Iridescent Tones: A Warbreaker Literary Essay

[Quiver he/him]

So... a little while ago, I posted an essay in the Random Stuff thread. It was about Warbreaker, and is kind of meant as a trial run for something. Ive been wanting to do a blog analysing topics for a while, so i thought starting with one of the reasons why Warbreaker is my favorite Cosmere book would be a good start.

And... I was thinking, maybe it would bare re-posting it here in a seperate topic? I hope that doens't count as "double-posting".  Honestly, it maybe should have been here to begin with...

So... um, yeah. For anyone who is interested: some disconnected ramblings on Warbreaker. Enjoy?

 

 

 

Modern Fantasy, more than perhaps any other prose work, is a genre which is in constant conversation with itself.
 

There has been a trend for fantasy to lean towards deconstructionism, to place it's worlds in what is commonly referred to as a "grimdark" setting and seek realism. A Song of Ice and Fire (the novel basis for HBO's Game of Thrones) is probably the most popular (and pop culture-relevant) example of the phenomenon, situating traditional fantasy tropes, plot devices and themes against a more "historically accurate" medieval background. And this deconstructionist approach has its roots -to an extent- from the genre of "Tolkien clones", novels which follow the standard stock-and-barrel fantasy devices as popularised by The Lord of the Rings; a young farm hand, a dark lord, magical artifacts... to paraphrase Yahtzee, the stereotypical fantasy setting and plot.
 

Taking those tired tropes and plot devices apart to see why they work as well as they do is certainly a valid way to approach and have a conversation with the genre; A Song of Ice and Fire has an enthusiastic literary base for a reason, after all. However, deconstruction is not the only way analyse something, and among writers, I can't think of someone who fits the reconstructionist mould better than Brandon Sanderson.
 

If GRRM is a reaction against the 'Tolkien clone’ genre's rehashing of plots and themes, Sanderson's writings generally feel like a reaction to the dark trends popularised by more recent fantasy novels. It isn't that he doesn't explore dark themes; his most-well known series, Mistborn, features sociopaths, eugenics, crisis of faith and interrogation of the validity of religious beliefs.  His earliest novel, Elantris, evokes an obvious comparison to Atlantis, with a setting that is defined by the decay endured by the city and it's population, but the narrative is all about rising out of, rather than being defined, by that decay.  The Stormlight Archive is the highest of high-fantasy; where other fantasy series seek to pull the genre down into history, with Roshar, Sanderson embraces the absurd, ridiculous, downright fantastical elements of fantasy. According to his annotations and interviews, part of the concept for Roshar came from seeing the unwieldy, overlarge weaponry common to fantasy (and anime, and video game) protagonists, and coming up with a reason to justify a six foot long sword.
 

Of all his books, however, the one which strikes me as having the most direct commentary upon the fantasy genre is also my personal favourite book of his Cosmere sequence: Warbreaker.

Mistborn's most obvious defining feature is it's tagline: "What if the Dark Lord won?". Similarly, as I highlighted above, the Stormlight Archive is a book which not only recognises it's "cliche" high fantasy trappings, it dives into them with a glee and reckless abandon that revitalises the genre. Both these series are interacting, and derive some of their impact, from how the negotiate the Epic Fantasy genre and tropes.
 

By contrast, Warbreaker represents a shift in tone and attention. Rather than interrogating and re-examining the tropes of epic fantasy, Warbreaker calls upon those of pulp "sword and sorcery" fantasy. Everything about the novel is calibrated to evoke and call out to themes established by those novels. Nightblood is the most obvious example; talking, magical swords are an old fantasy stable, and Nightblood's appearance, powers and sentience evokes nothing so much as it does Stormbringer, the "black sword" of Elric of Melnibone which -like Nightblood- can kill a man with a scratch. The God Court of Hallandren features men and women who have the exact type of fantastical body type popularised by the covers of sword and sorcery fiction. When Siri arrives in the city, it is for the express purpose of marrying -and engaging in sex- with the God King, a person with precisely the sort of title that fantasy has trained readers to associate with arrogance, depravity and villainy. Denth and Tonk Fa evoke the likes of Ffhard and the Gray Mouser, embodying the old dynamic of a shot one and a tall one, a quick one and a strong one, a smart one and a dumb one. The magic for the setting -rather than the abstraction of Elantris, Mistborn and the Stormlight Archive- is physical, down to earth and dynamic.
 

Even Vasher's opening lines draw out these comparisons. He remarks upon how many of his adventures begin in prisons, not only drawing the readerships attention to the obvious plot hook -one which has been recycled into video games such as The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion- but suggesting that he has a string of such escapades and mis-adventures, a sentiment enforced by Denth later in the book, and confirmed by the ending of the novel. Warbreaker is presented, from the first page, not as an epic fantasy upon which the fate of the world shall turn, but one of the serialised adventures in the casts lives, a feeling reinforced by the ending, as our protagonists -having concluded one adventure- set out on a journey towards another. It's a far cry from Elantris and Mistborn which -happy or no- provide endings for their cast members.
 

However, while Brandon is making use of pulp tropes, he doesn't simply regurgitate them. In Warbreaker, her provides his own spin and commentary on them.
 

Nightblood -with it's black sheath, sentience and dread power- may evoke Stormbringer, but Nightblood itself is anything but. It may be an ancient and sentient blade... but it also profoundly innocent rather than malevolent. It isn't a font of wisdom that can be dispensed to the new adventurers; Nightblood is childish and immature, and it's owner, Vasher, is no Elric. He may be surly and bad tempered; he may be scruffy and ill-kempt, but he is, in the ways that matter, the hero of the story. By contrast, the dynamic duo of Denth and Tonk Fa, the charming rogues who warn Vivenna that they are in it for the money and shouldn't be trusted, are the villains. Vivenna disregards their warnings, and so do the readers; after all, the charming rogue -the Han Solo type- might say they can't be trusted, but it always covers a heart of gold, a heart that can be relied upon when the chips are down. The reveal that Denth and Tonk Fa -two characters who would in other stories be the main characters, who along with Jewel and Clod form an almost RPG-like party- are the villains is unsettling because it upturns the way the narrative is "supposed" to go in these types of stories.
 

(And not merely for the reader; Vivenna's time spent in the slums following the reveal is not a case of Brandon "Breaking the haughty", or at least not just; it also gives the character, and the reader, a chance to re-orientate themselves to the new narrative they have been thrust into)
 

The God Court fits into that structure. Siri and Vivenna are the readers first viewpoints to the world; their upbringing leads us to expect a decadent court. And while there may be a lazy hedonism to things, epitomized by a sport which Lightsong wins by playing completely at random, that aspect of the court is one which is barely touched upon. Lightsong, with his epithet of 'the Brave' and his "perfect" body channels the likes of Conan or Aragorn, and his investigation has him positioning himself as the hero of our narrative. And on the other hand, we have Blushweaver, someone who, between the descriptions of her appearance, her proposition of Lightsong, her political maneuvering and her title of 'the Beautiful' deliberately echoes some of the worse depictions of women in the pulp genre.
 

However, the point of these decisions it that the pulp conventions are only on the surface. Lightsong, despite his imaginations, is not a hero who will kill his enemies. He is a person who died saving a little girl, and who then sacrifices his life to allow someone else to save the day. Blushweaver, for all her posturing and for how much Lightsong distrusts her, is politically active with the best intentions of everyone at heart. Lightsong isn't the hero of the story, and Blushweaver isn't the villain; they are both characters trying to do the right thing. The surface depictions playing into the Sword and Sorcery tropes exists only on that level: the surface.
 

And there can be no clearer example of this than in Bluefingers final plot. The sacrifice of an innocent princess in a foreign land to heathen gods; so far as pulp narratives goes, this sequence hits all the story beats. As if uncertain the point had been driven home enough, Brandon utilizes the props of such stories -the table, the bindings, the dagger- and has Bluefingers explain to Siri that he is deliberately evoking those tropes and that narrative to obtain his end. The entire spectacle is one deliberately engineered by Bluefingers to take advantage of the distrust Idris has for Hallandren. The scene is so carefully calibrated to meet that "stock pulp moment" that were Siri not in real danger, had the readers not spent an entire novel inside Vivenna's head and seen her opinions (by inference the general Idrian opinion) of Hallandrens, the sequence might almost read as parody.
 

I say almost, because reading Warbreaker, one doesn't get the impression that Sanderson is mocking old pulp trends; at least, not mean-spiritedly. After all, Warbreaker plays many of the pulp tropes straight in one way or another, and the climax of the novel features the fate of two kingdoms being dependent upon a sword duel between two friends. But just as Mistborn twists and tweaks classic Epic Fantasy tropes, Warbreaker does the same for pulp fantasy, providing variations on well-tread themes and tropes.
 

The other particularly notable aspect about Warbreaker, however, is that it is not merely a commentary on a specific genre of fantasy; it is also a book which is responding to and commenting upon Sanderson's own works. Warbreaker shows Sanderson not merely remixing classic tropes to create something new, it shows him deliberately evoking and playing with the tropes he himself has used in his canon.
 

The Returned, for instance, are not-dissimilar from the Elantrians, being normal humans who have -by one method or another- become living gods. The post-Reod Elantrians read like Sandersons riff on zombies, particulary the Hoed; meanwhile the Returned's need to consume Breaths makes them almost like a sort of vampire. But unlike the Elantrians from when the city was at it's peak, the Returneds status doesn't carry with it any especial power or wisdom; they have certain authorities, to be sure, but the court they live in is almost as much a prison as Elantris became for those who were transfigured by the Sheod. Unlike the Elantrians of old, the majority of the Returned show no particular magical talents. The Elantrians were said to work miracles constantly, whereas the Returned giving up their divine Breath for one person is a notable occurrence because of how rarely it happens.
 

Fantasy has a tradition of being associated with European settings. At the time Warbreaker was published, the Cosmere consisted of Elantris (whose name evokes Grecian imagery) and Mistborn, whose society was frozen at a confluence of technology but whose character names evoke French and German connections. While Sanderson would go on to experiment with further flung cultures -most notably the Stormlight Archives Roshar- the first major break in the trend comes with Warbreaker, and it's more tropical, Mediterranean-like setting.
 

Lightsong and Llarimar's investigations conjures up memories of Raoden and Galladon. Siri's arc has similarities to that of Serene, both being princesses promised to foreign powers who have to navigate the local court using their wits.
 

But then we have Denth. Denth, whose swagger, charm, whose attitude reminds the readership of nothing so much as it does Kelsier. And like Kelsier, he was a crew; Tonk Fa's obsession with pets can almost be seen as a character tick on par with Ham's philosophizing, Jewels' abrasion a repetition of Vin or Clubs. Like Kelsier, Denth's plans involve undermining the God King of the his society, plans he enacts through subterfuge, misdirection, and engaging with the local criminal elements, just as Kelsier's plan did. Just as Vin caught Kelsier's attention for her Mistborn prowess, one of the defining characteristics of Vivenna's relationship to Denth is the vast stockpile of Breaths she's obtained. The audience, particularly those who have recently read the initial Mistborn trilogy, may be more inclined to trust Denth and his crew since they do repeat those same patterns... which provides his betrayal of Vivenna with even more narrative weight. Warbreaker is the story where Kelsier is the villain.
 

And not only Kelsier; Bluefingers reads as a variation on Sazed. Like Sazed, Bluefingers is a member of a third people in the novel, one who do not get as much direct mention as the Hallandrens of the Idrians (or the Nobles and the Skaa) but who nonetheless are affected and marginalized by them. Bluefingers initially presents himself as a Sazed-like figure to Siri, giving her advice on how to handle the God King, appearing in a scholarly or authoritative position, and as with Denth, this ingrained familiarity with the readers makes his betrayal all the more shocking, even as it is seeded into the book from the beginning. Vasher's prologue tells us that there had been a failed Pahn Kell uprising -again mirroring failed Skaa uprisings- but the lack of other mentions in the book shows us how minor the kingdom is.
 

Possibly the largest break from the previous books, however, is the God King Susebron.

His title alone gives us an obvious comparison; the Lord Ruler of the Final Empire, Rashek. Like Rashek, Susebron is the ruler of his society, the central and most important figure in it's religion. Like Rashek, he is introduced to us an an imposing, domineering figure, cold, simply staring at Siri every night as if with detachment, like Rashek looking at the skaa. The way Siri presents herself to him -amidst the rest of the pulp book tones, and with the hindsight of Bluefingers plan- also goes a way to evoking memories of Iadon and the blood sacrifices he made with the Jeskeri Mysteries. Susebron -like Nightblood- is designed to create a sense of dread and terror in the audience, even before they meet him. His figure, his posture, his silent demeanor is meant to remind us of a familiar fantasy trope: amidst a court of supposedly decadent, heathen nobles, this is the Dark Lord incarnate.
 

And like Nightblood, Sanderson unsettles reader expectations by flipping the script. Where Rashek was ancient, burdened with a wisdom that had dampened his morality, Susebron isn't. Like Nightblood, he has a child-like innocence to him, an understanding of how life works -indeed, how life begins- that he has drawn from stories and fairy tales his mother told him as a child. Susebron undertakes a journey of understanding, the same way Raoden, Vin, Elend, Sazed did in the previous books of the series, and as Shallan, Jasnah and the Kngiht Radiants will do in the Stormlight Archive. Warbreaker is not only the book where Kelsier is the villain; it's the book where our hero and our villain have reversed positions. Where Kelsier has been reimagined as a mercenary ruled by and never overcoming his need for vengeance, Rashek is offered a chance to start over and be the hero, the ‘knight in shining armor’ of the fairytale book his mother left him, a true Hero of Ages.
 

From beginning to end, Warbreaker is a novel which tweaks, plays with and reverses the expectations of the readership. Anyone expecting another European High Fantasy novel instead finds a pulp fantasy in a tropical setting. The characters we have been conditioned to think of as the heroes are now the villains or the supporting cast; the villains from the previous novels are given a chance to metaphorically redeem themselves and become heroes. This is not a self-contained story; it begins by telling us that there were adventures before this, it ends with the promise of an adventure to come.
 

I have a particular enthusiasm for Warbreaker. It was a novel I read at exactly the right time to have the right impact. I had just concluded the original Mistborn trilogy, and was beginning to dip my toe into the water of classic sword and sorcery fantasy.
 

That time frame, invariably, has coloured my opinion of the book, but, I think, for the better. Warbreaker became more than just a good fantasy book; it became a piece of connective tissue, a story that linked me not only to the modern epic fantasy of Mistborn, but to some of the earliest progenitors of the genre.
 

In terms of Sanderson’s works, it represents a unique turning point. This is not to say that Elantris and Mistborn were bad books by any means; the latter, in particular, remains home to some of my favorite characters in fiction. However, by the standard of Warbreaker, they were also novels that played relatively safely. Both provided interesting worlds with unique magic systems… but both books also derived a not-inconsiderable amount of their initial, high-concept appeal by reversing traditional fantasy expectations, whether by placing Atlantis/Numenor/Elantris at the forefront of the action, or by using the ashmounts and dark lord tagline to remind the readership of Mordor.
 

Warbreaker borrows directly from sword and sorcery genre trappings; Nightblood, Denth’s party, the Court of Hallandren. However, there is a meta-awareness to the novel which isn’t present in Brandon’s earlier works. Warbreaker is the first novel where Sanderson’s cameo character appears as a story-teller. Previously, Hoid had been consigned to a beggar and an informant, a literal plot device delivering exposition. As a storyteller for Siri, however, Hoid is offered a chance to spin the narrative the way he wants it to go, rather than merely relaying the information to the protagonist.
 

Elantris and Mistborn have their appeal by taking a central conceit of fantasy novels and playing them straight. They are novels whose appeal is primed by audience familiarity with the source material. Warbreaker occupies a similar space at first; the sentient sword, the roguish heroes, the decadent god-king. And unlike Elantris or Mistborn, there are no obvious twists or hooks to Warbreakers concept; it’s merely a solid, well-written story.

Until the second half of the story, of course, when the readers views of the protagonists are turned upside down, when it becomes clear just how much of the novel has been the result of the villains constructing and playing into a narrative of their own design.
 

Is Sanderson mocking pulp fiction? I have previously described Bluefingers plot as a parody of those conventions, after all. Nightblood is a creature of utter innocence, completely unlike Stormbringer. Even the names and titles of the the gods of Hallandren -with their exaggeratedly perfect physique- have a tinge of ridiculousness to them; ‘Lightsong the Brave’ is a rather on-the-nose, over the top name. One could certainly look at Warbreaker as a rebuttal to old-fashioned concepts from fantasy, and deconstruction is a very valid form of criticism.
 

But that isn’t what Sanderson is doing with Warbreaker. Warbreaker, as a novel, borrows and remixes tropes, themes and concepts from popular pulp fiction; it also echoes and inverts Sanderson’s own plot structures and conceits. Denth and Susebron provide us with different views of Kelsier and Rashek, while Siri’s story is an adaptation of Serene’s. Hallandren is presented to us as an alternative Elantris, Pahn Kahl an alternative Terris.

Sanderson’s works frequently present characters interrogating the world around them; Raoden and Vin both spend not-inconsiderable amount of time in their books learning how magic works (indeed, Elantris revolves around that question). Warbreaker, however, is a story constructed around story telling; the stories the priests tell the gods, the stories people tell one another, the stories people tell themselves. Warbreaker has the most direct and obvious parallels to earlier fantasy stories, because, it is a story about how fantasy stories are read, about how they are told, and about who they affect. Nightblood acts ridiculous, and Sanderson doesn’t present Nightblood as ridiculous. Warbreaker doesn’t dissect the genre it is a part of; it merely shines a light on it from a new direction, and uses that to fuel more stories.

Edited April 14, 2017 by Quiver

[Arrae]

If this was part of a blog, I'd definitely read it. You might want to spell-check a fewthings, though. I'm pretty sure Serene should be spelled Sarene, and there's a part where you spell Pahn Kahl as Pahn Kell.

[Landis963 he/him]

Also, there's a mention of the "Sheod" which should be the "Shaod."  Very enjoyable essay though,  despite the typographical quibbles.

[Spoolofwhool]

This is a brilliant analysis. If I could upvote more than once, I would do so.

 

[Tal she/her]

*claps softly* I really enjoyed this. Your analysis of tropes and the subversion of these tropes is sound and fascinating to read.

[Quiver he/him]

I am really, really bad at spelling and grammar, and I really probably should have re-read some of the books first...

But... thanks to the above guys for commenting, for the people who helped me proof read this, and for all the upvotes! Because, uh.. wow. Wasn't expecting that many upvotes for things. Thanks!

[StrikerEZ he/him]

I just finished Warbreaker, and I never really thought about it like how you said, but it makes perfect sense now, in hindsight. 

Anyway, this was well-written, besides the aforementioned grammatical and spelling errors.

[Djarskublar he/him]

I really liked this analysis, but there is some stuff I differ slightly in my thoughts on. I wouldn't say Susebron was innocent. A little naive, yes. Ignorant? Definitely, but he caught on to how the world actually works far too quickly for me to think of him as innocent. He actively and curiously thought about his surroundings too much for innocence.

Other than that, I would say that this was a truly excellent analysis. It put some of the thoughts I already had into words, and quite well. There were also some things I hadn't considered and now agree with.