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

Title: Looking for a Third Option
Seems obvious. What else can we try? How do we utilize the power of Honor without taking it up? 
You know, hear me out. If a normal spren gives you a shardblade, what would a shard do if you Connected in the right way? Forget becoming a vessel, why not just grab honor by the hilt and smack Vargo with it? Okay, that’s facetious, but I’m being somewhat serious. In the previous chapter Wit made a point about needing to Connect in the right way to be sucked into the power and become the next embodiment of Honor. That means there are other ways to do things, right?

Icons: Nale
Either looking for more loopholes, looking at the lawful nature of the skybreakers, or the divine attribute of confidence, trying to find something that Dalinar can trust in

Epigraph: What kind of a moral is “dust goes where it wishes,” Nohadon? That doesn’t even match the rest of your story. I could imagine plenty of themes it would resonate with, but it seems a poor fit to this parable.

I am not even sure why the POV symbols are here, at this point. There are enough viewpoint switches within each chapter that very few of them can be said to belong to a particular character, and there’s little consistency on whether the symbol matches the first narrator or a later one. I guess we can assume that the indicated character will at least show up semi-prominently?

Unmoving plants making Kal feel like time has stopped is an interesting reaction I wouldn’t have thought of.

Hey, I’d forgotten that part. Spren are less plentiful in Shinovar, though I don’t know to what extent. Kal comments on the lack of lifespren despite the verdant greenery. 

Overall, Kal’s impression of the flora is trusting and peaceful, making him think of the place as an idyllic utopia. I suspect he will be disabused of that thought very quickly when they run into the local inhabitants.

Nightblood considering whether to take offense at an idle comment about inanimate objects feels silly until he responds to Szeth’s apology with “Oh, good! I won’t kill you then. Ha ha.” Then it’s just creepy, and it’s telling that both Kaladin and Szeth have identical reactions of caution when that happens.

Szeth is uninterested in Kaladin’s therapy or attempts at digging into his thoughts. The closest he comes to engaging with the questions Kal asks is an outright rejection.

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“That is irrelevant. I do not need to be healed, as I do not deserve anything of the sort.”

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“All [Dalinar] asked of me was to bring you. Therefore, you are here. You. The one who nearly killed me. Here. In my land, on my quest.”
“I trust Dalinar because I must, so I am not allowed to resent you. Nevertheless, do not assume I will endure you trying to ‘save’ me.”

When someone says “I’m not allowed to resent you,” it doesn’t really communicate “no hard feelings.”

Hm. Szeth is well aware of the Unmade that is here, and says it’s been in Shinovar for years before the advent of the modern Radiants. It’s here openly to some degree, because the people have “embraced it” 
Oh, he actually met it. It began “with a rock”--is this a reference to his oathstone? 
He frustratingly doesn’t give us a name or description of any sort yet. Next chapter maybe?

Dalinar regrets the antagonistic relationship he has with the Stormfather. Most other Radiants he knows are friends with their spren, but there’s resentment on both sides with him.
Stormfather is back to using his ALLCAPS voice with Dalinar. 
“Must you think so highly of yourself? You’re ruining everything!” 
Now, that sounds to me like Gavilar’s hubris is poisoning Stormfather’s expectations here. Maybe it would help a little bit if you actually explained what “everything” is and what you want to accomplish.

Stormfather says, “let’s take this outside,” which is gutsy. Even if you are the one constructing the space and providing the spectral avatars, it takes spunk to decide to throw hands with the Blackthorn.

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“Even at his worst though, Gavilar didn’t strive for godhood.”

Um, were you there for the same prologue as the rest of us? Because that is explicitly what he was striving for. Just because he never said it out loud in front of you doesn’t mean that he was humbler than Dalinar. You get a little bit of a pass because he was being careful to hide his thoughts from you, and because you were out of practice with understanding humans, but still. Hearing you accuse Dalinar with this kind of blatant falsehood is irksome.

Stormfather keeps speaking vaguely of “my plan” and “Honor’s plan” as potentially separate things, but sharing no details. I’ve had this thought brewing for a little while, but I’ll go ahead and air it now. Honor knew he was dying and that Odium was planning to splinter his power. He found a way to sequester it in the spiritual realm and arranged things such that if Odium wants to escape Roshar he has to pick up the remains of Honor on his way out. That would empower him, but also change his nature to someone bent on keeping and enforcing oaths, agreements, etc. (potentially including the spirit under which the original vessels parted ways after the Shattering?).  Meanwhile Cultivation thought the best way of changing Odium was to change the mind guiding it and orchestrated the handoff between vessels. Who’s to say whether Tanavast's shard power-up plan would have worked originally, or if it will ruin what Cultivation has accomplished. 

In the vision, Dalinar angrily grows to become the same immense size as the Stormfather, and even develops his own ALLCAPS voice to argue with. I can’t really guess what that means realmatically.

Stormfather says that time has broken the heralds… “I have broken them.” What role could he have personally played?

The power of Honor might not accept someone like Dalinar, “after what happened with Tanavast.”
And when Dalinar tries to follow up, Stormfather says he lied and it was worse than he told Dalianr before.

Stormfather tells him to go ahead and seek the insights of the spiritual realm and see the past, but to definitely not seek the power of Honor. If he manages to navigate that realm, he will see “our shame.”

Wit has Dalinar do some bondsmithy thing to Connect his clock to one that will stay in the physical realm, so he can actually track time while he’s gone on this quest. I also like the iteratively simpler explanations that culminate in “poke this with Stormlight, then poke that.” Thank you, Wit. Very mechanistic of you.

I was worried that Dalinar would make the trip without Shallan, and then we’d have some completely separate incursions into the spiritual realm, but it looks like they’re just doing a trial run to make sure he can get the method right.