I've been listening to a lot of audiobooks recently. I got the Libby app on my phone and put a bunch of things on hold. They tell you how long you will likely have to wait to receive your book, and I used that to base my decision of how many holds to place, but then I learned that that guess of when the book will be delivered is totally wrong. What they should say is that all the books will be delivered to you on the same day, because that has now happened to me about three different times, even the books that it said would take months before they got to me.
Anyhow, something about this system has got me trying desperately to listen to the books as fast as I can. If I don't hurry, the next ten holds will come in, and I'll have to delay all of them again. It's a feast or famine thing. They all come at once, but then none come for two weeks, and then I have nothing to listen to in the interim. So, when they come, I want to be ready for them.
Anyhow, it's caused me to voraciously binge listen to these audiobooks, finding any possible spare moment that I can listen, and adding that to my routine. So, I've made it through a lot of books. Recently, the side novel from the Stormlight Archive series came up in my holds. That is Brandon Sanderson's series of massive tomes that I have been listening to as best as I can. The side novel is called Edgedancer.
Rish found a copy of it at a thrift store a few years ago, and sent it to me with the other various toys coming in a package for me.
It's an interesting beast, because it's hardcover, but it's tiny. It's the size of a mass market paperback, but it's done as a hardcover.
I think it's because it was just supposed to be a little supplemental short story that Brandon Sanderson was doing to keep his fans happy when he found that he had some extra time during covid. Of course, since he's Brandon Sanderson...
It turned out to be waaaaaay longer than a short story. When he was done, he had himself another novel...a really short novel, but a novel nonetheless. So, he put it out that way.
Now, it's a novel that's short enough that even I could have wrote it. The Stormlight Archive series is know for audiobooks that run over fifty hours in length, but this one was only six hours and twenty-four minutes. So, I made sure to push it to the front of my holds, because I knew I could get through it quickly and clear up another spot in my holds queue.
It wasn't a bad book, but it certainly didn't light any fires in me. It contained none of the characters that we've grown to love in the series. What Sanderson does is tell the main stories of his books, and then intersperse those with vignettes of random characters that we've never heard of before and will never hear of again doing things that are semi-related in far flung corners of his world. This book is just another one of those vignettes that grew too big for its britches.
The main character doesn't appeal to me very much. At the end of the book in an author's note, Sanderson says that she is one of his favorite characters, and upon hearing that I just shrugged. To each his own, I guess. I found her to be annoying, and her character arc did not include becoming less annoying by the end.
The story was fine, but felt inconsequential. I've always hated those vignettes in the Stormlight Archive series, because there's no context for them, and they don't come back, so they feel like a waste of time. There is a little bit of a throughline to them here and there, but for the most part, I've forgotten what they were about before the throughline comes up, so I don't remember to connect the dots. Having a giant-sized vignette didn't make me extra happy or anything.
The biggest problem about the book is that I can't remember all the stuff that we learned about the world/magic/history and so forth since the last book...and I sure as hell don't want to go back and reread them to remember. The fuckers are longer than a standard work week. It might be best to just hold off on all of these books until the entire series is done, then spend a year or two bingeing my way through them, because then I would be able to keep the details in my memory long enough for them to matter when they come back up again later.
The book was fine, but no big deal, in other words. Sanderson is a fine writer, and the story was good, but it didn't move me like the main story has. I have the most recent main contribution to the series called Rhythm of War in my hold queue, and I'll probably be listening to it soon as well. I wonder if it will be a pleasant experience, or as frustrating as this one because I can no longer remember all the details.
I expect it will be worse than this one, because it's also 57 hours long. Last time, I had to check the book out on two separate occasions to be able to finish listening. Maybe, since I've been bingeing so hardcore recently, that won't be the case this time, but I suspect it will. I'll have to listen as long and hard as I can, then put the book on hold and wait a few months to reach the front of the line to hear the rest.
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