My issue with Jasnah

[Locke Lamora]

WoR was one of the best books I ever read hands down, it had major character development, very surprising and shocking turns of events and was overall a very complete piece. However, more I think about it, more I realize how much I have an issue with the big reveal at the end of the book.

 

(Spoiler Ahead)

 

Having read so many books in this genre, I came to admire the thrill of not knowing whether main characters are going to live through a chapter or not, whether an assassin is actually going to complete his mission and not being so confident in the stance; oh they are main characters, of course they are going to live through the series. Sanderson did an excellent job of that in the MIstborn trilogy and that is one of the main reasons why I admire him as an author.

 

 

When Jasnah died in WoR, it really shocked me (I did suspect it just a little bit although not that quickly). You know when things get to be so comfortable with a set of characters, and you start picturing how everything is going to turn out, and how they are going to figure out their problems and what they are going to do, and then BAM.. everything shatters, you literary feel Shallan's loss and struggle of how to move on - that is what separates great works from good ones. Hence, it really bummed me down when I realized that she actually survived. Dont get me wrong, I love what she is going to bring to the series because she is such an interesting character. However, I dislike when characters conveniently survive like that. It kind of took me a bit out of the ending.

 

So, I was wondering if I was alone with this mindset or if there are more people thinking the same way.

[Alayala_Radiant]

I totally think you have a valid point in feeling this way about Jasnah surviving; however, I think Jasnah surviving was so unexpected that it was a nice twist upon a twist (if that makes sense) that she survived. Her death seemed so final that I was completely shocked to find out that she was alive.  I think that a main character dying has become a common cliche now used by authors that what really matters is the circumstances surrounding the characters death or survival.  

 

Since Jasnah survived, I hope that her survival is driven by a deeper plot/story development to justify it and not just to bring back a favorite character.  However, Sanderson has a way of making all of his plot twists matter, so I have faith.

[11thorderknight]

I kind of felt it was the best of both worlds, to be honest. I personally felt that Jasnah was the most interesting character in the story so far, and identified with her a lot. So when the assassination scene happened, which I definitely did not expect, it really took me by surprise and hit me pretty hard. I actually had to take a bit of a break from reading to process it. I'm pretty sure I went through the 5 Stages of Grief (denial, anger, etc). Eventually I got to acceptance; Jasnah needed to leave in order for Shallan to develop at anything approaching a decent pace. That, or they'd have to have a serious falling out, which would have been pretty cool too. But anyway....

 

By the time the epilogue rolled around though, the reason for Jasnah's absence had gone away. Shallan was a big girl now, had completed Jasnah's quest, etc. And this opens up new possibilities - with Urithiru found and the Radiants refounded, Jasnah can focus on her own development, which is guaranteed to be an awesome story in its own right. 

 

Is her survival a bit deus ex machina? Of course. But c'mon, this is a fantasy novel. And crucially, this is a fantasy novel in which it has already been established that major stress tends to cause our characters to suddenly level-up. If anything, I found Szeth's survival to be far more disappointing than Jasnah's; when he lets Kaladin kill him, I thought "sweet! book three will be about the characters traveling to Shinovar to discover the mysteries of the Stone Shaman and the Honorblades, and Szeth's backstory will happen in flashbacks, and the two timelines will converge towards the end!" Alas, not to be - he gets saved by a minor character with a fabrial that apparently can now heal severed souls (?) and given a major artifact from another series. I found that development to be far more sloppy.

[Dalenthas]

I'll offer the counterpoint here.

From a storytelling perspective, I see why Jasnah 'died', it was necessary for Shallan's character growth and to provide more conflict, if Jasnah didn't get separated from Shallan, then things would have gone too smoothly for her when they arrived in the Shattered Plains. On the other hand, Jasnah still has too much to do to die so early. By separating the two of them, Brandon lets BOTH of them grow as characters. Jasnah's been changed by her travels, and she's learned a whole lot that the other characters don't know, while also being forced out of the loop, though Wit is with her now and he knows enough of what happened to fill her in to the big things.

Jasnah's reappearance will cause more strife for Shallan, especially as her infiltration of the Ghostbloods and her oath to never lie to Jasnah again come into conflict. There will also be much rejoicing for clan Kholin to have her return, hopefully avoiding the soap opera conflict of Navani assuming Shallan was lying by having Jasnah tell her mother that Shallan had good reason to assume she was dead.

So, the way it was done, Brandon gets to have it both ways. We get the shock value of Jasnah's death, without cutting off the storytelling potential of her character arc. I'm glad it worked out the way it did.

Though I do admit that a main character death would shake things up, personally I see Adolin as the Sacrificial Lion, as he serves little use other than as a foil to other characters.

[kaellok]

While I tend to dislike it when characters survive or live even though they seemingly died, I never actually believed that Jasnah died.  There was too much emphasis on Navani's grieving over Jasnah (both on-screen and through the epigraphs in early chapters) and almost nothing from everyone else for me to really believe that she was dead-dead.  We also knew that she was a Surgebinder at that point, and capable of healing from grievous and terrible wounds given Stormlight--which she had.  I also assumed that she had teleported or something through Shadesmar (I didn't really know what powers or Surges she had available to her aside from Soulcasting, because I didn't do a lot of extra research, but it made sense at the time--and turned out to be correct).

 

So, the reveal at the end having Jasnah be alive was validation to me and what I had thought all along, which means that I kinda had the exact opposite reaction as you.

 

Edit: I do agree with 11thorderknight that Szeth's survival threw me out.  That entire fight scene seemed a little off to me anyhow, but I can't really explain why (like it was missing a piece, really, even if adding in Shallan would have been silly and nonsensical, so I don't really know what it was actually missing.)

Edited April 1, 2014 by kaellok

[Kobold King]

I see your point--at first glance, the resurrection of Jasnah Kholin seems like a tired old cliche. An author sets up certain expectations whenever he sits down and writes, and when these expectations are unmet, readers can be dissatisfied. In this case, readers expected for Jasnah to remain dead after her death scene, and thus felt as if they had been cheated out of a perfectly tragedy.

 

Mistborn Trilogy spoilers:

It is unlikely that anyone would have suspected for an instant that Jasnah would stay dead were it not for the infamous plot twist in Mistborn: The Final Empire--the death of Kelsier. With this most shocking of scenes, Brandon Sanderson apparently impressed all of his readers with the fact that he was completely willing to kill off characters. He only cemented this fact with the ending of The Hero of Ages, which ended with both the protagonist and her husband dead. Sanderson did not even consider this to be a tragic ending.

 

But the thing about the Mistborn deaths is that each of them filled a primary function in plot and character development. No character dies before his or her time--each meets a death that sees their character arc completely satisfied. Kelsier dies only after he has faced his personal demons and gotten over his hatred of noblemen. Vin and Elend both die in defense of their world, at the end of their journeys. There was nowhere further for them to go in terms of character development, so their deaths were merely tying up loose ends in the plot.

 

Compare this to the "death" of Jasnah. Her character arc was not complete when she took an arrow to the knee spear to the heart in the Wind's Pleasure's cabin. She was still struggling with the mysteries she was unraveling, still getting over Gavilar's death in her own way, and as readers we were still faced with a hundred mysteries about her character, such as why she hates men so much. Her death at such an early point would leave too much unexplored, too little explained.

 

And Brandon Sanderson doesn't leave such glaring imperfections in his work. For this reason, I never truly believed Jasnah was dead. She still had too much of a story to tell, and Brandon Sanderson loves telling stories. Her departure allowed Shallan to grow as a person while still keeping Jasnah around for her own development. I am ultimately very pleased with the way the two characters and their stories are being handled thus far.

 

After all, Jasnah Kholin will never be gone, so long as there are readers loyal to her.

[NeutroniumAlchemist]

@Locke Lamora, I see your point but it seems obvious to me that Jasnah did acutally die and now there's instead a kandra on roshar who is about to be royally pissed when it realizes there is no atium outside Scadrial

[kaellok]

@Locke Lamora, I see your point but it seems obvious to me that Jasnah did acutally die and now there's instead a kandra on roshar who is about to be royally pissed when it realizes there is no atium outside Scadrial

 

Oh god...this...that...I almost wish this were true!

[Adolin_Dustbringer]

@Locke Lamora, I see your point but it seems obvious to me that Jasnah did acutally die and now there's instead a kandra on roshar who is about to be royally pissed when it realizes there is no atium outside Scadrial

A kandra that can Surgebind... yeah, I kinda doubt it.

[1empyrean]

A kandra that can Surgebind... yeah, I kinda doubt it.

There is nothing, so far as I can tell, that forbids the blessings a kandra carries from holding the ability to surgebind.

 

Jasnah's "death" was pretty obviously faked if you bothered to actually think about it.  The only questions were how she did it (elsecalling and soulcasting obviously, but what where the specifics) and why brandon sanderson wrote it this way (I agree with Kobold King's post here).

 

However, I do not feel that there is currently a good explanation (in the story) as to why Jasnah didn't just kill the assassins, and I will reserve judgement of the way things worked out in this scene until after Jasnah has had her chance to explain events and the rest of the crew has a chance to resurface (no, they aren't dead).

[Argent]

I too was not surprised by her resurrection. Though I have to admit, I never quite rationalized it in a way that included Stormlight-aided healing and Elsecalling, For a few chapters I thought that Brandon might be doing his own thing with the genre again, playing the tropes - engineering Jasnah's assassination to be very unfulfilling, so that his readers can not feel the pain and fail to believe that the assassination succeeded... only to have her actually die. But ultimately, the "no body, no death" prevailed - which is one of the reasons I am convinced Eshonai is still around and kicking. 

 

Actually, now that I think about it, Brandon might be getting a tad predictable in this - a number of his characters, presumed dead, tend to come back, as long as we've seen no body. 

 

@1empyrean, I'll play the devil's advocate here, and claim that it's very likely that Jasnah didn't get a chance to fight back. If the attack surprised her (and it very well could have, we saw her very tired not too long ago), then she was probably still half-asleep when she realized she had been impaled. We have a WoB that Jasnah's "last thoughts" were of escaping, so I find it very likely that she instinctively drew what Stormlight was nearby and Elsecalled - the same way Kaladin would occasionally Surgebind without thinking the process through, or how Shallan's first successful attempts at Lightweaving were essentially her just wishing the illusion to happen. So Jasnah wanted to be away, and Ivory obliged.

[Shardbearer]

It was obvious to me that she would return thanks to that "no body, no death" rule argent invoked, and I also knew she had Transportation as her other surge from these forums, so I wasn't surprised at all.

Szeth though... deus ex machina there. I don't recall any foreshadowing for that one.

[+eveorjoy]

Yes, Jasnah's death seemed pretty final when I started WoR, though I suspected she survived and we would see her in a later book. My belief in her possible escape increased after I read about how well surgebinders or those that could take in stormlight could heal.

 

Kaladin:

 

Broken shoulder two times

 

Broken skull and brain injury several times

 

Survived a hundred foot drop crashing into the ground unprepared and perhaps lashed to ground by Szeth making the impact harder.

 

Healed shardblade injury to arm twice.

 

Fractured both legs and feet, walking in a few moments afterward,

 

Survived two hundred foot drop.

 

Healed damaged leg and likely damaged ribs and organs in an instant.

 

Shallan:

 

Healed her feet,

 

Survived two hundred foot drop.

 

Says she could survive a spear to the gut just fine.

 

Szeth:

 

Healed a number of times.

 

Came back to life. (Yes with a fabrial, but still he looked even more dead than Jasnah)

 

Lopen:

 

Regrew the arm he lost as a child.

 

I think if Sanderson hadn't brought Jasnah back in the epilogue people would have been asking why she died. If stormlight could heal Kaladin's crushed insides in an instant with enough stormlight a stab through the heart seems to be a very survivable wound for an experienced surgebinder like Jasnah.

Edited April 1, 2014 by eveorjoy

[Lopen Skybreaker]

I think the fake death/ real death and resurrection thing is a bit overplayed these days. It's the one story element of WoR that didn't sit right with me. However, that said, Jasnah is one of my favourite Stormlight characters so it did serve its purpose by making me genuinely worried for about 90% of the book.

[Aleksiel]

I was shocked when Jasnah died. I had to re-read the scene a few times to believe it, but then I noticed the goblet of spheres Shallan knocked down before opening the door of her cabin and I hoped this was foreshadowing Jasnah's survival. The missing corpse was a clue as well.

 

I expected her to be back sooner honestly. If she had died, it would have been one of the worst timings of a character's death I've ever read. There's just too much mystery about Jasnah, too much she can do, she's far too interesting to get only a couple of chapters and a series this big. So I was satisfied when she elsecalled at the end of the book, even though I expected her to somehow help with the Oathgate in the last moment and when she didn't I started doubting my theory on her survival. So, in the end I was happy and mildly surprised when she appeared.

 

Though I overall was dissatisfied that nobody important died. I've been worrying for a long time about so many characters and I was at peace with the idea of having to part with some of them, yet in the end my expectations weren't met. Now, it's a good thing we'll see more of them all, but I was so sure I'd had to part with a few of them and when nobody significant died I was 'Wait, what? I worried over nothing?'. Though I suppose this will only make their deaths more shocking in the next book when I'll be expecting them to survive.

Edited April 1, 2014 by Aleksiel

[Alina Two]

I had all the appropriate grief reactions when Jasnah died, but when Navani remained so certain that she was alive, I began to wonder otherwise. And I began to wonder what had happened to the body. Etc, etc, etc. By the time she showed up alive at the end of the book, I was actually thrilled to be proven right about her survival. I rarely pick up on these things, so a theory confirmed felt like a personal victory. Needless to say it didn't feel cheap or out-of-nowhere to me. I don't mind the use of a resurrection trope as long as it's done well.

 

Szeth's reappearance, however, got a slight eye roll.

[Observer]

I had no problem with Jasnah herself, since, as many have stated, there was basically no way she could have possibly died unless she was actively trying for it. As for Szeth, I was surprised, but after I got over my Nightblood shock it occurred to me that I probably should have considered Shardic influence. From a contained perspective, I agree that it's annoying. From a Cosmere perspective, I have fewer issues. I still agree with Brandon that Szeth probably shouldn't have died, but that there wasn't much else to be done.

[Chrono]

The only foreshadowing for Szeth's survival is the fact that he gets another book, and that we've seen those massive healing fabrials before: in one of Dalinar's visions, carried by a Knights Radiant. At first, I was extremely suspicious when Szeth came back, but when Nale put the fabrial away, I was satisfied. There was barely any foreshadowing in text about his survival, but I've seen successful plot twists happen on far less.

[Sphinx]

I felt like Jasnah's "death" and resurrection worked narratively, both in terms of the arc of the book, her character arc, and the arc of the characters around her, particularly Shallan. It was also adequately foreshadowed that I did not feel like it came out of nowhere. It wasn't that I was convinced she was alive from Shallan not tripping over her, it just made it so I wouldn't be too surprised either way.

 

I think similar things can be said about Szeth's death and resurrection in terms of it fitting his character arc and the narrative arc of the series. I feel like it's a bit unfortunate that both of these things happened right together, but at the same time, I'm not sure that there would be a good way to separate them. I would be a lot more annoyed about Szeth coming back if it hadn't been shown in this book, and while Jasnah's return could have been pushed into a later book, I think that would also have lessened the impact of her returning to just miss the Everstorm and Urithiru being found. I think it helps WoR's integrity as a complete book to have both these survivals revealed at the end, instead of having events in later books directly contradict events in this one. In order for Jasnah's survival to work in a later book, it would have needed to be more heavily foreshadowed in this one, and possibly take place later on, to give it more emotional weight. Obviously, this is just how I feel about it.

 

It is interesting that these two resurrections (plus maybe Gaz and Syl) are making people suspect that all sorts of other people may not actually be dead. I suppose it's a reasonable reaction, but being taken to some serious extremes. (I will eat my hat if Gavilar turns out to be alive). I still believe that Brandon Sanderson is perfectly capable of killing people off, main characters or not, whenever he pleases or it fits the narrative. I was not, for example, expecting Sadeas to bite it in this book, but now that he is dead I certainly do not expect him to be showing up again unless someone is lightweaving his appearance or something.

[Spark]

I never believed for a second that Jasnah was really dead. Her death would've felt too cheap for such an interesting character. So when she came back it was more of a "it was about time" reaction. That being said, it's entirely possible that I only thought this way because I read/heard the scene pre book release.

 

Szeth on the other hand.. I couldn't have cared less about him towards the end of the book. I loved him during the first one, but the whole "I believe whatever anyone tells me" thing got old really fast. It wasn't even the resurrection itself that annoyed me. I guess I'm one of a few, but the whole flying around like superman (times 2) and chasing each other didn't really get to me. The fact that this was topped of with a resurrection, which essentially meant "oh, alright.. so it sort of was for nothing after all", just didn't sit right with me. It's alright, though, as long as Brandon knows how to not let Szeth feel like a drag in the next book. Plus, I was pacified by Adolin killing off Sadeas. Now that came out of the blue for me. And I loved it.

[LloydSev]

After reading some of these comments, I am glad to see I was not the only one who basically had to walk away from this book after Jasnah's assassination scene. It took me days to feel like picking back up and carrying on. When the twist happened at the end I felt such a feeling of euphoria.

Jasnah was my favorite character, but her being removed from most of this book forced me to re-evaluate my emotions toward the other characters. Now I have my favorite character from Book 1 back, but now I have a new favorite character from Book 2. Best of both worlds for sure.

[WeiryWriter]

I wasn't really surprised by Jasnah ending up alive, at all.  I knew that Feather was satisfied with what happened to Jasnah based on stuff that happened at the end of the book and I trusted her on that.  Personally I think that if Jasnah had just died like that (and was not latter revealed to be alive) it would have been bad writing.  Death of the Mentor is an incredibly common trope and to play it that straight (and pretty much gloss over it) is just meh?  It just isn't the death scene that Jasnah deserves.

[ericth]

I'll offer the counterpoint here. From a storytelling perspective, I see why Jasnah 'died', it was necessary for Shallan's character growth and to provide more conflict, if Jasnah didn't get separated from Shallan, then things would have gone too smoothly for her when they arrived in the Shattered Plains. On the other hand, Jasnah still has too much to do to die so early. By separating the two of them, Brandon lets BOTH of them grow as characters. Jasnah's been changed by her travels, and she's learned a whole lot that the other characters don't know, while also being forced out of the loop, though Wit is with her now and he knows enough of what happened to fill her in to the big things. Jasnah's reappearance will cause more strife for Shallan, especially as her infiltration of the Ghostbloods and her oath to never lie to Jasnah again come into conflict. There will also be much rejoicing for clan Kholin to have her return, hopefully avoiding the soap opera conflict of Navani assuming Shallan was lying by having Jasnah tell her mother that Shallan had good reason to assume she was dead. So, the way it was done, Brandon gets to have it both ways. We get the shock value of Jasnah's death, without cutting off the storytelling potential of her character arc. I'm glad it worked out the way it did. Though I do admit that a main character death would shake things up, personally I see Adolin as the Sacrificial Lion, as he serves little use other than as a foil to other characters.

It's a well known literary convention that the mentor must be removed from the picture or the protoge doesnt mature into their new role.  Gandalf had to fall in Moria or to force Aragorn and Frodo to bring their A-Game.  Since WoR is Shallan's viewpoint book, it would have been a disappointment to see her fall short in character development.  The only other possible mechanisms I can think of would be for Jasnah to be wounded and incapacitated, or else forced to be somewhere else.  Neither of these are really compatible with the current plot lines.  Surgebinders can heal almost anything and story events converged on the shattered plains.

[kari-no-sugata]

When I first read her "death scene" I really thought she was dead. But, after getting to the end of the book and re-reading that scene I thought it was reasonably well foreshadowed that she could have survived. I was really annoyed at first - didn't particularly want to see another "damsel in distress" arc with Shallan but she pretty quickly became awesome.

 

I have a vague memory of Brandon saying (prob just after tWoK release) that Shallan and Jasnah would probably arrive at the Shattered Plains at the start of WoR since he doesn't like doing arcs where characters are just walking from A to B. I was vaguely hoping that this indicated she wasn't supposed to die.

 

I'm pretty sure that Shallan could have figured it out if she'd thought about it... but it's abundantly clear that she avoids thinking about painful memories.

 

1) Jasnah is Elsecaller (Shallan knowns she shares Transformation Surge with Jasnah but is in different order, so Jasnah has to be an Elsecaller)

2) Her corpse vanished (if she questions Pattern, who she sent to look at the deck, she might realise they couldn't have dragged off her corpse either)

3) She could survive a stab through the heart with Stormlight - Shallan herself says she could probably survive being stabbed with a spear later in the book.

 

Of the 3, Shallan only knew item 2 at the time, though she could have figured out item 1 if she had had time to read the in-world Words of Radiance. I wonder how long it'll be until something jogs her memory and she starts thinking about it.

 

[Morsk]

I never expected her to die. There aren't enough female characters! The story is basically 2/3 male. Dalinar is so male that he spawned an entire child PoV that's also male. Navani and Syl are cool, but they mostly exist to make Dalinar and Kaladin more awesome, not as whole characters. Jasnah was half of the real female characters, and the story would be a mess without her. She's also the only character that can provide exposition on lost history, and on her theological perspective. She might be the only character that can't die.

I was hoping for something more awesome than just disappearing though. I thought she'd teleport to Urithiru, or show up at the end finding something the others needed. She still has time to do that later though.