The ongoing struggle with excessively long books.
It's not you, it's me, but it's also you.
I completely understand that there IS a market in the world for 28-hour audio novels, for 700-page fantasy, for the kind of long-wrought literary universes that look at forests the way A-10 Warthog pilots looked at Iraqi tanks in the 90s.
Brandon Sanderson himself has mentioned that his grandfather was a lumberjack and now here he is, continuing the family legacy of arborcide. For the record, the CrackerStack supports physical books, so don’t misunderstand me. I’m just also committed to honesty when I read a book, and I don’t want to overpuff something just because I like the concept and I like the guy who wrote it.
This is a good book, it’s just also way too damn long for my liking. That’s probably why I’m committed to these in audio and not owning the print books. Shame, because Ruocchio has gotten excellent cover art out of them.
For a summary of the contents of this book, check out Ruocchio’s own video synopsis here:
That more or less covers the big movements of the plot, the new revelations, the increased stakes, all that. I like the spiritual overtones of the story, the religious ramifications of it, the fact that characters can literally DIE and go to the AFTERLIFE and meet IMMORTAL BEINGS and then come back to enter the game, because the puppeteers holding the strings have some fun games to play.
It’s the deeper ideas in this saga that elevate it beyond its high page count peers. That’s what I’m here for. My personal tastes request that it move a little faster in getting there, but that would hinder the scope of the story, and besides—Ruocchio is both younger than me and a full-time author, so clearly what he’s doing is working better than what I’m doing.
Graham says this on a Sunday night as his next shift at work starts in <4 hours.
Anyway, I’m glad I checked this one off. I’m not committing to book three for April, I need a breather. It took me multiple days to cover this one at work. I’m excited to see where it goes from here.