Wind and Truth Reread: Chapter 54 and Interludes 7 and 8

This week, Sanderfans, we close out Day 4 and peek in on Shallan, Adolin, Moash (*mutters under breath*), and Odium. Chapter 54, the final chapter of this day, is titled, “A Friend.” It opens with Shallan thinking about Adolin and watching skyeels, taking a respite from the visions. This time, she, Rlain, and Renarin are in one of Rlain’s memories, of his childhood home, where he’d raised axehounds and spent so much time on his own.

It’s kind of a peaceful little break—or would be if Shallan weren’t busy having a bit of a freakout with Pattern over her recent encounter with Formless. I guess the seon that Shallan had all through Rhythm of War is who told Mraize and Iyatil about Formless. That, or the seon told Felt and he relayed that information. Clever of the Ghostbloods to hit her somewhere she’s most vulnerable. Clever, but cruel. But what else should we expect from that lot?

I enjoy this section of the chapter because Pattern is being so awesome and supportive of Shallan during her self-doubt and concern over the possibility of never getting better. When she thanks Pattern and he declares, “I am very good at this!” I have to laugh because while it’s quite touching, it’s also genuinely funny. I do adore Pattern and anyone who says that Brandon can’t write humor is reading different books than I’m reading. I also adore him for reminding Shallan of what Wit told her—that what was done to her wasn’t her fault and that she doesn’t deserve the pain. He’s a smart little Cryptic, he is.

Another reason this break isn’t as peaceful as it could be is that Mishram’s angry face keeps showing up. In the sky, in the rocks near Renarin and Rlain where they were sitting at the edge of a chasm, in the little house that was Rlain’s when he was young. She’s not letting the team forget that she’s storming angry with humans. And Brandon’s not letting us forget that Mishram’s the reason Shallan entered the Spiritual Realm.

Discussing the matter, the three agree that they must make another attempt to stop Mraize and Iyatil from finding Mishram’s prison. Shallan has the anti-Light dagger and Renarin and Rlain will just have to find something to use as weapons once they’re in the next vision. The three of them agree to head into another vision as soon as they can, and to stick together. It’s the three of them versus two Ghostbloods. They totally have the advantage, right? Right?

Next we peek in on Adolin, who is feeling exhausted. The onslaught continues, but he has a moment of peace and reflection, thinking of Shallan. It’s rather sweet that they’re each thinking of each other at the same time. It’s one of the book’s “Awww!” moments—at least, I hope more people feel that way than not.

But while Adolin is taking in the air, Noura approaches him. And she asks him, to no one’s surprise, to stop corrupting the Prime. We also all know how Adolin will react to such a request. He doesn’t argue, necessarily; instead, he talks to Noura about how Yanagawn needs a friend, someone who doesn’t bow to him or avoid his eyes, someone who doesn’t want or need anything that Yanagawn has to offer as an Emperor and the leader of an entire people.

Adolin wants nothing from the young man, so he reasons that he’s the perfect person to be that friend. Noura tries and fails to make her wishes a reality, though she also demonstrates that she truly cares about Yanagawn not just as the Prime, but as a person. It’s a nice insight into the character and her motivations; she may not approve of Adolin’s teaching of war or its tactics, but she is looking out for Yanagawn and that’s good to see. She does question Adolin about why he walked away from becoming the king of Alethkar and he guesses that she’s afraid that he’ll talk Yanagawn into doing the same. He seems to set her mind at ease about that, makes her realize that he’s been there, too… and he bids her a good night, thinking “that was a battle won, or at least fought to a stalemate.”

And that’s the end of Day Four! Let’s jump into the interludes!

Interlude 7 is a Moash POV. Growl, grumble, grouch, and grump. I loathe this human being almost as much as I loathe Dolores Umbridge. But his eyes were burned out when Navani leveled up and Moash is left with the memory of her surrounded by a halo of light, and what’s more, he thought he saw Teft’s spirit in that moment, as well.

Oh, and did I mention that he feels guilty? He feels everything and he begs Odium to take away his pain. But Rayse is no longer Odium, Taravangian holds that shard and he has a bit of a different approach. He doesn’t take away the pain, doesn’t take away the emotions.

Moash is unmoved, clawing at his eyeless face and feeling generally sorry for himself. ::yawn::

Then Taravangian, who I loathe almost as much as loathe Moash, tells the blind man that if a man must die for his choices, then it’s better to be killed by a friend. Which, I’m sorry, is just a sick point of view. Taravangian and Moash are just the worst.

The new god then tells Moash… ::deep, calming breaths:: …that he’s not a monster because he doesn’t love killing. And, oh, it gets better: He calls Moash a storming hero because it’s caused him agony to kill.

Taravangian gives Moash a vision.

He tells Moash that he will right every wrong and that Moash can decide how that happens and who is rewarded. THEN… Oh my Honor, then Taravangian has the nerve, the unbelievable, um, cremlings… to tell Moash that he will have to face his friends, and that they never stop being friends even if they name him a traitor.

Yes, Taravangian. Yes, Moash. They did stop being your friends. The moment you tried to kill Kaladin as he stood in front of Elhokar, injured and without Stormlight, facing you down with naught but a spear while you wore Shardplate and sported a storming Blade… in that moment, you became an enemy. You’re not still a friend. To any of them. Storm off.

::ahem::

Where was I? Oh yes… Taravangian brings someone to see Moash. To help him see again. Battar the Herald hammers some crystal spikes into Moash’s eye sockets, causing him, to the pleasure of a certain subset of readers, immense pain. Pobrecito.

And so Moash is granted sight again, though it’s quite different from regular sight. He now sees investiture. And we all know how badly this will go for the forces on the Shattered Plains later, but it’s kinda cool.Or, it would be if it wasn’t Moash. ::still grumbling::

It also makes me wonder if I’m… I mean, if we’re going to get the satisfaction of seeing the end of Moash in the back five or if he’s going to live to take the fight to the Cosmere. No, no, no, no, no. Put those words back into my brain. I am not inviting those thoughts! Nope… lalala, I can’t hear you!

Interlude 8 is titled “The Only Way” and it’s an Odium POV. Wow, has Taravangian gone off his rocker, or what? He lets his intellect be ruled by emotions and, to make a short interlude even shorter, decides that war is definitely the answer. He will control everything and everyone, and that’s the only way to protect everyone. Sure. Seems legit.

I’m not going to go further into Odium’s POV as it’s pretty straightforward. Rage, hate, war. Voilà. Moving on!

That’s all for this week, Sanderfans! Check out what Lyndsey and Drew have to say below!

Chapter 54’s chapter arch features Vedel in two places, which is fitting considering how prevalent Adolin is, and how strongly he’s exhibiting the Herald’s attributes of loving and healing. Vedel is often used in Adolin chapters since Maya was an Edgedancer blade, but he’s also displaying a lot of care towards Yanagawn here. Shalash is probably here for Shallan, and Palah? Well, Shallan’s sharing her chapter with Renarin and Rlain, so that makes sense. Pretty straightforward, and not a lot of analysis needed!

Moash’s interlude features Vedel and Ishar. I hate to type this, but Vedel is likely here because Moash sees himself as…

As…

Ugh. Do I have to type it?

::sigh:: He sees himself as healing the world.

(I feel ill.)

Both Moash and Taravangian see themselves as martyrs, sacrificing their morality in order to serve the greater good.

Now, as for Ishar… one of his attributes is “guiding.” Toadium definitely sees himself as guiding all of reality towards peace, so I guess this one makes sense too.

Finally, we get to Taravangian’s interlude. This one has Vedel and Palah as its chapter arch headers. The attributes of these Heralds are loving/healing and learned/giving, and in addition Palah’s role is the scholar. This is a pretty clear outward symbolism of the duality of Taravangian’s mind; the emotion on one side, and the logic on the other.

Shallan

This brings us to one of the biggest and most frequent complaints I see about Wind and Truth in various places online: that the characters “don’t get better” when it comes to their various traumas or neurodivergencies.

Those complaining do have a point in regards to character arc and general story structure so we can’t dismiss this complaint out of hand. A “pleasing” character arc, generally speaking, is one in which the character learns and changes throughout the story. So I can see why some people might view this bucking of the trend as off-putting. They’re used to their characters following a set path in regards to trauma; we learn what it is, they struggle with it (usually going through a few try/fail cycles) before they come to terms with the event and mostly move on, having learned something about themselves and grown as a person. These traumas can pop back up from time to time—the first two examples that jump to mind are Rand al’Thor from The Wheel of Time and Claire from the Outlander series, though I could probably find one in every fiction novel if I thought about it. In both of these stories, we see the characters return to their respective traumas from time to time, but rarely as extensively and profoundly as Stormlight characters do. It’s usually a passing thought or directly related to a specific triggering event, but it’s portrayed as no longer being as important or affecting to the character as it was before their realization/event that “healed the trauma.”

While it’s true that Sanderson’s characters tendency to return again and again to their traumas goes against general story-telling structure, I personally really like this aspect of his character work, because it’s true to life. In real life, traumas are not so easily packed up and placed on a shelf. They return to us, affecting us in ways that aren’t always obvious, and the healing process is rarely as quick and straightforward as it’s presented in most fiction. Sanderson is using his work to open the eyes of people who may not have experienced these things themselves, and to speak to those who have. We see this exemplified pretty clearly in the comment sections of posts complaining about the characters dealing with their issues; one faction annoyed by these recurring struggles dragging the story down, and the other exultant at finally being seen and having their realities presented so faithfully.

Rlain/Renarin

These two continuously charm me. They’re so sweet and vulnerable with one another. They’re open about their fears and insecurities, and I’m so glad that they’ve found one another to lean on.

I wish we knew what rhythm Rlain was using here. Confusion? Frustration? Anger? If I were to guess based on the context of the scene and Rlain’s general personality, I’d say genuine curiosity. He’s trying to get to know Renarin, and finding these areas of common interest and learning how they view things the same or differently is a big part of these chapters.

Adolin

Poor golden boy. He’s going to be carrying that failure for a long time, I think… probably his whole life. Despite his success in defending Azir at the end of this book, it won’t bring back all those Alethi who died in Alethkar. And, as I pointed out above, Sanderson’s not one for having characters conveniently overcome their traumas for the sake of what’s commonly thought of as “good” storytelling.

This is a new wrinkle in the beautiful tapestry that is Adolin! Perhaps this is why he reaches out to so many around him, and tries to make everyone feel included. He spent so much of his life feeling lonely and looking in from the outside that he doesn’t want others to feel that way too.

I don’t have a reason for quoting this one other than the fact that I really love it. No reason.

Nope.

None at all.

Adolin is just startlingly good at reading other people most times.

Once again, we get an incredible piece of artwork featuring the Regals by Ben McSweeney and Audrey Hotte. I love Direform’s tower shield, that’s an awesome design with the spikey bits at the top and bottom. It looks as if the shield and the… poleaxe? Mace?—are grown from the Direform’s own carapace, which is just insanely cool.

Our Stormform buddy’s got an awesome carapace-crown thing going on, along with the lightning sparking off of him.

Engage with extreme caution, indeed! I sure wouldn’t want to be fighting either of these guys!

Moash

Just starting this off by saying… great. A Moash POV. Exactly what I always wanted. (Insert eyeroll here.)

If only.

DAMN IT, SANDERSON! Don’t you DARE give him a redemption arc!

In all seriousness, I do appreciate this. Aubree Pham and I debated quite a lot in earlier rereads about Moash’s character and how he views himself, and I do still think that, were the story told from Moash’s POV entirely, he’d be the hero of his own story: A selfless martyr, sacrificing his own ethics and morality on the altar of the greater good. Turning on even his closest friends, in order to seek vengeance and justice for those who were destroyed by a system of government that doesn’t care about the common man…

And now, to be given the chance to have that sacrifice extend to ALL OF REALITY? Peace across all the universe, not just one country, or continent, or even planet?

Of course he sees himself as the hero. How could he not?

…I still don’t want him to be redeemed though.

Odium/Taravangian

This is a pretty fascinating take. The previous Odium was happy to take away Moash’s emotions in order to easily create a tool he could use to further his own ambitions. Toadium, on the other hand, is taking the harder road and convincing Moash to embrace his pain.

In his POV section, we get more about what Toadium’s planning, and it’s bordering on some Minority Report-style justice. (If you’re unfamiliar, in Minority Report, the police force can look into the future and see crimes before they’re committed, then arrest the prospective criminals before they even commit the crimes.) That’s essentially what Taravangian’s considering… stopping all crime and unjust behaviors before they ever have a chance to occur. If he controls everyone in the universe, then he preemptively stops all crime and violence. But—and here’s where his intentions cross over into murky morality—this is also removing free will. Is a good action actually good, without the choice which leads to it? Or is it just mass slavery on a psychic level?

Ah, so all of this is based in fear and lack of control. I’m sure a psychiatrist would have a field day with that.

Last week I mentioned how the epigraphs almost sounded as if they’d taken a hard left into discussing the Edgedancers, but here we see that they are indeed still referring to the Skybreakers.

I think it’s very likely that this sort of mentality—the community service officer Skybreaker, to use my analogy from last week—would have been pretty tough for the increasingly hardline and mentally unstable Nale to get along with. This schism could pretty easily account for a third faction, assuming it’s not the Billid group.

But that brings us to the end of the Day Four epigraphs. Not quite as tantalizing a bunch as the previous set from the Sleepless, but there’s still a good amount to ponder as we finish rereading Wind and Truth and head into the long break between installments in this series.

Shallan, meanwhile, is busy in the Spiritual Realm. Well, maybe not busy so much, but she’s hanging out there and looking at the clouds.

And:

There’s no real theory or mystery here—Ba-Ado-Mishram is and will continue to be spying on them. But this image, of the Invested entity’s face in the clouds, is extraordinarily reminiscent of White Sand. Bavadin has a penchant for hanging out and watching the events of that story, usually via a face in the clouds or hidden among the rocks. I actually wonder how much that will be called out when Brandon revises and finally releases the novel version of White Sand, because the faces were an addition to the graphic novels; they weren’t present at all in the old rough draft version of the book.

And then we get to one of the crazier sequences in the whole book: Moash’s interlude.

Oh boy. So. These visions are obviously temptations for Moash, but Brandon gets a little clever here as well. The use of “retribution” is too on-the-nose not to be deliberate. But he’s not finished with the cute stuff…

The Blackthorn. Oh, in this vision, at this stage of the story, we’re given to understand this is simply a teaser for Moash’s edification and a bit of Odium’s wishful thinking for getting Dalinar on his side.

But with hindsight after finishing the book? There may be more truth here than we thought. Again, the use of “unity” is pretty darn telling, especially right alongside a vision of Dalinar. And of course the Blackthorn itself, the spren that Retribution fashions into a general for his plans of conquest down the line, means that this vision is a whole lot more likely than we were given to expect at the ~40% mark of the book.

We’re not even done with this interlude, either.

Hooooookay.

So Moash was just turned into a Crystal Inquisitor, for lack of a better term, in the very first instance of on-page, cross-world Hemalurgy.

Now, we’ve known since The Hero of Ages came out that Hemalurgy had broad application potential across the Cosmere and Invested Arts. But it was always with the impression that it’d be metal spikes used—more specifically, the four Spiritual metals of chromium, nicrosil, aluminum, and duralumin. Nicrosil in particular has been the subject of much theorization, since it can steal Investiture.

But crystal? And how? Hemalurgy works through the application of blood, and the traditional method of creating Inquisitors isn’t used here. There was obviously no screaming, writhing person laid over top of Moash to have a spike driven through.

He sees more or less the same way as Inquisitors do, though there’s more focus here on Investiture rather than metal. On the surface, this seems natural; Roshar as a whole doesn’t do the whole metal thing like Scadrial, and gems and Lights are the big focus instead.

But seriously, how does this work? Perhaps the crystal spikes were prepared earlier and stored in blood, then pulled out for implantation in Moash. But that feels like the sort of thing that Brandon would’ve found a way to point at, especially with how clearly the crossovers are happening at this stage of the Cosmere. And if so, what attributes were stolen? There’s certainly nothing on the Hemalurgic table diagram from back in the day that talks about gemstone spikes.

The paucity of Moash in this book is, to be quite honest, one of my bigger complaints. He is not only a glaring, hanging plot thread that wasn’t even remotely resolved from the first four books, but now exists as a new kind of Chekhov’s Gun waiting to be pulled down from the mantel in the back half.

And because there’s just the one scene from his point of view, we don’t even know what kind of gun it is. Is he gonna start Gempushing around or something?

That’s all I have for this week, since Odium’s interlude was so short, and basically just featured him once again arriving at the conclusion that war is good. Don’t worry too much, though, since there’s a lot more Odium still to come!

We’ll be keeping an eye on the comment sections of posts about this article on various social media platforms and may include some of your comments/speculation (with attribution) on future weeks’ articles! Keep the conversation going, and PLEASE remember to spoiler-tag your comments on social media to help preserve the surprise for those who haven’t read the book yet.

See you next Monday for the start of Day Five and our discussion of Chapters 55 and 56!