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Prologue made me think Gavilar may not be actually dead.


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1 hour ago, The Traveller said:

As to the question of why Jasnah vanished instead of fighting, well we shall see.

She wanted the Ghostbloods consider her dead. Her logic was that they would keep sending murderers and eventually one of them would land a lucky blow. That explains why she did not immediately burn their eyes out. She was more right than she knew. They hurt her much worse than she had planned for.

1 hour ago, The Traveller said:

She was exhausted and may be they attacked when she was sleeping and she spooked, ended up in Shadesmaar by accident.

That was how the cut part reads. She panicked.

1 hour ago, The Traveller said:

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.

It looks like Transportation is really hard to master.

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13 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

She wanted the Ghostbloods consider her dead. Her logic was that they would keep sending murderers and eventually one of them would land a lucky blow. That explains why she did not immediately burn their eyes out. She was more right than she knew. They hurt her much worse than she had planned for.

Yes I agree. It is only logical ;) Jasnah threw them off herself but still it makes me think what of Shallan? She left him to be killed or was it really meant to be a test or was it meant to be a way to nudge her towards realising full extent of her powers!?

13 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

It looks like Transportation is really hard to master.

Yes and that should make it that much more interesting! Wonder what Venli will master first! Transportation or cohesion!!?

The emphasis on these flying platforms makes me think that transportation is going to be a major issue in this book!

Edited by The Traveller
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18 hours ago, The Traveller said:

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! 

I understand what you're saying, and all of these points are ways that we know that she didn't die. But that's not how everyone thinks or reads. Shallan at that point in the story and for most of Words is a seemingly reliable narrator (we lose this trust over time), so when Shallan sees that Jasnah is dead, most people understand that as truth implicitly. I remember the bit about the knife hitting the wood from my first read, and I though "wow! They really made sure she was dead, stabbed her so hard that the knife pinned her to the wood". Which given that description can be taken truthfully.

 

As for our knowledge of the Transportation surge and Radiants in general. We didn't really know the ins and outs of their powers at the time of Jasnah's death. While in hindsight it seems like Jasnah could easily have survived her knife in her heart (she did), on the initial read you didn't know that she was specifically capable of surviving. Then we have literally hundreds of pages of every character believing she is dead with very little foreshadowing of her survival. Most people when reading that take it as confirmation and aren't rethinking the original scene and picking it apart.

 

Good on you for recognizing that she didn't actually die, but I think Brandon did a damnation good job in making it a surprise (which after reading his thoughts it sounds like he intended).

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17 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

She wanted the Ghostbloods consider her dead. Her logic was that they would keep sending murderers and eventually one of them would land a lucky blow. That explains why she did not immediately burn their eyes out. She was more right than she knew. They hurt her much worse than she had planned for.

3 hours ago, The Traveller said:

Yes I agree. It is only logical ;) Jasnah threw them off herself but still it makes me think what of Shallan? She left him to be killed or was it really meant to be a test or was it meant to be a way to nudge her towards realising full extent of her powers!?

No.  It is quite clear she thought she could make it back.  Her goal was to reevaluate her situation from a safe position and then return.

Quote

Nerves still taut, Jasnah searched around for the junction: a faint warping of the air that marked the place of her passage into Shadesmar. She could use it return to the ship, to…

 

Edited by Karger
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On 8/30/2020 at 8:36 PM, 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.    

Did you not note the words ‘not-death’? She didn’t die, but we were led to believe she did. I wanted some foreshadowing of her survival.

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31 minutes ago, Kingsdaughter613 said:

Did you not note the words ‘not-death’? She didn’t die, but we were led to believe she did. I wanted some foreshadowing of her survival.

There was some.  You will notice her body is missing on rereads.  We know about radiant healing abilities from WoKs.  Jasnah herself told us about shadesmar...

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6 hours ago, Karger said:

There was some.  You will notice her body is missing on rereads.  We know about radiant healing abilities from WoKs.  Jasnah herself told us about shadesmar...

But there was very little and it was too vague. Brandon acknowledged this as an error and that he should have left it more obvious.

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1 minute ago, Kingsdaughter613 said:

But there was very little and it was too vague. Brandon acknowledged this as an error and that he should have left it more obvious.

I am aware Brandon thinks he should have done better.  I personally remember believing that Jasnah was fine at the time although I could not explain exactly why or how.

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5 hours ago, Karger said:

I am aware Brandon thinks he should have done better.  I personally remember believing that Jasnah was fine at the time although I could not explain exactly why or how.

I’m in the same boat! And I feel like I’ve gotten so used to character resurrections that when I saw the body missing I felt like it had to be a lampshade!

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I'm on the side of never having thought Jasnah was dead in the first place. The first book established that Radiants can survive and heal from things that should have killed them outright. 

As with Gavilar, I think the narrative would be better if he is just dead and doesn't come back. That said though, I'd love to see him come back and how jealous he would be of his brother, Navani, and Jasnah and see him go through a villainous breakdown like Amaram did.

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  • 1 month later...
On 9/2/2020 at 10:12 AM, Karger said:

There was some.  You will notice her body is missing on rereads.  We know about radiant healing abilities from WoKs.  Jasnah herself told us about shadesmar...

I 100% thought Jasnah was dead. I just went back to close-read and my conclusions are that the fake-out is very strong. It seems people are focusing on 2 reasons for thinking she is not dead: we know she can use Stormlight to heal and the missing body. The lines are:

Quote

So they thought she’d jumped overboard. Heart thumping, Shallan felt her way to Jasnah’s cabin, expecting at any moment to trip over the woman’s corpse on the floor. She didn’t. Had the men dragged it above? Shallan entered Jasnah’s cabin and closed the door. It wouldn’t latch shut, so she pulled a box over to block it.

Sanderson, Brandon. Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive, Book 2) (p. 118). Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition. 

It seems obvious in hindsight, but I felt no real reason to question Shallan's thought here. She's just been locked in her cabin for a while and there is time for the men to have removed the body. Not all of them needed to be banging on her door and she then waits for Pattern to look around; it's been at least a minute or two. Additionally, we don't know that Jasnah can move fully to Shadesmar, unless we made some guess from "Transportation" in the Ars Arcanum. The unreleased chapter even shows her being surprised when it happens.

Re: Stormlight, I don't think we really know that Stormlight can heal this much yet, and Shallan certainly doesn't. The biggest feats of Kaladin healing from WoK that I recall are surviving the storm and on saying the second oath at the Tower. Neither is directly comparable to the level of injury + loss of consciousness with a knife to the heart, plus Jasnah is apparently very good at faking because she is seen "staring sightlessly". Again in the unreleased chapter, Jasnah is surprised and must reassure herself that she can heal through it.

On topic, obviously this probably puts me on team Gavilar is dead. in addition to the points made before (he wasn't invested and couldn't become a shadow) I think it just isn't narratively necessary. Gavilar's actions are the setup for the Archive; I don't think he should remain material through the ensuring events.

 

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