It's good that they didn't decide to keep the art style that briefly appeared in the last volume, but it's just as quick in pace and confusing as its predecessors.
What made Kenton special is that he could control his single ribbon with more precision than most others, but this accuracy is discarded for a focus on quantity, just like all other sand masters.
I like the flashy fight with Drile. ( )

I remembered enough of volume 2 to find this installment interesting and the conclusion satisfying, but I wonder if it would have made more of an impact if I’d remembered more. (If I had realised just how many years it was since volume 2 -- three and a half -- I would have reread that first. Oh well.)

I liked the artwork more in this volume. ( )

A great conclusion. ( )

Onward and conclusionward! All the political machinations to save the Sand Masters (and himself) are coming to a head. It's a fine enough central plot, even if the random assassinations / friend that doesn't get along well with his father / scientist from the other side of the world / bodyguard that hates you and you have to win over subplots really do get to be a bit random and disorientating.

That's really a problem with the whole set of graphic novels though and--if I remember correctly--I had the same problem with the prose version years ago. It's not a deal breaker, but I feel like the whole thing could be cleaned up.

It does make the worldbuilding feel less huge and magical (like many of Sanderson's works) and more disjointed. I mean, take the whole Lord Admiral thing:



And the religion bits:



i think the craziest thing about this though is if you take it in context of the greater Cosmere, there very well could be something to the whole idea of a Sand Lord. It would fit with a Shard as you see in other worlds. Especially, when the graphic novel has a few scenes like this randomly throughout this volume in particular:




Artsy choice? Actual person in the clouds? WHO KNOWS!

Overall, it's among the weaker of Sanderson's works and the weaker of the graphic novels I've read in the last year. But that's mostly because I so very enjoyed just about every other example in both categories. It's not a bad story and from a completionist point of view, I'm very glad to have read it. ( )

The final chapters of Taldain's first story...

And certainly I hope it's not the last we get from Khriss' homeworld. Sand Mastery is a fine form of Investiture, and the potential for more cool storytelling is definitely there.

Having said that I also must point out that White Sand is by far my least liked story set in Sanderson's Cosmere. And there are multiple reasons as to why this is.

For one, the medium kind of takes away rather than benefit Sanderson's style ... The most amazing scenes in the series can't ever compare with the ways the action in Mistborn or Stormlight Archives played in my mind. The still images certainly look cool, but the action sequences feel too instantaneous. The medium also doesn't play well with the pacing... the story feels fast paced in a bad way, there's no time to absorb the events, to really fall in love with the characters. And finally the story is chopped in three volumes that as a whole read like a single novel, but apart from each other feel incomplete. Even this third volume does, since while it wraps up Kenton's efforts to save the Diem it sets up the stage for a lot more, in true Sanderson fashion... the events that close this story start up plotlines that seem way more interesting than Kenton's political maneuvering for saving the Diem.

As a whole the story is not bad, but not Sanderson's best. Hopefully we get to see a sequel trilogy set in Darkside that explores the threads that were put in place here.

7/10 ( )