more modern," Sanderson admitted. "The BETAs didn't spot it...that's the one that I've been looking at and saying, 'Alright, do I need to re-evaluate?' Like, I like listening to the fandom and things like this, and I do think I've been inching more and more modern, because in my head the Cosmere is going more and more modern. But that discounts kind of one of the reasons people come to fantasy, and that is as a contrast to a lot of contemporary fiction."
"People will say, 'It feels more YA,' which is very interesting because what actually is happening, I think, is that there's this kind of contemporary voice to prose that you'll find in YA, romance, thrillers, mystery...but a lot of the readers are going to experience it mostly through YA, coming out of YA, and things like that. And it's interesting to me that that's happening."Brandon Sanderson on Wind and Truth
The joke Sanderson knew might "be a step too far for people"
While discussions of voicing or the inclusion of modern parlance can be somewhat wide-ranging, there's one joke in Wind and Truth that gets mentioned more than any other. Early in Wind and Truth, the worldhopper Hoid tells Kaladin that he is, essentially, Roshar's first "therapist." This path for Kaladin was obvious from the previous book, Rhythm of War, where he started holding support groups to help other soldiers navigate their trauma and depression, ailments he was all too familiar with. But the word "therapist" doesn't exist on Roshar, so Kaladin has no idea what it means when Hoid says it.
The therapist line comes back around later in the novel in an important scene, where it functions as a punchline. The in-world continuity holds up, but many readers have railed against such a modern word appearing in an epic fantasy series, regardless of whether it originated from an ancient being who has traversed the Cosmere and seen worlds at every stage of technological and cultural development. But for Sanderson, including that joke is a decision he stands by.
"I love the therapist joke, but that might be the one that's a step too far," Sanderson said. "I knew when I was writing it, this could be a step too far for people, But sometimes you just have to do the things that make you smile."
It's the Week of Sanderson here at Winter Is Coming! We'll be sharing more excerpts from our conversation with Brandon Sanderson every day this week, leading up to the release of the full interview over the weekend. If you enjoyed this article, make sure to come back for the rest of the journey!
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