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

Interlude I-5 (Lift)
Lift! It’s Lift! Hooray! 

I know Lift is a divisive figure among Stormlight readers, but while she occasionally feels a little over the top she almost always lands really well for me. I’m excited to see what she’s up to now. My main worry is that she’ll be dropping lots of hints about Dawnshard, which I am still waiting to read until after finishing Rhythm. (I don’t actually know if Lift goes on the mission to Aimia, but I’m kind of guessing that she does? Where did I get that idea? Did I hear it somewhere or am I just making things up? Nobody knows.)

Plus, having just seen Shallan’s cultivationspren page, I have a lot of visual references for Wyndle looking ridiculous when he tries to be serious.

(As an aside, I’ll make another plug for the Stormlight X Worm crossover fanfic called Leaf, which I recommended and linked in my intro post. I’m not sure how well it holds up if you aren’t familiar with the dark superhero world of Worm, but the character of Lift is presented very authentically to how she appears in Edgedancer especially.)

Anyway, on to the interlude!

I suddenly realized that I don’t know where Lift is. Did she follow the army? Did she stay at the tower? Ah, looks like she’s still at Urithiru, and this is pre/peri-invasion. But with her unique nature, she’s bound to interact oddly with the Sibling’s suppression field. At a guess? She’s going to end up stealing Raboniel’s lunch.

Aww, people think her kleptomania is cute and leave food out for her. That’s adorable, except Lift wants to actually steal stuff, so she’s all frustrated. I wonder who left this particular basket. I want to say Rock, but he’s gone.

Hah. Wyndle the whineyspren. That’s alliterative and therefore almost punny. Good job, Lift.

Yup, Everstorms bother Lift because she’s too close to the other realm.

I do not feel good about a hideaway that is reached through a tunnel so tight you have to negate friction to get through. Lift, this is what we call a bad idea. To use a purely random example, what would happen if a scheming Fused decided to turn off everyone’s surgebinding? Or, and hear me out on this, what if you grew slightly larger? You know, that thing you’ve started to admit might actually happen despite the Nightwatcher’s promise?

Bahaha! It’s Rock’s son. And he wrote “love” on the jar of jam. Someone’s got an admirer!

I’d forgotten the boy’s name, so I’m glad Wyndle mentioned it: Gift. However, this is bad for two reasons: first, it sounds silly to talk about Gift and Lift as a potential couple. Second, you can’t make a shipping portmanteau out of their names. And it’s not worth trying with a proper unkalaki name. We’ll have to come up with something descriptive, and that’s less likely to catch on, especially when we know so little about the other half of the potential relationship.

Quote

“I’m a shadow. A dangerous and unknown shadow, moving mysteriously from place to place, never seen. Always feared.”

Yes, Lift. That is definitely you. Can’t think of anyone who would disagree.

Quote

“This tower, it’s like a big ol’ corpse. And I’m like blood, sneaking around through its veins.”
“Why would a corpse have blood in its veins?”

I’m with Wyndle on this one. There’s something inconsistent about that metaphor.

Ah, she’s recognizing that the passageways have been shrinking over the past year. No other possible explanation.

Lift has a strange old flute in her collection. Surely it’s not Hoid’s from Way of Kings? If it is, it’s only because so many people asked Brandon about it. Actually, even if it isn’t that’s probably the reason she has one here.

I initially thought this nest might be the hidden place on the fourth floor where Sibling told Navani they could still see a cage, but the description really doesn’t match that as far as I can tell.

Oh no. She’s growing. And a full inch? When was the last time she measured?

Wyndle captures my own incredulity. Lift stop eating? I very much doubt the possibility. Then again, it does convey the gravity of her displeasure.

Quote

“Cultivation created [the Nightwatcher] to be apart, separated from humankind, un-Connected.”

That capital letter on Connected is what we like to call significant. But why was it important to create her that way? I want to know more, Wyndle! Oh, wait, you keep explaining. Thanks! So, the disconnect allows her to escape the perception-dependent shaping that other spren undergo. 

Hmm. Presumably, that is mentioned here because it makes her unique, even compared to the Stormfather and Sibling?

Confirmation that Lift met Cultivation, not just the Nightwatcher. Brandon has phrased answers to say that Lift got her boon from the Nightwatcher (as opposed to Dalinar) but I guess Cultivation intervened as well. And Wyndle just said that she’s not using Stormlight, but Cultivation’s investiture, which is another good indication that Lift will be less impacted by the suppression effect. Not totally immune, I expect; the nahel bond is still an implementation of Honor’s power via Ishar, and most nahel spren are a mix of Honor and Cultivation even if the fuel for their granted abilities is Stormlight.

Quote

“When everything is going wrong, I want to be the same. I want to stay me. Not become someone else.”

That sounds like you get a cognitive/spiritual forcefield around your soul, plus maybe some added resilience or feedback loop.

Yup, no stormlight for you. You’re luck you still fit through that tunnel.

Whose chickens are fighting in the sky? Is the green one Mraize’s? But then who else would have a chicken? (Initially I thought the red thing Lift saw was a voidspren. Surprise murder chicken is better.)

She bit the chicken! Ha, take that! Such a perfect thing for Lift to do.

Does the healing (regrowth) still work because it’s closer to cultivation that her other surge, or is it more of the loud vs. quiet abilities being suppressed differently?

I love the image of Lift randomly chatting at cremlings since she doesn’t know which are sleepless and which are just bugs. 

I’m starting to think that the red chicken is Mraize’s. But if that’s the case then who sent the green one? It’s still a mystery.

Quote

“We should do something! Like hide! Or run away and then hide!”

Very good, Wyndle. Love the brainstorming.

Hm, I don’t recognize this old guy. A stormwarden perhaps? This is obviously a targeted killing, not just some opportunistic looting/mugging.

Oh. Oh, that’s not good. I was right, the green chicken did belong to Mraize, and now he’s hunting Lift. 

And worse, that’s where the chapter ends! What is this?! Storming cliffhangers!