Well, hello again! Fancy meeting y’all here on the Oathbringer reread! We’re back in Kholinar with the oh-so-clever infiltration team, at least one member of which is not doing a good job of staying unnoticed. Also, if you thought it was cool when Shallan got stabbed by that soldier, you’re going to love how she gets killed this week!
Reminder: we’ll potentially be discussing spoilers for the entire novel in each reread. There are no Cosmere discussion in the main article (though we make no promises about the comments), but if you haven’t read ALL of Oathbringer, best to wait to join us until you’re done.
Chapter Recap
WHO: Shallan
WHERE: Kholinar
WHEN: 1174.2.1.2 (Two days after the recon party in Chapters 69 and 70)
Shallan and her people infiltrate a local mansion to swipe their food, using multiple layers of Illusion. They get the food, but are discovered before they get away. Shallan is shot in the head with a crossbow bolt, but so terrifies the guards by doing weird things with her Illusions around the bolt that they all run away. She and her team proceed out into the city, where she gives all the food to starving people in a nominal effort to get the attention of the Cult of Moments.
Truth, Love, and Defiance
Title: Rockfall
A former waterfall spilled down to her right, now made of crystal. The shape of flowing water crashed forever onto the stone floor, where it blossomed outward in a wave, brilliant and glistening. The mansion had changed hands dozens of times, and people called it Rockfall—despite the newest owner’s attempt over the last decade to rename it the incredibly boring Hadinal Keep.
AA: The reason for the mansion’s name is in the description, and oy! what an ostentatious thing to do. Create a bunch of four-story waterfalls solely to have them soulcast into other materials, so you can show off your wealth and power. Okay, then. The thing that’s incredibly ironic about this title choice is that, at the time it was suggested and upvoted in the beta, we had no clue what was going to happen in the next flashback chapter. Priceless.
Heralds
AA: Paliah is our only Herald this week. She’s the Scholar, patron of the Truthwatchers, associated with the divine attributes Learned and Giving. (She also strikes me as looking very angry, but that’s neither here nor there.)
AP: She doesn’t seem angry to me, all the heralds seem to have pretty neutral expressions. But that hair! Such volume!
AA: Also, I have absolutely no idea why she’s presiding over this chapter. I’ve got nothing. Okay, “giving” maybe for Shallan giving away the food at the end, but that’s pretty weak. Anyone got an idea?
Icon
Pattern, as the icon tells us that the chapter will focus on Shallan’s POV.
Epigraph
The Edgedancers are too busy relocating the tower’s servants and farmers to send a representative to record their thoughts in these gemstones.
I’ll do it for them, then. They are the ones who will be most displaced by this decision. The Radiants will be taken in by nations, but what of all these people now without homes?
—From drawer 4-17, second topaz
AA: I must say, this Stoneward has a very good point, whether he came to it on his own or in discussion with the Edgedancers for whom he speaks. Granted that in the “present” time, there aren’t very many Radiants occupying Urithiru, so virtually everyone there is either a soldier, a servant, or a merchant. But back in the day when it was full of Radiants, there would have been hundreds or thousands of ordinary people living there, managing crops and animals, cooking, cleaning, selling, buying, all those myriad activities that enable a civilization to function. The vast majority of them had probably grown up in the Tower—likely for many generations. They might know their ethnic heritage, but it’s doubtful that many of them had any significant ties to the nations they nominally “came from.” That would be the normal part… but what does happen to all the ordinary folk of a massive city when they are all being evacuated, with no apparent intent to ever return? I wonder where they went.
AP: It also emphasizes what a huge decision it was to abandon Urithiru. Whatever happened, they had time to get the staff out, but it was serious enough to make the effort to relocate everyone. I hope we get answers to what happened soon!
Stories & Songs
The city’s heartbeat was deep within these stones, old and slow. It had yet to realize something dark had moved in. A spren as ancient as it was. An urban disease.
AA: I love this description of Shallan “hearing” the heartbeat of the city itself; not the people of the city, but the single entity of City, of Kholinar. This is one of those times when the idea that everything has a cognitive component, a spren of its own, is just beautiful and fitting. So Shallan can sense the spren of the city, which is not (yet) perturbed by the presence of the Unmade. She doesn’t know yet that it’s Ashertmarn, the Heart of the Revel, but “urban disease” is a fitting description of its influence.
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Oathbringer
AP: I wondered about that. Can Shallan feel the spren of the city because she is a Radiant? Or is this a “normal” Rosharan thing that anyone significantly attuned to the planet would be aware of? The next bit is also important here:
People didn’t speak of it; they avoided the palace, mentioned the queen only to complain about the ardent who had been killed.
AP: I do think they are able to feel it in some way. We didn’t know at the time, but the people are unconsciously avoiding the Queen and the palace as well because there is another Unmade there, even though we don’t know that yet.
The strange red lightning didn’t merely set fires or scorch the ground; it could break through rock, causing blasts of fragmenting stone.
AP: And then there is this tidbit. Why is it different? We have a lot of references to strange striated rocks, are they connected? Do they draw the Everstorm lightning? Considering that the normal Rosharan refuge from high storms are stone caves, this could be very important in the future.
AA: Oooooo… I hadn’t thought of that. It would be pretty cool if the reason the Everstorm damage affects Kholinar this way is because of the way it was made!
Places & Peoples
AA: It’s easy to see why the city is so tense. As if the parsh army and the refugees weren’t enough, plus the queen has clearly gone ‘round the twist, now they’ve got this new form of random destruction coming through every nine days—from the wrong direction, and doing the wrong kind of damage. (And if they only knew, there are three Unmade hanging out in the area making things weirder!)
One such strike had broken a gaping hole in the side of this ancient, celebrated mansion. It had been patched with an unsightly wooden wall that would be covered with crem, then finally bricked over.
AA: I just liked this description of how repairs are done. Honestly, though, when I read the wooden wall covered with crem, I expected that the whole thing would be soulcast to stone to match the other walls, at least under normal circumstances. I guess that would be more trouble than it’s worth now, anyway.
AP: That’s probably how it’s usually done. But right now there is a major lack of resources, and the soulcasters can’t be used.
Brightness Nananav—a middle-aged Alethi woman with a bun of hair practically as tall as she was—gestured at the boarded-up hole, and then at the floor. … “I won’t stand for them to be even a shade off. When you return with the repaired rugs, I’m going to set them beside the ones in other rooms to check!”
…
“These rugs were woven in Shinovar. They were made by a blind man who trained thirty years with a master weaver before being allowed to produce his own rugs! He died after finishing my commission, so there are no others like these.”
AA: And this is the point I was trying to get to. People are so bizarre. In the midst of the world swooping along in a handbasket with Damnation on the horizon, this lady is worried about the repairs to her rugs perfectly matching the originals.
AP: Which obviously can’t be done since they were one of a kind masterpieces made by a deceased artisan. It makes Shallan’s later portrayal not seem that far off.
Bruised & Broken
[Veil] and Vathah wore new faces. Hers was a version of Veil with too large a nose and dimpled cheeks. His was the face of a brutish man Shallan had seen in the market.
AA: In a way, this should go in Weighty Words, because technically it’s about Shallan using Illusions, and I almost put it in Squires & Sidekicks because at times I feel inclined to treat Veil as one of Shallan’s sidekicks, like Red, Vathah, and Ishnah. That’s really all I had to say about it, except that it’s interesting to note that for the moment, Shallan is still able to modify Veil’s appearance without getting too wigged out by her alternate personalities.
AP: It’s concerning that she feels the need to disguise Veil, who is herself a disguise for Shallan. This is further evidence of her mind continuing to fracture. Lies on top of lies, cryptics would be buzzing! And then this happens:
Veil took a deep breath, then let Shallan bleed back into existence. She quickly sketched Nananav from the glimpse earlier.
AP: Even though they are the same person, she needs to be “Shallan” in order to draw. Even though switching off her disguise could put her group in danger. She is losing her sense of self, and she doesn’t realize it yet.
AA: We’ve seen her do that before, to some extent, but the separation between personalities is widening dramatically.
She breathed out Stormlight, which washed over her, and became Veil fully. Then Veil became the woman who was not quite Veil, with the dimples. And then, layered on top of that, she became Nananav.
Arrogant. Talkative. Certain that everyone around her was just looking for a reason not to do things properly.
AA: Okay, there’s sort of a reason to layer the personalities like this, but it’s getting a bit ridiculous. Shallan, with Veil over her, then not-quite-Veil, then Nananav. Eventually she’ll drop the layers one at a time, if I recall correctly, so she can switch without having to recreate an illusion, but… yikes.
Why shouldn’t she be served by the best? She was a Knight Radiant. She shouldn’t have to put up with barely human deserters who looked like something Shallan would draw after a hard night drinking, and maybe while holding the pencil with her teeth.
The role is getting to you, a part of her whispered. Careful.
AA: We’ve seen Shallan lose herself in Veil before, but at least that was an imaginary person she’d crafted for long-term use with the Ghostbloods. This… this is getting creepy.
AP: I’m really concerned with Shallan’s super method acting:
Maybe she could move into Rockfall, act the part. And the former lady of the house? Well, she was an inferior version, obviously. Just deal with her, take her place. It would feel right, wouldn’t it?
With a chill, Veil let one layer of illusion drop. Storms… Storms. What had that been?
AP: What was that? It seems beyond just acting the part. Do her Orders powers (Lightweaving and Soulcasting) somehow combine to give her a supernatural insight into her subjects? That could be extremely useful.
AA: I’m not 100% sure, and I think we’ve talked about this before. There’s even a place, much earlier, where Shallan says that when she takes a Memory of someone, she takes a part of their soul. Something like that, anyway, though I might not have it quite verbatim. So maybe, maybe, she does actually make a Connection with their soul when she takes a Memory. But I can’t help thinking that it’s exacerbated and distorted by her personal mental issues, so that she’s almost not acting a part.
“Sorry,” Veil said, grabbing a sack of grain. “That woman’s head is a frightening place.”
“Well, I did say that Nananav is notoriously difficult.”
Yeah, Veil thought. But I was talking about Shallan.
AA: I’m not sure whether to sympathize with Veil or be frightened of what Shallan is doing to herself. Both, probably. I just can’t think it’s anything good to become the role you’re acting quite so thoroughly.
Shallan would have loved to linger and marvel at the artful Soulcasting. Fortunately, Veil was running this operation. Shallan… Shallan got lost in things. She’d get focused on details, or stick her head in the clouds and dream about the big picture. That comfortable middle, that safe place of moderation, was unfamiliar ground to her.
AA: You poor child. I think this is true, to an extent, but her solution is to create other people to occupy that middle ground, rather than learning to deal with it as herself. Poor child…
“Shallan/Nananav let her image distort, features sliding off her face, dripping down like paint running down a wall. Ordinary Nananav screamed and fled back toward the building. One of the guards loosed his crossbow, and the bolt took Shallan/Nananav right in the head.”
AP: Whoa. That’s some pretty intense illusion. I was expecting a stand-off between the two Nananavs. Not… whatever this was. It’s also interesting to note that the spren that Shallan conjured up are “wrongspren”—weird colored pools of blood and broken glass. I wonder if that was intentional or not.
AA: You really can’t blame Nananav for running. How very, very bizarre that would be! As for the wrongspren… I don’t know that she’d have thought to do it on purpose, but those are the things she’s been drawing lately, so I suppose it stands to reason that those are the ones she could use for Illusions most readily.
AP: And then we get to the head injury! It’s a good metric for us to learn exactly how much Stormlight is able to heal. Shallan obviously suffered a serious brain injury affecting speech and the left half of her body. So only half of a Radiant’s brain needs to be intact to heal them.
AA: Possibly not even that much; weren’t we told elsewhere that nothing but a severed or crushed head would kill them? So creepy, though:
She righted herself and looked back toward the soldiers, her face melting, the crossbow bolt sticking from her temple.
AA: If I were a guard, I’d run too.
Shallan let the illusions go, all of them, right down to Veil. Just normal, everyday Veil.
AP: Who is also an illusion. We are all worried about you, Shallan.
AA: Oh, so worried. Even the sidekicks are worried, in a rather hilarious way:
“Um, Veil?” Red said. “That crossbow bolt… the blood is staining your outfit.”
AA: “And also, I’m completely wigging out about the fact that you’re giving us orders with a crossbow bolt through your head, lady, but I’m trying real hard not to think about that part!!”
Veil didn’t know much of the Unmade. She’d never paid attention to the ardents on important matters, let alone when they spoke of old folktales and stories of Voidbringers. Shallan knew little more, and wanted to find a book about the subject, of course.
AA: Sigh. I mean, she’s been moving this direction for a long time, but when she’s dropped “all” the illusions “right down to Veil” and then keeps thinking about Shallan as another person, she’s seriously losing herself.
Tight Butts and Coconuts
She had Pattern quietly open the lock to the dumbwaiter down here, then sent him away to decoy a few servants who had been bringing wood into the bay. They pursued an image of a feral mink with a key in its mouth.
AA: At least occasionally, her imaginative Illusions crack me up. What an image!
Veil scrambled into the wagon’s seat, then slapped the chull with the steering reed. Her team, joined by Ishnah, charged back into the room and leapt into the wagon, which started moving. Step. By. Protracted. Step.
AA: Speaking of funny mental images… Kind of a bummer to have your getaway vehicle pulled by something that moves at a slow walk, when the people you’re trying to get away from are running. Just sayin’…
Muddled Motivations
Veil turned away, ashamed, thinking of the food she had hidden in the wagon. How much good could she do with all of that? How many tears could she dry, how many of the hungry cries of children could she silence?
Steady …
Infiltrating the Cult of Moments was a greater good than feeding a few mouths now. She needed this food to buy her way in. To investigate… the Heart of the Revel, as Wit had called it.
AA: This is one instance where I’m glad to see her mental conflict. She does need the food in order to investigate the things that are standing in the way of their overall mission, but I’d be worried if she didn’t even consider simply using it to feed the starving people.
“… In the meantime, do you know of anyone who could use a little extra food? People who are particularly nice or deserving, but who get overlooked by the grain rationing?… I’ve got extra to give away,” Veil explained.
AA: We’ll talk about this in a future chapter, but this is going to come back to bite—not just her, but everyone she tries to help. We’ll find out that it’s one of the situations where her other personalities, for all she puts into them, still don’t know anything Shallan doesn’t know. There may be an exception in that, as we discussed above, she might actually have Connection to the people she imitates from a Memory, but Veil is really just Shallan pretending.
By the evening, the cart was empty. Veil wasn’t certain if she could get the cult’s attention this way, but storms did it feel good to be doing something. Shallan could go off and study books, talk plots, and scheme. Veil would worry about the people who were actually starving.
AA: Well, there are schemes and there are schemes, I guess. It’s ironic that she thinks this is Veil’s clever way to give food to poor people with a facade of getting the Cult’s attention. In the end, she’ll fulfill the rationalized explanation, and regret the way she went about it.
A Scrupulous Study of Spren
What was that on the ceiling? She cocked her head at the strange sight of pools of liquid, dripping down.
Angerspren, she realized. Collecting there and then boiling through the floor. The larder was directly above them.
AA: I adore this one. We’ve talked before about how difficult it is to hide your emotions, when there are spren helpfully giving away your true feelings. We’ve also talked about how a spy would have to have extremely good self-control to avoid this; I’ll even admit that Shallan’s deep immersion would be helpful in drawing the “right” spren for her character. I’m not sure we’ve ever addressed the other side—how very useful it can be to see someone else’s emotions. In this case, they even get to see the angerspren being generated up in the pantry they just pilfered, which is an excellent bit of warning.
Okay, then. That was… fun. Just ask Vathah! Jump into the comments, and don’t forget to talk about some of the things we left out of our discussion! There was plenty more good fodder for conversation. Next week, we’ll stay in Kholinar with Kaladin and the Wall Guard in Chapter 73.
Alice is still not done with those drama props and sets, but the show is coming next week. Whee!
Aubree is slightly overwhelmed with JordanCon prep work.
A couple of quick comments – Shallan‘s injury here is bound to have been less severe than whatever damage she and Kaladin sustained from falling into the chasm. So, even head-crushing must be pretty thorough to kill a Radiant with access to stormlight, IMHO.
And I really hate how Shallan cut her curiousity, her sense of beauty and wonder out of Veil and keeps disparaging these traits.
These head injuries demonstrate that radiants are better at healing than Wolverine. When he takes a brain injury like hers, the brain grows back blank.
I can’t help but be reminded of this :P
Alice, the quote you were thinking of is :When she collected a Memory of a person, she was snipping free a bud of their soul, and she cultivated and grew it on the page. Which, considering his choice of cultivation, probably has a realmatic meaning in addition to its poetic one.
Love the mention of the soulcast waterfalls. Any tidbit to learn more about soulcasting is always awesome. This shows it doesn’t matter if the target is “moving” or in this case actively flowing, soulcasting can still be accomplished. To think of all the wonderful and beautiful creations that could be made just from changing one medium to another. Artisans carve wonderful shapes from marble, but imagine what you could do if you could first carve it from wood, or even shape it from clay? Soulcasting is epicness :)
@2 soursavior
Good point. I believe the reason is because the healing defaults to the spiritual ideal through the cognitive lense. So it is almost like taking a screen capture of yourself every moment before the damage is done, and then healing to return to that screen capture.
@3 Austin
LOL
“Shallan… Shallan got lost in things. She’d get focused on details, or stick her head in the clouds and dream about the big picture. That comfortable middle, that safe place of moderation, was unfamiliar ground to her.”
“Fortunately, Veil was running this operation.”
A neat nod towards the Virtue Ethics that Lightweavers represent or a disturbing hint that maybe Veil will end up the dominant personality, at least with regards to Shallan’s work as a Radiant?
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I really can’t recommend reading this enough, it’ll literally reshape the way you view every action the characters take – https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormlight_Archive/comments/7upe52/oathbringer_stormlight_archive_and_philosophy_an/
“The Edgedancers are too busy relocating the tower’s servants and farmers to send a representative to record their thoughts in these gemstones.”
I imagine they were always ‘too busy’ with these “small-minded things,” as Nale put it (no joke, it pains me to even read that line). If I hadn’t already known the Edgedancers were my people from their second Ideal, this would’ve cemented it.
@2 soursavior
lol Identity in the Cosmere is nice and convenient like that
@soursavior
Advantage to living in a reality where cognition and spirit reside on different planes of existence and you can just rebuild their physical containers. :)
It’s super minor but that did bother me a little bit. The crossbow bolt could not have taken out her speech and the left side of her body from that angle. I’m admittedly only a layman who reads too much but the speech centers are on her left side up high and the ‘controls’ for the left side are on the right and lower. Theoretically I could see her losing speech and having her right side go useless.
oh hey, it’s this chapter. the one that actually made me dislike Veil, Radiance, and all of the multiple personality stuff. Honestly, this is where Shallan and her narrative loses me. She needs to deal with this issue, and it feels like it doesn’t even get solved in the end of the book, or at least a hint of progression. Kaladin went through his issue of dueling oaths, nearly killing Syl, making it a big deal to his character. Shallan’s issue are she doesn’t even realize she is having issues, and pattern kind of doesn’t even get affected by it, like I feel he should, to tell her that she’s skirting the line. All she has is a prep talk from Adolin, and while emotional support is necessary, it still implies that she hasn’t really gone through answering her truths, confronting anything. She still just sees it, and than tries to rip it away, using adolin as…well, a crutch. She needs to handle this on her own, and yes, multiple personatly disorder is difficulty, and probably something you can live with. than why not have her other selves, if they are taking lives and personastly of their own, talk to her? make her realize that she can be all three of these things, the scholar, the thief and the knight, so they can work together,
That is cool. When they got to Shadesmar, I wonder i the large spren under the beads was Kholinar itself. Hadn’t occurred to me before.
@Brian, remember that Shallan is not Homo sapiens. Also even among our species, some people have speech on the right side.
One thing that I think is very important to remember when dealing with Shallan’s personality issues is that Shallan herself is a mask. The real Shallan, beneath all the illusions, is still that broken girl we caught a glimpse of in Words of Radiance. Until Shallan sets aside all her masks and confronts her trauma on that level, I don’t think she will ever be able to really resolve her issues with her personalities.
Shallan has become a walking onion. Layers on top of more layers.
I believe the dark thoughts that Shallan had while impersonating Nananav had to do with the presence of one of the Unmade in Kholinar: probably Sja-anat. I think Ashertmarn’s (Heart of the Revel) influence is concentrated at the Oathgate platform.
I give Shallan credit for trying to help the common folk and refugees in Kholinar. The fact that it ultimately fails does not (in my mind) does not diminish the thought. Sometimes, it truly is the thought that counts.
Thanks for reading my musings.
AndrewHB
aka the musespren
@7: wow, that’s a fascinating link, thanks for sharing.
Isilel @1 – I so agree! It’s just painful to watch Veil sneer at so much of Shallan’s personality. Does Shallan really hate herself that much, or does she just think that’s how Veil would see the world? It’s bad enough when one character sneers at another, but this… this is horrible.
Jdd @@.-@ – Thank you! That’s exactly the quote I had in mind. I was in too much of a hurry to look it up, because I couldn’t remember enough exact wording to do a quick and fruitful search – especially since I couldn’t even remember which book it was in.
Steven @9 – Oh, I think Shallan realizes she has issues, but she really doesn’t want to deal with them. The fact that the world is on fire is a super handy excuse for shoving those issues back down and refusing to face them, because there’s always something “more important” to do. Pattern… well, he realizes there are problems, but he’s pretty clueless on the “extent” and “solution” angles. I think by the end of the book she’s made a little progress, if only in terms of decreasing the acceleration. I would think, though, that in order to become a full Radiant, she’s going to have to face a lot more of this. Self-awareness is not her forte, but it’s required by her Order’s purpose. So… I do expect to see this happening in later books, but I’m kind of glad (in that awkward “great and horribly uncomfortable story-telling” fashion) that Sanderson didn’t make it easy to deal with her issues.
Andrew @13 – Well, I appreciate the thought… but I can’t really say “it’s the thought that counts” when people end up dead because of her well-intentioned but badly-executed “thought.” If it was just that it didn’t work well, that would be less of a problem, but people die because she didn’t know what she was doing.
I would most want watery waterfalls in my house. (Constructed ones, not plumbing malfunctions). (I love waterfalls and am lucky to live in a place famous for them). But those soulcast waterfalls sound spectacular, and very Alethi-Rosharan. I’d like to see art of them.
Even knowing these escapades are going to get people killed, I enjoy rereading them, watching Shallan amusingly freak people out. But it’s always painful to see how much self-loathing she’s developing, even if she doesn’t think of it that way.
That image of angerspren bubbling out and dripping from the ceiling is real creepy, though a helpful warning
Given our modern slang usage of “wrong,” I’m amused to imagine “wrongspren” appearing whenever it’s used that way.
@15 I actually realize why it kind of bugs me. Its like reading Rand from wheel of time again, where every small step forward lead to another OH MY GOD” moment of him not getting it. yes, it’s super important for character development but for Almighty’s sakes….we know what the problem is! someone help her or let her figure it out! haha
Yes Radiants are somewhat hard to kill and earth-anatomy only applies partwise with the influence of Cognitive and Spiritual Realm.
What absolutely shocked me though in the scene was her total disregard for her crew. She may be invulnerable, but her crew is not. Vatah even tells her
And that is not her dissociation, that is her being heady and overconfident.
Concerning her feeling the heartbeat of the city it could be a blending of her Horneater heritage and her Lightweaver capabilities. I am certain now it is related to the Parshendi rythms.
Her illusion of Nananav was certainly a blend of Illumination and (self)Transformation. But what caused it? The presence of the Unmades? Is it an unvoluntary side effect of her fracturing? Or is there yet another background?
To her mental problems I only want to state this at the moment. I am very wary of the concept real Shallan. IMO it is an idealisation, yet another persona created by us readers. We do not know the girl she was before the scene at the end of WoR, we do not even know, if we have been shown all there was to see, or only that what Shallan could bear at that moment. (The only hint, that there is nothing more to see, is the WoB, that Shallan was farther than Kaladin at the end of WoR). There is only one Truth, that we know for certain: Shallan cannot go back to the adorable teenager we saw on the docks of Karbanth, when she has ordered herself again, we will see a new woman, a person that we (propably) could not even fathom. And:
I have high hopes, that we see something like that in SA4, because this is epic fantasy; in RL i would be rather pessimistic.
Concerning her market distribution I am with Hoid, Alice and others. Better to have tried and failed then to do nothing at all. But it may be, that the resutls would have been better had she earnestly included her crew. They know much more than her of these things. By the way compassion was not in Veils blueprint. It is core-Shallan bleeding over.
Ah well… It’s *this* chapter. I will admit I disliked this chapter when I first read it, I disliked it on re-read but I have since then come to see it as the most explicative in terms of Shallan’s “issues” with her “personalities”.
I have always felt the moment where she becomes this snotty Brightlady and starts to act like her, despite not really wanting to, offers one big clue as to what is going on. The second big clue would be her later conversation with Hoid. Hence, my understanding is whatever Shallan is doing with her lightweaving, it isn’t just physical. Whether she snatches part of somebody else’s soul or she just alters her way of thinking to fit the illusion, whenever she is impersonating “someone”, she isn’t really herself. Oh she is *there*, but her disguises always seem to require she *becomes* them.
Now, her problem seems to be this hate she has towards herself, this desire to be everyone *anyone* but Shallan has made her create the perfect alter-ego: Veil. Veil disparages everything Shallan loves and is talented at, Veil sneers are Shallan, this useless insignificant girl except, but Veil isn’t real. So what is Veil? A persona. A *someone* Shallan created whom wouldn’t be her, whom would have all the strengths she thinks she lacks and none of the defects she believes she has. Deep down, she does think her art, even if she loves it, is insignificant. Wasn’t she prevented from choosing it as a Calling because it wasn’t “good enough on its own”? She had to choose “Natural Science” as just “Drawing” wasn’t acceptable. Hence, I always felt Veil’s disdain for Shallan’s art came from the fact she was crafted to erase all Shallan believes is a flaw in her. And that includes her love of art. Because art is insignificant. She doesn’t *really* think this is true, but she was told enough time it was to want it out.
Do I believe Shallan is a persona? Nope. Shallan is, well, the real Shallan. The broken girl she refers to is whom she thinks she’d become if she were to remember. She believes can’t deal with the truth, but she can. The broken girl is just an imagery which represents what she fears from her memories and when the memories are forced to come back, she jumps into another persona to further avoid them. All of this not to *be* this broken girl she resolutely believes she is. Deep down.
@19 Gepeto Hey, it’s something we actually agree on. yes, I also agree that I don’t think the “broken girl” shallan is the *REAL* shallan, no matter what the poor girl thinks. She has grown up from that, just like how Kaladin is always trying to grow away from the “wretch”. She truly believes that the young girl, the scholar, the artist, is just another disguise and she sees herself still as the broken girl, heck even because that the scholar has to use the shardblade that “killed her mother” we even see that in the very beginning of the book, where she insists that pattern isn’t the one to kill her mother, that the blade was. She’s still trying to escape from that despite pattern forcing the issue in WoR. In a matter of fact, I have to check, but does Veil ever have to wield the Patternblade? isn’t it always Shallan and Radiance? just further proof that she’s trying to escape, now using Veil because “shallan” has to face her truth, while she uses Radiance to be even harder to take care of the knight radiant responsibilities.
It bears keeping in mind that serious wounds, even once healed, can have permanent effects on the mind, even quite suddenly. As one example, Henry VIII went almost overnight from a broadly genial, extremely fit Renaissance man to a slowly bloating, fickle tyrant after he fell from his horse. Shallan took a crossbow bolt to the brain. Even with the healing powers of Stormlight, the lingering Cognitive issues sparked by even a momentary Physical injury could easily have kicked her brewing issues into full-on overdrive dissociative identity disorder. As she was “inhabiting” Veil while healing, this could have exacerbated things further, as healing using Investiture is based on one’s own self-image, and Veil at least would see Shallan as separate from herself.
Ah, this chapter. The disturbing Shallan who doesn’t see that she’s starting to take all the self-illusions just a *bit* too far. All the creepiness of her layers of illusions, and then the head shot, take her a little too far for me. I really loved her in the first two books, but she is definitely not my favorite at this point.
Part of me wonders if she might have temporarily lost a bit of her higher cognitive functions when she got shot in the head, because I was never sure even the first time that giving food to the people the boy told her about was actually a good idea. And the kid’s list is a little too precise to feel totally authentic. Like really, if you asked any of my kids who deserves free food they wouldn’t be able to give a list like that. It was a total red flag for me, though Shallan/Veil doesn’t have very much experience with people smaller than herself.
I personally don’t quite think that Shallan is communing with the spren of the city here, I think it’s something else going on. Note how Shallan describes the sensation like a beat. Shallan is Veden, and has Horneater blood in her. And we know that some Horneaters can hear the rhythms, if only dimly…
soursaviour @2, These head injuries demonstrate that radiants are better at healing than Wolverine. When he takes a brain injury like hers, the brain grows back blank.Please forgive me if I misunderstood you or if I am misinformed and therefore erring. By “brain grows back blank”, you mean as a clean sheet, without memories? I have never read any of the comics, only seen the movies, but I understood that the brain went blank and lost memory only if he got shot in the head with an adamantium bullet? Because he took a regular bullet to the forehead from a cop’s gun in “X2” and shrugged it off in a minute or two without nothing seeming to be wrong. As said, I have no knowledge of the comics lore and might have misunderstood your point, so I might be wrong, but I thought I’d mention it.
Scáth @5, To think of all the wonderful and beautiful creations that could be made just from changing one medium to another. Artisans carve wonderful shapes from marble, but imagine what you could do if you could first carve it from wood, or even shape it from clay? Soulcasting is epicness :)
I don’t have a digital copy and could not find the scene right now, but wasn’t it mentioned in one of the previous books (I think in WoK?) that there were items like mirror frames etc that were indeed carved for example from wood and then soulcasted into stone, so that even the pattern of the wood was still visible? I might be mistaking, but I think I remember something like that.
knuti @18, I really like your points about Shallan disregarding her crew and the possibility that hearing the city’s beat might be connected to the rhythms and Horneater heritage. About Nananav starting to take her over, I also suspected the influence of the Unmade(s).
@24 – The shot to Wolverine’s head in X2 didn’t penetrate his skull, which was laced with adamantium. I will say, thought, that the whole “adamantium bullet to the head, memory wipe” thing in Origins was very, very bad writing. It’s like, they somehow knew that would wipe out his memories.
This Shallan scares me, I’m not afraid to admit it. But in a way, Shallan in OB is all about deconstruction. Pattern strips away her illusions, Jasnah strips her feelings of adulthood, Kholinar is in the process of stripping away her feelings of competence though she does have a good run of it while it lasts. The fragmentation of S. Davar is a sore story point for many of us, equal parts frightening and frustrating. For my part, even knowing that this is a realistic portrayal that will make her eventual breakthrough feel earned, she still makes me wanna shake her. I guess this is one of those scenes where we have to distinguish good writing of hated character and/or situation and bad writing. I obviously think the scene was good but I don’t like being in her mind at all right now. Crossbow bolt notwithstanding.
As far as the great food giveaway, I just wonder how she could have executed it better given her resources and her mission. In my mind the attempt is the epitome of KR. Journey before Destination (and Pancakes). She was right to make the attempt and it’s an expected action given what she is. This is also a demonstration that Veil isn’t as street-smart as Shallan thinks she is.
Geez, for a book as incredible overall as OB was, these Shallan-in-Kholinar chapters are rough. Her fragmentation, confusion and self-loathing made being in her headspace for these chapters such a slog.
Any breakthrough she will reach has already been earned with how difficult these parts were.
@Wetlandernw
I think that’s good writing, personally. The only way to gain experience is to fail. In fact, “gain experience” means “learn from failure.”
@24 as @25 said, the injury had to get through to his brain, not just his big metal skull. As for “growing back blank,” your interpretation is exactly what I meant.
@21 I like your idea that being in her wrong mind during the healing might have given Veil extra influence.
@24 and @29, I feel like an idiot. I completely forgot the timeline last night and that the regular bullet did not get past his adamantium skull. Duh. Thank you for correcting me.
@24 Celebrinnen
Yep it was. What I meant was imagine if we had those capabilities here in the real world. Also beyond what we already see in the novels, imagine all sorts of art that could be created. Artists use all sorta of mediums all the time for varying results. Now imagine being able to create something in one medium, and change it into a completely different medium. I would love to see the kind of art shows a lightweaver could put on with either illumination for performance pieces (such as what Shallan did with the stage) or art pieces such as sculptures and paintings. Sanderson magic is cool lol :)
@31: Interesting. Do you think a Lightweaver could Soulcast her illusions into some form of actual matter?
@32 – That’s that theory. We saw hints of it at the end with Shallan’s illusions during the battle of Thaylenah.
@32 LazerWulf
Yep, which is why I cannot wait to see what a fully oathed knight in all the orders can really do. Imagine creating an illusory dragon to attack your enemies that really does do damage. Basically the lightweavers could be the “summoners” of the knight radiants.
@33 Austin
Yep yep :)
Knowing what’s coming, this part is even tougher on the re-read. I don’t remember catching any indication that helping out the poor would backfire in such a spectacular way. Sigh.
@20: I like the analogy in between Shallan thinking she is the “broken girl” and Kaladin thinking he is the “wretch”. Neither are giving themselves much credits for what they actually accomplished, both think they are so broken, they can barely function. This launches again the discussion on what it takes to be a Radiant which I have come to believe isn’t really to be “broken”, but it is to think of oneself as “broken”. Going through hardships doesn’t break people, what breaks people is thinking they are broken which is much easier when life hasn’t been kind.
Hence, Shallan and Kaladin are broken mostly because they think of themselves as broken people. They each think they are lacking “something” to be whole: Shallan refuses to deal with her past thinking she cannot live with it, Kaladin refuses to accept he isn’t responsible for everyone’s life thinking he cannot live while others die.
So yes, Shallan is so messed up she no longer knows what is real and what isn’t. All she agrees on is she cannot face her past, so she has to find ways, any ways, to avoid dealing with it. In WoK, we see her wanting to be a scholar, but in OB, we see her realize, in her own ways, she just probably isn’t scholar material. Scholarship isn’t what she enjoys nor really want…. though she still decides to make a go for it. What does she wants though? At 17, she is still trying to shuffle through what she wants in the face of what she thinks she wants: a recurring theme in SA as more than one character has similar inner struggle.
Who is Shallan? She is what she will make of herself. She isn’t the broken girl nor the scholar: she is a girl who’s gone through very difficult events, who’s got talent in arts, some interest in scholarship and, more importantly, who has the capacity to make choices for herself. Oddly enough, the very first thing Shallan really, truly decides to do, for herself, because she wants it is… marrying Adolin. Everything else, from her Calling to her scholarship with Jasnah, she did it for reasons external to her, choosing the marry Adolin when he gave her back the liberty to say no and go elsewhere truly is the first time, in books, Shallan takes a decision for her own good. This is why I tend to think Shallan is improving, by the end of OB, and also why I think we have seen the worst of her issues.
For the rest, yes, Radiant is the persona Shallan creates to deal with the responsibilities of being a Radiant. She doesn’t think she can do it, so she creates someone who’d have exactly the personality she thinks she would have needed to have to really be a *Radiant*. And that personality is based on Jasnah because, to Shallan’s eyes, Jasnah is the ideal woman. Veil is the persona representing whom Shallan wishes she were: a street savvy girl who wouldn’t been tricked into loving her parents, who has no attached, no ties, who’s above having a dark past, above events, who’s independent and so on. In this chapter, we see Shallan becoming protective of her Veil alias: she refuses to compromise Veil, to lose Veil which is the one scene making me think she will eventually need to do just this. Lose Veil. Agree she is just a disguise and thus, unimportant. I know many think Shallan needs to “re-absorb” Veil to be “whole”, but I am seeing things in a different manner. I am seeing Shallan as needing to stop thinking she needs to become other people to accomplish things, to rely on them and, to achieve this, I do think she needs to make them disappear.
@26: Yeah, it isn’t fun to be in Shallan’s head at all right now. Unfortunately, not wanting to be in a given’s character’s head can be problematic in a book. I never enjoy when I stop wanting to read a given character in any book I am reading. My hopes for SA4 is Brandon will fix Shallan’s character and make her engaging again.
First: that Reddit link was great. I enjoyed reading it.
A side note: Soul casting literally eats away a person’s existence. I can see using that for art the Soul caster themself wants to make but the waterfall and mirror frames and all the other non-food and shelter uses…then even as I think this I realise it’s no different than sending diamond miners into deadly mines or cramming poor women and children into dismal dangerous workshops. Our cultures live off the souls of others just as the Alethi do.
The biggest thing that bugs me about Veil is that she only thinks she is street smart. Her disparaging of Shallan’s traits is a real pot vs. kettle argument.
@Gepeto
Except Gavilar, Lopen, Hoid ….
In my head, Shallan doesn’t need to absorb Veil so much as as acknowledge that Veil is just Shallan, that she, Shallan, can do all those things without pretending. The competencies are and always were hers, not some imagined other person’s.
Tying the two threads together, note that Veil and Brightness Radiant couldn’t actually be Radiants if one had to think of oneself as broken–they’re both paragons of self-confidence, since that’s the reason Shallan made them.
@39: Well, we do know Lopen got to be a Radiant by being naturally “open” to the process thus showing us being broken is not a solid requirement. It is however through brokenness the greater majority of Radiants will develop their Nahel Bond. There is a WoB on the matter, stating how Radiants did/do believe to join their ranks you need to have either a mental illness or having lived through a tragedy which broke you, reality is the Nahel Bond isn’t as exclusive as they think. Still, they have those thoughts because they coincide with what they have observed. In other words, for each Lopen, there probably were hundreds of Kaladin. Dalinar, Kaladin, Shallan, Jasnah, Renarin, Teft, Lift, Szeth, Venli are all broken. Only Lopen isn’t. Hoid is something else, so I am not putting him up here.
On Veil and Radiant, I think someone once noted how the one bonded to Pattern was Shallan. And yeah, I agree neither Veil nor Radiant, were they real people would likely be broken enough to be Radiants. Both would likely not be picked by sprens.
so, i think being broken, means something a little different, as you have to have cracks in you spiritual self, for the a bond to happen with a spren, that doesnt necessitate being mentally broken, it could be something rather traumatizing, like losing your arm. on Scadrial, you have to be “snap” to get your misting abilities, which meant being beaten to near death, or the “mist sickness” , the main thing is, there has to be something in your spiritual essence that lets the bond in, cracks you could say, Lopen is a special case, in that he probably got over whatever took his arm, but that doesnt mean it wasnt tragic to him. granted, thats just be my thoughts on the matter.
@37 goddessimho
Good point. Being given the “job” of a fabrial soulcaster is basically a death sentence. The only question is how often they make you use it determines how short your life is. That is a lot like drafting in the lightbringer series. That is why Kaza is one of my favorite interludes. Very human, very sad and very touching.
An interesting side note is that radiant soulcasters seem to receive some insulation from their bond. Also radiants do not have a lot of the limitations that a fabrial has. Can’t wait to see more soulcasting from Jasnah!
@42 – Or some soulcasting from Shallan! Seriously girl, you have two powers! And you, too, Dalinar! You didn’t seem the least bit interested in knowing what your other power was.
@42: That reminds me of the novel A Plague of Giants by Kevin Hearne, which has one of the most haunting magic systems I’ve encountered. In that world, anyone can seek to acquire magic abilities tied to a certain force of nature — earth, air, fire, water, plants, or animals. To do so, they immerse themselves in a lethal form of that force (a giant carnivorous tree in the case of plants) at one particular location, and either get “blessed” with the magic or die — and a large percentage of them die. Those who get the magic and thus live are immune to harm from that force. But every active use of the magic physically ages them rapidly, with especially intensive use causing many years of aging in a span of hours or, in the most powerful spellcasting, immediate death. And they’re required to use it in service to their nation or people. So seeking the magic is always a death sentence, fast or slower. Yet a lot of people do it because they feel that they have nothing to live for, or that it’s their culture’s highest honor, or that it’s all worthwhile for the chance to fly or breathe underwater or live among deadly wild animals for a while.
Uh, sorry if that was too much of a tangent. I really like that book.
I know I mentioned this in an earlier thread where we talked about this, so sorry for the repeat, but this is also similar to one of the magics in Aether of Night (which wasn’t published but was possibly a precursor to Cosmere stuff) – there was a type of magic where some people have a metal/machine based magic and some of them decide to bond completely with those machines and basically just live as those machines and give up their humanity. It was really interesting but not explored much in the story, since that particular faction wasn’t one of the main viewpoints of the story.
@43 Austin
Lol I agree. Imagine what a lightweaver could do with illusions and soulcasting! A fused flying in to attack sees a wall suddenly pop up. Oh that must be an illusion, fly right through! :::smack crunch::: Turns out it was soulcasted. You would never know what is real and what isn’t lol.
@44 AeronaGreenjoy
That wasn’t a tangent at all. Sacrifice and balance is what I think makes magic systems so interesting. That is why comics like the X-men after awhile caused me to lose interest. A character just had an ability. An ability they could use all day everyday whenever they wanted as much as they wanted. Made power usage meh to me. Though I did love the commentary on racism.
@45 lisamarie
Great point. I do wonder where Brandon will take that book now that he pulled so much of it out and put it in mistborn. Wonder if Aether of Night will end up reaching a point in technology where they become living space ships.
44. AeronaGreenjoy that sounds fascinating!
I found this chapter and the others regarding Shallan’s issues really painful to read, but painful because I care about Shallan and what happens to her. I don’t find the chapters annoying or harmful to the book as a whole, but I can see why some people do find them so.