Dawnshard

 Dawnshard by Brandon Sanderson, 171 pages.

This novella takes place between books three and four of the Stormlight Archives, and follows side characters having there own adventure. That description told me very little, so I'm just now getting to it three years later, and I definitely regret waiting this long. Rysn (the Thalen trader from an earlier book's interlude who suffered a fall and lost the use of her legs) needs to get her larkin (a mythical flying, stormlight eating creature) back to it's ancestral home to save it from a mysterious illness. Unfortunately it's ancestral home is a mythical island in hostile seas. Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately again) a formerly disappeared ship that was previously looking for that same island has reappeared (sans crew) and the queen of Urithiru wants it investigated for any relation to the war effort. So Rysn has government support and a few Windrunners (Herdazian knights Lopen and Huio). Which are absolutely necessary with all of the weird and ominous signs that keep appearing on the boat. This island holds ancient secrets, and there are forces that will do anything to protect them.

This book short little novella had way more deep lore for the Cosmere than I was expecting! There are some implications in some of the secrets we discovered that will probably be felt in plenty of books. Aside from that, the story itself was a real treat. In his acknowledgments Sanderson thanks several paraplegic people who he consulted with for Rysn, and the amount of care and interest really shines through the whole book. It is also an absolute delight to get chapters from Lopen's perspective. The character is always fun, but it was very interesting to see his fun-loving nature (which is completely genuine) interact with some more serious internal thoughts (which we rarely get to see from him from an outside perspective). The very multi-cultural nature of this cast also put a lot of emphasis on language differences on Roshar, which I thought was neat and rarely gets much time in the mainline books. I would absolutely recommend this as necessary reading for anyone who enjoys the Stormlight Archives.

White Sand vol. 1

 White Sand Vol. 1 by Brandon Sanderson, Rik Hoskin, and Julius Gopez, 160 pages.

The first graphic novel in the White Sand trilogy. Like all of Sanderson's other works, this world features a well-defined magic system, this one focused on the magic manipulation of sand on a desert planet. A young man with very little talent in sand mastery is suddenly forced into a major political position after a tragedy. Also here is a traveling party from the other side of the non-rotating planet (descriptively called Darkside), led by a duchess searching for whatever her dead fiance died trying to find.

Overall, I found this graphic novel pretty alright. Nothing in the plot was extremely interesting to me, but enough things were a little interesting that I will probably read the other two.

Rhythm of War

 Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson, 1232 pages.

I'm not entirely sure how useful a long review of the fourth book in a series is, but here is a brief review anyway.

I really loved this book, and I think it may very well be my new favorite in the series (or at least a close second). This book really hammers home that despite being 1000 page epic fantasy novels where the plot is about saving a cool fantasy world, ultimately the books are about mental health and recovery. There's not much I can say about the plot here without major spoilers for the first three books, but Kaladin's journey in this book meant a whole lot to me.

Also! There was way more information presented upfront in this book than in any other book I've read in Sanderson's extended universe. Most of his adult novels take place in an extended universe called the Cosmere, with each series set on a different planet in the same universe. Because they are different planets, there's not usually a whole lot of overlap between series, but there are hints throughout about how the universe works and what's going behind the scenes. This book finally reveals a lot of the high lore directly, which was pretty exciting for me personally.