Words of Radiance

Words of Radiance was published on 4 March 2014 by Tor Books and is the second of the planned Stormlight Archive novels, following The Way of Kings in 2010. The book runs to a prologue, eighty-nine chapters, fourteen interludes and an epilogue, and it is one of the longest novels in the modern fantasy market: Sanderson writes the series around a structure of ten books, each following a different character, with a planned midpoint and a defined ending.

The series is set on Roshar, a world of stone and storms where spren, the small spirits that follow human behaviour, are part of the plot rather than decoration. The novel develops the two central characters on parallel tracks: Kaladin's command, his authority over a set of soldiers, and his discovery of what his powers cost him; and Shallan's arrival among the Alethi highprinces with a family secret and an apprenticeship to a scholar. Dalinar's chapters carry the political spine, and the Parshendi point of view is new to this volume and reframes the war.

Sanderson publishes extensively and the series is unfinished, with further volumes appearing across the 2010s and 2020s. The Stormlight books are connected to his wider Cosmere setting, which means characters and systems recur across his other series. This volume assumes the reader has read The Way of Kings first, and the package includes the maps and documents that the series uses to carry background. The interludes between the main parts follow minor characters and have become a signature of how these books are put together.