SquareOne

Just finished. The way Dalinar's storyline played out left me uneasy and I truly hope his revealed past leads to serious conflicts with the other protagonists in the next book. At the end of the day, he is a mass murderer and war criminal who throughout his life was too weak to reject his addiction to the thrill, even after doing terrible things over and over and over again. He became a decent person only after having his past and personality altered by Cultivation. People here are saying that he was a good person all along but that just doesnt match his actions at all. He literally had hundreds of children murdered. He nearly murdered his own brother and resolved to change but he didnt change at all. He crippled people in barfights and shrugged it off and so on. None of this ever had a profound enough impact on him to make him change on his own. In light of all this, I cannot accept that the other characters will be willing to just forgive someone like that, even if he has finally truly resolved to change. I think Dalinar would have made a fantastic villain. When I read the Rift flashback I thought "holy rust there is no coming back from this.". The way broken Kaladin and Seth placed all their hopes on Dalinar being a good man, a man worth protecting only to learn that he is in fact a monster would have been a devastating and interesting twist to the confrontation in the final part of the book. That said, I still thought the moment where Dalinar forms his resolve and denies Odium was quite powerful. I just hope his actions are confronted by the other characters in the future. They might still respect him but he is not someone who should be admired by people like Kaladin.