This volume also reveals the pasts of singer sisters Eshonai and Venli as, in the present, Venli develops a secret plan for the singers’ independence, free from both human and the Fused.

The human cast includes Kaladin, a surgeon who became a soldier, benched at the beginning of the book due to his PTSD Shallan, a woman with dissociative identity disorder who is also a master illusionist working in tandem for the heroes and a secretive spy enclave that claims to have answers to the universe Dalinar, a Bondsmith who can heighten the abilities of others (among other gifts), and who struggles against pressures to become a high king Navani, his wife, a queen who is more an engineer and many others. The singers have joined with powers to become the Fused, hosts to ancient souls in modern bodies. As powers of old have returned, the humans and the spren (magical spirits attuned to certain emotions or elements) have begun to reform the Radiant Knights. Rhythm of War continues the story of a war between humans and the parshmen (the singers) who are the native species of the world of Roshar. “I grew up on Anne McCaffrey and Robert Jordan and these really great, meaty epic fantasy series, which are my first love… I always wanted to do one of those myself.”

When trying to write for the market, he produced what he feels were some really awful novels, and beginning The Way of Kings was a way to return to the types of stories that he loved: big, chunky fantasy. (It was published in 2005.) “ The Way of Kings was number 13, the last of those unpublished books,” he recalls to Den of Geek. Sanderson wrote 13 novels before he sold one: Elantris, in 2003. He is, of course, not the only person who has enjoyed the epic fantasy saga. Now, 18 years later, Rhythm of War, the fourth book of The Stormlight Archive, marks Sanderson’s 25th novel (in addition to assorted novellas, short stories, and graphic novels), and something over seven million words of published fiction. Throwing away any ideas of what the market wanted, he decided to write something instead for himself. When Brandon Sanderson wrote The Way of Kings, the first book in The Stormlight Archive series, he was ready to give up on publishing.

Tor rhythm of war