This week, we launch into Part Four, titled “Defy! Sing Beginnings!” We’ll attempt to figure out what that means, if anything, over the next weeks. Today, though, we go back in time with Dalinar, who has developed some serious issues with life, the universe, and everything.
Reminder: we’ll potentially be discussing spoilers for the ENTIRE NOVEL in each reread – if you haven’t read ALL of Oathbringer, best to wait to join us until you’re done. There is also a brief mention of the magic systems in Warbreaker and Mistborn (Stories & Songs), so if you haven’t read those… it’s not exactly spoilery, but kind of weird-hinty. Beware.
Chapter Recap
WHO: Dalinar
WHERE: Kholinar – Gavilar’s palace
WHEN: Eight years ago – late 1165 or early 1166
Dalinar leaves a political meeting that Gavilar is holding (where his only duty was to stand and loom menacingly) and goes in search of a drink to drown out the voices in his head. He finds Adolin, who informs him that he’s got a duel set up that will hopefully start him down the road towards winning his own Shardblade, then heads to the beggars’ porch where he finds an old homeless drunkard with whom he shares a drink and some conversation. Upon returning to his chambers, he overhears Adolin, Gavilar, and Elhokar discussing him and his addiction.
Beginnings
Title: Voices
“How are the voices?”
AA: This is such a well-chosen title. Dalinar, here, asks “Ahu” (a.k.a. Jezrien) about his voices. But sprinkled throughout the chapter are the voices Dalinar hears: Evi weeping, children crying in his head – and also the real voices, heard through the door, of his sons, his brother, and his nephew, trying to figure out how to help him. (Well, the nephew not so much helping…) And every one of the voices anger him.
Heralds
Jezrien: King, Herald of Kings, patron of the Windrunners, attributes Protecting & Leading
AA: This is almost funny, but not. We’ve got Gavilar being all regal and kingly, but more importantly we’ve got Jezrien himself being… well, just about as opposite as you can get. Come to think of it, Dalinar’s being pretty opposite-as-you-can-get, too.
Icon
Inverse Kholin glyphpair for a Dalinar flashback
Thematic Thoughts
AA: This is the first flashback after the events of the Rift, and it could be argued that this is where we begin (not exactly singing!) to see Dalinar’s descent into madness and his eventual rescue and redemption. It is highly probable that the comments section will reflect a wide variety of opinions on Dalinar’s condition as well as his “redemption arc.” Yes, it has been discussed frequently (*ahem*) in the past, and will continue to be discussed. I ask first that you would be courteous to one another, and second that you would do your level best to understand the perspectives expressed by others, rather than merely doubling down on your own stance. I’m not expecting anyone to necessarily change their opinion, but I do expect y’all to be respectful and open.
L: In Dalinar’s overarching character arc (in regards to his flashbacks at any rate), we’ve hit his low point. This is what is sometimes referred to as “the long dark night of the soul” and hoo boy, is it ever long and dark. He’s lost everything he cared about–Evi, war, and his thirst for battle. Including, of course, his own sanity, or so he believes. Before a character can begin the upwards climb towards redemption, they must lose everything and be at their lowest point. It is this that drives them to move towards ascension (and the climax of the arc).
AA: We’ll get one more flashback, set about a year later, in which Dalinar is still at the bottom of the arc, and then the moment where he starts to move upward. I’ve got some things to say about the concept of redemption, but I think it will wait until then.
AP: This is definitely the low point, and we can see the cracks in his spirit web pretty clearly. Not all potential Radiants have a specific trauma, but Dalinar sure does. He is clearly suffering from PTSD here, and is self medicating with alcohol. The assurance from Gavilar that Dalinar is a soldier and will fight through this rings hollow for anyone who has dealt with mental illness and been told to just “take your mind off it”, or “don’t think about it so much.”
Stories & Songs
AA: I’m going to start this out by addressing something which is not, strictly speaking, the normal purpose of this unit. It’s not ancient history or legend, but it is, most definitely, a story:
Sadeas had carefully spun news of the Rift’s destruction to the king’s advantage. … regrettable that the Rifters had forced Kholin action by killing Dalinar’s wife … unfortunate that the city had caught fire during the fighting….
… Gavilar didn’t want to unleash the Blackthorn.… these days, everyone was careful to give him plenty of other options.
So efficient. All it had cost was one city. And possibly Dalinar’s sanity.
L: Dalinar is, in effect, the nuclear option.
AA: Indeed. I suppose you could argue that the city and the sanity were already lost, so spinning it to reduce further bloodshed was merely a pragmatic decision. Dalinar doesn’t quite seem to see it that way.
AP: It’s a war crime and cover up, sure enough. Practicalities aside, I don’t actually think that everyone really believes the story, since there were a lot of witnesses at the Rift. I think they could cover up Evi’s betrayal, but not that the fires were deliberately set. I think everyone is going along because they are afraid that the “nuclear” option, once used, might be used again.
AA: Quite true, that many of the soldiers would know the fires were intentional. The reasoning behind it would have been unknown to them, though, so they’re likely to accept the “revenge for Evi” story, I think. Even if they didn’t quite buy that as enough, they also saw a brutally damaged Dalinar slogging back into camp after supposedly being killed in a “rockslide,” and heard his story of betrayal and ambush by Tanalan. After that, I doubt many in the army (especially an Alethi army) would have argued about retribution. We would, due to the killing of innocent civilians, but they probably wouldn’t.
… he found Ahu huddled in the shadows between two large religious statues, their backs facing the beggars, their hands spread toward the gardens.
… With black, matted hair and a scraggly beard, his skin was dark for an Alethi. …
… “Have you seen me?”
AA: On a guess, he’s sitting next to his own statue. He seems to make a habit of this; I’m guessing his question is supposed to be a twisted joke. I noticed something odd, though: “his skin was dark for an Alethi.” Was he darker than we thought, or does his appearance change from time to time? If this is really what he always looked like, then it appears that the “Vorin idealization” of him in the endpaper artwork lightened his hair and skin tone considerably. So… maybe his daughter’s skin tone isn’t so much darker than his after all. (That would be Shalash, if anyone had forgotten.)
L: I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised if they’d made him look more Alethi in the artwork. We’ve seen the exact same thing happen in the real world, where people have a tendency to depict Jesus as a white man.
AA: ::eyeroll:: Yeah, that one always kills me. (Though I’ll confess I still love the Christmas carol “In the Bleak Midwinter” despite the improbability of snow, ice, or frozen ground…) The funny thing is, he doesn’t even look all that Alethi. But that’s okay – artistic/religious license and all that!
“Soft, today. They chant about ripping me apart. Eating my flesh. Drinking my blood.”
L: I can only assume that he’s remembering his time spent being tortured.
AA: That’s my assumption as well. Brutal.
“Where is my soul, and who is this in my face?”
L: This is a really interesting line. I don’t know whether we should be trying to read into this, or if it’s just the ramblings of a madman, but if the former… Is his soul really missing? Is someone else’s soul inhabiting a body that should be his?
AA: Hmmm. I think it’s his own soul, mad as it is… but given his later comment about Moelach, could this actually be foreshadowing of the not-so-distant future when someone will come with a jeweled dagger? Yes, that’s a stretch; it comes down to “I don’t know.”
AP: With the way that the physical/cognitive/spiritual realms work, I wouldn’t be surprised at all to find that his “soul” or pieces of it, are missing. Can a living soul be splintered?
AA: Umm… That’s a really freaky thought. I mean, Breath and Hemalurgy both deal with “part of your soul” so… maybe? I’m not an expert on how Hemalurgy works, and we don’t really know how the Heralds were made and maintained, but I suppose it is possible.
L: It would make a lot of sense. We’ve seen how certain aspects of magic systems are mirrored across worlds, so why wouldn’t something that could happen to Adonalsium also happen to a human soul? If Adonalsium was a god, then that’s exactly what the splintering was to begin with.
“Which one got to you, little child? The Black Fisher? The Spawning Mother, the Faceless? Moelach is close. I can hear his wheezing, his scratching, his scraping at time like a rat breaking through walls.”
AA: It seems fairly obvious that Ahu/Jezrien is referring to several of the Unmade here. The Black Fisher, a.k.a. Dai-Gonarthis, is one of the mystery-Unmade as yet. So far as we know, we haven’t seen him in action, and know very little about him. The Spawning Mother is most likely Re-Shephir; we saw all too much of her in Part One, but we don’t know where she is now. (At the time of this flashback, she was presumably holed up in the basement of Urithiru?)
L: It’s pretty cool to think of her as “spawning,” as she creates myriad mirrors of herself to accomplish her goals.
AA: The Faceless… we have no link to anything. My best guess is Ashertmarn, since we’ve seen him/it take the form of an enormous heart.
AP: Another candidate for the Faceless is Nergaoul, who takes the form of a red mist and is responsible for the Thrill. Dalinar has definitely been under its influence! It’s interesting to note that Jezrien can spot the effects of an encounter with the Unmade.
AA: I hadn’t really considered that, but it’s valid. If Shallan is sensitive to the presence of an Unmade, even from a distance, why couldn’t Jezrien be able to see the effect of a being he spent millenia fighting? And he seems quite certain that Dalinar has been “got to” by one of the Unmade.
Moelach, we know, is the one who triggers the Death Rattles; I found Jezrien’s description of him “scraping at time” to be fascinating and creepy at once. We know he was hanging around Kharbranth for a long time, since Taravangian was using the Death Rattles to edit the Diagram, and he seems to have relocated to the Horneater Peaks more recently.
L: Since the death rattles seem to be prescient, it makes sense that time is referenced here. Obviously Moelach has some sort of ability to either foretell coming events itself, or to bring out that ability in others.
AP: I agree that he is referencing the predictive nature of the death rattles, which is super creepy.
“I used to think it wasn’t my fault. But you know, we can’t escape what we did? We let them in. We attracted them, befriended them, took them out to dance and courted them. It is our fault. You open yourself to it, and you pay the price. They ripped my brain out and made it dance! I watched.”
AA: Welp. How to unpack this? Is he still talking about the Unmade, or about the ancestral Singers? Or is there an overlap there – were nine of them Unmade, while the rest were made Cognitive Shadows and given the ability to return and take new bodies?
L: Good questions. I read it as him talking about the Unmade, since that’s what the conversation was about before, but… he’s mad, so his mind may be shifting topics. If he is talking about the Unmade, I find the line about “we befriended them” to be the most interesting. We know that they were made and then unmade, so perhaps they were originally creatures or spren that the Heralds thought they could bend to their wills? And then Odium got ahold of them?
AA: I wish we knew more, because this is so ripe for speculation, and I’d like a little more to work with! I think there’s better support for the Unmade having been spren than having been Singer souls, but the ideas run together here too much to sort it out.
However, the idea that this is referring to ancient Singers fits with hints we get elsewhere. For example, in the Epilogue, Wit thinks about having shared a dance with one of the Fused thousands of years ago. We also know that at some point, there was intermarriage between the Singers and the humans; it certainly seems possible that the Horneater and Herdazian heritage may go back this far, to a time before the wars began.
Given his statements (which are, perhaps, not entirely trustworthy) about attracting, befriending, dancing, and courting, some new possibilities about the beginnings come to mind. Perhaps it wasn’t so much a matter of the humans leaving Shinovar and invading the rest of the planet, as inviting the Singers to join them in Shinovar on a social basis. They seem to have gotten along quite well at first, so it may well be that the first human ventures beyond “their place” were amiable, and at the return invitation of the Singers.
If that is true, things went south rather badly, didn’t they?
L: Gee, I wonder who could possibly have been responsible for that?
Relationships & Romances
AA: The relationships reflected in this chapter are complex. Without doing too many lengthy quotes, it’s clear that Dalinar himself is deeply conflicted about Evi. On the one hand, he wants to blame her for everything; on the other hand, his difficulty in dealing with all the thousand-and-one things that remind him of her argues against the anger.
L: It’s possible to be both angry and guilty, especially when it comes to death. A good friend of mine took his own life several years ago, and I experienced many of the same conflicting emotions–anger, guilt, grief all mixed together and warring with one another for prominence.
AP: It’s definitely possible to feel both things. And Dalinar doesn’t have the mental resources to get to a healthy place with his grief. This conflict is one of the things magicked away by his visit to the Nightwatcher. Blessing & curse all in one.
Emotions warred inside Dalinar. Memories of good years spent with his son in Jah Keved, riding or teaching him the sword.
Memories of her. The woman from whom Adolin had inherited that blond hair and that smile. So genuine. Dalinar wouldn’t trade Adolin’s sincerity for a hundred soldiers in proper uniforms.
But he also couldn’t face it right now.
AA: How much Dalinar loved Evi will always be a matter of debate, but this kind of pain doesn’t come from memories of someone about whom you cared nothing.
L: It seems to me like he didn’t realize how much he loved her until he lost her. You never appreciate what you have more than when you’ve lost it.
AA: So very true! He did occasionally register how much her good opinion meant to him; now he’s realizing just how much she was part of the fabric of his life.
AP: I think that it’s possible to love someone and still treat them poorly. Dalinar was not a good husband. Full stop. That doesn’t mean that he didn’t have some degree of affection for Evi, or that he won’t mourn her death. He’s a majorly flawed and conflicted character. Contrasting his relationship with Evi vs. Navani, the latter is much more healthy, and based on a mutual respect and affection that wasn’t present between him & Evi.
AA: It always makes me sad to see how much the “respect” in his relationship with Evi went all one way. His relationship with Navani isn’t perfect either, but it’s definitely got a stronger basis in mutual value.
Adolin blushed, then put on a stronger face. He didn’t wilt beneath the stern words. When censured, Adolin only tried harder.…
Storming child. Who could deny him?…
Dalinar walked off as quickly as he could, to get away from that hair, that wonderful – haunting – smile.
AA: I know some people see Adolin’s response as a negative; I don’t. Yes, he loves to please his father, but how is that a bad thing? Dalinar’s inner turmoil, coming out as censure, isn’t directed at Adolin, and at some level they both know it. That’s why, IMO, Adolin works so hard to make his father happy: there are a lot of things he can’t fix, but he does the things he can to make Dalinar’s life better. I admire that selflessness in such a young person. It’s not like he lives solely for his father and never gets to do his own thing; we see him here in a specially-tailored uniform, excited about his upcoming duel. Those aren’t necessarily calculated to make Dalinar happy – but sharing his excitement with his father, being eager for his father to come watch the duel, those are the actions of a son seeking to draw his father out from his internal struggles and back into an enjoyment of life. In my opinion.
L: I like the concept of him doing this to try to bring his father out of it, but I don’t think that’s his sole purpose. Adolin’s built most of his personality around the things that his father values, and hence it’s become an integral part of himself. His joy in duelling is his own, and while I definitely think he is happy to give his father something to be proud of him for, he’s also doing it for his own sake.
AP: He gets the resolve & grit from his mother. It’s so subtle, and I love it. Evi worked for years to be a good Alethi wife, and Adolin would have seen that first hand. Now he is working at being a good Alethi son & soldier. I don’t think it has anything to do with trying to bring Dalinar back to an enjoyment of life. It’s the behavior that was modeled for him.
AA: I would say that much of Evi’s behavior was intended to bring Dalinar to an enjoyment of life outside of war; for Adolin to try to bring Dalinar “back into life,” whether consciously or not, is following Evi’s example. In any case, I thoroughly agree that Adolin gets his resiliance and determination from his mother. Appearances notwithstanding, she was a strong woman.
“Your father never adjusted to being alone, Adolin,” the king replied. “He misses your mother.”
L: I’m very curious as to whether or not Gavilar actually believes this, or if he’s just saying it to make Adolin feel better. I’m betting the latter. It seems like everyone is always lying to Adolin and Renarin about Dalinar, trying to preserve his honor in his sons’ eyes.
AA: Heh. My note on this paragraph was “Is Gavilar really that clueless, or is he making up stuff for Adolin?” Great minds, eh? I suspect that Gavilar wants to believe this, at least, and in fact I think it’s partially true. But as you say, Gavilar is also trying to preserve Dalinar’s image; assuming that Gavilar knows the truth, he’s not about to tell the boys about the guilt that is tearing his brother apart. Wise or not, the truth is being hidden from all but the very few who were there – and even some of them “know” things that aren’t what really happened. Sadeas and Dalinar, Kadash and a few of his elites… that’s about it. I’m not entirely sure Sadeas even really knew all of what happened.
AP: And thirded. You don’t tell a fifteen year old kid about how terrible his dad is and how he actually caused his mom’s death. Nopenopenope…teenagers are bad at state secrets.
Bruised & Broken
AA: Oh, Dalinar. You poor broken beast.
L: Yeah. As horrible as a person as he was, it’s important to remember that he’s a product of his society. When everything and everyone around you is telling you to prioritize violence and the glory of battle, is it really surprising that he turned out the way he did?
AA: Not surprising at all. It’s sometimes hard to keep this in mind, but we do need to deal with Dalinar in the context of his culture.
Dalinar could not stand fire. The scent of smoke smelled like burning skin, and the crackling of flames reminded him only of her.
L: The Nightwatcher must have pruned this along with the rest, but I am curious to see if it will ever eventually resurface.
AP: I don’t expect it to. It was a trigger for his PTSD, and whatever happened in between, he seems, mentally, to be better able to cope with his history. It’s painful, of course, but we don’t see the same complete loss of control and need to drown his memories. I think it’s a combination of the magic (nahel bond, Nightwatcher) and his self improvement quest and improved support system.
His own keep reminded him too much of her.
AA: I won’t quote them all, but this chapter is chock full of things that remind him of Evi. The crackling of flames; his keep; Renarin’s incense; Adolin’s good looks, hair, smile, sincerity; the voices of his sons. Life reminds him of Evi, which is why he keeps trying to drown life in a bottle.
Three years, living with what he’d done.
AA: Another thing this chapter is full of, and one I want to consider more deeply, is Dalinar’s thought process. Or maybe emotion process would be more applicable. In any case, he starts out thinking about what he had done. Next thing you know, he’s looking for wine and blaming Gavilar for being stingy after all Dalinar had done for him. Then he blames Evi for being childish and “getting herself killed.” Then he’s back to blaming Gavilar for pushing him to drinking with the beggars. And then he’s just angry because even inadvertently, they all won’t let him forget.
This seems to be typical of his life during this phase – blaming himself until he can’t bear it any more, then blaming everyone else as he drinks himself into oblivion, and then waking up to start again. Some days are better and he doesn’t “need” the alcohol as much; some days are worse and he can’t stay away from it. Apparently there are a lot of the “worse” sorts of days, since he’s emptied out all the places wine would normally be stashed for convenience, terrified the people of the city so that he’s unwelcome in the taverns, made himself a pest in the kitchens, and finally gotten to the point that he’s found one “beggar” who somehow always seems to have liquor. And all the time, he’s telling himself the he indulged “only on occasion. On bad days.” It’s humanly understandable, and humanly tragic. He knows what he’s done, he hates himself for it, and there’s no place to turn for healing.
He didn’t miss Evi. He wanted to be rid of her.
Though… he did ache now that she was gone. Was that why she wept for him so often?
AA: As if the rest weren’t evidence enough of his brokenness, there’s that. And yet… in a way it’s true. In her last years, she wept for what was happening to him, and for the people he would kill, far more than she wept for herself. Seeing him now, she would most definitely be weeping for him.
This chapter brings out such … ambivalence is too gentle… warring emotions about Dalinar. So many people share responsibility for the destruction at Rathalas: Dalinar, of course, but also Sadeas, Tanalan, even Gavilar in some measure, and of course the Thrill. Even Evi’s death is not entirely Dalinar’s fault, though he did order his men to torch the saferoom-turned-prison; she made the choice to go to Tanalan, and Tanalan made the choice to imprison her rather than releasing her, thinking that he could still use her as a bargaining chip after his treachery. Aside from that… Dalinar makes me want to console him and beat him at the same time. Appropriate, considering that he does the same.
Squires & Sidekicks
Today, Adolin wore a fashionable suit with far too much embroidery, and boots that were topped by silver.
“That’s not a standard-issue uniform, soldier,” Dalinar said to him.
“I know!” Adolin said. “I had it specially tailored!”
AA: So sue me. I love this. He’s fifteen years old and way too adorable.
L: Yes. He’s storming amazing.
Sheer Speculation
AA: And now I have a new theory. (Someone else has probably thought of this, but I haven’t seen it anywhere.) Returning to the last quotation in the Stories & Songs unit, Jezrien says, “You open yourself to it, and you pay the price.” We don’t really know what happened in the early days, right? We’ve assumed that the humans were the aggressors, invading the rest of Roshar from their initial home in Shinovar, but we don’t know that. It’s possible that instead, the humans cooperatively followed the example of the Singers, perhaps even with their guidance, and opened themselves to the spren bonding. Then, per Eshonai’s songs, the spren discovered that they gained more from bonds with humans than from bonds with Singers. Depending on what effect that had, it’s easy to imagine that some of the Singers would grow angry about their abilities being usurped and maybe surpassed, and they turned to Odium to try to stop the humans from spren-bonding and all the rest. We still don’t know the whole story; we know that the humans came to Roshar after damaging Ashyn beyond habitability, but we don’t really know who started the fighting, or why. Perhaps it was the Singers who truly brought the Void powers to Roshar after all, and Honor made the Oathpact with the Heralds to defend all of Roshar’s people from Odium. At the moment, this makes sense out of all sorts of things – like why ten humans would offer themselves to Honor, and why Honor would accept them.
Quality Quotations
Dalinar didn’t need to participate in the meeting; his job was to loom.
Next week we’ll be beginning our journey in Shadesmar with Shallan, Adolin, Kaladin, and Azure. (As well as their respective spren, of course.) Join us then, and in the meantime, keep those comments coming!
Lyndsey is excited that her husband bought her a little Maya pendant from Badali Jewelry this past weekend at GenCon, so now she can carry Maya around with her everywhere she goes. If you’re an aspiring author, a cosplayer, or just like geeky content, follow her work on Facebook or Instagram.
Alice is deeply envious of Lyndsey’s bio.
Aubree is theorizing about what the Rosharan version of horcruxes might be…
I don’t think Dalinar ever truly loved Evi. Not when his heart belonged to Navani the entire time. But I do think he realized that he loved her in his own way.
I’ve had this theory that each Unmade is connected to a Herald and that they were created/went bad the first time each were broken first. The reason there have only ever been nine was because Taln had never broken but now there is a tenth one probably out there.
@John I think a problem with that theory is that it’s stated that the spren copied the idea of shardblades, and the words, from the Hearlds and the Oathpact. Its heavily implied that they were not originally connected to the Spren at all, but directly to Honor. SO it wouldn’t make sense if the unmade were broken spren connected to the heralds. It is a good theory despite that though.
Awhile back, when Adolin’s tailor was introduced, we had a discussion here in the comments on whether Adolin would have had time to form a rapport with her. Well, here it is. there’s at least two years of Dalinar getting lost in drink, and Adolin clearly found a tailor here. Fashion also always has a shelf life of 2 weeks, so it would make sense for Adolin to come in and form a friendship, and keep in contact later, I’m sure we have a friendship with a favorite shop because we come in so frequently, well so does Adolin.
Poor Poor Dalinar. Here’s why I say that he is clearly seeking redemption. he suffers here, argue whether a physical punishment is good enough, but I feel that in order for someone to seek redemption, they must want it, and clearly Dalinar GRIEVES here. Emotion is more important to me than the word of law when it comes to redemption. People like Hannibal Lecter or Littlefinger from Game of Thrones clearly doesn’t deserve it, as they do not feel guilty. but men like Dalinar, even Szeth have their guilt eating up inside of them. ANyone who feels that guilty deserves a shot at redemption.
“We let them in. We attracted them, befriended them, took them out to dance and courted them. It is our fault.”
This section seems like it would perfectly describe spren bonding, but according to Nale no other herald has ever bonded a spren so I don’t know why Jezrien would use the first person “we” to describe that process.
@3 They might have been Spren that formed from the idea of the heralds themselves. A part of them that was ripped out and corrupted. My idea is that each unmade represents a corrupted aspect of the herald it derives from.
Dalinar lost his mind, and his life to PTSD and alcohol addiction for 5 years before going to Cultivation. 5 years Dalinar has felt guilty, hating himself and tormented in his mind for what he has done.
(reference for my math, Dalinar says in this chapter he has been like this for 3 years. The chapter head is 8 years ago. The war at the Shattered plains has been taking place for 6 years. 8 years ago-6 years at shattered plains = 2 more years from this chapter’s time period to seeking Cultivation.)
I do feel we see Dalinar’s love for Evi. Not a healthy love, nor a healthy relationship, but I do feel the love is there. He misses her. He feels tormented by her absence and that he is the cause of that absence.
I like the additional worldbuilding commentary how the artwork and written accounts of the Heralds were altered to portray them as Alethi and light eyed. Amaram when he absconds with Taln remarks about how Taln’s dark eyes must be a disguise.
I agree, I could see the shattered of a cognitive shadow being possible. I also find it interesting as pointed out, that those affected by the Unmade can seemingly recognize its influence on others. Maybe like how the Stormfather can recognize Cultivation’s influence on Lift and Dalinar?
I look forward to finding out more about the origin of the Desolations. What event, if there was a specific event, or multiple events leading up to it, that resulted in the war starting.
The chapter does do a really great job of showing the cycle of self damage PTSD and alcoholism can cause.
It occurs to that this is what the original inhabitant of a Fused’s body would say if they were around to see the end result. I am not sure why Jezrien is saying it, but it makes me uneasy.
Jezrien acting the opposite of his image as a Herald is par for the course for the 9 Heralds who have broken the Oathpact. I wonder if the way these 9 are acting in the present (or near present in the case of Chapter 88) is a direct effect of their abandonment of the Oathpact. By direct effect, I mean this acting the opposite of how they acted in the times of the Desolation in the fine print of the “imaginary contract” they signed when they accepted the burden (a sort of magical change of personality). Or is it that they do not care anymore, they all evolved this way. I think it is the former. It seems too coincidental that all 9 change into almost opposite personas as they had when they became Heralds. I think they reversion in personality is an unintended consequence.
Also, I wonder what Honor thought when they broke the Oathpact. He knew the truth. In the 2nd five books, I hope we get a viewpoint from one of the Heralds that talks about or shows a conversation that Honor had with at least one of the Heralds about the 9 breaking the Oathpact. In addition, I have a gut feeling that because the 9 broke the Oathpact, it made Honor more susceptible to an attack by Odium than if they had all adhered to the Oathpact.
There are hints in Dalinar’s prior flashbacks that he has is an alcoholic. It just gets worse now that he has nothing to do but drink. I believe in one of the flashbacks (I think the one where he one his ShardBlade) that he wants alcohol to help him relax. I believe he uses alcohol as a crutch to deaden his withdrawal from the Thrill.
I find it interesting (but troubling at the same time) that he has memories of Evi and Adolin but nothing of Renarin.
I think Evi had a hand in Adolin’s love for dueling. She knew that Alethi culture revered its martial prowess. Yet she hated the concept of war and the useless killing. She saw (based in part on how she encouraged Adolin’s love of Dalinar and how she spoke very highly of him to Adolin) that Adolin wanted to emulate Dalinar. Rather than seeing her son become a berserker like Dalinar, IMO, she convinced Adolin that he could display such martial talents through dueling. In the overwhelming majority of duels, the loser does not die. If my theory is correct, Evi understood Altethi culture by the end of her life than those who knew her give her credit.
Alice and Lyndsey re Gaalivar’s statement to Adolin. If Galivar knew how Dalinar felt about Navani (that Dalinar wished it was him who Navani chose to marry), then Galivar’s statement can be read differently. Gavilar statement that “your father never adjusted to being alone” is true. Dalinar never adjusted to being without Navani. And Galivar knows this. The rest of the statement (“he misses your mother”) is just the thing an adult relative (here an uncle) would say to the dead parent’s child. And Galivar knows he is lying to Adolin about the second sentence.
I believe the issue of how and when Adolin got his love of fine clothes (and met hi tailor) came up in the comments during the last section. When the Adolin and company are in in Kholinar. I think the scene with Adolin and Dalinar about Adolin specially tailoring his suit indicates that he found his tailor before the war on the Shattered Plains. Or at least it does in my mind. (edit: Steven Hedge @3 beat me to this point)
Alice re your last theory about the Singers teaching humans how to open themselves up to spren. If that is true and that knowledge is discovered and released in Book 4, perhaps many of the Skybreakers will come back to team Honor (rather than fighting for the Singers).
Thanks for reading my musings.
AndrewHB
aka the musespren
I hadn’t thought about it before, but this flashback emphasizes Dalinar’s parallel to Szeth–hearing the voices of those they murdered, going crazy, meeting a Herald ….
I’m increasingly convinced that both Szeth and Dalinar are hearing the real voices of the dead. It was mentioned in the last comment thread that there is a WoB about the after life of Roshar being damaged or nonfunctional or something. (I haven’t read the actual quote.) Dalinar hearing Evi weep, I believe, is literal if nonphysical.
This is presumably a deliberate reference to Dalinar warming himself at Navani’s heating fabrial, while thinking about how he prefers a real fire.
I want to respond to a bunch of stuff here, but I hate typing on my phone. So I’m only going to do one at the moment, and more later.
Andrew @8 – I had the same suspicion about the Heralds abandonment of the Oathpact weakening Honor, and asked about it at the Steelheart signing.
AA: Was Odium able to Splinter Honor because the Heralds abandoned the Oathpact?
BWS (paraphrased): Good question. Um, their abandonment of the Oathpact is related… but mostly tangentially. If I was pinned down on that, I would say no.
AA (paraphrased): Is there any of the Oathpact still functioning because of Taln’s continued participation?
BWS (paraphrased): Yes, indeed.
It says “paraphrased,” but iirc that’s verbatim except for the occasional um and ah. This wasn’t my transcription.
The line about Ahu’s skin color was supposed to be a hint at his identity. Pretty much all of the Heralds we have met at this point have been compared to the Makabaki, which are pretty dark skinned. Alethi have deeply tanned skin, so “dark for an Alethi” would be about the shade of Makabaki skin.
And I do agree that there’s a bit of “White Jesus” syndrome going on with the depiction of Jezrien in the back of the books. The Alethi revere him so much that they depict him in their image so they can pretend that they are made in his image.
I know there’s a lot going on here with Dalinar’s redemption and Adolin’s character development here, but right now what I actually am pretty interested in is Jezrien (I actually forgot about this part and that he shows up).
His remarks kind of remind me a bit of Rand/Lewis Therin in Wheel of Time and the feeling of another person in with you. But the ‘let them in’ part also reminds me a little about how Odium is always asking people to embrace their pain, etc. I do have a gut feeling it’s connected to the Unmade somehow (and maybe the Singers’ old gods?) but not sure how.
@9 Now that you mention it, I do wonder, since honor is dead, it would make sense that the afterlife might be in disarray, especially if it is a sheer amount of violence, like the rift or szeth’s murders. I do wonder if there’s a WOB out there confirming that all of the shards perform the duty of “Charon” of guiding the dead like Preservation, or it was only a Scadiel custom.
Points on Dalinar’s redemption:
Unlike Moash, Dalinar feels guilt and (although it spills out onto other people) doesn’t deny his guilt.
On the other hand, I like Dalinar and, in real life, this would be a big, red flag. Sociopaths are often likable. Narcissists often recruit what are termed “flying monkeys,” people who help go after the narcissist’s victim because the narcissist seems so nice the the FMs are convinced the the victim really deserves it. The fact I like him makes me immediately question my support for him.
Of course, in fiction, we have the advantage of seeing inside the character’s head. So, the things I like about Dalinar (and the way he’s changed) are real. But, excusing people’s crimes because you like them or they’re on your side is not a good thing.
Where I currently stand: I buy Dalinar’s repentance and his change. I am not so clear on whether he should be forgiven or who should be doing that forgiving.
Ellynne @14 – Perhaps a better measure of Dalinar’s likeability would be how characters in the book feel about him, since they aren’t in his head like we are. There, you get a very mixed bag; many people admire him as the Blackthorn because of their culture, but there are plenty who dislike him without being his victims.
There is so much depth here that I just get confused. Too many things may be hints, many narrators may be unreliable…
Even dropping all the fantasy elements it seems we have a huge response coming when the general population learns the story of Oathbringer. Adolin and Renarin learning the whole truth seems it must be shattering to the Kholin family. Unless all of that will take place in the year that separates book 3 from book 4.
@16: That’s something I really hope that we see. Especially for Adolin, who rather idolized the Blackthorn (one of the reasons I didn’t like Adolin much in TWOK; he’s gotten better since), understanding the person his father really was will be a tough thing to take. Combine it with Dalinar (who also rather idolizes his son) realizing who Adolin is, with Adolin’s confession to killing Sadeas, and it has the potential to be a very interesting relations to explore.
But I think Sanderson said the next book win’t have as much of a Kholin focus as this one did? So I don’t know how mich that will be developed.
Good question about “the Faceless.” As far as we’ve seen, Re-Shepir and Sja-Anat have faces of a sort (Re-Shepir has an excess of faces :-p) and Ashertmarn, Yelig-Nar, and Neragoul definitely don’t. We don’t know about the others.
RE: Sheer Speculation
Do we know when the Knights Radiant were first created? Did they exist before the Oathpact was broken? I’m wondering because Jezrien’s quote could refer to that
With that as a starting point, I wonder if [@2 John] might be right in connecting the Unmade to the Heralds. My thought, though, is that they might tie to the original spren who bonded to create the first Knights.** The other thought I had is that said original KRs might tie to the Fused (since I don’t know how many of those there are either).
**Another thought that occurred as I was typing this was that there might have been an intermediary step…maybe the Heralds tried to create replacements for themselves so that they could escape the Oathpact. The Unmade spren should be tied to that.
Oh this chapter is hard to read. The guilt, PTSD, the drinking… he is about as low as he can get now. Not quite, but close. I think he realized that he loved Evi after she was gone. Or at least loved the good things about her that didn’t drive him nuts; it’s easy to be selective about how you remember someone that’s gone. But no way did anyone but Adolin and Renarin believe the drinking etc was a sign of grief.
But I love Adolin and his custom uniform and his dueling. I just picture him as like a boy band hottie with actual skills. And he grows into it so well.
The Herald/beggar’s comments are so frustrating! Jezrien knows a LOT of stuff that would be so useful now, but he’s even more crazy than Taln has appeared to be. All those centuries of knowledge stolen now by Moash. How does he know the touch of the Unmade? And where did this all start? And how on Roshar can they fix it?
Enough rambling. Excited for more Shadesmar next week.
@steven Hedge (#13): you just inspired another insight for me. Evi was enormously more honorable than pre-magic-lobotomy Dalinar. She did what she saw as her duty, even though it caused her incredible pain and sadness, literally to the moment of her death. And then the Shard wasn’t there to greet her on arrival in Shadesmar.
Now I’m wanting to ask Brandon a question: if the local Shard meets the souls of the dead when they shuffle off this mortal coil, what happens on planets like Sel, where they’re both dead, or Threnody, where a Shard visited but left millennia ago?
@RogerPavelle
We do know that second thing, because when we see the Heralds abandon the Oathpact back in WoK, one of them tells another that mortals will be OK because they still have the Radiants.
Speaking of the appearance of the Heralds, most of them look to be of mixed ethnicity to the “modern” Rosharans. I remember that somebody thought about Taln in OB that he looked “almost” Makabaki, but that there was something that didn’t quite fit. The eye shape, maybe? I am not sure. IIRC, the only confirmed Herald so far who didn’t elicit such reactions is Nale, who looks properly Azish. So, I wouldn’t ascribe Jezrien’s darker skin tone or him looking to any cognitive changes, particularly not since skin color it is quite unimportant among humans on Roshar. His apparent age, though – he looked like a man in his early 30-ties in Kalak’s Prelude PoV, but when he appeared in the PoVs of the modern characters, he was grey-haired and described as “old”. Not sure how much of it was due to lack of grooming, etc.
True appearances of the Heralds do differ from their canonical images, as is mentioned a couple of times in OB, and it allowed them to remain under the radar for so long. For one thing, most of the Heralds featuring in the books so far have been dark-eyed and it is particularly interesting that Nale’s eye color didn’t seem to change even when he summoned his spren as a sword or surge-binded, as happens to normal dark-eyed people. OTOH, Shalash has the “unnatural” light eye-color – very pale violet or lila, IIRC, which in all other Rosharans is associated with the Radiant or shardbearer ancestry, but can’t be explained in her case.
Concerning Jezrien’s “voices”, yes maybe these are memories. Or maybe he somehow “hears” what Taln is experiencing? I know that this is somewhat crackpotty, but the Oathpact did allow the Heralds to share pain. And while there have been well reasoned arguments about the apostate Heralds now representing the opposite of their Divine Attributes, I can’t wholly agree. IMHO, both Nale and Shalash only display _one_ corrupted Attribute apiece. Nale is very unJust, but still quite Confident. Shalash destroys instead of Creating, but it is rooted in her deep aversion to the lies about/mistaken worship of the Heralds and herself in particular, so she is is still quite Honest, even if it is expressed as a very specific OCD behavior. Ishar, from what we have heard about him, still Guides. Jezrien seems to be the only complete reversion of _both_ of his Divine Attributes, but what if there is more to it? Obviously, he has become anti-Leading, but maybe he found a way to still be “protecting” and share Taln’s pain, even from Roshar? Maybe that’s why he can also hear the Unmade so clearly? Food for thought.
Dai-Gonarthis/The Black Fisher was mentioned in conjunction with “sorrow” somewhere wasn’t he? The whole “we let them in” reminds me of some passages from the Parshendi “Song” epigraphs in WoR which alluded to something eerily similar at some point, IIRC. We must give Jezrien his due, though – even at this point he didn’t give in to Odium’s “you are not responsible” shtick, even though it must have been oh, so tempting and even largely true, because you truly can’t blame somebody for not being up to eternal torture. Neither did Shalash, now that I think about it. Not sure about Nale.
Concerning Dalinar – I, for one, think that Gavilar likely did believe that his brother being so crushed by Evi’d death was due to love as well as guilt. After all, Navani believes that Dalinar loved his first wife very much, so why wouldn’t Gavilar?
We have a lot of quotes from people who should know – like Taln and the Stormfather that humans bonding spren came _after_ the creation of the Heralds, after a few Desolations. So, no, I don’t think that it could have caused the war in the first place. Not to mention that since almost all of the Heralds are Ashynite ex-pats, the conflict must have broken out and the Fused created within a few decades of the human arrival – not enough time for such adaptation.
Steven Hedge @3:
Ah, yes, the tailor. Well, in this very chapter we were told that Adolin works very hard to please his father and have Dalinar tell his son off for being out of uniform. This doesn’t leave much room for him to pursue fashion and of course within a couple of years he’ll be off to the Shattered Plains for 6 years and forced to lead a “uniformed” existence, so a close relationship with the tailor back in Kholinar does seem rather unrealistic. Oh, well.
Carl @21:
I think that Cultivation still does the “meet and greet” of the newly dead and that we’ll see Taravangian’s Last Walk. So, IMHO a Shard was there for Evi.
@13, 21 – Souls don’t need a Shard to pass to the Beyond. Preservation just saw it as his duty to comfort them as they passed through the Cognitive realm.
re: various
I was thinking along the same lines (that the unmade are an artifact of the process to make the Heralds, or their breaking of the Oathpact, or their original “breaking” on Braize. It fits with there only being 9 (with a possible 10th waiting in the wings now).
To the criticism that this doesn’t fit with what we “know” about the spren not bonding humans until after the Heralds had been in existence for millennia: it’s important to remember that the Knights Radiant weren’t created until then, and the whole bonding-with-rules thing was something Jezrien pushed on them. obviously, though, some sort of bond or “something” pre-existed prior to the founding of the KR, as the Steele says humans destroyed their own world thru surgebinding. So it may very well be that Honor used 10 spren, pulled their surges from them “somehow” and granted them permanently to the Heralds, leaving 10 “made”, and when teh Heralds broke, either under torture or when they broke the oathpact, the former spren were “unmade”. Not a crazy theory given what we know.
Re: the white Jesus thing. Two things:
1. in real life – remember for most europeans, the examples they had of jewish people were fair skinned like they were. After all, go listen to Adam Sandler’s Hanukkah song and there aren’t many examples of middle-eastern-looking folks in there.
2. Remember that the Heralds’ appearance could change, sort of like in Warbreaker. It may be that as they Connected to various lands, their appearance changed as well. That, plus standard iconography, could explain their Vorin appearance.
Did the humans who came to Roshar immediately break off contact with their origin world? Maybe they destroyed that world with surgebinding long after they came to Roshar, where they learned how to do it.
For Europeans it is ridiculous that Americans call middle eastern people non-white. Americans seem to invent weird racial distinctions where everyone else might talk about nations, cultures or ethnic groups because all conflicts have to be about race in America.
@9 Carl
It has been confirmed that Dalinar and Szeth are experiencing the same thing, and it is a cosmere wide experience that has to do with the spiritual realm. We also have confirmation that the spiritual aspect of a person does remain in the spiritual realm for a very long time. So I agree, when Dalinar hears that he is forgiven and the screams end, that it is the spiritual aspect of Evi and the people of the Rift that did so.
Re: Divine Attribute
I have a theory on the Divine Attributes and their application to both Heralds and the knights that take their inspiration from. One of the Attributes is what one is, the other refers to what one does. The Ideals progress one Attribute to service the other.
Here’s how I think that it works. Take a Windrunner for example since Jezrian is the Herald in this chapter. The Divine Attributes here are Protection/Leading. Protection is what one does, and all Kaladin’s Oaths so far have been protection themed. They are all in the service of leadership; every Windrunner we’ve seen attract a spren has either been a leader or displayed leadership qualities. Even Lopen uses jokes and banter to fortify the spirit of a wounded soldier, something that leaders do. Windrunners are meant to be leaders. It’s what they are. The pattern works so far for any of the characters for whom we’ve seen give Oaths exclusive to their particular order. Lift’s is Loving/Healing. Her Oaths are acts of love and by doing so and living her Oaths she heals. She even shoves a bit of sanity into a broken down Herald, though more treatment is definitely needed.
The problem with the Heralds and their escape from sanity, or at least one symptom of the problem, is that what they do no longer services who they are. Nale is still confident, but that confidence is no longer serviced by justice. Ash is still honest, though she seeks the polar opposite of creativity. Ishar perverts the very definition of piety even as he guides a nation and the Heralds that seek his council. And I imagine that even as wasted as Jez is, as little able to give protection as could ever be possible, he could with a shave, haircut and wardrobe change still walk onto a battlefield and have a hundred people follow. I’m sure there’s plenty of reasons why Jez was the first to catch an Odiumnium hemablade, but I cannot help but think that what Jez was, what he could become again with a healing of his broken soul, had something to do with his final death.
Speaking of character parallels. Let’s not forget the parallels between Dalinar and Shallan. As they both deal with recovering memories this book
Also if we want to talk about potential political complications. How much do you want to bet that Ialai trys to turn this to her advantage. Not even so much by undermining Dalinar perse, but by trying to corrupt his message.
I don’t think that we have seen the last of Ialai and her potential for mischief. An author doesn’t go out of their way to mention a character’s intelligence, deviousness and competency without an eventual payoff. Her activities in OB aren’t enough show that competence so far. I think her mediocre showing was due to her being unbalanced by the changes in the world and the death of her husband. There must be more in her trick bag.
I never really twigged to the similarities between Dalinar and Venli because I was more focused on their differences. General vs. Scientist. Dutiful vs. Ambitious. Top dawg of the colition vs. Double Agent for Honor, ultimate command vs. mouthpiece for the ones holding real power. I dismissed the similarities between them, putting no more significance on that other than to say that they both feel like Brandon’s characters.
I’m not sure if I will agree with the Eshonai/Venli character switch up. I’ll know more about how I feel about that once RoW comes out next year. What I do know is that the role Venli is playing at now could never be done by Eshonai. She was too honest by half to ever play at being Odium’s pawn. She’d have gone with the missing Listeners and would probably forge them up like Kaladin did with Bridge 4. That of course would have put her out of the action and would have deprived us of a POV in the enemy camp. It also would have put in place a character that didn’t really need to grow. When Brandon said she was too similar to Kaladin, I don’t think he was talking character traits but rather their journeys.
@EvilMondky, you’re very optimistic if you expect a Stormlight book in 2020. According to his web site, Brandon hasn’t even got half the rough draft done. Given his extensive beta reading process and habit of rethinking things partway through writing, I suspect it won’t even be submitted to Tor for almost a year. Then there’s a year delay (figure given by Brandon himself at a talk) before publication.
@32 – This is Brandon Sanderson we’re talking about. If anyone can hit a deadline, it’s him! It’s still August. The first few months of the year was spent doing a detailed outlining. So he hasn’t been doing the actual writing all that long and his progress bar is at 43%. I think it’s still very doable.
@27 EvilMonkey
Interesting theory on the Divine Attributes and the Knights Radiant. What about the other orders? I am curious how your theory plays out with them.
Also interesting theory on the Heralds.
Personally I disagree because I think they are corrupting both ideals. I think Nale is not confident as he is relying on someone else (Ishar) to tell him what is right and wrong, and has shown he is doubtful of his decisions at times. I agree he is not just. Ash I think she is lying to herself that she is ok and not mad when in fact she is not ok, and is quite mad lol. And creativity is because she is destroying. Ishar I see as instead of being pious he is being blasphemous by claiming to be god, and he isn’t guiding, he is commanding. To me Jezerien is not protecting nor leading.
But interesting theories, I’d love to hear more!
@29 BenW
Good point!
@30 BenW
Could be. Personally I think her story is done, and Taravangian is the foe that tries to corrupt Dalinar’s message, and work against him on the downlow. But who knows? She could have something up her sleeve.
@31 EvilMonkey
Personally I always saw the mention of Ialai deviousness as to demonstrate that Sadeas and her were a “power couple” opposing Dalinar. She helped with the plan to leave Dalinar stranded on the Shattered Plains to die at the hands of the Parshendi. We saw the effectiveness of her spy network by the release of Dalinar’s visions, altered to discredit him. She was able to seed her men into Dalinar’s army to try and assassinate him. She was embarrassed when it didn’t work out the way she expected. If Kaladin had not recognized the carpenter having been formally one of Sadeas’s men, the attempt would have worked. In fact it would have taken out Dalinar, Adolin (the heir), and Shallan all in one fell swoop. Basically accomplishing in one pull of a lever what the whole Battle of the Tower tried to accomplish. So I feel we have seen plenty of her effectiveness in Words of Radiance when she and Sadeas were the primary threat. Now that the Desolation is in full swing, and Taravangian is pulling the strings in the background with Odium (I still do believe Taravangian is a plant of Cultivation though), I think the primary foe will be Taravangian and Odium. Personally I think Ialai’s story is done. But I am sure if she pops up again, it will be at a suitably shocking and poignant moment lol.
Interesting thoughts on Dalinar and Venli. Where do you think Brandon will take Venli? Will she switch sides early and join up with the Kholins at Urithiru and develop with them, potentially alongside Rlain? Or do you think she will advance through her oaths while trying to keep hidden her advancing Radiancy, till a climatic moment leads to her switching sides? If the latter, any theories on what the climatic moment will be?
I agree regarding the journey. I feel we are following the characters we are, because they have to progress. Progress through their lives, their personal issues, and the oaths. I feel like the point of the oaths, is to help the person grow and become a better version of themselves. That’s why to me Szeth advanced so quickly through the early oaths of his order. He already went through a lot of the pain and growth, so when he bonded, he zipped right through the oaths he would have had to come to terms with. To me Radiancy is not the destination, its the journey.
@32 Carl
Brandon has said he is working out the kinks of the process for the Stormlight books. That is why Oathbringer got delayed. So he is hopeful about keeping on track, but is very transparent whenever there is a slow down. Here’s to hoping we all get to read it sooner rather than later!
@33 Austin
I agree!
@Scáth
Unfortunately we don’t have the Oaths for all Orders at present but I think that my theory will slot in easily when we find them out. As for the ones we do have:
Skybreakers: Just/Confident
We know the full pattern of their Oaths and they’re all about justice and law. With each successful oath the radiant gains more confidence in the codes they choose to live by. The 4th Oath is particularly important in that regard because by completing a crusade they get a true proving ground for the Ideals they expouse. They do justice. Providing justice builds confidence.
Bondsmith: Pious/Guiding
This one is tricky but I think it still fits. Of the Orders, them and Lightweavers will look most non-standard. Lightweavers because of the form their Oaths take, Bondsmiths because their spren are unique. Anyway, Dalinar’s Oaths look like a guide to live a righteous life. Stand when others fall, rise to be better when you do fail and fall. I’m sure his last 2 Oaths will be doozies. If we look at his Oaths as a guide, the end result of this will be someone who is quite Pious. If one follows the guidebook then one will be Pious, even Pious enough to guide others to piousness along with you.
Lightweavers: Creative/Honest
I’ve already highlighted the Lightweaver problem. Using Truths instead of Oaths as a basis of progression nearly throws the system out of whack. We do know that being honest to oneself is the bedrock of their existence, especially considering how easy it is to fool oneself with this power set. But does that honesty serve their creativity, or were they already creative before drawing their Cryptic? Some would say that being honest with oneself makes one a better artist, but there’s plenty of instances of great artists who were completely self delusional. Generally speaking though, I’d say that being honest with yourself should improve the quality of the product you produce.
I think Venli has to stay with Odium’s forces, at least for the length of the upcoming novel. There’s a meta reason, that we don’t know nearly enough about the enemy, including how their powers work, to not have someone on the inside to give us a glimpse. Storywise, she’s useless in any other role at this point. She doesn’t add anything to the radiant party if she goes to Dalinar now. Her stock in trade isn’t fighting prowess, she’s a scholar. Her stock in trade is information. Right now she doesn’t have enough to help defeat Odium or even make a tangible difference in how Team Honor fights. She’s just sneaky enough to gather what she needs and not get caught.
I don’r know if this has been discussed, here or elsewhere but related to comment 2, as a fairly out there theory that I don’t have time to fully flesh out in my head right now, but if the unmade were originally related to the Heralds as either their spren or maybe the Spren that came to embody the worship of the heralds by humans. Then they were turned by Odium, as the heralds fell or as part of a scheme from millennia ago, similar to the way the Everstorm is a new gambit of his.
As a side note is there any reference I missed about the “sibling” (I think) and his/her power relative to the unmade? Same question for the Storm-father or Night-watcher, is each the equivalent of an unmade or the equivalent of a couple of unmade apiece
@35 EvilMonkey
Skybreakers: Interesting. I am still waiting for a fifth ideal Skybreaker to say in a Judge Dredd voice “I am the law!” lol
Bondsmith: So do you think piousness in such a way that Dalinar may become a religious leader at some point? Or piety not necessarily connected to religion?
Lightweaver: Hmmm, maybe being honest with yourself leads to creativity in your personal growth? As in changing as a person? Like how lightweavers do that for others? Maybe a self transformation?
Good point regarding the meta reason. Wonder if as she learns transportation, so could teleport back and forth between meeting spots. As in that she joins team kholin, but as you said remains among Odium’s forces. In a way acting as an anti Taravangian. Seemingly on Odium’s side, but working to circumvent him from the inside.
@36 Bobby
Interesting idea.
Regarding the side note, Brandon has said that the Unmade were parallel entities for Odium to the Stormfather and Nightwatcher being to Honor and Cultivation respectively. So theoretically they are about the same power level. But then again another WoB state that the Unmade are closer to what the humans would call the heralds. So its still relatively open ended.
I think I saw something saying that the Fused are at the Herald level of power while the Unmade correspond to the Mega Spren Stormfather/Nightwatcher. Not sure where I read it, but if true it would explain where all the other Mega Spren of Roshar went to. I know there’s the Sibling but what the hell is it a spren of? Where’s the mountain spren or the ocean spren, just for an example.
@Scáth
Dalinar could be a religious figure, for a given value of religion. If we define it as a representative of a godlike being then he already is one. As are the Heralds and to a lesser extent the other Radiants.
@38 – Those spren probably exist, but just aren’t Shards like the Stormfather (who is also a Cognitive Shadow of Honor now) and the Nightwatcher. So they wouldn’t have that much power.
@austin
Sure those spren exist. But from what I understand about spren, the bigger and more encompassing the concept, the more Investiture the representative spren has. It makes sense to me that Stormfather Nightwatcher are the biggest concept representatives on Roshar. The storms shape the entire ecology of Roshar and plants allow life to exist there. But this is a world of stone. Why would a mountain spren be that much lesser? Why would an ocean spren be on the same level or lower than an average honorspren? Maybe I’m being a bit Earth centric. If spren existed here there’d definitely be mega Spren representing those concepts. Still though, I just can’t get past the idea that there should be more than 3 Mega Spren on Roshar. YMMV.
@EvilMonkey
“I think I saw something saying that the Fused are at the Herald level of power …”
No. We saw Kaladin defeat eight Fused while also holding off one of the Unmade, bonded to a human. It’s the Unmade that are potentially at the Herald level. Fused correspond to, but are much weaker than, the Radiants. (Of course, they’re also functionally immortal like the Heralds, they aren’t exact parallels.)
@40 – Again, the Stormfather and Nightwatcher are deliberate Shards invested by Honor and Cultivation. They were imbued with a portion of the power of a Shard (and the Stormfather even more, after Honor died). Spren, even ones of something gigantic in scope, like mountains or oceans, are not the same in terms of Investiture. I’m not even sure what the relationship between spren and investiture is exactly.
I’m not disputing that SF and NW as deliberate avatars of Honor and Cultivation respectvely are the most invested entities in system that are not Shards of Adonalasium. What I’m saying is that there is a tier between those two and an average Nahel spren. The Sibling occupies this tier presumably. Cusciech according to WOB occupies this tier.
@carl
It is my opinion that due to Odium not wanting to truly invest in any one place, his minions will be weaker than some Shard that has truly integrated with his/her system. So his Mega Spren (Unmade) will be weaker than Honor and Cultivation’s (SF/NW/SIB). His Cognitive Shadow Heralds (Fused) will be weaker than another Shard’s (Heralds on Roshar, Returned on Nalthis, Kelsier and TLR on Scadrial, maybe Elantrians for Sel). Regals will be weaker than Knights or Mistborn or 5th heightening Awakeners. To compensate, servants of Odium are more numerous and are likely less costly to make since he’s often flavoring an existing magic system instead of creating something from scratch.
I just couldn’t stick with this one. I thought The Way of Kings was incredible — one of the best fantasy books I’d ever read. Words of Radiance struck me as a meh superhero/fantasy mash-up. This one was even worse. I just couldn’t get into it for some reason.
I found the best parts of TWOK to be Kaladin’s arc and learning about The Shattered Plains. But Kaladin is now Superman and the Plains are less mysterious. I guess it lost me. I don’t even know why I’m bothering commenting but it’s my first time on Tor in a while.
Enjoy the reread. I’m jealous.
@38 EvilMonkey
But Dalinar does not see them as gods to be worshiped. Though he does believe there is something to the “golden light”. You think Dalinar will found a new religion in the Cosmere? Or connect the golden light to the “God Beyond” and start a local sect?
@40 EvilMonkey
I thought I read somewhere a theory that there are more than 3 Mega spren, just that there is only three Bondsmiths at a time. Though there is that mural that shows the radiant spren, and there is only mention of three forms that seem unique. A part of me just can’t let go of cusichech being something important! lol.
@41 Carl
Well I wouldn’t say defeat. More along the lines of distract/delay to prevent them from harming Dalinar. Though having said that, I do agree that the Unmade seem to be more the level of the heralds or the Stormfather/Nightwatcher.
@43 EvilMonkey
Interesting theory regarding the analogues between Odium, Honor, and Cultivation. I am really excited to see more of what Odium can bring to bear in the battle of Roshar. Also can’t wait to see the full extent of voidbinding, in particular Renarin.
@Scáth
I think that you were reading one of my theories though I’m sure I’m not the only one who thinks this. Bondsmiths have options, at least I think so. I also think that Cusciech has some greater significance than a simple worldbuilding detail.
Dalinar may not see himself as a religious figure but he may just have to accept that he is one or will be soon. If Sazed had to do it…
@Matt
I’m sorry you feel that way. Bottom line is that you like what you like, nobody’s allowed to dictate to you your own personal preferences. I will say however that Roshar is such a rich world. There’s sure to be other vistas that tickle your fancy. Plus, book 4 is supposed to be structured more like WoK than WoR or OB; you just may rediscover your love of SA with the next installment in the series. Or maybe not. Ether way I wish you luck in your future Journey.
@EvilMonkey:
Not to nitpick (even though I own nitpicking.com) but I can make a case that Nightblood is more invested. We know by WoB that it’s the most invested “object” in the Cosmere, and it keeps increasing in power every time it rips someone’s soul apart. Notice that by another WoB Hoid is afraid (but not certain) that it can kill him, where even with Odium Hoid only fears being imprisoned for a long time.
@Scáth:
I haven’t reread that chapter yet, I’m keeping up with the reread here as best I can. As I recall, though, at the end of that fight all of them are dead (and back on Braize).
@carl
Nightblood is surely an exception as far as invested entities. But I don’t think he’s eligible for a Nahel bond with a Bondsmith.
@EvilMonkey: you are certainly correct, since Nightblood is already his-style bonded to a Skybreaker.
Yeah but is he really? Szeth gets to carry him around true enough, but I don’t think he grants Szeth anything but death if he unsheathed him without Stormlight. Szeth doesn’t get any benefits when Nightblood kills things, just a dead enemy. He speaks to Szeth, but he speaks to anyone who’s holding him. If they are bonded, it certainly isn’t a strong bond. The bond that makes him a skybreakers is that shy highspren that we have seen but never formally met.
“His-style bonded”. Nightblood clearly is not a Rosharan Shardblade and doesn’t do the one-person personal bond found between a Radiant and spren, or between an Aonic person and a Seon on Sel. He does have a connection (Connection?) to anyone who draws him and doesn’t go rampaging murderer, and can speak in their minds (and apparently read them) when nearby.
OK, Shallan has to do a pun about drawing Pattern, both in the sense of pulling a blade from its sheath and of creating a picture.
@46 EvilMonkey
Lol, it would be interesting to see Dalinar ascend, and him and Sazed having a conversation in their new states lol.
@47 Carl
So like you said, can wait till the chapter comes up, but I will put what I found in whiteout below. Don’t want to spoil your re-read.
Kaladin kills two fused near the end. When Dalinar captures the Thrill, the other fused flee. So they are still around and not back on Braize.
Is it just me or does some of the dialogue in this chapter seem a little Nietzschean?
Didn’t have time to read all the comments so idk if this has been mentioned, but I was under the impression that Ahu was talking about his Honorblade when he asked where his soul is. I can’t seem to find it but I swear there was mention of there only being 7 Honorblades in Shinovar
@54 That’s an interesting thought