Frustration reads Isles of the Emberdark

[Frustration]

Well, I just finished my read, and honestly this was such a welcome break from a lot of Brandon's recent works. If it wasn't for WoK and AoL I'd say it's crazy to believe that IED and WaT were written by the same author only a year apart.

I saw a really cool analysis by @VirtuousTraveller that I'll link here but I thought I'd go over all of my thoughts on this.

Spoiler

 

 

Altogether this read was highly enjoyable while still retaining its place as a side story in the overall cosmere. There were a few small problems, but altogether it was genuinely one of my favorite cosmere novels.

 

What I liked:

Spoiler

Dusk's journey was really cool, it was a really interesting development in showing just how much his world has changed and how he is still trying to adjust to that change.

The Evil was honestly a fascinating concept

The future changes in the way technology and magic are used was really interesting, and I'm impressed with the way Brandon managed to show so much while spoiling so little.

First of the Sun didn't just win by overpowering everyone else but still finding something everyone wanted

The characters all felt really solid, with one exception I'll get to later

Only one real plot contrivance that I will get to in a second.

 

What I did not like

Spoiler

Dajer was abnormally smart when dealing with Starlight, and really dumb when dealing with Dusk. That just felt really inconsistent.

Starlight didn't even try asking Dusk for the Dakwara to break her manacles

Everyone backing off once the Eelakin got the Navigators felt a little too easy. I can't see the Malwish not at least trying to continue forcing their monopoly on the planet. Now I know that was part of the benefit of Xisis telling everyone about them as if the Malwish tried the other nations might work together to get access to them and that they might they just didn't before the story ended. I'm still not thrilled by it.

I wanted to see more Aviar varieties, they felt so underused.

Dusk handing the Dakwara, perhaps one of the most powerful entities in the Cosmere over to Vathi was cool, making it part of an elected position really makes things super risky. If an expansionist gets their hands on power there... It becomes complicated. He could have just made it so the Dakwara stayed there and only allowed those that the elected leader chose to permit through. That would have solved both issues.

The change from Patji's fingers to Cakoban's fingers was uneccesary.

 

Altogether this book while certainly not perfect was a massive positive sign after WaT, RoW and TLM. I definitely saw a serious uptick in the general quality of dialogue, and felt a pretty serious overtone in general. Now this wasn't a full return to form for Brandon as I was definitely lacking the post book high that made some of his early books so great, but all in all it was genuinely a solid book for me. I'd place it just after TSM in my list of favorite Cosmere books, and I seriously hope that FoD continues this trend of improvement.

Edited February 23 by Frustration

[Nitpicking]

I pretty much agree with the last paragraph. IMO, not as good as Tress or Sunlit Man, better than Yumi and much better than WaT.

[Adonalsium Will Return He/him]

Yeah, I think Dajer just had inaccurate preconceptions.

[Chaos he/him]

These are reasonable, though I think it makes sense that Dajer underestimates Dusk, who he feels is just so far lesser, but it is very much moustache-twirling colonial antagonist. I can see it though.

I sometimes imagine what the fandom temperature would be like if we had none of these secret projects and we went from RoW to TLM and WaT. Oof. I liked RoW and though I can very much understand people not liking WaT, I did like it. But certainly all of those were far more mixed (WaT especially) than I'd like. Emberdark's quite fun though! I enjoyed it a lot. 

[Nitpicking]

Well, I mean, you're literally in Emberdark, @Chaos. Sort of. You might be ever so slightly biased?

 (I love Brandon including private jokes like that.)

[Chaos he/him]

On 3/4/2026 at 7:29 AM, Nitpicking said:

Well, I mean, you're literally in Emberdark, @Chaos. Sort of. You might be ever so slightly biased?

 (I love Brandon including private jokes like that.)

Hah! My opinion is from the draft I originally saw, which didn't have my tuckerization in it yet, and I still remember my beta opinions (which were pretty similar to my thoughts now). I was quite surprised to see the reference to me in the later draft. 

[nehalem]

Quote

 Starlight didn't even try asking Dusk for the Dakwara to break her manacles

You mean she didn't want to have the giant entity that kills people(and dragons!) by touching them touch the manacles on her wrist... yeah that seems pretty smart to me.

Seems like it would be at best trying to perform open heart surgery with a chainsaw.

[Frustration]

2 hours ago, nehalem said:

You mean she didn't want to have the giant entity that kills people(and dragons!) by touching them touch the manacles on her wrist... yeah that seems pretty smart to me.

Seems like it would be at best trying to perform open heart surgery with a chainsaw.

You do know that chainsaws were invented to preform surgery right?

 

And Dusk had already shown that he has fine control over the Dakwara, to the point that he can get it to pick a ship up and move it without killing the occupants.

Edited March 9 by Frustration

[Aekiel2]

There's a significant difference between lifting up a large ship and carefully destroying a pair of manacles on a person's wrists, regardless of how delicately the Dakwara moved the ship.

[Frustration]

7 minutes ago, Aekiel2 said:

There's a significant difference between lifting up a large ship and carefully destroying a pair of manacles on a person's wrists, regardless of how delicately the Dakwara moved the ship.

I'd imagine you have the Dakwara extend it's fangs and then hold still. You can then move Starlight and run the manacle along the fang to destroy it.

[Aekiel2]

That's fair, though I'd also point out that the manacles are very highly Invested devices, so it may not be a good idea to put them in contact with an anti-investiture being for other reasons. 

Such as the propensity for being turned into a fine red mist.

[Frustration]

58 minutes ago, Aekiel2 said:

That's fair, though I'd also point out that the manacles are very highly Invested devices, so it may not be a good idea to put them in contact with an anti-investiture being for other reasons. 

Such as the propensity for being turned into a fine red mist.

The Intensifier shot a beam of investiture at it to no ill effects, and Cakoban while invested enough to float on the Unsea was picked up by the thing.

Which I don't entirely understand, probably the difference between anti and negative investiture stuff.