Wind and Truth is out now: Stormlight’s first era ends

Brandon Sanderson released Wind and Truth on December 6, 2024. It’s the fifth novel in The Stormlight Archive, and it brings the series’ first five-book arc to a close.

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The book picks up after Rhythm of War and runs on a tight ten-day countdown to the contest of champions. It’s also enormous, roughly 491,000 words, which makes it the longest Stormlight Archive novel so far. Sanderson still has 10 books planned in total, split across two eras.

If you’ve kept up with The Stormlight Archive, this one’s an easy buy. Just go in knowing book six isn’t close.

Sanderson is moving to other Cosmere work for a while, including the next Mistborn trilogy, and the second Stormlight Archive arc isn’t expected until around 2031.

By late 2025, Sanderson had sold more than 50 million books worldwide. The Stormlight Archive alone had passed 10 million copies, and Wind and Truth reached No. 1 on the New York Times list. Then, in early 2026, Apple TV+ announced a Stormlight Archive TV series along with a Mistborn film. Sanderson was attached as an executive producer and writer, with reports saying he’d secured an unusual amount of creative control.

The response to Wind and Truth has mostly been strong, especially around its scale, the character payoffs, and the fact that it actually lands the ending for this arc. That said, some readers have pointed to pacing issues, the sheer length, heavy internal monologues, and prose that can sound a little too modern for the setting. One more thing for fans: Tidebreakers, a Stormlight Archive tabletop RPG module, is scheduled for October 2027.

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You can buy Wind and Truth now wherever books are sold.