Oathbringer Spoilers - Blog Posts

So I was listening to the Shardcast about the love triangle between Shallan, Kaladin and Adolin, and someone pointed this out. At this point in Oathbringer, on page 1201, Kaladin is talking about Shallan and the fact that "she reminds me of someone." While we aren't given a direct answer as to who that someone is, the next page starts off with Syl saying "That's a nice rock" and Kaladin saying something nerdy and specific about that rock. Who did Kaladin care about who loved rocks? Tien.

Oathbringer review/thoughts *SPOILERS CONTAINED*

Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson

Book 3 of the Stormlight Archive series

Page count: 1233

Genre: fantasy

***SPOILERS CONTAINED BEYOND THIS POINT***

Wow. What a ride. This book was not only so exciting that I stayed up past midnight three nights in a row reading it, but also incredibly meaningful.

I was upset by Elhokar's death because I had hopes for Moash and Elhokar was close to redemption. And by upset I mean I was throwing my pillow down the stairs. That scene where Kaladin had his breakdown and the humans and parshmen he cared about started fighting really got to me. Poor Kal has gone through so much and he just needs love. (Not necessarily romantic, just love in general)

This book really addresses the meanings of right and wrong, after getting to know the parshmen with Kaladin and finding out that the humans we're the voidbringers.

I think there's a lot of representation of different human problems and mental illnesses in this book: split/multiple personality with Shallan, depression with Kaladin, epilepsy with Renarin, amnesia and alcohol addiction with Dalinar. As Brandon Sanderson himself said, character's limitations are more interesting than their strengths, and the realism of these characters is one of the amazing things about these books, as well as the detailed worlds and cultures he created. And, of course, the crossover with Warbreaker and the mention of Vivenna.

I loved this book. So much. I'm glad Shallan and Adolin ended up together, because I don't think I could imagine Kaladin and Shallan. Also, Dalinar fighting off Odium was the coolest thing ever. I'm so happy that Jasnah became queen.

I think it's awesome that Dalinar learned to read at the end because as he said, the men claimed battle and the women claimed literature, and now with Jasnah, Shallan, Lift, Lyn, etc, learning to fight and Dalinar and Renarin learning to read, they're reclaiming what used to be closed to them. It's so cool.

Thank you, Brandon, for this amazing new update on Roshar, and I can't wait for the next one.

Oathbringer thoughts: Eshonai

What if, just maybe, part of the point is that we are supposed to be angry and bitter about Eshonai’s death? Maybe, given what we know right now, it is supposed to come across as completely pointless. 

It seems like no one (except Timbre and sometimes Venli) cares. Eshonai’s death happens off screen and the only reason we get confirmation that she is dead is that Ulim guides Venli and Demid to her to retrieve the plate. We learned all the way back in WoK that scavenging from corpses goes against Listener culture, and yet here we are with Venli being forced to do so anyway. The only reason we even find Eshonai’s corpse is that Venli is being forced to do things that go against her culture. Eshonai is dead. Their culture is being erased. 

There are various parallels between the Listeners and the native peoples of the Americas. Far too often their plights are ignored. Indigenous women are murdered or go missing at disturbing rates and yet it almost never makes the news. Their deaths are horrible and pointless and it seems like no one cares. When they do get talked about it is almost always (at least from what I have seen) as an after thought. Much like Eshonai. Maybe that’s part of the point.

But you know what? Even with Eshonai dead, this isn’t the end of her story. Just because her death happened off screen doesn’t mean that will continue to be true. One of the next two books is going to give us Eshonai flashbacks. We are going to get to know her and her world better. And, I suspect, we are going to get to see that awful battle from her perspective and be with her as she falls into the chasm.  

Ulim says it looks like she drowned in the flood waters, but my guess is there is more going on. She had plate, a blade, and storm form. We know she was at least somewhat trained with the plate and blade. Kaladin and Shallan survived spending a high storm in the chasms when they were both a mess and Kaladin didn’t have his powers and Shallan was wary of hers. Eshonai should have had the tools to survive. I can imagine a heartwrenching scene coming where Eshonai knows that she could save herself using the power that she has in storm form, but fighting that power and rejecting it. Or Eshonai being given the chance during that first Everstorm to become a fused and choosing to die instead. Some kind of intense internal struggle where she makes the choice to die rather than give in to something she can’t accept. 

Her death will still be tragic. We can (maybe even should) still be angry that she died, but until we get her flashback chapters I’m going to cling to the hope that there is more going on than we currently know. 

For your consideration: Adolin, Evi, and Fashion

Consider: Evi moving from Rira to Alethkar and learning to cope with the new culture and all of the safehand nonsense. Then marrying the blackthorn and collecting and analyzing fashion folios to figure out how she can be a Good Vorin Wife while still trying to be true to herself.

Consider:  Smol Adolin sitting with her, only half understanding, as she talks half to him and half to herself about balancing traditions and current fashion. And then when he shows interest - because if mom cares then so should he - she starts also getting the fashion folios for boys and young men and altering Adolin's clothes with ideas he likes from the folios.

Consider: Evi encouraging Adolin when he starts fashioning himself play armor out of the rockbud shells he finds laying around. Evi teaching smol Adolin knots and the very basics of sewing.

Consider: An older Adolin trying to follow his father’s example and getting into dueling. Adolin coming home with tears in his clothes from roughhousing and fighting his friends/rivals and Evi sitting him down and teaching him how to mend his clothes. Not just how to mend them, but how to do it in ways that make the mending look intentional and fashionable.

Consider: Evi at the war camps feeling like she is losing control of everything and her life is falling apart, but still making sure she is put together and trying to make sure her boy has his jacket because that's one of the few things she CAN still control .

Consider: After Evi’s death, Adolin seeking out the folios himself and growing closer to his tailor while he continues to improve his sewing skills because it's a connection he has to his mom that he doesn't want to lose.

Consider: Adolin taking the group to his tailor, not just because he is into fashion but because she filled something of a surrogate mother role for him after Evi died and he truly does trust her completely. And THEN in Shadesmar when he is feeling useless and helpless on the ship he sits down and sews himself a halfway decent outfit because, storm it, even if he can't control anything else, he can still control THIS and the process of the sewing reminds him of his mother's strength even when she felt helpless and that helps him keep holding himself together and doing what he can.

Oathbringer Speculation: Soulcasters

We know that people who consistently use soulcasters over a long period of time are...changed. My theory is that they are being slowly turned into spren and sucked into Shadesmar and further that this is the source of Syl’s comment about how the power coalesces slowly  and parts become sentient and a spren is born.

First off, let’s visit our friend Kaza in Interlude 4. We learn that she is slowly turning to smoke, but it seems to hold together well enough that she can wear a glove over her smoke fingers and still use her hand. She is forgetting the “ordinary passions of human life” and increasingly not needing to eat or drink. The she says that “I have begun to see the dark sky and the second sun, the creatures that lurk, hidden, around the cities of men.” It is clear that she is starting to see into Shadesmar and it isn’t too much of a stretch that in Shadesmar there might start also being evidence of her. The Aimian cook notes that she is “barely human anymore.” At the end of the interlude she chooses to “go with the smoke,” but the other times that she almost goes it sounds like she almost goes all the way into shadesmar and doesn’t come back, not that she almost turns into smoke in the physical realm and drifts off. Later in Celebrant (chapter 102) Kaladin finds himself in a tent with a “single bewildered spren made of smoke,” confirming that smoke spren are a thing.

In chapter 81 Kaladin meets a grain soulcaster and notes that “The woman had an inhuman look to her; she seemed to be growing vines under her skin, and they peeked out around her eyes, growing from the corners and spreading down her face like runners of ivy.” Then in Celebrant we meet spren that “were made entirely of vines, though they had crystal hands and wore human clothing.”

In chapter 105, we meet a soulcaster that makes stone and learn that his “skin beneath [his cloak] was colored like granite, cracked and chipped, and seemed to glow from within.”   In Celebrant there “were other spren with skin like cracked stone, molten light shining from within.”

We don’t have a description of the Azish soulcaster that makes bronze, but it seems like a good bet that their description would match that of the Reachers, who “looked like humans with strange bronze skin—metallic, as if they were living statues.”

In Chapter 35 of Words of Radiance we meet a soulcaster that doesn’t quite fit any of the descriptions of spren that we meet in Celebrant, though she could potentially be in an earlier stage of the granite type: “Prolonged use of the Soulcaster had transformed the eyes so that they sparkled like gemstones themselves. The woman’s skin had hardened to something like stone, smooth, with fine cracks. It was as if the person were a living statue.”

We also hear about Honor and then the Stormfather making Honorspren, so soulcasters wouldn’t be the only way that sentient spren are formed, but I’m fairly convinced that it is at least one way that spren are born. 

For reference and as a side note, in Celebrant they meet Cryptics, Honorspren, Reachers (bronze), Cultivationspren (vines), Inkspren, the ones whose skin turns to ash, the glowing granite ones, the ones made of smoke and possibly also ones made of fog/mist, though I’m not completely convinced those aren’t the same as smoke. If the fog/mist ones are different from the smoke ones, then this gives us 9 different types of sentient spren to correspond to the 9 non-bondsmith orders of the Knights Radiant. 

Oathbringer Speculation: Timbre

The descriptions of Timbre would fit with the name “lightspren”. We know that she communicates with Venli by pulsing to different rhythms. During the first shadesmar boat trip, Shallan speculates that the Reachers/lightspresn are using vibrations (ie pulses) to communicate.

This suggests that Timbre is a Reacher, but I suspect that she’s not just any Reacher. We meet Ico in Shadesmar and learn that his father is a deadeye and his daughter “ran off chasing stupid dreams”. Then Timbre tells Venli that her own grandfather was lost to human betrayal. Putting all of this together, I strongly suspect that Timbre is Ico’s daughter. I’m not sure what implications this will have for the future. But it’s a thing.

Citations: (Note: Page numbers come from the Kindle edition.)

What was that small spren that had crept out from beneath Eshonai’s corpse? It looked like a small ball of white fire; it gave off little rings of light and trailed a streak behind it. Like a comet. (pg 340) 

“The copper vibrates,” Shallan said. “And they keep touching it. I think they might be using it to communicate somehow.” (pg 931)

 “Wait!” Adolin said. “Ico, I saw something moving back there.” Ico locked the door and hung the keys on his belt. “My father.” “Your father?” Adolin said. “You keep your father locked up?” “Can’t stand the thought of him wandering around somewhere,” Ico said, eyes forward. (Pg 946)

Ico speaking:  “My daughter used to work there, before she ran off chasing stupid dreams.”  (Pg 948)

Timbre pulsed to Irritation, then the Lost. “That many? I had no idea the human betrayal had cost so many of your people’s lives. And your own grandfather?” (pg 1196)

You’re in her dms, I’m in those cryptic, prophetic dreams she keeps having. We’re not the same

My friend is roughly halfway through The Way of Kings and he just said "Dalinar should get to kill one person as a treat"

oh. oh my sweet summer child. you have no idea how many treats this man has had

i miss these idiots

Guess who wrote their first Stormlight fic 🕺

https://archiveofourown.org/works/62007322?show_comments=true#comments

That's right, it's rlainarin time losers >:]