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

Chapter 26 (A Little Espionage)
Epigraph: Devotion and Dominion are dead, their power shattered. Yes, yes, news at 11. 

Shallan surrounded by cryptics every time she breaks out the sketchpad :-) All the other Lightweavers must be jealous-- “No, I can be artistic too, I swear. Come back Pattern… no, not you, my Pattern. The one with the fractally, no, not you. Pattern! Stop ignoring me.”

Hm, yeah, maybe flashbacks to that period where you were haunted by freaky symbolheads would make you uncomfortable. I have to say, that remains one of my very favorite chapters / scenes of WoK. Creepy and evocative, with a horrifying cliffhanger. It would stick with you even more if you were the one who lived it.

Veil says “No.” I know this is supposed to be a touching moment of self-discovery and rebuilding trust with her alternate selves, but this bit just strikes me as petulant stubbornness. “Come out of your room, Veil” “No.” “I’ll let you catch a spy~” “Don’t wanna!” Sorry, maybe my sense of humor is off kilter tonight.

Okay, it did develop into a more mature conversation than it felt from that initial exchange. But then at then end, Radiant snarking about Shallan claiming ownership the trio’s “humor” is back to funny town.

Pattern is famous. He studied humans, went on a lecture tour. I wonder if he ever met Wyndle on the road for a chair exhibition.

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“Ha ha. Yes, [humans] bite. And break your oaths and murder your spren. Ha ha.”

Harsh sense of humor you’ve got there, Pattern.

See, there are two problems I have with this mole hunt. The first is their assumption that the agent is one of her lightweavers. “We have three specific suspects.” Yeah, that pretty much guarantees that it’s someone else. Second, they’re starting with the “poke the guilty conscience with a stick” approach. That’s not how you make your allies happy with you, and is bound to cause problems (though at least one of the suspects will end up feeling closer to her because of opening up and sharing something personal.

Oh, I just realized. What if Shallan poking at her people like this leads to them uncovering/confronting more truths about themselves, thus letting them advance in their Radianthood? I’m almost convinced this is what will happen, and that the discomfort some of them feel will be played off as “Oh, she was just trying to help us succeed. Thank you Shallan, you are a wonderful mentor!” You know what, that works so well I’m going to make it my official prediction. To go even further on a limb, Beryl will be the one to reveal her truth and advance, while Ishnah will be the one to credit Shallan with brilliance. I expect lots of internet points if I’m right about this bet.

The difference in ability to sense the souls of objects inside beads, with Shallan>Veil>Radiant, makes me wonder about their other nahel abilities. Is Shallan the best at lightweaving between the three as well? Or can Veil do it without drawing things, making her more flexible? More interestingly, have all three struggled with soulcasting to the same degree? How about manifestation of plate? Is her current truth the barrier to that or has one of them already made it that far on the battle for Thaylen Fields?

Ishnah was “old enough to be seen as a full adult. Young enough to not believe it yet.” That is a disturbingly accurate description of what it feels like. I was in that stage for at least a decade.

That conversation with Ishnah went about how I expected, except for the dejection at the end. I pegged her more for angry.

The stone of the cognitive realm is “eager” to be something else. Is that because it is undefined by anything in the physical realm?

So, when we’ve seen soulcasting in the past (in the physical realm) the soulcaster always catches a little glimpse of Shadesmar while they are casting. Does the process differ when the soulcaster is already in the cognitive realm? Is it easier/harder to perform in that case?

This is the second time Veil has surfaced to say or think something, despite her obstinacy in trying to stay in the background and coach Shallan through these conversations. The first one was a thought about how manifesting items in shadesmar works; this one was about the mechanics of soulcasting. I think we found our surgebinding member of the Three. 

Oh, here’s another comment from Veil surfacing, this time in commiseration with Beryl. Fitting.

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Feelings, feelings, Veil said. Blah blah blah. Shallan, stay on topic, please.

I wonder if Veil says this when Shallan is with Adolin, too. 

Formless is a he? It’s a small detail, but serves to add just enough otherness to up the fear factor here compared to previous mentions.

I like the clue of Pattern humming when people lie near him, especially because of how utterly ambiguous it is as a clue. He hummed when Shallan made a mistake in her drawing, when she lied about becoming Radiant, and also when Beryl was being self-deprecating. For Beryl, what does that mean? Which part was the lie? We just can’t know.

All of that adds up to… Red Herrings Galore! Hooray!

I do very much appreciate that the mole hunt conversations are primarily turning into a vehicle for Shallan’s character development. All of the tension here is coming from her internal conversations with Radiant and Veil, with the character exposition about the other Lightweavers being a useful background for the scene, an impetus to keep things moving. My complaints about the mole hunt are largely sidestepped because that’s not the main point of the plot development, even if it is the excuse for it. (I wonder if this is obvious in general to readers, or if I think too much about structure of writing? Regardless, I appreciate the writing skill that’s going into making this sequence what it is rather than what I expected.

“You were the child of rocks” … “I appreciate your sediment.” Please, Shallan take pity on the man. That’s enough puns for one day.