kari-no-sugata

A couple of minor thoughts... For Shallan, since this is a few hours after her last chapter, she should still be dressed as Veil, unless she had time for a nice warm bath (I don't think so). I don't know if we'll see what happens immediately after her last scene but there is a chance for a "wardrobe malfunction", as it were, and she reveals that she's dressed as Veil in front of Jasnah (and Adolin). It's curious that Jasnah came to Shallan first (it seems), rather than her family. I'm guessing Dalinar is on the Stormphone to other world leaders with Navani helping so they are currently indisposed. I'm guessing Adolin has been filling Jasnah in on recent events and Jasnah is concerned about Shallan. If Jasnah has already visited her family, then who is the rest of the group with Jasnah and why are they still following? For Shallan's sake, I hope her recent achievements aren't overshadowed yet again. It's also of course deliberate plotting that just as Shallan starts to feel some stability in her life again that Jasnah (and Kaladin) return. Ironically, the last time she was feeling a bit like that was just before Jasnah "died" in WoR. Shallan has been getting used to the feeling of freedom etc and probably doesn't feel like being in Jasnah's shadow. If Jasnah and Shallan still have a teacher/pupil type relationship then Jasnah would probably ask Shallan to move to the Kholin side of Urithiru, for example. Yet, Shallan respects Jasnah massively so she'll be really conflicted about such things - part of her will want to leave everything to Jasnah and part of her will want to participate as a grown-up. Also, from Jasnah's point of view, it'll probably be a shock to find just how much Shallan has changed and she might struggle to adjust as well. Then there's the minor problem of the Ghostbloods. Ironically, Jasnah being alive after all would remove one major reason why Shallan hates them (though there's others of course). I'm sure Mraize and co would be surprised and concerned about Jasnah's return. How quickly will they try to contact Shallan or will they consider her to be compromised? When will Shallan get her payment of information about Helaran, if ever? At least, with Jasnah back we should see some real examples of Soulcasting again.

Hmm, Kaladin and Jasnah are both back... wasn't expecting that. Not that I'm complaining. No Urithiru Christmas tree. No Dalinar. And still no confirmation of the author.

I'd say that the main difference is that Hoid is trying to solve problems that others started while Taravangian and Amaram are deliberately taking a bad situation and making things worse for an end goal that is dubious and selfish in Amaram's case and not clear in Taravangian's case (yes he wants to save the world but what does success look like to him?). We've seen in the case of Szeth and Darkness/Nan that they were doing things that were bad and they were pretty much insane. They've now realised that what they did was wrong so they have a chance of some kind of redemption or restitution. But, I'm not sure that could happen with Amaram unless he loses his faith (seems unlikely). It seems similar for Taravangian - I think he can only be persuaded that he's wrong if the Diagram shows a major flaw. He might well refuse to believe such a thing though.

I very much doubt Shallan will get the next chapter, though she might get the last chapter (eg Mraize tells her about Helaran). Another possibility is that the last chapter has numerous viewpoints. If we don't see Mraize in the next two chapters we should see him early in Part 2. Unless Kaladin reaches some kind of turning point or has some kind of significant reveal I don't think he'll get a chapter - it feels more like his story is going to go quiet for a while. For the last two chapters I'm guessing we'll see the next highstorm arrive. In which case, we should see Dalinar's conversation with Queen Fen, or the aftermath. A short time after that the highstorm should hit Urithiru and we should see it light up like a Christmas tree, or something. That should make a nice way to end Part 1.

I know the thread is about characters but overall, the book is less dark than I expected, so far. I had expected the situation to be much bleaker. Though I'm sure it'll get worse than what we've seen so far. In tWoK, we had Kaladin going through hell and contemplating suicide and eventually realising that the bridgemen were bait. Dalinar thought he was losing his mind due to the visions and also got trapped in a nasty situation at the end due to Sadeas. Shallan was quite a mix and there were also times when she was terrified and thought she was losing her mind or otherwise stressed out heavily. In WoR, Kaladin really struggled with his general hatred/disdain/prejudice against lighteyes etc. His prison scenes were really dark. Shallan again was a mix - her situation after Jasnah's "death" was quite bleak at times but apart from some parts it didn't feel too bad due to her attitude. Some of her flashbacks were quite painful though and there were various signs that she's far from stable. In OB so far, Kaladin is about as happy as we've ever seen him (outside of flashbacks) and while he's facing some risks I seriously doubt he'll be tempted to join Odium's side. Dalinar is more of a mix - he has gotten married and Sadeas is dead and while there's some trouble with the other highprinces it's nothing serious so far and there's the bigger problem of dealing with the world though it feels somewhat remote from Dalinar's POV. Shallan is yet again a mix - while she started off with a lot of pain from her Truth spoken at the end of WoR, she has made progress but again she worries about her own mind (not anything new really, just more open) and has perhaps developed some new problems while her scenes with Adolin were generally happy. For me, the darkest section of any of the books so far was Kaladin's early arc in tWoK.

Some of Shallan's chapters were very short as well. I don't know if the relative difference in word count would be much different from the relative difference in chapter count overall.

I know there's been a lot of follow-up discussion here but I wanted to comment a little bit on this... Often with Shallan it's hard to tell whether to take something as positive or negative (this happens with other characters too of course, but Shallan is particularly tricky). The case in chapter 29 where she effectively treats Shallan as a persona is yet another example. I wouldn't say this is the first time she's considered "Shallan" to be more of a persona or the like but she does seem to be actively treating it as a persona to adopt for the first time... though the passage reads somewhat strangely: The strange thing about this is that while she's wearing Veil's clothing here, at no point does she consider herself to be something other than Shallan. She was Radiant just before this. Is this "Shallan kept her word" a typo and it's supposed to be "Radiant kept her word"? Or is the important bit the "started to reawaken" part? If so, what was going on here? It feels like there's a time jump like in WoR when Shallan thought of her mother and her mind went blank, but it's still confusing. What is she at this point if she's not Shallan? Anyway, adopting Shallan as a persona feels like a mistake (or is it?) and effectively "Shallan" pushes back / complains. So, what will she do in future? Will she continue to treat Shallan like a persona or will she realise that Shallan is the "real" one and not try again? So, this could be taken either way and what's important is what she does afterwards. Looking ahead to the rest of OB (or possibly future books)... I have suggested before the Shallan could likely face Re-Shephir again by the end of the book and this time it would probably be much more serious. I don't know if Re-Shephir could be killed by Shallan alone but since she was imprisoned in the past that at least could happen again. So how could that be either be achieved? We saw in the case of Dalinar's vision of the Recreance that it's possible to actively/knowingly break an Oath with a spren (otherwise, how could several hundred people do what they did at the same time?). So, consider the following - Shallan deliberately allows herself to bond Re-Shephir (by swearing a Voidbinding Oath?) and then breaks the bond. However, I doubt such a thing would be zero-cost. For example, the stronger the bond, the stronger the cost to break it, probably. I'd think it's likely that Re-Shephir is much stronger than an average Radiant spren so perhaps doing this is either impossible or exceedingly painful. Another theoretical possibility is to bond Re-Shephir as before then have someone else kill Shallan with a Shardblade. Since a Shardblade cuts the soul this seems likely to work (with a rather obvious cost). If this doesn't kill Re-Shephir it would likely weaken her significantly (it would depend on the strength of the bond I guess). The final possibility that I thought of is that Shallan could splinter her soul (or something like that) by creating a very strong persona, and then have that persona bond Re-Shephir. Shallan could perhaps then trap Re-Shephir by Soulcasting/Transforming that splinter. Perhaps that's how the ancient Lightweaver trapped Re-Shephir? (I wouldn't be surprised if this ability with personas is a Lightweaver trait, though not necessarily a common one).

Some thoughts on Shallan's possible overall arc for the book: Given that Shallan already faced Re-Shepnir in Part 1 and that it now "knows" Shallan I think there's a very good chance that Shallan will face it again by the end of the book. To beat it again I'm sure she'll need her last Truth/Ideal. But she would also be likely to need time to recover from speaking it. So maybe if Shallan speaks that Truth at the end of Part 3 she'll need Part 4 to recover before facing it again in Part 5? This is all purely speculation of course. In the latest chapters Shallan has been under all sorts of stress/pressure the last few days, moonlighting as Veil while doing her normal "day job" as well. The presence of Re-Shepnir didn't help either, particularly since it was focusing on Shallan. Those sources of stress should now be removed, so hopefully Shallan will be able to trust herself more and also be able to relax and perhaps pull herself together, as it were. It's good for her that she drove off Re-Shepnir as Shallan rather than Veil or Radiant - it's her victory. btw, it's indirectly indicated that Shallan has been doing a lot of drawing recently, in particular, lots of drawings of herself - different ages, different scenarios, different lifetimes. I think this is Shallan being self-reflective and thinking about herself - she does generally find drawing to be both relaxing and stimulating. It seems to be working, since she could wield Pattern as a weapon as herself for the first time since the end of WoR, though it's not all progress. Part 2 looks like it's going to focus more on Dalinar's story of trying to unite the world, and I suspect we'll see Shallan being able to visit some new places and sketch them (and in future parts as well), which I'm sure she should enjoy. Overall I suspect she'll be relatively low-key here though I wonder if her recent success will raise her profile or otherwise change how people see her. I don't know if Mraize will talk to her about Helaran at the end of Part 1 or early in Part 2 and I have no idea how that will affect things. We'll probably also see her return to trying to figure out who actually killed Sadeas now that her side-quest is finished. For the book overall, it'll be interesting to see what she does with her men. Will she help train them so that they can do what Bridge 4 did? Will she reveal Veil to them? Will she recruit Ishnah or accept her if she asks again? Will she start participating in the big important meetings (possibly as Radiant) or will she try to stay out of the spotlight? PS I was going through my old posts the other day and had remembered I had theorised that Shallan's excellent memory can be both a boon and a curse/bane. It's useful in many ways but also makes it harder to recover from trauma. So I'm slightly kicking myself for not suspecting that Shallan's Truth/Ideal at the end of WoR could cause her problems.

Well, the latest chapter lays it out quite well I think: So basically, she is Pattern's twisted older sister but also quite dumb and violent.

It looks to me that Re-Shepnir is using the Surge of Transformation (possibly with some Lightweaving as well), since the things have physical form. So in theory anyone could copy that... but does that make it the same? Hmm, here's an interesting thought... The Midnight Essence that we see seem to be "separate" from Re-Shepnir. ie they are "birthed" and are then somewhat independent. So are individual Midnight Essences each a spren? If so it would tie into this quote from chapter 10: If that is the case then no it would not be a matter of simply having the same Surges.

Renarin seems to know or suspect something: I wouldn't be entirely surprised if he had seen something about the copycat murderer that made him think of Adolin. Unfortunately, he's keeping us in suspense and nobody's asking him either, that we see. I can't see any indication that Shallan got such information. We saw nothing except it's own emotions / fears and some info about it. But yes I wouldn't be surprised if Shallan figures something out. She seems to pick up little hints every time she meets Adolin, almost. For now, Adolin doesn't seem about to crack and confess though.

It's not impossible that there is more than one thing that humans classify as Midnight Essence but are in fact different in practice. Ie it would technically be a miss-classification. I think the only way we'd have something identical is if there's more than one Re-Shepnir.

Yeah, that's my impression too. I think Re-Shepir was deliberately sticking to the gem pillar to prevent Urithiru from coming back to life. There's no indication that I can see that it was trapped there. I hope Part 1 ends with Urithiru lighting up like a Christmas tree during the next highstorm. In chapter 25, Shallan says: Not blood, but stormlight!

More like an Art of War reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_War#Quotations

As far as I can tell, "Re-Shepir" was the main blob that Shallan encountered and the things she saw elsewhere in Urithiru were Midnight Essence. So Midnight Essence is only released by Re-Shepir itself. It's worth remembering that people don't have perfect knowledge. For example, the Radiants in this vision might not know about Re-Shepir while they do know about Midnight Essence, if you see the difference. Given that Re-Shepir's becoming trapped is a "recent" event for it, I very much doubt it was during previous Desolations. The last Desolation was 4500 years ago and Re-Shepir would probably not be much more than 10,000 years old (at most) based on what Brandon has said about timelines. Shallan's impression is that it's been many centuries (maybe 500-1500 years) not many millennia. I would say that this all points to Re-Shepir's being trapped is well after the last Desolation and is probably close to the time of the Recreance. At the moment, I'm not sure what Re-Shepir was doing here in Urithiru. Some people think it was trapped here and some think that it was recently released there or recently moved there of its own violation. It feels to me more like the latter - when we see it it doesn't feel like it was in a state of being trapped.

When I said that the two Surges combined and dropped together I was only thinking about Shallan's personas. I agree that she is not forcing change upon the deserters - not all the deserters converted after all. She nudged them, you could say. Exactly how that all worked I don't know. Maybe it's more like emotional Allomancy in terms of the results though not necessarily the details. Maybe she made them more open to change, allowing her message to get though? btw, have you read the special Jasnah chapter where we see what happened to her after she was stabbed? She could force things to be Soulcast, though that might only work for simpler things.

I've recently posted some thoughts on this subject here: A few extra thoughts: The Surge of Transformation quite possibly extends beyond the Cognitive Realm - it's almost certainly not "just" Soulcasting. If it can also reach the Spiritual Realm as well then a lot of possible effects would make sense - and if it doesn't then they become hard to explain. I think when Shallan dons a persona she combines the Illumination and Transformation Surges together as a temporary layer - both visually and spiritually. So unlike Soulcasting the effect is not permanent and when the Stormlight runs out or the magic is dispelled then both effects drop at the same time.

I don't think anyone was assuming that resurrecting a "dead" Shardblade would be easy. After all, it's never been done before, despite all this time. However, it's been discussed more than once in-world - it came up in WoR as well, briefly.

One slight worry - is it possible that the local Odium spren might get in the way? I'm not suggesting that it's likely but you never know...

This only tells us how "recent" the start of the imprisonment was. I don't think it says anything about how recently it was released. But thematically it would make more sense if it was tied into things Galivar (or someone similar) was up to.

I'd say the same. It's not like the ancient Radiants or the Heralds would have left behind a blueprint for how to defeat Odium. Also, most of the books will probably be from several thousand years after the last Desolation - it's not like all the info will be accurate. Perhaps it'll finally be time to put the ability to translate Dawnchant to use...

Or at least, what Mraize wants Shallan to know. But I suspect he'll be reasonably honest in this case as a reward. By turning it into an "event", it does suggest it's going to be something significant, at least for Shallan. I wonder if this event will be the last chapter of Part 1... Hopefully Mraize starts explaining a bit about what the Ghostbloods are up to as well.

We're all getting Oathbringer! (to read) Everyone gets an Oathbringer! More seriously: Probably Amaram (if we go down the duel-wielding route) or someone he trusts.

It might be that some Orders are more sensitive to things being wrong than others. ie it might not be that Shallan and Renarin are particularly sensitive to this specific Unmade but all Unmade. Both Shallan and Renarin seem to have a sort of clairvoyance, though Renarin more than Shallan it seems.

Amaram arrived in Urithiru before the highstorms returned. That would mean he was amongst the first batch of people, before they ran out of stormlight - ie before Shallan's first POV chapter. So he should have arrived before the first copycat murderer. Even if he was there it doesn't prove he released it of course - I can't imagine why he would want to release it in a place that he was staying. It's interesting to note at least that the text doesn't say for sure that this Unmade wasn't trapped in Urithiru that I can see - just trapped somewhere in general. There isn't a sense of what kept it in Urithiru if it was indeed trapped in Urithiru either.