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Prologue made me think Gavilar may not be actually dead.


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On 7/28/2020 at 5:33 PM, Honorless said:

Kelsier coming back wasn't really annoying to me. Szeth & Jasnah were though.

What will the prologues be about in the back 5 of SA, I wonder? 

Kelsier was completely ok and so shocking. 

Szeth was ok too. Like it was an herald who pulled him back using what might be a very powerful gabrial or even a dawnshard.  Besides it would have been sad if he were to just die like that . He deserves some happiness and oh his first words after resurrection were so heartbreaking. Like I laughed but then I felt bad for laughing. 

Jasnah was a bit annoying yes. I don't really understand y she couldn't have helped fight the ghostbloods. She did have a shardblade and risked shallan dying. Or perhaps shallan liquified the water before she could surprise the killers who thought she was dead. 

On 7/28/2020 at 9:53 PM, Isilel said:

Either the day that the Oathpact was made or the one when it was broken, I bet.

Ooooooooooo that would be amazing. 

But idk I think that will show up in taln and Ash's povs. 

I bet it will be someother event in the near future which will begin with the start of book 6

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55 minutes ago, PrinceGenocide said:

Jasnah was a bit annoying yes. I don't really understand y she couldn't have helped fight the ghostbloods. She did have a shardblade and risked shallan dying. Or perhaps shallan liquified the water before she could surprise the killers who thought she was dead. 

 

Jasnah's body had vanished prior to Shallan soulcasting the ship.

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Man, you're going to have to do some heavy lifting to convince me this man is still alive:

Quote

“The Parshendi? That makes no sense.” Gavilar coughed, hand quivering, reaching toward his chest and fumbling at a pocket. He pulled out a small crystalline sphere tied to a chain. “You must take this. They must not get it.” He seemed dazed. “Tell…tell my brother…he must find the most important words a man can say….”

Gavilar fell still.

Quote

“Nothing makes sense anymore,” Szeth whispered, tucking the strange sphere away. “It’s all unraveling. I am sorry, King of the Alethi. I doubt that you care. Not anymore, at least.” He stood up. “At least you won’t have to watch the world ending with the rest of us.”

Beside the king’s body, his Shardblade materialized from mist, clattering to the stones now that its master was dead. It was worth a fortune; kingdoms had fallen as men vied to possess a single Shardblade.

Quote

To Szeth’s people, a dying request was sacred. He took the king’s hand, dipping it in the man’s own blood, then used it to scrawl on the wood, Brother. You must find the most important words a man can say.

That's....pretty dead. He took the man's own blood and scrawled out a message. The shardblade reappeared beside the dead owner. They had a funeral and everything.

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2 minutes ago, Rainier said:

That's....pretty dead. He took the man's own blood and scrawled out a message. The shardblade reappeared beside the dead owner. They had a funeral and everything.

I agree, I think he's dead. But to play Devil's (or Gavilar's) advocate. What if he had already replaced Nale in the oathpact? I don't know what happens to a Herald's body when they die, but I know they are sent back to Braize. Now, a herald's Honorblade is what takes them back, so that wouldn't be left. But couldn't he have an Honorblade and a regular shardblade bonded at one time? In my opinion I think Gavilar being a part of the Oathpact is the only way to explain away how he survived -- although I don't believe he had achieved that yet.

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1 minute ago, bdoble97 said:

Could he be a els caller and be in shadesmare. Sorry for get how to spell it. 

I don't see this as a viable option.

With Jasnah we were seeing her "death" from Shallan's perspective and Shallan didn't actually see the killing blow, she heard a knife hit the wood (she didn't hear reactions of the assassins). We know that Jasnah was stabbed and used stormlight to sustain herself then transition into Shadesmar around the time that Shallan heard the knife hit the deck (I don't know the exact timeline). 

With Gavilar we have Szeth watch his body as he "dies" and then a Shardblade coalesces around him (you could argue he summoned it then broke the bond?) but that would have broken the gemstone in the hilt right? Then Szeth writes a note in his blood. Then Jasnah and Navani come see the body and spend time with it. Transitioning yourself into Shadesmar is just that, removing yourself from the Physical, there would be no body (or clothes) left. 

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8 minutes ago, GudThymes said:

I don't see this as a viable option.

With Jasnah we were seeing her "death" from Shallan's perspective and Shallan didn't actually see the killing blow, she heard a knife hit the wood (she didn't hear reactions of the assassins). We know that Jasnah was stabbed and used stormlight to sustain herself then transition into Shadesmar around the time that Shallan heard the knife hit the deck (I don't know the exact timeline). 

With Gavilar we have Szeth watch his body as he "dies" and then a Shardblade coalesces around him (you could argue he summoned it then broke the bond?) but that would have broken the gemstone in the hilt right? Then Szeth writes a note in his blood. Then Jasnah and Navani come see the body and spend time with it. Transitioning yourself into Shadesmar is just that, removing yourself from the Physical, there would be no body (or clothes) left. 

Good points. Hahah

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5 minutes ago, Wax said:

It can be like Mistborn secret history.

 

Could he though?

Spoiler

Kelsier had years and years of heavy Investiture use and was a very unique case. We have seen a decent amount of Congitive Shadows, however, all of them use other routes. When people die we know that those are more heavily Invested stick around longer, and it was Keslier's unwillingness to die that allowed him to stay.

The mechanism that allowed your mistborn example to stick around was heavily foreshadowed throughout the trilogy as well as very heavily rooted in Realmatic theory. I don't think that Gavilar would come back to life that route for two reasons.

1. Using the same method to bring someone back from death is repetitive and undermines the impact death has.

2. It wouldn't make sense in this scenario. As far as we know Gavilar was not Invested at all. At best he was a proto-Radiant, at worst he was just some egotistical schmuck.

I'm not saying that Gavilar is 100% dead, I won't think that for any Cosmere character anymore unless there's a WoB saying so. If he were to survive by being a Cognitive Shadow I think there would have to be some explanation for how he became one, that we haven't seen yet. The jury is still out at there's 6 (7) more books until SA is complete and we can say for sure. Personally I'm not buying it.

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4 hours ago, GudThymes said:

The jury is still out at there's 6 (7) more books until SA is complete and we can say for sure.

I think we'll find out by SA5.  Have been betting on (since WoR) that Gavilar will have the prologue for Book 5.

Obviously, that's a guess and it can stretch out to beyond book 10 in a separate novella.:P

Edited by Wax
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  • 3 weeks later...

I think that, if he had lived just a little bit longer (couple more months or years) he would have succeeded in whatever his true goal was. I believe he was trying to become a herald or something similar. 

However, I think the assassination was able to stop that from happening. I believe that he is truly dead and did not pull any cognitive shadow shenanigans. 

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I can see by the magic mechanics of the Cosmere why Gavilar still being alive in some manner might seem viable. It certainly is plausible in-world, we've already had Szeth come back from the dead. It's narratively a mixed bag though: it certainly makes the prologues more important, but on the other hand we've already had far too many resurrections already, with Szeth and Jasnah.

Thematically, I don't think it's very likely. Gavilar's focus on his legacy and being snuffed out so swiftly without being able to see the things he wanted coming to fruition and being completely overshadowed by recent events just fit so much better.

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On 7/28/2020 at 8:03 AM, Honorless said:

Kelsier coming back wasn't really annoying to me. Szeth & Jasnah were though.

What will the prologues be about in the back 5 of SA, I wonder? 

Kell coming back was not an issue, as we had YEARS of foreshadowing. We’ve known he was around since HoA; the big surprise was that he had a body again.

Szeth was not annoying, as I consider him coming back to life in the same way the doctors resuscitated my daughter. Ie. Not actually a resurrection. Unless we want to argue my daughter was resurrected a half dozen or so times. In which case: one week at a hospital has more resurrections than the comic book industry.

Jasnah annoyed me, as it came out of nowhere. Brandon admitted this one was a mistake, and he should have made her not-death obvious, as it was originally.

Gavilar being alive on the villain’s side is fine with me (with foreshadowing), as Odium does this to his allies. (See: all the Fused.) Not on the good guys’ side though!

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21 hours ago, Honorless said:

I can see by the magic mechanics of the Cosmere why Gavilar still being alive in some manner might seem viable. It certainly is plausible in-world, we've already had Szeth come back from the dead. It's narratively a mixed bag though: it certainly makes the prologues more important, but on the other hand we've already had far too many resurrections already, with Szeth and Jasnah.

Thematically, I don't think it's very likely. Gavilar's focus on his legacy and being snuffed out so swiftly without being able to see the things he wanted coming to fruition and being completely overshadowed by recent events just fit so much better.

 

20 hours ago, Kingsdaughter613 said:

Jasnah annoyed me, as it came out of nowhere. Brandon admitted this one was a mistake, and he should have made her not-death obvious, as it was originally.

Jasnah DID NOT DIE. Therefore she cannot have been resurrected. One of the biggest questions I have about WOR is why Jasnah decided to elsecall and not just kill her assailants. She could at the very least soulcast their bodies. Potentially she could have cut them down with Ivory. I don't understand why she left Shallan, alone and defenceless, and  abandoned her Notes.    

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18 minutes ago, LordTheodore said:

 

Jasnah DID NOT DIE. Therefore she cannot have been resurrected. One of the biggest questions I have about WOR is why Jasnah decided to elsecall and not just kill her assailants. She could at the very least soulcast their bodies. Potentially she could have cut them down with Ivory. I don't understand why she left Shallan, alone and defenceless, and  abandoned her Notes.    

https://www.tor.com/2014/08/06/stormlight-archive-scene-after-words-of-radiance/ gives a not-quite-canon-but-pretty-close answer.

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1 hour ago, LordTheodore said:

 

Jasnah DID NOT DIE. Therefore she cannot have been resurrected. One of the biggest questions I have about WOR is why Jasnah decided to elsecall and not just kill her assailants. She could at the very least soulcast their bodies. Potentially she could have cut them down with Ivory. I don't understand why she left Shallan, alone and defenceless, and  abandoned her Notes.    

Technically, yes, she did not die. But narratively, we thought she did, then boom! She actually survived! It fits within the same trope

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On 8/7/2020 at 10:51 PM, Wax said:

I think we'll find out by SA5.  Have been betting on (since WoR) that Gavilar will have the prologue for Book 5.

Obviously, that's a guess and it can stretch out to beyond book 10 in a separate novella.:P

Quote

Extesian

Can you confirm whether Navani will be the prologue viewpoint? Or you want to keep that quiet/ haven't decided yet?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, she is the prologue viewpoint.

AridholGM

Wouldn't it be dope to have the book 5 viewpoint from Gavilar himself, and it finally revealing what exactly he was up to.. :)

Brandon Sanderson

That is what I have planned.

General Reddit 2019 (April 17, 2019)

 

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3 minutes ago, Honorless said:

Technically, yes, she did not die. But narratively, we thought she did, then boom! She actually survived! It fits within the same trope

I find it hard to believe you thought she was dead. I can understand if Shallan's POV gaslighted you into thinking as book went on. But honestly if Jasnah had actually died, in that way, it would have broken my suspension of disbelief and I wouldn't have read any of Sanderson's books ever again. I don't really know how else to put this but if a reader thinks that Jasnah is dead after reading WOK and WOR up to that point then that is a flaw in their thinking. Whenever I notice a similar flaw in my own thinking I will disparage myself for being stupid. When know that surgebinders can heal with stormlight!!! We know Jasnah has access to stormlight!!! The assassins were distracted by Shallan!!! and the most obvious and clearest indicator is that HER BODY DISAPPEARED!!! I mean how Shallan thought she was dead I will never know.

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10 minutes ago, LordTheodore said:

I find it hard to believe you thought she was dead. I can understand if Shallan's POV gaslighted you into thinking as book went on. But honestly if Jasnah had actually died, in that way, it would have broken my suspension of disbelief and I wouldn't have read any of Sanderson's books ever again. I don't really know how else to put this but if a reader thinks that Jasnah is dead after reading WOK and WOR up to that point then that is a flaw in their thinking. Whenever I notice a similar flaw in my own thinking I will disparage myself for being stupid. When know that surgebinders can heal with stormlight!!! We know Jasnah has access to stormlight!!! The assassins were distracted by Shallan!!! and the most obvious and clearest indicator is that HER BODY DISAPPEARED!!! I mean how Shallan thought she was dead I will never know.

I wasn't the only one who thought that

Quote

Brandon Sanderson

I've watched this conversation with interest, and wasn't planning to step in, as it's exactly the sort of thread that's generally better without me. Author intervention can derail a good discussion.

But after considering, I decided I did want to talk about this topic a little. There are two things going on here. One is the mistake I made with Jasnah in Words, which I've mentioned before. One is a larger discussion, relevant to the cosmere.

Warning, WALL OF TEXT. This is me we're talking about.

You see, Jasnah wasn't originally meant to be a fake-out. Jasnah originally was going to go with Shallan to the Shattered Plains--but she was really messing up the outline, diverting attention from Shallan's character arc and pointing it toward Shallan/Jasnah conflicts instead.

My biggest breakthrough when outlining the book in detail was the realization that the book would work so much better if things I'd planned to do with Jasnah in it were diverted to later books. When that came together, WORDS really started working. Hence her jaunt into Shadesmar. I initially wrote the scenes with it being pretty clear to the reader that she was forced to escape--and it was super suspicious that there was no body.

In drafting, however, early readers didn't like how obvious it was that Jasnah would be coming back. I made a crucial mistake by over-reacting to early feedback. I thought, "Well, I can make that more dramatic!" I employed some tools I've learned quite well, and turned that into a scene where the emotion is higher and the death is more powerful.

HOWEVER, I did this without realizing how it mixed with other plotlines--specifically Szeth's resurrection.

We get into sticky RAFO areas here, but one of the biggest themes of the Cosmere is Rebirth. The very first book (Elantris) starts with a character coming back from the dead. (As I've mentioned before, a big part of the inspiration for Elantris was a zombie story, from the viewpoint of the zombie.) Mistborn begins with Kelsier's rebirth following the Pits, and Warbreaker is about people literally called the Returned. (People who die, then come back as gods.) The Stormlight Archive kicks off with Kaladin's rebirth above the Honor Chasm, and Warbreaker is meant as a little foreshadowing toward the greater arc of the cosmere--that of the Shards of Adonalsium, who are held by ordinary people.

Szeth's rebirth, with his soul incorrectly affixed to his body, is one of the things I've been very excited to explore in The Stormlight Archive--and the mistake with Jasnah was letting her return distract from that.

That said, you're not wrong for disliking this theme--there's no "wrong" when it comes to artistic tastes. And I certainly wish I'd looked at the larger context of what happened when I shifted Jasnah's plot in book two. (Doubling down on "Jasnah is dead" for short term gain was far worse than realizing I should have gone with "Jasnah was forced to jump into Shadesmar, leaving Shallan alone." I consider not seeing that to be the biggest mistake I've made in The Stormlight Archive so far.)

However, the story of the cosmere isn't really about who lives or dies. We established early on that there is an afterlife (or, at least, one of the most powerful beings in the cosmere believes there is--and he tends to be a trustworthy sort.) And multiple books are about people being resurrected. What I'm really interested in is what this does to people. Getting given a second try at life, being reborn as something new. (Or, in some cases, as something worse.) The story of the cosmere is about what you do with the time you have, and the implications of the power of deity being in the hands of ordinary people.

More importantly (at least to me) I've always felt character deaths are actually somewhat narratively limp in stories. Perhaps it's our conditioning from things like Gandalf, Obi-Wan, and even Sherlock Holmes. But readers are always going to keep asking, "are they really dead?" And even if they stay dead, I can always jump back and tell more stories about them. The long cycle of comic books over-using resurrection has, I think, also jaded some of us to the idea of character death--but even without things like that, the reader knows they can always re-read the book. And that fan-fiction of the character living will exist. And that the author could always bring them back at any time. A death should still be a good death, mind you--and an author really shouldn't jerk people around, like I feel I did with Jasnah.

But early on, I realized I'd either have to go one of two directions with the cosmere. Either I had to go with no resurrections ever, stay hard line, and build up death as something really, really important. Or I had to shift the conversation of the books to greater dangers, greater stakes, and (if possible) focus a little more on the journey, not the sudden stop at the end.

I went with the latter. This isn't going to work for everyone. I'm fully aware of, and prepared for, the fact that things like Szeth coming back will ruin the stories for some readers. And I do admit, I've screwed it up in places. Hopefully, that will teach me better so that I can handle the theme delicately, and with strong narrative purpose behind the choices I make. But do warn you, there WILL be other resurrections in my books. (Though there are none planned for the near future. I took some extra care with the next few books, after feeling that things happening in Words and the Mistborn series in the last few years have hit the theme too hard.) This is a thing that I do, and a thing that I will continue to do. I consider it integral to the story I'm telling. Hopefully, in the future, I'll be able to achieve these acts with the weight and narrative complexity they deserve.

If it helps, I have several built-in rules for this. The first is that actual cosmere resurrections (rather than just fake-outs, like I did with Jasnah) can happen only under certain circumstances, and have a pretty big cost to them. Both will become increasingly obvious through the course of the stories. The other rule is more meta. I generally tell myself that I only get one major fake-out, or one actual resurrection, per character. (And I obviously won't use either one for most characters.) This is more to keep myself from leaning on this narrative device too much, which I worry I'll naturally do, considering that I see this as a major theme of the books.

...

(Sharders, please don't start asking me at signings who has had their "one death" so far. This is me drawing the curtain back a little on the process, I really don't want it to become an official thing that people focus on. Do feel free to talk about the mechanics of resurrection though--it should be pretty obvious now with Elantris, Warbreaker, Szeth, and a certain someone from Mistborn to use as guides.)

General Reddit 2017 (Aug. 30, 2017)
Quote

_0_-o--__-0O_--oO0__

With Jasnah not being dead when we thought she was dead and Szeth coming back to life; how will you retain tension during future battles if the audience thinks that death might not be the end of someone?

Brandon Sanderson

I try hard to make sure things like this are well foreshadowed, but it's always a concern as a writer. Basically every book you write, in an action/adventure world, will contain fake outs like this.

There's certainly a balance. Gandalf coming back in LOTR worked, and Anakin turning out to be alive Empire Strikes back is a powerful moment--but I feel RJ, for example, may have brought people back too often.

Not sure where this balance is for me yet. I know the story I want to tell, though, and I try to leave clues when something like this is going to happen so that it feels less like a fake out and more like an "Aha. I knew it."

/r/books AMA 2015 (March 13, 2015)

I completed the books before diving into the Coppermind or the forums, same as most readers do, so we were not familiar with the magic. We knew very little about the magic post-Way of Kings.

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I think lots of people thought Jasnah was dead, because we saw her body and then she didn't save the crew. We had a pretty explicit death scene:

Quote

A body in a thin nightgown, eyes staring sightlessly, blood blossoming from the breast.

Jasnah.

“Be sure,” one of the men said. The other one knelt and rammed a long, thin knife right into Jasnah’s chest. Shallan heard it hit the wood of the floor beneath the body.

Sure, I can understand how people would believe otherwise. I don't know the numbers for how many people did and didn't, but I tend to save the theorizing/overanalyzing for the reread, and on first read I of course accepted what the book was telling me, that Jasnah was dead. I think it's pretty obvious why Shallan thought Jasnah was dead, because she saw her dead body, double-tapped just to be sure.

Edited by ftl
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I never believed that Jasnah was dead. In my opinion, in fiction, if there is no body then there is no dead person. Besides Shallan hears the knife hitting the wood! One of her surges is transportation and when Shallan went into the room again, there was no dead body. And the ghostbloods were too furious at the crew! 
 

Shallan told Navani that Jasnah is legit dead because she saw her get stabbed in the heart but then later while arguing with Dalinar that how she is probably the one person here most difficult to kill, she argues that she can survive a stab wound to the heart even! 
at that moment, I was like if you can then so can she! Why do you think Jasnah died then! 
 

As to the question of why Jasnah vanished instead of fighting, well we shall see. I hope it was not some sort of test for Shallan! Some kind of tough love routine! 
but what I think most likely is that they caught her unaware. She was exhausted and may be they attacked when she was sleeping and she spooked, ended up in Shadesmaar by accident. I don’t think she has really worked much on transportation at all. 
And it did take her a long while to come back to PR too. 
 

Edited by The Traveller
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