50 thoughts on “How it Feels Trying to Explain the Plot of the Stormlight Archive”
the stormlight archives is a book with three main plot lines, each led by a protagonist character shalan, kaladin, and dalinar. kaladin's arc deals with the social injustices of the worlds class system and the sufferings of slavery and moving forward even in terrible situations. dalinar's story follows a man who tries his best to be honorbale in a society that has mostly abandoned the principle in exhcange for self interests. finaly shalan's story deals with a young woman trying to save herself and her family from poverty and likely slavery, by stelaing from the most dangerous woman on the planet. this plot is interupted as that dangerour woman pulls shalan into the "let's save the world from demons plot line". and thats more or less the first two books of the stormlight archives. yes there are five books. the remianing two books are all about those three characters and many many others working together to fight a race war. yes we itnerupted the awsome plots from the first two books to do a race a war instead. cause its so much more interesting. dont worry the alternate dimension that was creepy as all hell, thats mostly a joke dimension filled with slapstick or out of place humor. nothing intriguing about it truly after we finaly get there. the characters will constantly remind you of how dangerous and amazing it is despite it being just a large ocean of glass beads. and no before you ask no one is ever really put in any significant danger there that u would actualy think theyd die or get seriously hurt. yeah get used to that in this series cause every supposed serious injusry is going to disapear in seconds even after they get their soul cut apart by a magic sword. which they told yhou couldn't be healed by the exact powers that later guess what heal that injusry. also dont expect half the plots to be progressed in any logical sense of time both irl and in universe cause there characters despite being mostly soldiers who've been fighting for years have no sense of urgency at all. "oh the city's being besieged, lets have tea and try to do somehting about it in a week or three. its fine we have crumpets" that more or less the characters reaction to every situaiton lets wait a week. lastly the books will constantly drop subplots as though board of them and move without giving any emotional pay off to various setups. sadious dalinar's primary villain for the first two books. oh he gets murdered in back alley by dalinar's son. if you thought that would be an interesting subplot to deal with then yoiur wrong. because dalinar puts his own son in charge of the murder case, yeah the one that murdered the guy. and of course no one else tries to solve the murder. not the mans wife or any of his officers. if you thought that the murderer would deal with some interesting issues as a result of this then guess again. he leaves the investigaiton to his fiance and barely mentions it for the rest of the book in which it matters. his fiance oh yeah thats shalan and becuase we dont know what to do with her at this point she'd going to deal with multipersonality disorder instead of actualy olving the murder. then shes going to find a totlay dangerous spirit in an ancient tower that instead of being a threat runs away form her out of fear when she touches a rock. but dont worry cuase this lets us segway into the drug abuse side plot following another character. who will later get magic that curs poison form his system but will still somehow how issues with this. even though those healing powers can literaly regrow limbs and heal wounds from soul cutting blades. guess they tap out at addiction though. oh and scars. oh and old wounds. except when they dont. yeah the guy who wrote this did an entire lecture on magic in fantasy stories and how it should be consistent. lol you thought he'd follow that here. no sorry if you want to read a book with a comrehensibel magic system then i suggest any of his other books or perhaps "shadow fo the conquerer" by shad M Brookes. but in the stormlight archives we laugh at coinsistency. so yes thats the later two books. oh the fifth book. yeah that hasnt come out yet because the author Branden Sanderson has decided it would be a better use of his time writing like thirty different shorter books before finishing the series he promised. well he had to write those miny novels to fill in some plot wholes for this book silly. yes its very much like having to watch every disney+ show in order to understand the next marvel movie why. oh you thought book authors were better than hollywood? oh you sweat summer child book authors were some of the first casaulties of the culture war. just look at rick rioradan and the backlash his heroes of olympus series got. guy didnt even give the legacy protagonist a narrative view in the last book.
so thats the stormlight archives by Branden Sanderson. for real though the first two books were great love those. unfortunately, the story fell apart by after that and there realy is no saving it by this point. you can really sea the decline in plot in his other works too such as the wax and waine series. that fourth book was something else. posisbly the worst book he ever wrote. its sad that sanderson's plots are falling apart though because his skill in prose has greatly increased since elantris. makes me wish the man would jsut take a break and reconsider some of this. not like he'll ever read this but thought id wirte some critiques down in sarcastic format. if you care to challenge any of my statements have a go. but remember i thrive on the argument.
Some tenthousand years ago, some guys killed god. But that doesn´t really matter. Some thousands years later 9 people laid down their weapons. And thousand years later, some depressed guys carry a bridge. Featuring: Storms, handfetish, crabs, magic and awesome and completely broken characters with therapist-fairys.
I've been explaining Stormlight as "Basically Game of Thrones Pokemon, set in a high-fantasy Dune world, feat. Halo Spartans with Lightsabers." and if they don't walk away, I get more specific.
Mine would be : ''Ayo wild continent with goofy storm stronger than your dad's belt, we follow a depressiv slave, the depressiv schizophrénic oncle of an alcoholic king, and a girl with the same hair as turtle-shield's-eater, whichi is depressiv AND madly annoying from Time to Time. Oh and also there's racism, sexism, assassination and the depressiv Can Ride 😏 the storm.
MAN HIRED BY ANT-PEOPLE KILLS KING SO BRIDGE PEOPLE ARE ENSLAVED TO GO TO WAR BUT THEN A GENERAL SHOUTS AT A SKY GIANT IN HIS DREAMS SO HIS SON CALLS HIM CRAZY AND THEN THE WIND MAKES A DOCTOR GLOW IN THE DARK AND THEN WIT GETS BORED AND LEAVES
I just got a stormlight related tattoo and was in this very same situation lmao. I basically just said that there are these people gaining powers right before this great war and they have to hold themselves to their vows, the first one being the tattoo I got: Life Before Death, Strength Before Weakness, Journey Before Destination (it's in the alethi women's script, wrapping around my forearm)
I tried explaining the whole thing to my uncle who's a long time DND player. When I explained Radiants to him he just cocked his head and said, well if someone had that kind of power, why wouldn't they just overthrow the king and do whatever they want?" Even when I tried to explain to him how the Ideals work, he just thought that was "lazy writing". I have since given up on trying to explain the series to people. I now just say, "oh it's high fantasy, so it would take a while to explain how it works without it sounding absurd." and that staves off most people.
No for real though! I just did my first Stormlight Archives review and the Way of Kings went from 6 minutes to almost 20 just because I realized how much detail even the summaries need 😭Amazing books, absolutely massive. The next one is going to be chaos
The back blurb is actually very good: The book is about a surgeon who struggles with the terrors of war, a thief pretending to be a scholar, an assasin who weeps as he kills, and a warlord who looks to the past as his thirst for battle wanes. And magic is seeping back into the world of men.
The correct response is to say with extreme contempt “a book, which I would like to return to.” and then proceed to ignore them. However, I am not cool enough to pull that off.
I started by explaining the intricate social structure and the gender roles of men and women. Did I do good? I then proceeded explaining the Highstorm in a langauge I barely speak. "There is storm. Strong storm. Yes, so strong, not even dirt exists. Predicting future not good. But figuring out when strong storm come with math is ok." I really was out here trying to explain the intricate societal loophole the Stormwardens went through to fortell future Highstorms while barely being able to speak the langauge.
Best one I ever heard was: A med-school dropout feels bad and decides to start a fitness club. A trust fund artist really needs to get an internship. And an illiterate AA member decides to start keeping a dream journal.
The first book is actually easy to explain. It's about a rich guy in a super-soldier armor suit, and a friendly neighborhood guy who gets great powers and gets lectured about great responsibilities. And there's a magic glove studded with gems that everybody wants to steal.
It’s about a disgraced warrior turned slave, a girl in search of a way to save her estranged family, and the deranged brother of the dead king who all must over come their mental instabilities in order to come together and save the world from a foretold cataclysmic event caused by crabs (not the std)
Ngl, TWoKs was sooooo long and complicated and i was confused from cover to cover. But i stuck with it and am now onto RoW and couldn’t be happier for having persisted coz it’s brilliant!
Burnt out teenager entering the workforce has to deal with organizational issues and stupid higher ups Starving artist must steal fancy glove from rich lady Senile old man tries to convince entire country that God is dead (and hook up with his brother's ex) And a kid who just wants to play around with his sticks
I was once reading Oathbringer and someone asked me what's it about. The best only description I could come up with at the time was 'It's about these people and some have powers and they're trying to unite all the kingdoms in this world because they are under attack'
I usually start off with how mysterious shard blades are (burned eyes, uncut flesh but cut clothes) and the the assassin in whites powers. That’s what got me hooked.
the stormlight archives is a book with three main plot lines, each led by a protagonist character shalan, kaladin, and dalinar. kaladin's arc deals with the social injustices of the worlds class system and the sufferings of slavery and moving forward even in terrible situations. dalinar's story follows a man who tries his best to be honorbale in a society that has mostly abandoned the principle in exhcange for self interests. finaly shalan's story deals with a young woman trying to save herself and her family from poverty and likely slavery, by stelaing from the most dangerous woman on the planet. this plot is interupted as that dangerour woman pulls shalan into the "let's save the world from demons plot line". and thats more or less the first two books of the stormlight archives. yes there are five books.
the remianing two books are all about those three characters and many many others working together to fight a race war. yes we itnerupted the awsome plots from the first two books to do a race a war instead. cause its so much more interesting. dont worry the alternate dimension that was creepy as all hell, thats mostly a joke dimension filled with slapstick or out of place humor. nothing intriguing about it truly after we finaly get there. the characters will constantly remind you of how dangerous and amazing it is despite it being just a large ocean of glass beads. and no before you ask no one is ever really put in any significant danger there that u would actualy think theyd die or get seriously hurt. yeah get used to that in this series cause every supposed serious injusry is going to disapear in seconds even after they get their soul cut apart by a magic sword. which they told yhou couldn't be healed by the exact powers that later guess what heal that injusry. also dont expect half the plots to be progressed in any logical sense of time both irl and in universe cause there characters despite being mostly soldiers who've been fighting for years have no sense of urgency at all. "oh the city's being besieged, lets have tea and try to do somehting about it in a week or three. its fine we have crumpets" that more or less the characters reaction to every situaiton lets wait a week. lastly the books will constantly drop subplots as though board of them and move without giving any emotional pay off to various setups. sadious dalinar's primary villain for the first two books. oh he gets murdered in back alley by dalinar's son. if you thought that would be an interesting subplot to deal with then yoiur wrong. because dalinar puts his own son in charge of the murder case, yeah the one that murdered the guy. and of course no one else tries to solve the murder. not the mans wife or any of his officers. if you thought that the murderer would deal with some interesting issues as a result of this then guess again. he leaves the investigaiton to his fiance and barely mentions it for the rest of the book in which it matters. his fiance oh yeah thats shalan and becuase we dont know what to do with her at this point she'd going to deal with multipersonality disorder instead of actualy olving the murder. then shes going to find a totlay dangerous spirit in an ancient tower that instead of being a threat runs away form her out of fear when she touches a rock. but dont worry cuase this lets us segway into the drug abuse side plot following another character. who will later get magic that curs poison form his system but will still somehow how issues with this. even though those healing powers can literaly regrow limbs and heal wounds from soul cutting blades. guess they tap out at addiction though. oh and scars. oh and old wounds. except when they dont. yeah the guy who wrote this did an entire lecture on magic in fantasy stories and how it should be consistent. lol you thought he'd follow that here. no sorry if you want to read a book with a comrehensibel magic system then i suggest any of his other books or perhaps "shadow fo the conquerer" by shad M Brookes. but in the stormlight archives we laugh at coinsistency. so yes thats the later two books.
oh the fifth book. yeah that hasnt come out yet because the author Branden Sanderson has decided it would be a better use of his time writing like thirty different shorter books before finishing the series he promised. well he had to write those miny novels to fill in some plot wholes for this book silly. yes its very much like having to watch every disney+ show in order to understand the next marvel movie why. oh you thought book authors were better than hollywood? oh you sweat summer child book authors were some of the first casaulties of the culture war. just look at rick rioradan and the backlash his heroes of olympus series got. guy didnt even give the legacy protagonist a narrative view in the last book.
so thats the stormlight archives by Branden Sanderson. for real though the first two books were great love those. unfortunately, the story fell apart by after that and there realy is no saving it by this point. you can really sea the decline in plot in his other works too such as the wax and waine series. that fourth book was something else. posisbly the worst book he ever wrote. its sad that sanderson's plots are falling apart though because his skill in prose has greatly increased since elantris. makes me wish the man would jsut take a break and reconsider some of this. not like he'll ever read this but thought id wirte some critiques down in sarcastic format. if you care to challenge any of my statements have a go. but remember i thrive on the argument.
I just say book about a book
Amygdala lol, is that an actual brain part or is it really just a reference to Bloodborne?
Some tenthousand years ago, some guys killed god. But that doesn´t really matter. Some thousands years later 9 people laid down their weapons. And thousand years later, some depressed guys carry a bridge.
Featuring: Storms, handfetish, crabs, magic and awesome and completely broken characters with therapist-fairys.
Me when someone asks me "hey, what's the wheel of time about?"
I've been explaining Stormlight as "Basically Game of Thrones Pokemon, set in a high-fantasy Dune world, feat. Halo Spartans with Lightsabers." and if they don't walk away, I get more specific.
:<D
Mine would be : ''Ayo wild continent with goofy storm stronger than your dad's belt, we follow a depressiv slave, the depressiv schizophrénic oncle of an alcoholic king, and a girl with the same hair as turtle-shield's-eater, whichi is depressiv AND madly annoying from Time to Time.
Oh and also there's racism, sexism, assassination and the depressiv Can Ride 😏 the storm.
MAN HIRED BY ANT-PEOPLE KILLS KING SO BRIDGE PEOPLE ARE ENSLAVED TO GO TO WAR BUT THEN A GENERAL SHOUTS AT A SKY GIANT IN HIS DREAMS SO HIS SON CALLS HIM CRAZY AND THEN THE WIND MAKES A DOCTOR GLOW IN THE DARK AND THEN WIT GETS BORED AND LEAVES
I just got a stormlight related tattoo and was in this very same situation lmao. I basically just said that there are these people gaining powers right before this great war and they have to hold themselves to their vows, the first one being the tattoo I got: Life Before Death, Strength Before Weakness, Journey Before Destination (it's in the alethi women's script, wrapping around my forearm)
Me: It’s fantasy like Lord of the Rings!
Stranger: Really!
Me: Kinda, well it’s actually more like Wheel of Time
Stranger: Oh! I love that show!
Me: 😔
This is really good 😂
“Crabs”
"Don't worry about it, it's not very good".
Think of an animal, any animal.
It's a crab now. No no, not crab *shaped*. It's the exact same, but now it's also a crustacean.
I was just going for a walk and trying to summarize the plot of stormligjt archive and yeah… Its rough lol
I tried explaining the whole thing to my uncle who's a long time DND player. When I explained Radiants to him he just cocked his head and said, well if someone had that kind of power, why wouldn't they just overthrow the king and do whatever they want?" Even when I tried to explain to him how the Ideals work, he just thought that was "lazy writing". I have since given up on trying to explain the series to people. I now just say, "oh it's high fantasy, so it would take a while to explain how it works without it sounding absurd." and that staves off most people.
After book 4 and 5 prologue:
"Szeth-son-son-Vallano, Truthless of Shinovar, wore white on the day he did everyone a storming favor"
No for real though! I just did my first Stormlight Archives review and the Way of Kings went from 6 minutes to almost 20 just because I realized how much detail even the summaries need 😭Amazing books, absolutely massive. The next one is going to be chaos
Forget explaining it, this is how I feel just trying to remember the story while I'm rereading lolol
This is amazing 😂😂😂
"mental illness gives you super powers"
I tried to read these. I just… tried and died.
The back blurb is actually very good: The book is about a surgeon who struggles with the terrors of war, a thief pretending to be a scholar, an assasin who weeps as he kills, and a warlord who looks to the past as his thirst for battle wanes. And magic is seeping back into the world of men.
ikr my parents asked me and i just didnt know how to explain
The correct response is to say with extreme contempt “a book, which I would like to return to.” and then proceed to ignore them. However, I am not cool enough to pull that off.
I tried pitching the series once. When I ended up at Adonalsium I knew that I fucked up somewhere along the way.
I usually start with "crabs. Also men cant read"
I started by explaining the intricate social structure and the gender roles of men and women. Did I do good? I then proceeded explaining the Highstorm in a langauge I barely speak. "There is storm. Strong storm. Yes, so strong, not even dirt exists. Predicting future not good. But figuring out when strong storm come with math is ok." I really was out here trying to explain the intricate societal loophole the Stormwardens went through to fortell future Highstorms while barely being able to speak the langauge.
Best one I ever heard was:
A med-school dropout feels bad and decides to start a fitness club.
A trust fund artist really needs to get an internship.
And an illiterate AA member decides to start keeping a dream journal.
That was a triggered response ingrained in all of us now 😂
Ok like there is this depressed guy that fights depression by trying to get shot by some savages
As a psychology major who loves and struggles to explain the Stormlight archive, I love this😂😂
The first book is actually easy to explain. It's about a rich guy in a super-soldier armor suit, and a friendly neighborhood guy who gets great powers and gets lectured about great responsibilities. And there's a magic glove studded with gems that everybody wants to steal.
I usually start telling all of kaladin's bridge story.
"so there are these magical swords, and constant hurricanes"
It’s about a disgraced warrior turned slave, a girl in search of a way to save her estranged family, and the deranged brother of the dead king who all must over come their mental instabilities in order to come together and save the world from a foretold cataclysmic event caused by crabs (not the std)
Screw Brandon Sanderson
Reading people's suggestions in the comments and I've no idea how all these comments are about the same piece of media
Went thought this the other day when I told someone I liked the books and they asked what they were about…
Ngl, TWoKs was sooooo long and complicated and i was confused from cover to cover. But i stuck with it and am now onto RoW and couldn’t be happier for having persisted coz it’s brilliant!
The best explanation I can come up with:
Burnt out teenager entering the workforce has to deal with organizational issues and stupid higher ups
Starving artist must steal fancy glove from rich lady
Senile old man tries to convince entire country that God is dead (and hook up with his brother's ex)
And a kid who just wants to play around with his sticks
I was once reading Oathbringer and someone asked me what's it about. The best only description I could come up with at the time was 'It's about these people and some have powers and they're trying to unite all the kingdoms in this world because they are under attack'
racism! but for eye color
"at least 2 books worth of pages about a depressed and selfpitying dude"
"annoying crab folks humming all the time"
I usually start off with how mysterious shard blades are (burned eyes, uncut flesh but cut clothes) and the the assassin in whites powers. That’s what got me hooked.
"Is about people going through diverse psicological patologys while they literally fight the end of the world, agaisnt god."
It's about dudes that swear oaths and dudes that grow carapaces
I swear this is literally me anytime anyone wants to know what the book is about😂