ByDanielD
These chapters coming out on Monday is great, as the start of the week tends to be something people don’t look forward to. When it means we get one step closer to the showdown with Odium, however, Monday can’t come soon enough. Today’s chapters have some hints of bigger secrets to come, and move us very close to important events.
To best enjoy this article, first read chapters 21 & 22 of Wind and Truth over at ReactorMag.com. Naturally, this article has major spoilers for all the previous Stormlight Archive books.
Shallan’s crew decides to go ahead with their plan. Sigzil decides to fake it until he makes it. Jasnah, Navani, and Wit (plus a couple of people hiding) learn of what Cultivation has told Dalinar.
It was surprising how quickly this Ghostblood infiltration operation got going — Dalinar authorized the operation last chapter! People who were bored during Rhythm of War (not me, for the record) will be happy with how Sanderson isn’t wasting any time in this book. It isn’t immediately clear that the operation will happen, however, as Shallan takes a moment to tell her team this is the point where they can decide not to go through with it.
This is an interesting scene, as it isn’t very military or leader-y to tell your team “This is our last chance to back out.” Shallan doesn’t seem confident in herself or her plan, and who can blame her? The Ghostbloods are a powerful, interplanetary organization, and Shallan is a young woman who has had to grow up a lot — too fast, really — over the last couple of years. But it’s a better scene because of her hesitancy; the way the team backs her up and makes good points for why they should go through with the operation is satisfying to read.
“I think,” Red said, “that nobody ever feels ready for big operations. Storms, you think half those boys on the walls feel ready to fight a war? The question isn’t if we’re ready, but if it needs to be done.”
Now that there are so many new Radiants, we’re getting to meet a lot of new spren. Red’s spren Array likes alliteration — a truly tasteful trait. It’s becoming more clear with each spren we meet that, like people, spren are not monolithic within a cultures, and there is a lot of variety in their personalities. Which is great — the Star Trek trope of the whole planet being full of people with the exact same personality is boring.
With Radiants being so powerful, it’s an interesting challenge for Brandon Sanderson to give them meaningful challenges. Fused are one, obviously, and now in this operation we see another cool twist: black sand from Taldain can detect Investiture, so Shallan can’t bring Pattern into the meeting, and she can’t use a Lightweaving.
The plan seems to be to capture one of the Ghostbloods heading to the meeting and replacing them with Shallan — but she’s going to have to disguise herself without a Lightweaving. If that person is wearing a mask, it will be easy, otherwise I’m interested in how she manages it. Also, while Pattern will probably have to remain behind, Testament is only in Shadesmar until summoned, so Shallan should be able to enter the meeting armed.
The middle segment of this chapter features another perspective switch with a great opening line. Brandon has been nailing these this book:
Sigzil did his best to pretend he was Kaladin.
It’s simple, but expresses a lot, and gets you right into what’s happening internally with Sigzil. In this scene we meet Sigzil’s spren Vienta, right as she’s doing something that’s basically a trope in this series now: an Honorspren talking their moody Windrunner off of the proverbial ledge. As usual, it works, and Sigzil comes to a decision that he needs to act like a leader. Right as the section ends, he prepares to reveal a “strange” idea about the defense of Narak — hopefully we get to learn what it is soon.
While discussing defense plans, it is revealed that Windrunners and Edgedancers make up the bulk of the Radiant forces, with Stonewards and Lightweavers also being present in great numbers. The other orders are “largely empty”. We’ll just have to hope this is because the spren of those orders aren’t yet willing to bond — and that it isn’t because those orders are siding with Odium.
Also noteworthy in this section is a Windrunner using her spren as a Shardpen. It sounds like it can be filled with ink like a normal pen, which makes sense, but is still pretty funny. We can look forward to more clever and amusing uses for Shardblades in the future. Shardtweezers, anyone?
Every time we’re back in Urithiru, we learn about anther awesome thing the Sibling can do now that the tower is fully operational. The sunroom described in Jasnah’s section of this chapter sounds awesome, although Dalinar is less than amused by how rapidly the plants around him are growing. The Sibling mentioning that it’s in case her sister the Nightwatcher visits is noteworthy, as it implies it has happened before. The Nightwatcher is the last remaining Bondsmith spren, though it’s hard at this point to have any guesses as to who (if anyone) might bond her. Adolin’s got a good relationship with a Cultivation spren already in Maya, so he could go on that list.
We found out earlier in the book that the Sibling essentially spies on everyone in the tower all the time, and now we know just how much she can hear. The Sibling hears Jasnah whisper to Ivory and then replies — no secrets in Urithiru! This response includes some wild new info:
“When was the Nightwatcher created?” Jasnah whispered to Ivory. “We call her the Old Magic, but how long has she been around? When did Cultivation form her?”
Before Ivory could answer, a voice whispered back from a nearby air vent. “The Nightwatcher came from the Night, as the Stormfather came from the Wind. Though, when I was young, the Wind was different. So very different.”
“When were you created, Sibling?” Jasnah asked.
“Some six thousand years ago, when the Stones wanted a legacy in the form of a child of Honor and Cultivation. Back when Bondsmiths bonded not to spren, but to the ancient forces, left by gods.”
It sounds as though the current Bondsmith spren might not have been created by Shards, but instead formed from other natural forces made manifest. We’ve met the Wind already, as she spoke to Kaladin in a previous chapter. It’s very strange that Bondsmith were bonding these forces, rather than the spren they spawned. Perhaps this can still be done, and there isn’t a hard limit of three Bondsmiths — an exciting prospect.
Sanderson sometimes nails his timing with the book’s humor, and the bit with Lift and the Mink is one of those times. The mental image of an elder general being discovered hiding alongside a teenage girl is just great. We also get more Lift logic, which is unimpeachable — porridge should taste like meat. Dalinar deciding to send the Windrunners to help the Mink retake Herdaz seems likely to come back to bite him. That’s a lot of their Radiant force, and there’s no way the entirety of Odium’s scheme has been discovered yet.
Dalinar honoring the oath to the Mink feels like a real clear foreshadow that he’s meant for Honor’s power — but it’s too obvious, and my money’s on the whole thing being a misdirect. Someone else will probably take up Honor’s shard, or perhaps there’s another way to use the power to fight Odium without a new Vessel for the Shard.
Kaladin discovers the mental health benefits of being in nature that doesn’t hide from you, and is rebuffed in his attempt to discuss with Szeth’s his own mental health. The Stormfather throws a tantrum.
The alien landscape of Shinovar continues to amuse and amaze both Kaladin and Syl, and it continues to be equally amusing as a reader to see totally normal plants viewed from the perspective of someone who finds them super weird. Every main character Brandon Sanderson writes is secretly a philosopher, by the way:
He found it oddly peaceful. Comforting. Did a deep part of him know humans had once lived on a world full of these plants? Or perhaps… perhaps they weren’t timid or stupid. Perhaps these plants were brave. At the very least, they had never known the tyranny of the storm—and so had never been forced to hide. He found beauty in that.
Kaladin’s attempt to get Szeth to open up about his trauma goes about as well as you’d expect — it doesn’t go at all. Kaladin isn’t going to give up though, he’s just going to try another method (one he hasn’t figured out yet). A good therapist essentially tricks their patient into coming to realizations, so perhaps Kaladin will find a way to be more subtle — but that’s not his strong suit, as a general rule.
When I thought maybe Szeth was going to Shinovar to “cleanse” people he didn’t like because they weren’t honorable or something, I wasn’t that excited about this plot thread. But Szeth confirms there’s an Unmade influencing his people, and now I’m in. The Unmade have all been cool, as a general rule, and there are quite a few that we still know nothing about. Szeth has apparently met this Unmade, and says it began in his youth “with a rock”, perhaps his Oathstone — I believe the Oathstone was part of his being made Truthless, but we don’t know how young he was when that occurred.
In this chapter, Nightblood tells a joke — is the sword getting more intelligent? We’ve seen it struggle with humor in the past. The strange shardblade is still largely a mystery, and while most Awakened objects probably can’t learn and grow, it appears Nightblood is doing just that.
It’s funny how everyone leaves the room so the Stormfather can come yell at Dalinar. The spren is surprisingly petulant and childish, and it’s unclear if the plan he’s talking about is his plan or Honor’s.
I HEARD YOU DISCUSSING HONOR’S POWER, THE STORMFATHER THUNDERED. WHY, DALINAR? MUST YOU THINK SO HIGHLY OF YOURSELF? YOU’RE RUINING EVERYTHING!
The Stormfather saying that he has broken the Heralds was also a bit confusing, but perhaps he had more to do with the Oathpact than we know. Crucially, we now know whatever happened to Tanavast is even worse than the implied death. The Stormfather calls it “our shame”, and says the power of Honor may not take “someone like [Dalinar]” as a host after what happened with Tanavast. Whatever happened, it’s obviously embarrassing, and perhaps involves some less-than-honorable behavior.
The Stormfather’s attitude, combined with the revelation about Tavavast, serves to show how, when it comes right down to it, even the powerful beings and gods of the Cosmere are regular people. That’s both terrifying and heartening — while it means the Stormfather isn’t as strong of an ally as we might have thought, it also makes Odium seem that much more fallible. That said, it’s Taravangian holding Odium now, who feels much more dangerous than Rayse ever did.
Speaking of danger, Wit confirms venturing into the Spiritual Realm is risky, giving us a bit of Realmatic theory while he’s at it. Time moving strangely in the Spiritual Realm is no surprise, and adds a real danger to Dalinar’s journey there — he could miss the contest of champions entirely if things go wrong. The scene with the two watches reveals more about how the entire magic system works, and is pretty funny too.
“Take my clock’s soul,” Wit said, holding up his, “and Connect it by a thread of power to your own clock, grounding yours in the Physical Realm while you travel.” Wit looked at him. “Poke this with Stormlight, then poke that. Try it.”
Just like Shallan’s scene, Dalinar is on the verge of beginning an important mission right as this chapter ends. We really are in for one long Sanderlanche with Wind and Truth.
There’s a lot that’s been set up already: the Spiritual Realm, Shallan’s infiltration of the Ghostblood hideout, Szeth’s upcoming battle with an Unmade, the defense of the three cities. But there is still something I’ve been waiting to see mentioned again: the anti-light that Navani discovered in Rhythm of War. The fact that spren can be killed, and that the Fused can be killed permanently, seems a glaring omission from the chapters we’ve seen so far.
A very small amount of time has passed in-book so far, however, and everyone has been scrambling in response to Todium’s surprise attacks on the three capitals. I expect we’ll learn that Navani’s science team is working on some kind of anti-voidlight weaponry — and hopefully, a way to counter anti-stormlight as well.
The next chapters should be quite spicy — I can’t wait to see what the Spiritual Realm is like. Let us know your thoughts on Chapters 21 and 22 in the comments below!
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