It’s Thursday, my chickens, and you know what that means! Time to dive back into the Rhythm of War reread for a Kaladin chapter. Thankfully this one is a bit of a reprieve from Kal’s depression—he’s actually doing okay here, though a bit melancholy over his friends all leaving. Better than he is for the majority of the book, though. Personally, I find his chapters in this book to be a very hard read. Not because I don’t like them… but because it all hits just a little too close to home. So chapters like this where he’s not bad per se, are a nice little break. Would I rather see him happy? Of course. But hey… he’s got Teft with him for now, right? That’s a good thing. (Aaaand now I’ve gone and made myself sad again because we all know what’s coming in that regard.)
Reminder: We’ll be discussing spoilers for the entirety of the series up until now. If you haven’t read ALL of the published entries of the Stormlight Archive (this includes the novellas Edgedancer and Dawnshard, as well as the entirety of Rhythm of War), best to wait to join us until you’re done.
In this week’s discussion we also discuss some things from Mistborn in the Front Matter section just below, so if you haven’t read it, best to give that section a pass.
Heralds: Vedeledev (Vedel), Loving/Healing. Edgedancers. Role: Healer.
Battar (Betab), Wise/Careful. Elsecallers. Role: Counsellor.
A: Vedel is pretty obvious here, for Kaladin’s new purpose as a surgeon (or surgeon-in-training, at least) and healer. I expect we’ll see her on quite a few of his chapters, at least for a while. Battar is a little harder, but I think she represents the role of Kaladin’s counsellors in this time of his life: Sylphrena and Teft, primarily, but also Hesina, Lirin, and Oroden as the people who are on his side and give life a new meaning.
L: I absolutely would have pegged Battar as being representative of Teft in this chapter.
Icon: Banner and Spears, indicating a Kaladin POV chapter.
Epigraph:
Much as you indicate, there is a division among the other Shards I would not have anticipated.
A: You almost have to feel sorry for poor Sazed here. He did a good thing for his planet by picking up Ruin and Preservation, combining them into Harmony, but I doubt he expected to get dragged into interplanetary politics.
L: Poor thing. First he has to deal with Kelsier (not the easiest prospect), then Elend, now… all this.
A: Poor guy. Of course, the Cosmere-aware reader knows that some of the Shards are at odds with one another, to say nothing of good ol’ Odium going around destroying other Shards when possible—but as far as I know, Saze knew nothing about even the existence of the other Shards when he took on the job.
L: That must have been a fun realization.
A: LOL. Right? It will be interesting to see how it plays out eventually (30 years from now?): Will there be two factions? More? Two primary factions and a few Shards trying to remain separate from the conflict?
L: Bigger question… Where are we in the Scadrial timeline right now? Has Brandon ever explicitly said?
A: The latest entry I can find is dated December 2020, so that’s as current as it gets. He said then that Mistborn Era 2 (Wax & Wayne) falls chronologically in the 10-year gap between Stormlight books 5 and 6, and then Mistborn Era 3, set 50-70 years after Era 2, will happen after all the events of The Stormlight Archive are completed. As always, this might get changed during the writing, if it’s necessary for the Cosmere timeline, but that’s the current plan.
(Note that this is Cosmere-chronological order, not publication order; the last book of MB Era 2 should publish before SA5 comes out, and then he’s planning to write all of MB Era 3 before starting the back half of SA.)
Chapter Recap
WHO: Kaladin
WHERE: Urithiru
WHEN: Approximately 1174.4.2.4, assuming Dalinar is sending some of the troops—and the Windrunners—ahead of his own departure.
(Note: For the “when” notations, we are using this wonderful timeline provided by the folks at The 17th Shard.)
Kaladin is hard at work at the clinic as the rest of the Windrunners are deployed with Dalinar’s troops. He overhears a familiar voice, and discovers that Teft has stayed back with him.
Overall Reactions
A: “You are not alone.” It seems to be the overriding theme for this chapter. Family, spren, and friends are still there for Kaladin, and it matters. He might feel like he’s being abandoned, but he’s not.
“They’re all going away,” Syl said softly, landing on his shoulder.
“Not all of them,” Kaladin said. “Around twenty will stay to guard the tower.”
“But none of our friends.”
A: It seems that Syl has continued her efforts to remember her own pain as a means to understanding Kaladin. At least, she understands what he’s feeling about not going along on any of the missions leaving Urithiru right about now.
Maybe Rlain would stay behind, and work on the fields? Though he often chose to go with the Windrunner support staff, to help out there, with Dabbid and a few squire hopefuls.
A: As we’ll see later, these two do stay in Urithiru—and a good thing, too.
L: So very glad they did… although… maybe if Teft had gone… ::cries::
A: From the inside, I agree, and I could wish he’d gone; from the outside, it was narratively necessary for Teft to stay.
Buy the Book
The Witness for the Dead
The thoughts didn’t work; it still hurt to see them all leave. Hurt to know Shallan and Adolin had gone off to Shadesmar without him. He had his parents and his new brother, and he appreciated that. But the men and women of Bridge Four had become equally important to him.
A: Talk about mixed feelings! It’s good to see him acknowledge the support of his family—both because it’s good for the reader, and because it’s good for Kaladin to recognize that he loves them, and they him.
At the same time… Adolin and Shallan left about a week ago (or maybe two?), and I suppose in a way that would feel weird to him, since the three of them had gone through so much together in the previous Shadesmar adventure. This trip is much better planned, and there are good reasons for him not to go, but I can see how he’d still feel just a touch left-out.
L: FOMO (Fear of missing out) is a legit thing, and something that I think we’ve all experienced to one degree or another.
A: Oh, for sure—and it’s complicated by Kaladin’s internal imperative to be there for everyone who might need his protection.
On top of that, he has to watch the majority of the Windrunners (and especially Bridge Four) leave to accompany Dalinar and Jasnah, and he can’t be with them. They’ll be very much needed there, given that the Skybreakers seem to be focused on that battlefront, and it must be painful to realize that he really shouldn’t be there. Can you imagine the effect if he froze against the Skybreakers when people were depending on him? They would most definitely take full advantage of even a momentary hesitation.
So there he is, with everyone leaving, knowing that he’s got a good task to perform in Urithiru, but also feeling… inadequate, maybe? There are reasons for him to be removed from each venture, and that has to sting a bit.
Syl landed on Kaladin’s shoulder and gasped at seeing Teft, then clapped excitedly.
“Rock is gone,” Teft said, “and Moash… Moash is worse than gone. Sigzil needs to lead the rest of them, without me being baggage to bother him. You and I were the start of this though. Figure we ought to stick together.”
L: ::sniff:: Oh, Teft…
A: This was such a brilliant thing for him to have done, though it hurts to know how it will end. (Also, he’s probably right about Sigzil needing to lead without Teft to “validate” him.) But if he hadn’t stayed, if Kaladin hadn’t needed to keep functioning in order to keep Teft alive, if Teft hadn’t been there to give him hope… he’d never have reached the fourth Ideal.
It didn’t seem like he had a choice either way. That should have frustrated him. Instead he found himself feeling warm. They weren’t all gone.
“Thank you, Teft,” he whispered. “You shouldn’t have given up so much. But… thank you.”
L: Aaaaaand cue the waterworks.
Relationships and Romances
As one, the Windrunners saluted. The Bridge Four salute; though most had never been in Bridge Four and didn’t use the salute to one another, they always gave it to him and other members of the original Windrunners.
L: This is just… so beautiful. The respect that they show him (and the other original members) tugs on my heart-strings.
A: So beautiful. It’s an ever-so-slightly-painful reminder that Bridge Four is very much in the minority among the Windrunners these days; the old core group has been vastly outnumbered by the recruits. At the same time, it’s wonderful to see that all the new members hold the original crew in such high esteem, and the way they reserve the salute solely for the original Bridge Four members is… deeply moving.
Bruised, Broken, and Disabled
Near the end of his time as a Windrunner, he’d found even simple sparring to be emotionally taxing. Daily activities, like assigning duties, had required so much effort that they’d left him with a pounding headache. He couldn’t explain why.
L: Ah. Out of spoons. I think spoon theory is one that Kaladin could definitely benefit from learning. Only maybe they’d call it sphere theory. “My spheres are dun for the day.”
A: Isn’t it funny how sometimes a goofy analogy can seriously help to a) understand and b) deal with issues like this?
Was he happy?
He wasn’t sad.
For now, he’d accept “not sad.”
L: Some days, that’s the best we can hope for.
A: Heartbreaking in its way, but very true. And it is an improvement over his condition in the aftermath of the Hearthstone expedition.
…told him to spend a month recording each and every headache, with signs he’d noticed of it coming on. It wasn’t much, but Mil grinned ear to ear. Often people just wanted to know they weren’t fools or weaklings for coming in. They wanted to know their pains were real, and that there was something—even something small—they could do about the problem.
L: Once again, Brandon hitting the nail squarely on the head. Anyone who’s had to deal with chronic pain or an autoimmune disorder or any unexplainable illness will understand this feeling all too well. Would that we all could find doctors like Kaladin…
A: Not that Kaladin needs them to be empathetic, but the spren must be helpful to a doctor. He mentions the painspren he sees gathering around Mil, so we all know that there is actual, physical pain going on. That said, I agree; sometimes it’s hard to convince yourself that your issue, whatever it is, is really “worth” going to the doctor. It’s nice to have it taken seriously.
Oaths Spoken, Powers Awakened
“Um, prodromes. Right… Uh, just a sec.” He looked toward the reading desk to find Syl laboriously lifting pages and flipping them over…
“So,” he said, “when did you learn to read?”
“Last week.”
“You learned to read in a week.”
“It’s not as hard as it seemed at first. I figured you’d need someone to read for you, as a surgeon. I think I might be able to become surgery tools too. I mean, not a scalpel since, you know, I don’t actually cut flesh. But your father was using a little hammer the other day…”
A: Sylphrena is the best. Like, seriously amazing. She’s thinking way ahead of Kaladin about ways she could help him. I wonder if the memories of the way she and her first Knight used to help the common people might be part of the impetus for this.
L: I bet Hesina is teaching her. Which only makes it better, that Syl’s probably conspiring with Kal’s mom (again)…
A: Right? I absolutely adore the relationship between Hesina and Syl. Did you notice that Syl is even mimicking Hesina’s clothing in this scene? So stinking cute.
“Can you become things other than metal? I’d love to not have to share the stethoscope with Father.”
L: This is so cool! I love the implications here.
A: Right? Brandon has been cagey on whether or not spren can really become things other than metal. He mentioned in one conversation that there are legends of spren becoming bows in the past, which would involve a string, which you’d think wouldn’t be metal… but he wouldn’t say whether it was true. He did say that making themselves into complex mechanisms (such as a pen) would be hard, so I’m not sure about the stethoscope, but the reflex hammer would certainly be possible.
Fortunately, there were medicines that could help, and—with Jasnah capable of Soulcasting a wide range of substances—they had access to rare medications. Though Kaladin and the queen didn’t often see eye to eye, it said a great deal about her that she was willing to take time to make medicine.
A: I appreciated this on so many levels. First, I’m amused that Kaladin and Jasnah still don’t exactly get along; IMO, their personalities are such that they should clash. Second, Jasnah’s Soulcasting has progressed, if she can make rare medications. Granted that “strawberry jam” was a completely foreign substance to her back in Words of Radiance, rare medications would be just as foreign now, I’d think. Third, she’s willing to put in the time to learn them well enough to Soulcast them, and provide them in a quantity that allows a peasant from Hearthstone to receive a rare medication.
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at that last. This is the woman who has all sorts of radical ideas about freeing slaves, ending the monarchy, and all that, so it stands to reason that if she’s going to make medicines, she’d make sure it wasn’t limited to the wealthy and elite. Still, it’s another peek at her personality and priorities, and I’ll take all of those I can get.
Speaking of Jasnah…
Jasnah was probably operating (the Oathgate) today; she could do things with her powers that were well beyond the rest of them. Though she didn’t show it off, she’d plainly sworn the Fourth Ideal.
A: Just thought this was worth noting. There’s a very good reason the Fused wanted her away from Urithiru before they tried an infiltration… While I understand the narrative reasons that Sanderson hasn’t given us very much action from her yet, I’d dearly love to see more of what she can do!
Cosmere Connections
He dealt with an unusual number of coughs. Apparently there was something moving through the tower—a sickness that left people with mucus in their lungs and an overall feeling of aches.
L: Again, this is the common cold that was brought to Roshar by the world-hoppers. With how much Brandon’s mentioned it, I can’t help but feel as if it’s going to wind up being significant down the line somehow…
A: You have to wonder, right? It does keep showing up.
Hence, I also feel compelled to remind everyone that this was written well before SARS-COV-2 came on the scene; we can testify that it was in the beta, which started on the 3rd of February, one year ago.
L: Yeah. I can’t help but be a little on-edge every time I see references like this, even though I know full well that it’s not an actual plague. Amazing how much all of this has affected us emotionally here in the real world…
Humans
“Next time, Adin,” he said, “take the steps one at a time.”
A: It’s Adin, the Windrunner Wannabee! I love this bit even more in retrospect. On the first read, it’s just a quick moment and then we move on, but this kid will come back in an Interlude, and then again when he’s the first person we actually see being protected by Kaladin’s living and active Shardplate.
Lirin had always wanted one of these (white surgeon’s apron); he’d said white clothing made people calm. The traveling butchers or barbers—men who often did surgery or tooth work in small towns—tended to be dirty and bloody. Seeing a surgeon wearing white instantly proclaimed, “This isn’t that sort of place.”
A: He’s not wrong, you know? We might think of it as “sterile” in a negative sense, given our culture, but when you consider the contrast Lirin points out, that puts a whole new spin on it! It’s not so much that white is calming in itself, but the implications of cleanliness would make you feel a lot better about the surgeon. Say what you want about the father-son relationship (but not now), Lirin has a good understanding of human nature in general.
L: He has a good understanding of the job, at least.
A: I would argue that he has a good understanding of human nature; he just doesn’t know how to apply it to his own personal relationships.
And we’re out! Join us in the comments, have fun, and remember to be respectful of the opinions of others. (Also, kudos to you—there have been some great discussions lately, and all with no rancor. So much more fun!)
Next week, Chapter 24 returns us to the Shadesmar Envoy Mission.
Alice is excited to start the next beta read—Skyward 3—in less than a week. This will be her 15th (or so) beta for Brandon, and she still has impostor syndrome about it.
Lyndsey has been a Sanderson beta reader since Words of Radiance and is also a fantasy author herself. If you’re an aspiring author, a cosplayer, or just like geeky content, follow her work on Facebook or Instagram. She’s been doing weekly tie-in videos to the reread on TikTok as well.
I’m not sure if there are any virtues greater than loyalty. It certainly does prickle the skin when you see it. Poor Teft, though :(
I am wondering how soulcasting actually works. Does soulcasting simply change one substance into another (Rosharan alchemy), or can you only change a substance into a specific other substance. More to the point in this case, is it easy to soulcast one substance into another if you have a template/natural example? If so, no matter how rare a medication is in nature, as long as she has a sample she could soulcast material to match that sample.
Now we can retroactively envy all Rosharans for having never previously suffered from the common cold or anything like it.
Syle quote of the day: “Storms, stuff goes out of you and it’s bad, stuff doesn’t go out of you and it’s bad. How do you live like this?”
Looking at this chapter now, I find myself thinking, “The plot will actually start in about 60 chapters.” In this chapter one thing actually happens. Everything else is just scene-setting for future events.
I was so happy when Teft stayed behind
What are the glyphs on Kaladins banner?
The spren that has to change needs to know what it should change into. If the soulcaster doesn’t know but the spren does it could still work.
I don’t think it’s ever been mentioned but a Radiant soul casting won’t have the same physical cost that a regular human using a soul caster device does, right?
Also, blood is pretty complex but Shallan soul cast it by accident and I doubt she knows much about red and white blood cells or platelets. So maybe if something previously exists, like a known medicine, it can be soul cast without a great deal of internal knowledge but you couldn’t create a brand new medicine without understanding what would be in it.
I still have a hard time imagining what sort of real world effect visible emotion spren would have. Just a small thing like the pain spren would be a huge difference for the many people who have been told their pain is all in their mind and not a real condition. It seems like the Rosharans would be a lot more clued in to lies and truth than they seem to be also.
This chapter actually raised some questions for me. Why would she work as a hammer? Wouldn’t she pass through things just like a sword? If not, why not? If it has to do with Intent, is it Syl’s, Kal’s, or the person being worked on?
If she can be made to hit flesh, how much force does she impart? Is her mass mutable as well as her shape? The shardblades supposedly weigh next to nothing which makes me think she would hit like a pool noodle anything she didn’t pass through.
It makes me also wonder if you could change her shape to an arrow and fire her from a normal bow. Go through walls/shields/whatever you have and zip back to your bow right after.
Sorry for the barrage, but this chapter popped the rule of cool bubble and made me curious about the physics of everything.
RogerPavelle @2 – Soulcasting is complicated, and more so because there are different kinds of Soulcasting. The Soulcaster fabrials, for some reason we don’t yet know, are limited to 1-3 of certain substances; we know of those which can make food, metal/bronze, smoke, and wood. (On a guess, there may be – or have been – Soulcaster fabrials for each of the ten Essences. Also on a guess, those which are tuned to specific substances simply won’t work if you try to power them with the wrong gemstone, which corresponds to the Essence.) It seems, though, that a Soulcaster fabrial can change virtually anything into its target substance; the source material doesn’t seem to matter.
The rules seem to be different for Soulcaster people (Surgebinders). Jasnah, for example, is seen to create a number of different substances, and it looks like the only limitation is that she uses the gemstone corresponding to the general category of the Essence to do so. (Smokestone to make smoke, garnet for blood, diamond for crystal, ruby for fire, etc.)
I based my earlier comment on this segment:
Her own lack of familiarity with strawberries was, at least in her opinion, responsible for the nasty stuff she changed it into. But now she’s changing something-or-other into rare medications. Is it possible to simply hold something, and then transform something else into the same kind of stuff you’re holding? I don’t know yet. I can’t think that the spren of a cup of water would be knowledgeable enough to change to a cup of antibiotic or analgesic.
Maybe her spren Ivory can see enough of the essence in Shadesmar to facilitate the transformation, if they have the other substance at hand. Maybe she has to ingest something once, and then she has enough information to Soulcast it. Maybe… could be a lot of different things.
Had Kaladin gone on the Shadesmar mission, the mission would have turned into an unmitigated disaster. Kaladin has many skills; diplomacy, however, is not one of them. He would have been his combative self when something happens which he feels is unfair. Adolin was willing to work within the system (the trial) to try to convince the Honorspren to support the anti-Odium faction. He came to realize that the trial was a sham; a kangaroo court. Yet when he found an opening, he was able to take advantage of it. Adolin knew when to remain silent and let someone else have the spotlight when it was appropriate: Maya. If Kaladin was in Adolin’s shoes, I could not imagine him holding his tongue and allowing Maya to make her points. I could see Kaladin trying to speak for Maya – the very same thing Sekeir did. IMO, one of the most underappreciated parts of the climax of the trial was Adolin realizing he should not be the focus when Maya started speaking.
“Moash worse than gone.” Perhaps the most insightful comment one character makes about Moash post WoR. Succinct yet accurate.
I liked when Syl started reading the medical treatise to Kaladin. I wish I could learn foreign languages as easily as Syl can learn to read and Pattern can break codes. I think a dog would have an easier time learning to fly than I do trying to learn another language; even the dog in Wit’s story.
Alice. Technically speaking, COVID-19 was present before February 3, 2020. It was present in China. The Wuhan Province was in lockdown. I am not sure if it had spread to Iran or Italy by then. But it was present in China by December 2019.
Thanks for reading my musings.
AndrewHB
aka the musespren
@8 – Hammers don’t have an edge. Therefore, it won’t go through an object.
@9 Alice
For some reason I understood this to mean she was soulcasting rare medicinal components rather than the medicines themselves. Something like creating willow bark from which aspirin would be made or poppies to make assorted opiates.
As for how she could learn how to do this with rare items, take it to Shadesmar and examine the bead in your hand until you understand the essence enough to change a second bead to be like the first. Or, as you say, have Ivory bridge the gap.
@goddessimho:
It isn’t super-clear, at least to me, but it’s worth mentioning that neither of our two Radiant protagonists who can soulcast actually does it very much, if you think about it. (It’s also odd, now that I think about it it myself, that Soulcasting is no order’s primary Surge–it’s secondary for both Elsecallers and Lightweavers. Other Surges are primary for one order and secondary for another, right?)
Mistborn spoilers:
There is a Cosmere-wide phenomenon called “savantism,” which happens to any Investiture user who uses their abilities continuously, where the power distorts them both physically and spiritually. Thus Tineye Spook became a savant and had his abilities expand tremendously, but also lost the ability to turn them off or survive without them.
This seems relevant to Kaza, who we see gradually turning into smoke, the substance she can transform things into. Kaza and other “professional Soulcasters” spend all day, every day using the power, and become savants eventually. One suspects that if the Rosharans understood this process, they would at least sometimes share the fabrials among multiple people, to protect them from the negative effects.
@Stormy:
No, they weigh as much as any metallic sword. Vasher comments a couple books ago about how people don’t swing them hard, but that’s because they never encounter resistance when they hit anything, cutting through people and armor and stone as if they were air. If Syl didn’t weigh anything, she’d be terrible for parrying! Take that from a fencer–a weightless blade is not too useful in defense.
OK, the “dead” Shardblades are probably lighter than freaking enormous blades that would be at home in bad Final Fantasy fan art, but they do have mass.
Even if Radiant soulcasting has a physical cost, the Radiant maybe able to heal themselves, so it may not matter to them.
@@@@@ 8 Stormy
My thoughts on the matter:
Spren weapons are mutable in size and shape. They can be swords, spears, rods and knifes of different sizes and shapes.
If a spren assumes the shape of a war hammer and a person is hit with it, since the hammar is not sharp enough, she may not pass through the person, but cause contusion/concussion like injuries, which may or may not be deadly depending on the location of the impact and the force behind it.
Offhand, I can’t think of a purpose of a shard hammer, coz the shardblade is so effective. So maybe that’s the reason they have not been featured so far?
Shard arrows sound interesting. Will they really need bows to send them flying or if the Radiant conveys the thought to their spren, may be they can take that shape and just fly? Though I think physical connection and intent may be necessary for spren to keep their metallic forms for longer periods of time….?
@10 AndrewHB, The beta read started on Feb 3, which means the *content* of the read had already been written. I don’t know the exact timeline of course, but I suspect the parts with the common cold being seen and discussed were probably written sometime in 2019, which is before COVID-19 started making big news.
@10, 15 – And this was from 2015. So, unless Brandon can see the future (with Fortune maybe?)…
Yes, when I said the beta started on February 3rd, that doesn’t imply Brandon was inserting stuff like this right up until February 2nd. It had already had one pass through the editor before we started, so it was written well before that. I guess if you subscribe to the theory that SARS-COV-2 was developed in the lab and escaped into the population in November, it might have been in existence, but it still wasn’t something we were all aware of until December at the earliest.
Well, we know at least one Shardbow exists but I don’t remember what Rock used as an arrow. A live spren could be an arrow and just return to the bow after it was shot but a deadeye arrow seems like it would just stay where it landed.
Regarding mutability of spren weapons, Syl was a shield and then a hammer while battling Amaram at the end of Oathbringer.
The shardbow Rock used was Amaram’s (I think it was Sadeas’s originally, used for hunting chasmfiends as he didn’t have a shardblade, only plate). The arrows were made to be as big as spears. Both the bow and arrows were of regular material, not of spren, alive or dead.
Normal objects have spren, too. Why are they beads in Shadesmar, not people/animals like the other spren?
Sorry, I believe a dead eye arrow would also return to the person it was bonded to after being shot. I don’t think we’ve seen any of these, though it’s theoretically possible.
From The Way of Kings, chapter 12:
So the only thing we’ve seen called a Shardbow… shouldn’t be. It’s just a recently-developed fabrial that can normally only be used by someone wearing Shardplate. Rock seems to be a special case; we’ll learn more about that eventually.
Thanks for letting us know that. I completely thought that was a deadeye just like the blades.
We see Adolin throw deadeye-Maya and summon her back to his hand. The only reason that wouldn’t work with a deadeye-arrow is that there are no deadeyes in arrow form. They all have the “base” form of a sword and they don’t shapechange like a living spren can do.
I forgot Adin appeared this soon :)
@13 Carl, do we know from the text or WoB that “primary” and “secondary” surges for each order are actually a thing? I know Brandon has deliberately tried to parcel out the surges so we don’t get all of them dumped on us at once, but I mean in terms of general magical mechanics.
My impression, which could be wrong, is that neither surge is magically preferred within an order (not counting progression-gating, which I think we’ve only seen for certain with the Skybreakers), although some individuals may choose to focus on particular skills. To use Soulcasting as an example, RoW implies that Shallan, for whatever reason, is just unusually bad at it and not representative of her order’s general proficiency.
Anyway, what I appreciated about this chapter was it set up a viable arc for Kaladin. There’s legitimately a lot he can do off the front lines. He’s making great progress with the protecting bit, but has lots of room to grow on leading. We get several hints at the cool discoveries that would be possible for a non-combat Windrunner.
And then everything gets blown to Damnation.
@Laran:
Not that I know of. However, we do know that for all the orders we have seen, they tend to learn one Surge before the other in a uniform way. That is, Lightweavers learn lightweaving before Transformation, Willshapers learn Cohesion before Transformation.
The impression I had (and we do not have canon on this, no) is that for both the Elsecallers and the Lightweavers, Transformation is the second. However, the Coppermind disagrees, implying that Elsecallers get Transformation first. This seems weird to me, because they’re named “Elsecallers,” which is a direct reference to Transportation, but if so, then that’s what it is.
@carl: From what we’ve seen of Jasnah, it’s seems entirely reasonable that Transformation is the first surge for Elsecallers – in WoR, she’s a very proficient soulcaster, but she has trouble with Transportation – while she was capable of getting herself into Shadesmar, getting back out was a lot harder, and took her quite a while.
As I wrote, I think I was misled by the name. It’s as if the Windrunners’ primary Surge doesn’t let them fly … which it doesn’t, indicating that I am too easily misled by the names.
Heh. Maybe the names arose from the perception of cool-factor from observers.
@20 birgit
Do normal objects have spren? I know of flame and wind spren which are the non emotion spren but I assumed that it is because wind and fire represent forms of energy. Inanimate objects in Shadesrmar have souls which are like small beads and living things appear as flames, Nahel bond spren appear somewhat like humans and the rest of the spren like animals.