Helleran Davar Lives!

[Ari he/him]

Shallan sees Jasnah stabbed and very, very dead, then sends her Lightwoven double up top to try and distract the mutineers. While they're away, she runs into Jasnah's room to find the spheres and use their power. On that way, she expects to stumble across Jasnah's body, which had been left in the doorway... but it's just plain gone. She wonders if they took the body or was it just rocked by the motions of the boat somewhere she can't see in the dark, but it was a huge red-flag for me.

 

The others were smaller clues, but from this one, I was more-or-less positive she wasn't dead.

 

Ah, right, yeah, I do remember reading that now. I just didn't consider it super suspicious as I hadn't looked up that Jasnah's order had Transportation.

[Evil_Reptile]

Ah, right, yeah, I do remember reading that now. I just didn't consider it super suspicious as I hadn't looked up that Jasnah's order had Transportation.

Yeah, at that point, you shouldn't know that Jasnah is an Elsecaller unless you've looked up a bunch of stuff which you shouldn't have. Also, someone being stabbed in the heart straight through tends to make me not believe that that person can come back, unless I'm reading something in the Malazan series. We also had no indicator that stormlight can heal an almost immediately lethal wound. Wehad indictions that it could heal minor wound, as well as gradually heal Kaladin of a slow-moving death, and heal him of many things that would kill him if stacked up in the Highstorm, but that's all, really.

[Guest]

I did not even know there were orders of knight Radiants or what they were or the number of surges. I had no idea of their powers, so Jasnah was dead, dead, when I read that scene.

 

We have to make the distinction between the casual reader and the informed one. I was a very casual reader when I read WoR. However, had I been an informed one, I may have picked up on the clues.

[Oudeis he/him]

You guys are conflating things. It doesn't matter if you have a working alternate theory, you can still know the "obvious" explanation has problems.

 

I didn't know for sure how she'd escaped, how she'd survived. It didn't matter. A dead body mysteriously vanishes moments after death? Okay, something up. Maybe she Soulcast a fake body and left it for the them to stab. Maybe it's an illusion. Maybe a dozen other things. None of that matters. You guys are proposing the fallacy of false dichotomy; you may have assumed the obvious answer because you couldn't propose an alternative, but some of us were able to say, "I may not know what has actually happened here, but I know it wasn't this."

 

I didn't need any "additional" information to come to this conclusion. And I've never claimed I knew what actually did happen. I just smelled something fishy. Even if you didn't know there even were Orders of Surgebinders, even if you hadn't see Kaladin heal enough to survive a Highstorm, even if I had just picked up Words of Radiance and had never heard of Brandon Sanderson before... a person supposedly "dies" and then moments later the body has mysteriously vanished. I didn't need to know anything else to suspect that somehow, someway, something was going on here.

[Guest]

..

 

Well good for you if you were able to pick-point see it the moment you read it. All we are saying is many people did not see it and I offered the explanation not being well-versed enough in SA may have hindered some of us. There are readers who won't stop their reading and start to think if her death made sense. She died. Period. I personally did not think much of it. I did not care much for Jasnah back then anyway.

 

I guess we are all just dumb idiots for not having drawn all of your wonderful conclusions during our first read. 

[ParadoxicalZen he/him]

I didn't the details of it until I looked up on it, but I wasn't focusing on every detail as I was eager to know what was going to happen in the story. As a result, stuff that should have been a red flag i'd either forgotten or missed. As said before, I'm keeping an open mind until we have direct confirmation. 

[SweetLift she/her]

I fanticised that he was Mraize....But that is apparently not true. As far as actual information to support Helleran being alive, I got nothing. And I agree that resurrections have reached the limit.

[Ari he/him]

Yeah, at that point, you shouldn't know that Jasnah is an Elsecaller unless you've looked up a bunch of stuff which you shouldn't have. Also, someone being stabbed in the heart straight through tends to make me not believe that that person can come back, unless I'm reading something in the Malazan series. We also had no indicator that stormlight can heal an almost immediately lethal wound. Wehad indictions that it could heal minor wound, as well as gradually heal Kaladin of a slow-moving death, and heal him of many things that would kill him if stacked up in the Highstorm, but that's all, really.

 

Yeah, and given how little Cosmere or magic system stuff there was in WoK, I deliberately left myself fresh for WoR.

[DreamEternal]

Even though it would be difficulty(not impossible, there were enough hints for a guess) to find out Jasnah was an Elsecaller, it was always clear she had a mastery over Shadesmar much above Shallan's. For those who supposed entering Shadesmar was not a mental journey or astral projection, but actualy entering there with your physical aspect, then it would be possible to guess she had escaped.

Of course, maybe it would be less jarring if we got a short chapter showing her in the middle of Shadesmar in her way to one of the great spren cities. With everyone coming from the dead at the end I sometimes feel like it would be better for Eshonai to have died and for Adolin's blade to remain dead. And for Kaladin to lose his right hand in some way Stormlight can't heal.

[StoneWalker he/him]

I don't know why it would be difficult to know Jasnah is an Elsecaller. She states pretty specifically that she and Shallan are not in the same order, and we are told each order has exactly two surges. We know the suge shared by Jasnah and Shallan is Transformation, forcing Jasnah to have Transportation and therefore be an Elsecaller.

I think there were very subtle hints Jasnah had not died, including Taravangian's almost throwaway: Had Jasnah faked her death as he suspected? I didn't want Jasnah to be dead, but still missed all the subtle clues until a more careful reread.

It maybe could have been cofirmed better, at least not literally two chapters after we find out Szeth isn't dead, but I feel that it needed to be done, if only to show how storming hard it is to kill off a Radiant with conventional means.

Edited September 30, 2015 by StoneWalker

[Yata he/him]

I don't know why it would be difficult to know Jasnah is an Elsecaller. She states pretty specifically that she and Shallan are not in the same order, and we are told each order has exactly two surges. We know the suge shared by Jasnah and Shallan is Transformation, forcing Jasnah to have Transportation and therefore be an Elsecaller.

The point was that in the books without read any "outside" informations there is no way to know that the other order with the Trasformation surge was the Elsecaller and of course you can't know that the Elsecaller have the Trasport Surge.

[Oudeis he/him]

While valid, Yata, there's no reason you have to know she has Transport to know she survived. If you read Way of Kings, you know Stormlight can help you heal the damage a Highstorm does. Even if you don't, the body mysteriously vanishes. That's not a "well, done deal, she's alive," but it's a pretty obvious clue that something happened. Corpses don't routinely dissolve into thin air. Maybe you have no idea what the mechanism is, yet, but unless you missed that line, it's a pretty big clue that SOMETHING has happened.

[Evil_Reptile]

While valid, Yata, there's no reason you have to know she has Transport to know she survived. If you read Way of Kings, you know Stormlight can help you heal the damage a Highstorm does. Even if you don't, the body mysteriously vanishes. That's not a "well, done deal, she's alive," but it's a pretty obvious clue that something happened. Corpses don't routinely dissolve into thin air. Maybe you have no idea what the mechanism is, yet, but unless you missed that line, it's a pretty big clue that SOMETHING has happened.

I don't know. I just assumed that the goons brought the body along with them or something, figuring it was just a random detail. Actually, come to think of it, prior Sanderson knowledge might actually harm more than help in this case, since, in my experience, Brandon doesn't bring people back to life that often. It's pretty much just Kelsier and Jasnah, if I recall correctly.

[Oudeis he/him]

The 'goons' had just raced abovedecks to chase Shallan's doppleganger; even if they'd been so inclined as to take Jasnah's corpse, it would have been difficult, obvious, and slow. I'll have to read the scene again, but I'm pretty sure from what Shallan sees, it's clear that this didn't happen.

 

Regardless, even if there might be another explanation... it just struck me as a hugely weird thing for him to point out, especially to make it seem as discordant as it did. Her body wasn't there, and this was very strange. Those two things were apparent from the scene. Like I said, it's not a slam dunk. Based on that I was only mostly sure she was still alive (though seeing what Stormlight can do, I was very, very sure).

 

Either you're saying that the missing body could have meant a few different things, including that Jasnah wasn't dead, in which case, we agree. Or, you're saying no, her mysteriously vanishing corpse gave no indication that she'd pulled through... which I do not agree with. Nor, I think, have you made that point by citing one unlikely alternative.

[Orlion Blight he/him]

 

Either you're saying that the missing body could have meant a few different things, including that Jasnah wasn't dead, in which case, we agree. Or, you're saying no, her mysteriously vanishing corpse gave no indication that she'd pulled through... which I do not agree with. Nor, I think, have you made that point by citing one unlikely alternative.

 

What we all ready know was that:

 

1) Shallan was pretty sure Jasnah was dead. Not once after this point does Shallan consider "oh, she was just playing possum and escaped through the Shadesmar". Our point of view character just sees Jasnah get an instant fatal wound and is dead by the time she hits the ground. Even if we consider Jasnah escaping to the Shadesmar with a hole in her torso, what then? Where is she getting the instant healing from? How is she surviving from not drowning in spheres while her body is in shock from being stabbed in the heart and trying to keep things together just to merely not die? 

 

2) The only other indication at this point that people can come back from being violently murdered are the Heralds from the prologue to the entire series, and they seem to suffer in hell for centuries before they come back. So with this indication, we might say "Jasnah will come back!....erhm... later...much later... maybe the second pentology? No? That might be too soon? Mistborn Future Trilogy, then?" Which would make her effectively dead until that theory is proven/disproven twenty years from now.

 

3) The first indication that someone can come back from being violently murdered in a timely matter is Szeth. But that required a very lore strong, possible Herald figure who also managed to get a hold of Nightblood. This allowed us to accept more readily that Jasnah is alive when we see her right at the end, but it still begs the question: how? If that last scene was cut out we would still be left to speculate on Jasnah fate with unfounded ponderances such as "Well, it's 'possible' that her still warm corpse was discovered by ANOTHER Herald in the Shadesmar who decided instantly and without thought, 'gee, I'm going to revive this still warm corpse with my Herald magic' and then taught her the ways of the Force."  Now, we just know she is alive but still have no idea as to the how.

 

Essentially, "something strange is going on here" just preps you for whatever strange is going to happen. There is really no way to 'know'  if you do not have a 'how'. For all we know, dead Radiants become Voidspern, which is why the old Radiants killed their spern and abandoned their oaths... because, dang it, that is not how you win a war against Voidspern!

[DreamEternal]

1) A small cut can be easily healed by stormlight. A small cut in the heart is still a small cut. Plus, one does not beed to breath when holding stormlight, so maybe the loss of blood pressure doens't make you go uncouncious while holding it.

She didn't drown in shadesmar because, as she demonstrated twice before, she is much more adept at manipulating it than Shallan. And she was at the sea, wich is solid in shadesmar anyway, so it doens't even matter.

2)She wasn't murdered. A wound in the heart is not necessarily an instantaneous death, especialy if you have supernatural healing.

3) See the two previous points. You are overestimating the effects of a heart wound in a surgebinder.

Edited October 1, 2015 by CognitivePulsePattern

[ParadoxicalZen he/him]

1) A small cut can be easily healed by stormlight. A small cut in the heart is still a small cut. Plus, one does not beed to breath when holding stormlight, so maybe the loss of blood pressure doens't make you go uncouncious while holding it.

She didn't drown in shadesmar because, as she demonstrated twice before, she is much more adept at manipulating it than Shallan. And she was at the sea, wich is solid in shadesmar anyway, so it doens't even matter.

2)She wasn't murdered. A wound in the heart is not necessarily an instantaneous death, especialy if you have supernatural healing.

3) See the two previous points. You are overestimating the effects of a heart wound in a surgebinder.

 

Bear in mind though, we don't know exactly how much stormlight she was holding although

that half-canon Jasnah excerpt states it was a close call

[Oudeis he/him]

Paradox: Thank you for putting that behind a spoiler, but if you mark what it's a spoiler for (in this case, SA3) people will know whether or not it's safe to read it.

 

 

1) Shallan was pretty sure Jasnah was dead. Not once after this point does Shallan consider "oh, she was just playing possum and escaped through the Shadesmar".!

 

This point keeps getting made, over and over, like a Highstorm, and I am getting almighty tired of it.

 

For what I hope but realize isn't the final time: We do not need to know exactly and specifically what happened in order to realize that SOMETHING happened.

 

You, and many others, keep saying it like this. "Unless you cheated, you don't know she has Transportation, so there's no way to know exactly what happened." I am not contending, nor is it relevant, that we don't know exactly what happened. I never said, "And Mr. Sanderson revealed to us what happened, as it happened." I had no idea she'd gone to Shadesmar. Even knowing what I did about the Surges (which, despite accusations I've received from others, was neither cheating, nor bad, nor something I "shouldn't have done") I didn't know what was going to happen.

 

And I didn't have to.

 

You are proposing a logical fallacy known as a false dichotomy; you are trying to claim that since we didn't know exactly what happened, the only other possible assumption would be that literally nothing interesting happened. Stop making that argument. It's wrong, and it's not a point contrary to anything anyone who disagrees with you is saying. It was, and is, entirely possible to realize, "Hey wait, something has happened here I don't yet fully understand," without saying, "I understand literally everything that has happened here."

 

I realize this will have no effect. I realize that this will not stop you, or any of a dozen other people, from saying one more time, "But you only knew she transported because you read things unavailable in the text." And I'm making my peace with that. I just feel better for having gotten this off my chest.

 

You talk about how we couldn't know she could survive in Shadesmar... I never thought she went to Shadesmar. Since we know, in-text, that she's a Soulcaster, I actually assumed she just made a fake body for them to kill; it's worth noting that by the time Shallan sees 'Jasnah', she's on the ground in a stupor with a head wound, right before being stabbed in the heart. She never moves, or walks, or speaks, she just lies there like a meat puppet, so I figured she'd conjured up a double to fool the assassins... exactly like Shallan does a moment later, with an illusion. Happens I was wrong, and truthfully this never struck me as ENTIRELY plausible, but it was still a viable alternative.

 

The important thing to note is that the body was gone. That doesn't just happen. Ships are tiny, cramped spaces. The body was there, then it was gone. Shallan comments how weird that is. It's unlikely in the extreme that the men would have taken it, and there's nowhere for it to go, and Shallan even takes a moment to think about the oddity. This, to me, was a huge red flag. Something happened here.

 

Now, I've been accused in other places of treating people like they are stupid. This is, of course, not the case. I'm not saying everyone should have seen this. I'm not saying everyone did see it. There are hugely obvious things, in this book and others, that I missed on my first read-through. There are a lot of words in Words of Radiance. There are a lot of little tricky things, subtle clues left, big and small, for future events big and small. The smartest of us will miss some, the most casual of us will see others. No point of this debate is supposed to be taken as, "I saw this thing, and you didn't, and that makes me smarter than you."

 

This whole thing started from people saying, there was no foreshadowing. There was no way to know. There were no clues. And that's not true. There's no shame in admitting you missed a clue. I missed a ton of stuff. That doesn't mean I now go back and claim the clues which were there did not exist, because I'm not ashamed to admit that I simply missed something.

 

The plain fact is, there was foreshadowing that Jasnah was not dead. Some of it was subtle, some of it was easier to find if you read WoB, but it was there. It was not a slam dunk, it was not a glowing sign, it was not the words JK JASNAH'S NOT REALLY DEAD OKAY GO BACK TO THE STORY, and it wasn't specific, but the clues were there. Most pages of Mr. Sanderson's works have clues in them, and the best of us pick up something in the neighborhood of half of them. Some of us noticed this. Some of us did not. No one is saying the people who missed this are dumb, or that they don't pay enough attention. I would politely ask that (and I realize not everyone is saying this) those saying that the clues either did not exist, or you could only possibly notice them if you're a 'cheater', calm down, stop taking offense where no offense was meant, and stop hurling hurtful accusations.

[Shardbearer he/him]

I agree that there was plenty of foreshadowing for Jasnah's return. I kept reading, waiting for the reveal, knowing it was coming.

 

It is unfortunate that this reveal came so close to Szeth's resurrection, but I can't see any other way it could have been done. If done earlier, it would have been a diversion from the other plots that were happening.

 

I suppose it could have been left for the next book, but that would probably seem even more "deus ex machina".