In regards to Shallan - I don't really remember all of the details of the prior books since I haven't reread them, and won't until book 5 is close to coming out, but my recollection was that we resolved a lot the details about her history several times, including finding out about killing her mom.. and dad... and stuff about her brothers, including Heloran being killed by Kaladin. And Wit coming by for a nice visit. I didn't particularly remember if there was more to uncover or not, but the first chapter in RoW where Shallan retreats into her mind at thought of remembering her past basically made me go "oh, so we are we doing this again? I just hope he doesn't dangle this every chapter for the entire book until the climax at the end" and here we are...
I really enjoyed that mystery the first time as we pieced together she was a shard bearer.... and what she did with the shard. And then again several more times. But now this feels like we are repeating the same thing over and over again.
I do like the three personality arrangement that has been going on and honestly, I would be down for that being a permanent part of Shallan and not just something she has to "get over" and be normal again. I loved Legion, after all! But I dislike the way Shallan retreats so heavily at the mere mention of her childhood, when it's a topic we've already spent so much time peering into. It's not like we have no idea what her childhood was like. There may be further holes to fill, maybe an important hole like Formless always existing or Shallan having always been a Ghostblood, but this running away thing feels mostly like we are being teased about a secret we already know most of the answer to, which is pretty tedious when Shallan does it at the literal drop of a hat.
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The batman villians all seem to be one big joke that batman refuses to laugh at - SantaRPG