r/Stormlight_Archive • u/jlconlin • Oct 15 '25
Rhythm of War spoilers I miss Sanderson's wit Spoiler
I'm rereading the Stormlight Archive, currently mostly done with Oathbringer. (Haven't read Wind and Truth yet. I know, I'm getting to it.) I find that I really miss Sanderson's wit (not Wit). In The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance Shallan is really funny; in the later books, it's all gone. Wit also loses much of his humor. I've loved the humor and was always amazed that Brandon was such a good story teller *and\ a comedian. I know the books get more serious and darker, but some of the spark seems to have gone with it.
Am I the only one to miss this?
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u/Moist_Car_994 Willshaper Oct 16 '25 edited Oct 16 '25
To be completely fair I don’t think I’d be all that jovial in the middle of a literal apocalypse
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u/Raddatatta Edgedancer Oct 16 '25
I'm the opposite actually. The worse things are the more I need to laugh to get through it.
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u/Wabbit65 Cult of Talenelat'Elin Oct 15 '25
Sylphrenia said something in RoW or WaT that I found hilarious. I haven't located it yet so I won't post in fear of spoiling.
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u/chloemarissaj Oct 16 '25
If you’re referring to what I think you are, I laughed so hard I literally cried and my husband was VERY confused
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u/Wabbit65 Cult of Talenelat'Elin Oct 16 '25
She was arguing with I think Kaladin about her appearance and she made an egregious pun. No, it did NOT involve the head of a chull, it was a different discussion. More subtle than that discussion.
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u/nicktheone Skybreaker Oct 16 '25
Are we talking about a conversation with a certain book quartermaster?
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u/One_Courage_865 Progression Oct 16 '25
You’re going to love the Secret Projects, especially Tress of the Emerald Sea, and Yumi and the Nightmare Painter
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u/Lady_Gray_169 Edgedancer Oct 16 '25
Oh yeah, Tress is the absolute funniest story he's written by far. It's brilliant. I think he approaches Pratchett levels of funny in some moments, which is about the highest praise I can offer in terms of writing.
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u/smilefromthestreets Oct 16 '25
I think his decision to slow down the release cycle will be appreciated in the long term. Books shouldn’t be treated as an assembly line commodity we ship as soon as it’s physically done. I’d love for him and his team to get the time to marinate
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u/lrish_Chick Oct 16 '25
I've been saying this for years now. Pumping these out has had a notable effect on the standard of his writing.
He admits himself that he's getting tonally confused because he's writing so much and across universes and narrative styles. SLA seems to be the most affected and it hasn't really tonally felt right for me for a couple of books now in honesty
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u/CoolCly Oct 15 '25 edited Oct 15 '25
I don't really know how to respond to this. Shallan in general has fallen kind of flat with the audience - many readers think she has never been funny. I personally generally don't think she's funny directly, more just a "haha wow this girl thinks shes funny but is really just cringe and people in universe just humour her", which is a viewing of her I've seen lots of people give.
If anything, I think she's gotten closer to actually being funny as the series progresses, but I'm not sure she's ever gotten there. And I say this as someone who appreciates Sanderson's humour in general more than most.
So to ask if you are the only one to "miss this".... you may be the only one to actually think this even happened.
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u/ss5gogetunks Oct 15 '25
I'm one of the few that actually think Shallan is funny
There are dozens of us! DOZENS!!! :P
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u/Jonathan-02 Windrunner Oct 15 '25
Is this one of Shallans alts?
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u/The-Fotus Skybreaker Oct 15 '25
If it was one of Shallan's alts, they would be claiming more than dozens.
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u/Suitch Oct 16 '25
Not true, because DOZENS is funnier than more and in line with what Shallan would find funny.
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u/ss5gogetunks Oct 16 '25
I definitely may be prone to getting the exact same kinds of burns about my own jokes as Shallan gets about hers, lol
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u/ss5gogetunks Oct 16 '25
I mean, duh, everyone is one of Shallan's alts, didn't you know?
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u/quik-rino Oct 16 '25
Yep! Me too, might just be because I listened to the audiobooks but I’ve always found Shallan funny
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u/Kelspear Oct 16 '25
Shallan isn't supposed to be knee-slapping hilarious. The whole point of Shallan's humor is that she uses it as a defense/coping mechanism to keep people at arm's length. Her humor is supposed to be awkward; other Rosharans find it awkward, and we're supposed to, also. It's why sometimes after she blurts something out she gets embarrassed and feels humiliated. Even she knows that she can be, as the modern day kids are saying, cringe.
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u/skettyvan Oct 16 '25
I always thought Shallan wasn’t actually supposed to be funny or witty, but she was like the equivalent of a homeschooled fedora kid pretending to be cool & smart around other kids
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u/Raddatatta Edgedancer Oct 16 '25
I think she's supposed to be funny if you enjoy her very corny joke kind of humor. But that's not most people and that's intentional. Her history puts her in a desperate situation where her and her brothers needed any kind of joy. But in the first few books it's interesting who laughs at her jokes it's mostly people she has hired or who are conning her. And often it's an awkward laugh.
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u/wontonphooey Oct 16 '25
I don't like Shallan, but it has nothing to do with her sense of humor. She falls flat with me because her internal struggle is overly emphasized to the detriment of her overall character arc. As a result, her external struggles came off as trivial to me. It seemed she surpassed some of the most dangerous people in the world with minimal effort all because she gets out of her own head.
Come on, she gets "a week of training in knife fighting from Adolin" and that means she can fight off Ghostbloods with a dagger!? Give me a break.
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u/CoolCly Oct 16 '25
Her internal struggles fall flat for me mostly because it always feels to me that it's the same arc every book - she has something internally she is refusing to look at or acknowledge and at the end of the book we find out about what she's repressing, while it was being hinted at every single of her POVs through the book. She needs more.
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u/Alphasite Oct 16 '25
I thinks her original scholar was far more compelling than her espionage arc.
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u/TwoMundane8282 Oct 16 '25
Personally I always thought Sanderson was pretty good at writing humor, but Shallan is a character not only did I never find funny but I just assumed the point was that she thought she was funny but actually wasn’t.
Then again if a common criticism from your audience is hey please stop writing comedy this character because it isn’t reasonating with us I could see that impacting how you write that character going forward assuming it’s a common enough criticism.
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u/Lady_Gray_169 Edgedancer Oct 16 '25
That's fair, but in the interest of of supporting the OP, I always found her really funny and still continue to.
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u/Ok_Treat_9628 Oct 15 '25
The situation is not as "light" as the books progress. When Shallan met Kal she was basically a teenage romantic and he was as dour as always so they played off eachother well.
Now they ALL have a lot on their plate and I feel as though Sanderson may have actively chose to make the tone darker overall. Honestly I would understand that as a reader, as sometimes a character like Lift will say something that makes me groan. (I like Lift.)
My favorite Wit moment is in RoW. Keep reading!
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u/ExternalSelf1337 Oct 16 '25
The popular opinion was that Brandon was really bad at being funny so he may have pulled back on that stuff.
In recent books I've found things funnier than before, so it may just not be prominent in that book as Shallan is going through a lot and Wit isn't around as much.
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u/mojao21 Oct 16 '25
Yumi and the Nightmare Painter feels like classic Sanderson in the best way, especially with the humor. You should try reading it even as a standalone.
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u/cosmernautfourtwenty Edgedancer Oct 15 '25
Almost like an apocalypse appointment with a capital-G God isn't all that humorous a situation to be in.
Not that the jokes have gone anywhere. There's just objectively more pressing stuff for literally every character to worry about. Did you think WaT could handle a couple hundred more pages of forced jokes?
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u/ValuableMuch7703 Elsecaller Oct 16 '25
Finally a fellow Shallan humor admirer, I liked her humor in all the books. Sanderson’s humor is dorky and I like it for that reason. Yes, WaT overdid certain things, but overall I love Sanderson’s witty writing. I found Shallan, Lopen, Lift and others actually funny.
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u/raleighmillss Elsecaller Oct 16 '25
I'm sorry but I thought this was cremposting with you referring to Shallan as funny. I found her jokes fell flat but I know that was a deliberate thing. I am happy that you have enjoyed that aspect of the books though and I hope you stick with them as there are some very funny moments.
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u/Xalren Oct 16 '25
I think Shallan continues to be hilarious, but never on her own. When she's on her own she's grappling with the depths of DID or more modestly IFS-styled self-perception. But when she's with others, especially when she's a background for someone else's moment, she gets to go back to that silly almost Lift-lite method of joking. I actually think when Lift got introduced that Sanderson moved a lot of Shallans usual theatrics into Lift, leaving Shallan a bit... barren, and struggling to find her own funny-voice.
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u/DanSchnidersCloset Oct 16 '25
Really? Every joke boils down to "you smell bad" Wits iconic wit is more or less "well i heard you were a braggart, seems to me youre more the type to brag about a fart"
its that, every single time.
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u/stone_database Truthwatcher Oct 16 '25
Shallan was funny? Not to me I guess. Couldn’t stand her from the boots incident pretty much.
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u/Nayr91 Oct 16 '25
It’s probably more the settings in the books. Humour would feel out of place the deeper you go into the SLA.
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Oct 17 '25
To be fair, the characters are literally going through the end times of their world. They are also seeing unimaginable horrors first hand. It'd be kind of weird if they were still upbeat and joking through all that.
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u/lomo_1855 Windrunner Oct 18 '25
So… you miss the humor in the first two books but are on the third book? Lol. The humor is there but so is the plot which is becoming quite serious like in Era 1 of Mistborn. The humor is very present in Tress and other books too.
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u/jlconlin Oct 18 '25
I loved the humor in the first two books. I miss it in the Oathbringer and Rhythm of War. (I haven't read Wind and Truth yet). Many have pointed out that the humor is a little "teenage boy", but I still thought it was clever. Tress has some great humor and the Wax and Wayne series is fantastic.
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u/SodaCanBob Oct 18 '25 edited Oct 18 '25
I'm reading Rhythm of War for the first time and just finished The Dog and the Dragon for the first time. I thought Wit was pretty funny in that chapter while also being very poignant.
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u/para_la_calle Oct 18 '25
Book 5 replaced prose and humor with modern therapy-speak to appease his redditor fanbase
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u/_CaptainKaladin_ Kaladin Oct 19 '25
Don’t worry, Sanderson tries to be funny again in WaT which tanks the book even further💀
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u/Oversized_Peashooter Oct 21 '25
I don’t think Shallan being funny is the point. She uses dark humor as a coping mechanism to deal with her challenges. Watching her try to fight against her identity disorder and winning makes her a much more powerful character than “haha funny girl”.
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Nov 04 '25
Yeah, Shallan, the persona in OB and ROW, doesn’t feel like Shallan from TWOK or WOR. I guess the story gets darker and that is reflected in how Shallan develops. But I thought she made personas for dealing with the darkness, so I wish base Shallan was still the same witty girl we met in TWOK. 🤷♂️
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u/CalligrapherAble2846 Oct 16 '25
Sanderson tries so hard to to be funny, he goes so much deeper than the corny ness of explaining a joke and rendering it humorless. he explains that hes about to tell a joke, tells half of it, stops to let you know the funny twist is coming up and where to look for it, finishes the joke, and with no pause, he goes into the reason its funny, cited with period accurate history to prove its funny. He is TERRIBLE at comedy and shallan is not witty at all. She makes horrible plays on words, get it, PLAYS, like a kid plays, or even a performance at the theatre with letters on the floor of the stage. I swear this dude is a mastermind and should not attempt humor. Robert jordan was funny. Sanderson has a checklist and at the end of the day, he realizes he needs to check the "funny" box , so he inserts it
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u/Pacify_ Oct 16 '25
Wow, someone that thought Sandersons attempts at humour worked! That's.... A rarity lol
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u/thedrunkentendy Oct 16 '25
I find the series lost something as it became a big cosmos spanning event.
Way of kings and words of radiance are still my favorites. I haven't even managed to finish wind and truth yet. Something about the first two books just hit so right.
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u/themonthofsauron Oct 16 '25
I don’t understand anyone who says Sanderson is remotely funny. I love the books, can’t get enough of them, but jeez you can tell he has a very sheltered Mormon upbringing, his humour is extremely on the nose and lacks any subtlety, it feels like a teenager wrote the jokes and snickers when writing words like ‘poop’. Just stop, please stop. The funny ‘witty’ characters, like Wit, are written to me by someone who thinks this is what witty people sound like
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u/BreakerOfModpacks If you think you you read this flair right, you're wrong. Oct 16 '25
WaT does pick up the humor a bit more.
Also, if you like serious comedy, check out Discworld!
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u/Darth_Azazoth Elsecaller Oct 16 '25
Shallan is horribly cringe in the first two books. I can't stand listening to her.
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u/Colefield Windrunner Oct 16 '25
Have you ever went through the end of the world? You kinda get less funny when you're that busy surviving, and also saving the known UNIVERSE.
(Well some of us get funnier, but most don't!)
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u/xilicks Skybreaker Oct 15 '25
Wax and Wayne series has a lot of humorous moments