This is my reaction blog for Winds and Truth. Beware of spoilers! Index post here. 

Title: The Cost of Heroism
Combined with the icon of Kelek and that this is a Shallan chapter, I assume we’re getting a conversation with Restares.

Icon: Kelek

Epigraph: Okay, this one is pretty informative. The epigraphs are speaking of very recent events (Taravangian’s displacement of Rayse as Odium’s vessel) so the text must be a new work. THe Wind is apparently going to vanish at some point, which is a worrying bit of foreshadowing. SHe also is given feminine pronouns. Apparently she was somewhat impotent before and only regained her voice when the change in vessel occurred. The author (Kal?) speculates that the perspective of people considering the wind less of an enemy could have also accounted for the change, which strongly points at the Wind being a spren of some sort. Unmade? Something like Cusicesh? Hard to guess.

Pattern is surprised that Shallan’s memories didn’t come back all at once, and he’s confused about Veil’s gone but not gone status. Apparently Shallan still hasn’t figured it all out either, but she’s got a sense for it. Veil is taking a backseat, still distinct as a viewpoint but not one who “fronts” in this plurality any more. I hesitate to say that this is hewing closer to real-world DID, because I’m not an expert there, but that’s the general gist I’m getting. Obviously Radiant is still a separate aspect with all the magical effects that implies. 

As usual, I’m really invested in Shallan’s mental landscape.

Her healing breakthrough is apparently “I deserve understanding, not hatred,” which is a huge shift in mentality. I hope that she really does accept that deep down. In the last chapter she was expecting hatred from Testament. Hopefully the lack of condemnation there will help Shallan internalize the idea.

The way Pattern savors the concept of human squishiness in body, mind, memory, and ideas, reminds me how much he loves lies. Is it the mutability he is attracted to? The potential for counterfactuals and contradictions? Or something else?

The Davar family is a real mess, isn’t it. It’s tempting to blame the competing agendas of the Sons of Honor and Ghostbloods and whoever else had an interest in things, but yikes. There were problems there outside of secret societies.

Shallan gives us a good high-level summary here: Mom and mystery man respond to her bonding of Testament with attempted murder, Shallan protects herself with Testament blade. In trauma she wrenches that bond and convinces herself it was a normal blade, burying her memories of her friend. She “retrieves” the Testament blade from Daddy Davar’s safe before searching out Jasnah.

Ah, they’re talking to Wit, not to the Aon itself. Should have guessed that. Adolin is convinced Dalinar will be the champion, which is expected but we do have ten days for things to get complicated. The contest will take place at Urithiru, so the cover art is almost certainly of the tower. Already the most likely, but now it’s practically confirmed. And so Shallan and Adolin are getting picked up for a flight back to Urithiru. I stupidly forgot that was an option here in Shadesmar. Somehow I was expecting a trek. Especially since the map of their path in the previous book had them continuing south after Lasting Integrity. Maybe that was just the rest of the party that weren’t granted admittance?

This conversation about the Ghostbloods and their expected reprisals against Shallan is a good opportunity to express my lingering bafflement about the group. The Scadrian chapter we met in Lost Metal operated very differently than Mraize and Iyatil have been running the Rosharan cell. Some of that can be blamed on the person they were recruiting: Marasi required a soft touch while Shallan is more of a secrets person so the carrot-and-stick approach was warranted. Part of it can also be attributed to the different location. Their stated mission is the protection of Scadrial, so it’s natural they would act differently on their home soil compared to behind enemy lines. However, the blackmail business Mraize has doing to recruit Shallan is still very opposed to the “we’re a crew, and crew trust each other” ethos that Kelsier tried to preach. Is Iyatil acting outside his preferred rules of engagement, or is the “crew” on war footing so their usual standards don’t apply? 

Shallan talks to Wit about Formless and asks for advice! That show of trust says a lot. Sure, she gets some standard platitudes about heroism and choices, which I would probably appreciate more if they didn’t sound rather cliche, but the important thing to me here is that she feels safe with Adolin, Wit, Pattern and Maya.

Shallan is expecting to kill Mraize, and she’s okay with that, but she’s worried about how that will continue the pattern of killing her parents and mentor figures. 

Kelek, alone among the heralds, was involved in the planning and execution of the plan to capture Ba-Ado-Mishram. Supposedly he’s the only one alive who knows the details. Fortunately, Adolin is a convincing negotiator, and he’s telling us now. They made a flawless heliodor for the task. Heliodor is the gem associated with Ishar, patron of bondsmiths. Was it heliodor because of the connection to bonds? Because that’s the gap with no Voidbinding parallel? Could any polestone have worked? 

The prison gem is hidden in the Spiritual Realm? How did Melishi do that? I thought there were no locations there.

Maya is talking! A lot! In regular conversations, even. Her recovery is going much better than I expected. Yay!

Ah, so the Spiritual Realm’s weirdness full of distorted time and space was the point. In a place where causality and distance are fractured, navigating and finding something is a very daunting task. 

They think Mishram’s captivity is the cause of deadeyes? Without that, maybe the recreance would have been nonlethally painful? Huh. We obviously need to learn more about her and how she Connected to Roshar. I don’t buy that it’s a consequence of Honor’s death, because that should have been well after the False Desolation. The timeline doesn’t match up for that.

It does bring up the possibility of vastly simplifying the recovery of the dead spren. Going Adolin’s route was never feasible at scale. If we can lower the barrier to revival, that’s worth doing for its own sake.