Welcome to my liveblog of Rhythm of War! Index post here. Beware of spoilers.

Interlude I-11 (Adin)
Icons: Jez. Not sure why.

Adin is a new name. I’m not sure what nationality it fits. Oh, it’s an Alethi kid in the tower. Makes sense, it’s a shorter version or at least shares roots with Adolin. We know that Kaladin didn’t like his name because it made him sound like a lighteyes with that extra syllable in the middle, so it feels obvious in retrospect that a darkeye kid would have a simpler form similar to Adolin.

Wants to be a windrunner, hence the chapter icons. His plotting to draw the attention of spren is cute, except every time he mentions it I think about how the spren in the tower are all suppressed and there’s nobody around to watch him even if there were enough honorspren to be looking for a bond and even if his attempts to attract them weren’t mostly ridiculous.

He does have the core concept that it’s attitude that matters. My favorite though is how he’s competing with the girl next door for being the most spren-worthy.

Adin’s dad has been tending the Radiants, but also doing something with the tower’s resistance after curfew. No hints on what that something is.

I guess having crem around and available makes for convenient starting materials for pottery. I don’t love the idea of working with it as my job, but I’m not really a hands-on laborer type by experience.

Quote

Windrunners needed strong arms, because they didn’t use their legs much, on account of them flying around everywhere.

I’m sorry, run that by me again? I don’t think I quite got the flow of logic there. I’ll ask my son to explain it to me, I guess.

His dad knows how to handle this. “Windrunners have to eat, so they respect plates. You should do pottery until you can fly.”

Didn’t Master Liganor already arrive? Oh, he arrived at the front door, but hadn’t come into the back room yet. I guess I didn’t think of it as a shop with attached work area, but more as a single open room (which it isn’t). That double entrance threw me.

Alalan as a name matches conventions, but I’m betting it’s a cameo for someone with an IRL name like Alan. (There was another windrunner mentioned recently that was also an obvious cameo. Kati or something? But I’m out of touch with the fandom and those close to team dragonsteel, so I’m not sure who either would be.)

Adin can tell that things are coming to a head today, and he convinces his dad to bring him along, on the argument that the Radiant room will be safer than the shop. I’m going to say that’s probably a bad argument, but the whole tower will get pulled into this mess, so it’s still potentially better to have the family members together.

This was a fine interlude, but honestly kind of forgettable. It feels like a letdown to have it be another perspective on events in the tower without revealing anything substantial. The interludes in general are ideal for expanding the world and exploring distant people and situations. Getting a civilian view of things and a child’s view of spren/Radiants was good, but probably not enough to justify an interlude in my opinion.