Will Adolin get his own book?

[TheDoomsday]

Hey guys!

First post here. I only just joined up with this forum, despite being a Sanderson fan since getting The Final Empire for my birthday two years ago. I've read all the cosmere works (including Arcanum Unbounded), and I'm excited to be sharing my thoughts with everyone.

So, I was wondering something. The books of the stormlight archive revolve around a different central character for each book. WoK has Kaladin (my favourite), WoR has Shallan, Oathbringer has Dalinar, and future books will have Szeth, Eshonai, Renarin, and more. However, in all of these books Adolin has been a secondary character, an important person that isn't a radiant. The end of WoR opened up possibilities of further Adolin plot lines.

So is it possible for there to be a book with Adolin as the star character? Let me know what you think.

[Oversleep]

11 minutes ago, TheDoomsday said:

So is it possible for there to be a book with Adolin as the star character? Let me know what you think.

No. Sorry to shatter your dreams, but the main 10 characters are firmly set and Adolin is not one of them.

[Weltall]

Yeah, unless things change the following are the characters who are each getting their own 'book':

 

• Kaladin (The Way of Kings
• Shallan (Words of Radiance)
• Dalinar (Oathbringer)
• Szeth (Book 4 or 5)
• Eshonai (Book 4 or 5)
• 'Taln', Lift, Renarin, Jasnah and Shalash (the back five books)

Adolin and Navani were apparently under consideration for getting their own books but that's no longer the case.

 

Edited May 8, 2017 by Weltall

[TheDoomsday]

Who is shalash?

[Weltall]

Another of the Heralds.

Oh yes, and welcome to the Shard!

Edited May 8, 2017 by Weltall

[CaptainRyan]

@TheDoomsday, welcome! While Brandon has stated the names of the ten (10) characters getting their own books in the Stormlight Archive we should always remember that everything is subject to change. Alloy of Law was supposed to be a stand-alone book but ended up being part of a four (4) book Wax and Wayne series. Brandon was firmly committed to releasing the Dragonsteel series after Warbreaker but ended up scraping that and doing the Stormlight Archive instead. And so on and so forth. I would not be surprised at all if the nature of the series changes as time goes on. Does that mean Adolin gets a book? Probably not. But could he? Sure. Or, what I think is more likely, he might get a novella similar to Lift's Edgedancer or he might even get a standalone book. Who knows?

[maxal]

Sorry but no  Brandon has been firm in his desire to not give Adolin a stronger story arc then the one he currenly has. Many of us feels the character ended up on large promises of growth, but it seems we have been mislead in our expectations.

I am now only hoping Brandon will close up the loop on Adolin is a satisfying way within the few page time he is willing to give him, but I do not hope for him to actually grow into the story anymore.

[Kered]

1 hour ago, maxal said:

Sorry but no  Brandon has been firm in his desire to not give Adolin a stronger story arc then the one he currenly has. Many of us feels the character ended up on large promises of growth, but it seems we have been mislead in our expectations.

I am now only hoping Brandon will close up the loop on Adolin is a satisfying way within the few page time he is willing to give him, but I do not hope for him to actually grow into the story anymore.

I can never really take authors serious when they discuss there wants for the characters future story arcs. More often than not it changes. Just the way Adolin has been discussed by Brandon in interviews and what not, and what has actually happened in the books, makes me think that Adolin is going to get a pretty big arc in the future if he doesn't die. But that's just my opinion. 

[maxal]

37 minutes ago, Kered said:

I can never really take authors serious when they discuss there wants for the characters future story arcs. More often than not it changes. Just the way Adolin has been discussed by Brandon in interviews and what not, and what has actually happened in the books, makes me think that Adolin is going to get a pretty big arc in the future if he doesn't die. But that's just my opinion. 

That's the thing... Brandon never discusses Adolin within interviews: readers have discussed the character, but the author very seldom mentions him. Messages we have gotten from the author have been... mixed. While it is true he did say Adolin would get a story arc of his own and there would be more of him, he did cut down his viewpoints within Oathbringer. While he did amazingly apparently wrote a flashback chapter for him, he did say he didn't find Adolin as interesting as Renarin. While he did say Adolin's development was unexpected, he also confirmed on multiple occasions he wouldn't be a focus character.

So all in all, it has been very difficult to get a clear idea what to expect, but I wouldn't have too big expectations when it comes to Adolin. His story arc is highly likely to be... very short and very small.

My thoughts also are Brandon perhaps didn't expect how strongly readers would react to Adolin's character. Since he doesn't find him interesting, he might not have expected readers to expect much out of Adolin as it may be he thought it was intuitively obvious he wouldn't get a strong story arc.

[+Extesian]

I'm not the fan of Adolin that @maxal is (I don't think anyone in the Cosmere or in real life is ) but I'm not particularly worried about Adolin remaining an important character in the series even though he's not a primary character and has limited viewpoints. We've learnt so much about him already without him being a primary or major viewpoint character and Brandon has said that will continue 

Quote

mistborn   Shardbearer • 1y

The above is about who gets viewpoints where. Adolin will appear roughly as much as he has in the other books, but he doesn't usually get as many viewpoints. (Hint: He might be one of the tertiary characters listed in the visualization above.)

Source

So he certainly won't become a primary character and probably won't become a big viewpoint character. But part of the appeal, for me, of Adolin is that we learn about him more through his actions and words than through his thoughts. I don't think that's diminishing his character growth, I think in some ways that adds to it. It leaves more mystery but it lets us judge him on the effect he has on others rather than on his own internal mind-thinkings.

[Kered]

I think the 2 big things will happen with Adolins arc. 1, obviously, is what happened at the end of WoR. 2, Adolin talking to and bonding his blade.

[TheDoomsday]

Thx for all of the support, guys! I understand now that he won't get a book, but I hope he still remains a strong part of the story.

Also in case I confused you, Kaladin is actually my favourite character, its just that I recently did my 7th reread of WoR and was intrigued by Adolin's plot lines.

[geralt]

Honestly, I'd say never say never. He probably won't get a book of his own where he has flashbacks, but I wouldn't be surprised if he actually starts getting a lot more focus in the future. I mean, at the rate we're going Stormlight Archive will end in 15/20 years, which is a lot of time to change things up. 

[maxal]

19 hours ago, Extesian said:

I'm not the fan of Adolin that @maxal is (I don't think anyone in the Cosmere or in real life is ) but I'm not particularly worried about Adolin remaining an important character in the series even though he's not a primary character and has limited viewpoints. We've learnt so much about him already without him being a primary or major viewpoint character and Brandon has said that will continue 

So he certainly won't become a primary character and probably won't become a big viewpoint character. But part of the appeal, for me, of Adolin is that we learn about him more through his actions and words than through his thoughts. I don't think that's diminishing his character growth, I think in some ways that adds to it. It leaves more mystery but it lets us judge him on the effect he has on others rather than on his own internal mind-thinkings.

I personally wish for Adolin to actually have a role to play within the main narrative and/or have the main narrative make more room for him to grow just as it keeps twisting and deviating in order to give Kaladin more room to shine. The lack of Adolin related viewpoints implies we are unlikely to ever explore his character nor to read much of him, except through third person's perspective which isn't the same as Adolin never behaved as he thinks, other characters read him poorly, on average.

This being said, I must admit I never stumbled on such a strong case of readers expectations not matching the author's intend. In other words, while it isn't rare for supporting/minor character to morph into popular characters, it is usually made obvious they are to remain... side characters. Adolin's case is different as the ending of WoR strongly suggested the character would grow into a more prominent one into future books. Hence, many readers came to expect it which is why the true author's intend hard to comprehend. If he didn't mean to give the character a bigger, fuller arc, then why did he gave him an ending which suggested he would? That's the question I have never been able to answer. 

13 hours ago, geralt said:

Honestly, I'd say never say never. He probably won't get a book of his own where he has flashbacks, but I wouldn't be surprised if he actually starts getting a lot more focus in the future. I mean, at the rate we're going Stormlight Archive will end in 15/20 years, which is a lot of time to change things up. 

While technically nothing is ever impossible, based on everything the author has said (and not said) about the character, it remains highly unlikely. I personally would not expect much more than what we have already gotten, I would even expect less in Oathbringer and probably no presence at all within book 4 combined with a very small role into book 5.

[KnightofLight]

On 5/8/2017 at 4:06 PM, Weltall said:

Yeah, unless things change the following are the characters who are each getting their own 'book':

  Hide contents

• Kaladin (The Way of Kings
• Shallan (Words of Radiance)
• Dalinar (Oathbringer)
• Szeth (Book 4 or 5)
• Eshonai (Book 4 or 5)
• 'Taln', Lift, Renarin, Jasnah and Shalash (the back five books)

Adolin and Navani were apparently under consideration for getting their own books but that's no longer the case.

 

Wow first time seeing this! I knew szeth and eshonai got a book but not the others. Taln gets a book that's awesome. I've been intrigued by his character ever since the prologue of TWoK. 

[kaellok]

6 hours ago, KnightofLight said:

Wow first time seeing this! I knew szeth and eshonai got a book but not the others. Taln gets a book that's awesome. I've been intrigued by his character ever since the prologue of TWoK. 

Just keep in mind that this is very open to being changed, and as I recall, has changed at least once or twice already.  There was a planned order for the books which has also already changed.  One of Sanderson's greatest strengths as an author is the substantial amount of outlining work he has done for the series and books he writes; another one is how willing he is to change and adapt that outline as he progresses along it.  I think that we won't see a book devoted to Adolin if only because he would be stuck giving a POV from events being covered by other characters, which is a major structural problem in most genres of storytelling.  For it to happen he would have to be spending much time away from other POV characters, or directly take screen time away from them so that we see the scene from his point of view instead of theirs.

[maxal]

2 minutes ago, kaellok said:

 For it to happen he would have to be spending much time away from other POV characters, or directly take screen time away from them so that we see the scene from his point of view instead of theirs.

Robert Jordan often had several of his main protagonists grouped together and would alternate their viewpoints so we would see the story through both of their eyes, but not twice, just interlocked. Viewpoints from characters evolving within the same scene do not have to be redundant nor in conflict one with another. Obviously, this would imply the character currently labeled as "main protagonist" would be giving away some of his viewpoints, but really I see no reasons why it couldn't work out. In fact, this is exactly how Brandon wrote the Dalinar/Adolin scenes back in WoK. Of course, it meant we had less Dalinar, but then again, that story, the one with more Dalinar didn't work out, hence Adolin was introduced. 

Also, within the future main protagonists, we also have Renarin, so again, I cannot see why his viewpoints wouldn't interfere with other characters, the same for Jasnah. 

Honestly, I do not see it as a reason why Adolin shouldn't get more viewpoints and/or not move up onto the character ladder. The only reason I foresee why it will most probably not happen merely is because the author does not wish it to. He has already planned out his story, he knows what needs to happen and he has already decided which character was going to do what. Of course, there is some flexibility, but not so much he will start giving Adolin more than a very minor sub arc within book 3 followed by a Long Bus Trip.