Welcome to the Rhythm of War Reread, in which we reach what may be the most contentious chapter of the book. This is the one where Alice tries to balance “I sort of understand why so many readers hate Lirin” and “I totally get why Hesina loves and trusts him”—oh, and also “his attitude, while not likable, is very understandable as a human being.” Whee! Should be fun times, eh? Wherever you stand, come on in and join the discussion! Maybe someone will change their mind. You never know; it could happen.
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 Edgedancer and Dawnshard as well as the entirety of Rhythm of War), best to wait to join us until you’re done.
Front Matter
Heralds: Vedeledev (Vedel). Edgedancers (Abrasion, Progression). Loving/Healing. Role: Healer
A: Oh, this is such an easy one—and hard at the same time, because I’ll probably miss at least one of the references. Healer: both Lirin and Hesina are healers by profession and practice, plus the whole thing takes place in the Radiant Infirmary. We see Noril, who testifies to the healing effects of following Kaladin’s example. The infirmary has a lot of volunteers who want to help with the Radiants, hoping to contribute to their healing as well as to honor them. We see a ton of loving in a very personal way: Lirin & Hesina’s love for one another; their love for their various family members, each in their own way; love for their people on a broader scale… and I know I’m missing one I’d thought of earlier. Then there’s Abrasion, for the conflict between Lirin & Hesina, and Progression for the way they help and strengthen and encourage one another to grow. What did I miss? because I’m pretty sure I missed something. There aren’t any Edgedancers, right?
Icon: Banner & Spears—Normally this indicates a Kaladin POV, and I’m delighted that they chose to use it for this chapter with his parents.
Chapter Recap
WHO: Hesina
WHEN: 1175.4.10.4—If the 17S timeline is correct, this takes place the day after Navani produces anti-Voidlight, and mere hours before the beginning of the battle. The former makes sense: Raboniel’s scholars need time to come up with functional anti-Stormlight, and then to make enough of it for the purposes of “testing” on the Radiants and their spren. (Murderous wretches.) That means life in the infirmary hasn’t changed yet. Without knowing all the reasoning that the 17S crew placed it where they did, I keep wondering whether this mightn’t have taken place on 4.10.3—mostly because I’d like a little more time for Lirin to have talked with people and changed his mind about the glyph prior to the battle.
(Note: For the “when” notations, we are using this wonderful timeline provided by the folks at The 17th Shard.)
WHERE: Urithiru, in the Radiant Infirmary a.k.a. the model room
RECAP: Hesina searches the scouting maps for information on her hometown and family. Lirin teases her about her father, but also does his best to reassure her about her family’s safety. They get into an argument over Kaladin, and Hesina pushes Lirin to try to understand why so many people in the tower seek to honor Kaladin.
Chapter Chat – Love, Respect, Trust, and Family Resemblance
A: This whole chapter could be put under Relationships & Romances, of course, but there are Themes here that I want to talk about. As noted in the intro, I find myself seeking a balance between acknowledging the reasons so much of the fandom hates Lirin, my own appreciation for his dilemma, and Hesina’s view of him. Well, let’s get into the discussion and see where we go.
P: And Alice knows I’m not much interested in said balance because I don’t care for Lirin or his attitude towards Kaladin! But let’s see where this interlude goes. Onward!
It seemed the city had given in without too much of a fight, which boded well for local survival rates.
A: Hesina is looking at Windrunner scouting reports on her hometown of Tomat, and I’m amused at this extremely subtle reminder that Lirin has a point: the Fused/singers aren’t determined to kill off humans in general, and a lot more humans survive the invasion if they don’t fight. One can argue whether or not survival is worth it when it means living under the rule of an invading force, but it’s nonetheless true that trying to fight a superior force is likely to get a lot of people killed—including the innocents who have no say in the matter.
P: I won’t argue that Lirin is right in that respect. I will argue that he’s wrong to write off anybody who does fight because they feel that they must, that it’s the right thing to do.
A: Hmm. I don’t think he writes them off… as we’ll discuss later. (Also, it’s so hard not to bring real-world events into this. But we’ll try to avoid that.)
P: I do feel that he thinks that people who fight deserve what they get. And I can’t reconcile that with someone who is supposed to protect.
“Well, we’d probably know if your father died.”…
“And how is that?”
“He’d be haunting me, obviously,” Lirin said. “Living as a shade in the storms, calling for my blood. As I haven’t heard a thing, I must assume the old monster is alive.”
A: Bahahaha! I do love Lirin’s sense of humor. For all that a lot of readers don’t catch it, remarks like this are very much him teasing his wife; whether or not she appreciates the humor in the moment, it’s clear that she (along with their sons, back in the day) understands his sense of humor and know when/when not to take him seriously. As witness the next paragraph.
Buy the Book
The Lost Metal
P: One moderately redeeming factor is his sense of humor. He and Hesina do banter well.
A: The whole family was pretty awesome at banter—at least when they all got along! (Can’t wait to see it again. Chapter 110!)
Hesina rolled up the map and gave her husband a flat glare, which he accepted with a smile and a twinkle to his eye.
A: This and following make it (IMO) clear that this is a perfectly normal kind of exchange for them. They both know the history and the personalities of the conflict between Hesina’s father and her husband (unlike the reader, which drives me nuts!), and it’s kind of a standing joke. In this case, he uses humor to lighten the mood, then reassures her that, from everything they know, her father is most likely okay.
(It’s very like something my husband would do: turn my attention away from my fears by teasing me until I’m irritated at him, and then use reason to help me be more… well, reasonable about it.) It doesn’t entirely work, of course, because the current tensions just aren’t that easily alleviated—and she’s already angry with him about something else.
P: Sure, he has a twinkle in his eye until she really calls him out about Kaladin. Then he buckles down with his attitude.
A: Well, he’s trying to deal with her worries about her parents. For the moment, they aren’t talking about Kaladin. I can’t fault him for this; he really is trying to help with what appears to be her current concern.
“You are thinking that if he lifted a sword,” Hesina said, “he deserved whatever he got.”
And her father would use a sword.… She’d met only one man who dared defy him.
A: While I’m deeply amused at the thought of her father (likely first nahn, but clearly darkeyes if he wouldn’t normally be allowed to own a sword) bullying the local lighteyed citylord (minimum sixth dahn, possibly as high as fourth), there are a couple of more important things here. One, Hesina is accusing Lirin of thinking something that he really isn’t thinking, which is a typical but stupid way to conduct a conversation in which two people disagree. Two, despite her error here, she has a very high regard for her husband, who had the strength of character to defy her father and win.
(Worth noting: I have a ton of respect for Hesina’s wisdom and insight. Her ongoing love and respect for Lirin, even when she vehemently disagrees with him on something, is one of the things that makes me unwilling to condemn him as readily as many fans do. I think she’s being a little … disingenuous here, but I still love her.)
P: I don’t necessarily think she’s wrong to guess what Lirin was thinking about her father, because I personally feel he would be thinking the same exact thing. It’s pretty much what he thinks of soldiers: that they wouldn’t have died if they hadn’t picked up a sword or a spear.
A: Having recently been badly burned in a situation where someone assumed they knew what I was thinking and treated me rather badly based on that assumption, I’m on Lirin’s side here. Don’t tell someone else what they’re thinking; you are not qualified.
P: My head knows that’s right but my heart disagrees, in this particular instance only.
“I’m thinking,” Lirin said, “that my wife needs a supportive husband, not a self-righteous one.”
“And our son?” she asked. “Which version of you does he deserve?”
A: And there’s the actual issue, the core of Hesina’s pain. She’s legitimately concerned about her parents, but every worry is magnified because they are in conflict over Kaladin.
P: Boom! Get him, Hesina! And she’s totally right… Kaladin needs (and deserves!) a supportive father, not a self righteous one.
She hadn’t planned to snap at him, but … well, she supposed she hadn’t forgiven him for driving Kaladin away.
A: Wait a minute. Despite my respect for her in general, she’s being blatantly unfair here. Yes, Lirin yelled at Kaladin and was furious that he’d killed that singer in the infirmary, but Kaladin left on his own. He needed to save Teft as well as himself, and there’s no way he could have done that without leaving. He had zero intention of staying in the infirmary once he knew the Fused had ordered the Radiants to be turned over to their custody. His departure had nothing to do with Lirin’s attitude, and everything to do with finding a hiding place for himself and his friend. And… I’m trying to think of any way Hesina would fail to understand that. So she’s actually being irrational here, probably a combination of the way her husband and her son parted in anger, and Lirin’s earlier pretense that he wouldn’t go help Kaladin unless he could bring him back to the infirmary. Well, I guess no one can be rational all the time.
P: Lirin told Kaladin to go. Twice. Called him a murderer. Called him a monster. I agree with Hesina. Lirin did drive him away.
A: Do you honestly think Kaladin would have stayed at the infirmary if Lirin had been sympathetic? I don’t believe that for a skinny minute. Not only could he not successfully hide himself and Teft in the infirmary, but if he’d stayed he’d have put his family and his entire village in danger by his mere presence. No way Kaladin does that. No way. The only thing he could do, once the soldiers knew they were there, was leave. Lirin’s words meant that he left with unresolved conflict, but there’s no way he could have not left.
P: I mean, of course he wouldn’t have stayed. But I still feel that he felt driven away. He knew he had to protect and hide Teft, but Lirin’s words weren’t helpful at all.
A: To be fair to Hesina, she may believe that Kaladin would have tried to contact them if Lirin hadn’t “driven him away.” She can’t know how impossible that would be, and how much he’d avoid it even if it were possible, because of the danger it would put them in.
“I want you,” she said, “to appreciate your incredible son.”
P: Thank Honor for Hesina, who can see Kaladin’s worth despite the path he’s taken. He is incredible. It’s time Lirin saw it, too.
“He was supposed to be better than this. He was supposed to be better than … than I am.”
“Lirin,” she said softly. “You can’t keep blaming yourself for Tien’s death.”
“Would he be dead if I hadn’t spent all those years defying Roshone? If I hadn’t picked a fight?”
A: And there’s the core of Lirin’s pain. He spent their childhood teaching his sons that there are other, better ways to resist tyranny than just physical violence—and then his own form of resistance ended with petty but incredibly vicious retribution from Roshone. Worse, whatever the emotional pain he himself suffered, the physical punishment was suffered by his sons, who had no part in his decisions. As he sees it, the innocent suffered for his convictions. (Honestly, sometimes one could wish that Lirin had obeyed Roshone’s orders and kept trying to save Rillir. They’d have both died, and… well, as a man with ethics, he couldn’t do that, but who could have held him to blame for obeying his citylord’s command in that culture? Petty tyrants. Ugh.)
But back to the moment, I’m still wondering if this is all there is to it. That thing about “he was supposed to be better than I am”—is that just him feeling responsible for Tien’s death and all those years of Kaladin’s presumed death? I mean… that’s pretty significant, no denying that. I just keep feeling there’s something farther back—something they know, and we don’t. Something that occurred to set Lirin so much at odds with his culture in his antipathy toward physical violence. I doubt we’ll ever know, though.
P: I can understand Lirin’s pain at Tien’s loss. And him feeling the guilt he feels for his years long conflict with Roshone. One thing I wish, though, is that Lirin could see that Kaladin carries guilt for Tien’s death, as well. He went with Tien so he could protect him, but was unable to do so. Lirin and Kaladin are a lot more alike than Lirin cares to admit, I think.
A: Oh, they’re very much alike. I’m pretty sure Hesina sees it—and pretty sure neither of them do. (For that matter, probably everyone that knows them sees it.) I find it’s frequently the case that parent-child conflicts are mostly a matter of “you’re too much alike” in certain ways.
“You’ve healed soldiers before, sending them back out to fight. That’s always been your conviction. Treat anyone, no strings attached, no matter the circumstances.”
A: I grant that this makes one thing clear: Lirin has a different standard for himself and his son than he has for everyone else. Some readers interpret this as Lirin merely wanting to control Kaladin and force him into being the perfect surgeon. As a parent, I’d say it’s less about control, and more about the knowledge of your own failures and your hope for your kids to do better. I might be sad if one of my daughter’s friends flunked out of college, but if it were my daughter, I’d be really upset. You just… naturally care a lot more about your own children (even when they’re adults) than everyone else.
P: My daughter dropped out of college after one semester. I was disappointed because I wanted her to do better than I did. But I set that aside and I supported her in her desire to get a job and get an apartment and make her own way. I supported her because that’s what parents should do. And she eventually went back to school and became a medical lab technician. And then she went back again to pursue another degree… she’s about to earn her Bachelor’s before pursuing her Master’s in Speech and Hearing. She had to be her own person and make her own choices, not do what I decided she needed to do. Just as Kaladin had to be his own person and make his own choices, not do what Lirin decided he needed to do.
A: Well, I’ll address that a little farther down.
“I left everything for you, Lirin. Do you know why?”
“Because you believed in me?”
“Because I loved you. And I still love you.” …
She seized his hand, less a comforting gesture and more a demand that he remain there with her, so they could face this together.
A: Heh. This little exchange points up a key difference between men and women… just sayin’. Men thrive on respect; women thrive on love. Not saying that we don’t all need both, but that’s where we thrive—and consequently what we offer first, as most important to the relationship. I don’t think it’s causing them specific problems, because we see elsewhere that she has great respect for him, and he has deep love for her. It’s just… revealing in the moment. More important, though, I love their understanding that the only way they can deal with this is by facing it together.
P: I love that she wouldn’t let him leave until they’d talked it out some more.
“Your son is a soldier, Lirin. A soldier who inherited his father’s determination, skill, and compassion. You tell me honestly. Who would you rather have out there fighting? Some crazed killer who enjoys it, or the boy you trained to care?… Before you say you don’t want anyone fighting, know that I’ll recognize that as a lie. We both know you’ve admitted that people need to fight sometimes. You simply don’t want it to be your son, despite the fact that he’s probably the best person we could have chosen.”
A: (Lirin and Hesina never met Moash, did they? Ugh. He’s the one you don’t want fighting.)
This kinda goes back to something I’ve said a couple of times in the past. While obviously Lirin trained Kaladin as a surgeon and wanted him to follow that path, the thing that actually hurts is not that he chose a different path, disappointing as that would be. The issue is that he chose (what Lirin sees as) an antithetical one. Had he decided that he didn’t want to be a surgeon and chose to be a woodworker or a potter, Lirin might have complained about wasted potential, but he’d never have gone in for the “he isn’t my son” schtick. He hates knowing his son is killing people—partly because it’s better to save them, and partly because he’s seen the mental/emotional harm that comes to so many soldiers.
P: I just wish that Lirin could see that Kaladin does what he does because he’s driven by his need to protect. To protect his brother, to protect his bridge crew, to protect his friends, to protect those he loves. To protect his people.
A: Again, this comes up later—but it also goes back to what you said before. They’re very alike, and they have the same priority: protecting. They just do it differently, and sometimes it’s hard to see how it’s the same. (Having just gone and reread the end of chapter 110, it’s so nice to know that they will eventually get there…)
The place was busy with humans who wanted to care for the Radiants.… Darkeyes made up the majority of these, but each and every one wore a shash glyph like Kaladin’s painted on their forehead.
A: Let me just interrupt myself here to say how deeply heartwarming this is, even before the conversations happen. The “common inhabitants” of the tower are risking the attention of the Fused in order to do something for the Radiants, and they wear the shash glyph because they’ve heard that Stormblessed still fights, and it gives them hope. Delightfully ironic that these common people are going to be the ones who, in desperation, take up whatever kind of arms they can when the battle comes. They are, indeed, dangerous.
P: It’s really so touching! And they know that they could be punished for it at any time, yet they still do it.
A: It’s quite a beautiful moment. Almost makes me want to smack Lirin for his super-pragmatic evaluation. He’s not in a mental/emotional place where he’s willing to see past the obvious practical side—IMO, he’s subconsciously but determinedly refusing to see anything that’s not “realistic.”
“I see fools,” he said, “refusing to accept the truth. Resisting, when they’ll just get crushed.”
She heard the words he left off: Like I was.
A: This, on the other hand, is heart-breaking. I didn’t quote it earlier, but when Lirin was teasing Hesina and she suggested that her father might have softened, he retorted that stone doesn’t soften with time, it merely grows brittle. I would suggest that, however it may or may not apply to Hesina’s father, it absolutely applies to Lirin. He’s putting up a stony front, but he’s feeling very brittle. Already crushed, in fact, though he tries not to let anyone see it.
P: And here I’m focusing on the fact that he thinks they’re fools for caring about and supporting his son.
A: It’s another twist on that desire to protect—he doesn’t want them to be hurt for doing something that will draw attention without accomplishing anything. What he doesn’t see is why they think it’s worth the risk. I think that’s what Hesina is trying to get him to recognize: they’ve evaluated the risk and decided it’s worth the price.
P: Ugh, my feels hurt.
“Why do you wear that glyph?” Lirin asked.
“To honor Stormblessed, who still fights.” Noril nodded, as if to himself. “I’ll be ready when he calls for me, sir.”
[Insert Lirin explaining why fighting is counterproductive.]
“But sir, do you know why I get up each day? It’s hard sometimes. Coming awake means leaving the nothingness, you know? Remembering the pain. But then I think, ‘Well, he gets up.’”
“You mean Kalaidn?” Lirin asked.
“Yes, sir,” Noril said. “He’s got the emptiness, bad as I do. I can see it in him. We all can. But he gets up anyway. We’re trapped in here, and we all want to do something to help. We can’t, but somehow he can.”
“And you know, I’ve listened to ardents talk. I’ve been poked and prodded. I’ve been stuck in the dark. None of that worked as well as knowing this one thing, sir. He still gets up. He still fights. So I figure … I figure I can too.”
A: ::sobs quietly:: This always gets me.
The truly ironic thing is that Lirin thinks Hesina wants him to acknowledge that Kaladin’s stubborn resistance is doing more good than surgeon’s treatments; that may be true, though I doubt it. IMO, she wants him to realize that his stubborn insistence on caring for the Radiants is exactly the same in kind even if not in appearance. Lirin still gets up every time, still cares for those who need his help, just like he’s always done, and that’s where Kaladin learned it. If Lirin weren’t the kind of man who stubbornly gets up and cares for the people who are his responsibility, Kaladin wouldn’t be that kind of man either. The only difference is that Lirin does it in an infirmary, and Kaladin does it on a battlefield. They’re both protecting.
P: I swear I made my comment above about them being alike before I read your comment here.
But yes, Noril’s words make me tear up, too. Just like it made me ugly cry when Kaladin found him and brought him out of the dark.
A: This is so much what Lirin needs to understand about himself, and the only way he’ll get there is by seeing it in others. People need more than mere survival. They need meaning, hope, encouragement, support, purpose. I think that’s what Hesina hopes to accomplish here: for Lirin to understand how and why Kaladin is an inspiration to these people. He’s been so wrapped up in his own little knot of pain, he’s forgotten that sometimes defying the darkness is what makes life worth living. He’s known it in the past; now he needs to grasp it again.
P: Two thumbs up!
“Don’t challenge them. Don’t argue with them. Simply ask them why they wear that glyph. And see them, Lirin. Please.”
She left him standing there and returned to her maps. Trusting in him, and the man she knew he was.
A: And I’m back in total agreement with her. She knows what kind of man he is better than anyone, including himself. She knows he’ll do what he promised, and she knows that when he lets go of his own pain to see through the eyes of others, he’ll understand both himself and his son better.
Trust.
P: And I’m so cynical when reading this scene because I feel that Lirin won’t appreciate the love and devotion that are shown to Kaladin by their people.
A: Well, first read and all that… but we’ve read the end of the book, and we know that it works. We have a scene coming up (a lot of chapters from now) where Lirin demonstrates that he does understand it, or is at least getting there. As noted in the time-stamp section, I feel like this would be a little more believable with more like a full day to process it. Going from “Ask them why they wear the glyph” to “I want to wear the glyph too” in a matter of a couple of hours seems… unrealistic. In an odd way, it feels unfair to Lirin’s inner conflict to resolve it so quickly.
P: This is definitely different on a first read. I’m just stubborn and Lirin gets under my skin. I need more from him for him to be redeemed in my eyes. But I agree that more time would have been more appropriate.
History, Geography, & Cultures
Sadeas’s was included… It had taken her until now to realize she could check on Tomat.
A: I’m including this mostly because I’m always startled to remember the connections of Kaladin’s family with Sadeas princedom. For what it’s worth, not only is Hearthstone in that territory, so is Tomat, Hesina’s hometown. It’s an essential part of the backstory, but it’s so hard to remember that these people we love are really from Sadeas princedom, not Kholin. It feels so wrong.
The singers had the city wall under repair… That had been broken since … what, her grandfather’s days?
A: Ironic, isn’t it? For all that we’re generally pro-human and anti-Fused/singer, there’s a marked contrast between the cultures that doesn’t exactly reflect well on the humans. While I’m not big on rigid government oversight, people can be so slack about infrastructure. She doesn’t say why no one had fixed the wall, but we can make a lot of guesses. One of them, of course, would be that they felt secure enough in “these civilized times” that they didn’t see a real need for a city wall. One has to wonder… would it have made any difference when the singers came?
P: It likely wouldn’t have made a difference. But I agree that they probably felt there was no need to repair the wall. And you’re right, people don’t care about infrastructure but they really, really should!
He nodded to Hesina and Lirin. Almost a bow. As far as he could go without provoking a reaction from the watching Fused, who didn’t like such signs of respect shown to other humans.
A: I find this… encouraging, I guess. People are doing as much as they can without crossing the line—at least until there’s a good reason to cross it. Small actions like this can have a tremendous positive effect on morale.
P: This is something that bothers me. The fact that the Fused don’t like humans showing respect to one another. They only want respect shown to themselves.
A: Yeah, it’s pretty grating. I suspect it’s true of some Fused more than others; look at Raboniel giving Navani the title Voice of Lights, or Leshwi showing respect to Kaladin, one fighter to another. But Fused like Lezian, and many others, would not want any respect of any level to be shown to a human. I’m glad there are a few (if rare) counterexamples, because as it is, some of the Fused are almost caricatures of arrogance.
Spren & Shadesmar
He’d been studying the large model of Urithiru that was at the back of the infirmary room.
A: Not that anyone needed the reminder, but the final node is in this room with the Radiants, with Kaladin’s parents, with a number of secrets… Several different plot arcs all come together in this room over the course of Part Five.
P: I can’t help but wonder why he was studying it.
A: Me too. I mean… the model is interesting, and all, but was he just looking, or was he looking for something? Trying to figure out where Kaladin might be, based on what Dabbid told them? I wish I knew, but since we’re not told, it’s probably not relevant!
Bruised & Broken
A: Sometimes I can’t help thinking Lirin is also being set up for a Radiant bond. Stormfather knows he’s been bruised and broken by his life experiences. I don’t really think it’s all that likely, but… I won’t be entirely surprised if it happens, either.
P: He’d definitely be an Edgedancer or Truthwatcher.
Brilliant Buttresses
A: I almost included all of Lirin’s “gibes” in this section, because they were needed elsewhere, but I love his sense of humor. Dark and dry. My favorite.
We’ll be leaving further speculation and discussion to you in the comments, and hope to join you there! There are strong feelings about the subject of this chapter, so please be respectful of other opinions. Next week, we’ll be back with Interlude 11, in which young Adin tries hard to be worthy of a spren.
Alice lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and two kids. She’s having a blast with her daughter home from college for the week. Go Yankees!
Paige resides in New Mexico, of course. She’s super excited that the Yankees have won their first postseason game! Links to her other writing are available in her profile.
