History Literature / TheWayOfKings2010

* FourStarBadass: Dalinar all the way.

* PowerMisidentification: Deliberately. Jasnah's "soulcaster" turns out to be a decoy which she uses to hide her own ability to soulcast without the object.

* MagicFeather: Jasnah's "soulcaster" turns out to be a decoy which she uses to hide her own abilities. The power was inside her all along.

* AsskickingEqualsAuthority: See Kaladin's BavarianFireDrill below. At this point, he just exudes so much authority and has done so much awesome shit that he, a slave in the worst possible job a slave can have, ''takes over an army''.

* AffablyEvil: [[spoiler:Taravangian]]. [[spoiler:Kabsal]] also qualifies.

* TheManTheyCouldntHang: [[spoiler:Kaladin.]] Taken UpToEleven as [[spoiler:he survives being strung up in a HIGHSTORM.]]

* ChekhovsGun: All over the place, but especially noticeable in the DistantPrologue, with the Heralds and the Last Desolation. The names of the Heralds themselves are important, and the [[spoiler:lost Herald]] is the most obvious, but even [[spoiler:the color of the blood on the ground]] becomes important later on.

* EmpoweredBadassNormal: [[spoiler:Kaladin]], sort of. For the first half of the book he doesn't do anything supernatural as far as we can tell, and the nature of his abilities makes it hard to tell if he's doing anything magical at all, but he gradually does more and more obviously supernatural things. It's hard to tell exactly when he starts developing powers, but he certainly didn't have them to begin with. The prologue shows the point of view character seeing something strange about [[spoiler:his spinning spear, possibly Syl first being attracted to Kal]].

* EmpoweredBadassNormal: [[spoiler:Kaladin]], sort of. For the first half of the book he doesn't do anything supernatural as far as we can tell, and the nature of his abilities makes it hard to tell if he's doing anything magical at all, but he gradually does more and more obviously supernatural things. It's hard to tell exactly when he starts developing powers, but he certainly didn't have them to begin with.

* DramaticSitDown: Invoked by Sadeas, who brings along a chair when telling the other characters some bad news. He then looks contemptuous when [[IllBoy Renarin]] sits down.

* FaceHeelTurn: The Radiants, for some reason. We even get to see it at one point. [[spoiler:They didn't turn on humanity so much as [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere abandon them to their fate.]]]]

* RobbingTheDead: Canyon duty requires the bridgemen to do this. It's their most hated duty because it's both disgusting and dangerous.

The story revolves around the Kingdom of Alethkar, a group of ten princedoms recently united as a single nation under Gavilar Kholin, who managed to force the other nine highprinces under his rule, becoming the first King of Alethkar in centuries. Some years later, Gavilar encounters a mysterious people while on a hunting expedition -- a free and independent group of Parshmen, the docile and listless SlaveMooks used by Alethi. Dubbing these people the Parshendi (parshmen who can think), Gavilar quickly signs a peace treaty with them... and is just as quickly betrayed, when the Parshendi have Szeth assassinate Gavilar on the very night the treaty was signed. Outraged, the Alethi -- led by Gavilar's son (and the new King of Alethkar) Elhokar -- immediately declare war on the Parshendi. Pursuing them to the Shattered Plains, a group of tightly-clustered plateaus separated by a labyrinth of deep, narrow chasms, the Alethi settle down to outlast the Parshendi in a war of attrition.

The main story picks up after several years of virtual stalemate on the Shattered Plains. Dalinar (Gavilar's younger brother and Elhokar's uncle) is one of the ten highprinces overseeing the war effort. Kaladin is brought into the camp of highprince Sadeas and forced to work as a bridgeman -- the physically punishing and suicidally dangerous job of carrying the bridges used to span gaps between plateaus, even in the face of Parshendi archers. Shallan, away from the Shattered Plains, seeks to become a student of the princess Jasnah (Elhokar's sister and Dalinar's niece), a renowned scholar and infamous heretic against Alethkar's primary religion of Vorinism; however, her ulterior motive is to steal Jasnah's [[{{Magitek}} soulcaster]] (the only such artifact known to be outside the control of the Vorin clergy) and use it to save her impoverished noble house. Meanwhile, Szeth travels across Roshar on the orders of several changing masters, whose orders he is honorbound to obey regardless of how personally loathsome he finds them.

* DueToTheDead: Subverted big time. [[spoiler:Kaladin exploits the Parshendi's race-wide BerserkButton by armoring himself in their dead, and attracting the attention of ''the entire army'']].

** [[spoiler:Knowing that his abilities are powered by Stormlight, spheres going dun unexpectly is a telltale sign of Kaladin's powers manifesting.]]
* EmotionsVsStoicism: Played with; Kaladin believes, teaches and was taught that caring about something or someone gives you a reason to fight harder, while most soldiers tend to favor stoicism over emotions.

* FantasticRacism: Dark-eyes are rated lower than light-eyes, from birth, a source of much of Kaladin's trouble. Parshmen are rated sub-human, and the discovery of Parshendii (literally "Parshmen who think") surprises many.

** When Jasnah is first shown using her Soulcaster, after transforming the rock into smoke there's a brief moment where she seems confused as to where she is. This is because [[spoiler:in order for an Elsecaller to Soulcast they need to go into Shadesmar]].
** Dalinar using his Shardplate to [[MundaneUtility dig a latrine trench in a matter of minutes]] and then reflecting on how Shardplate makes such things so easy is foreshadowing to [[spoiler:his ability to repair and rebuild things on a large scale as a Bondsmith]].

* GeniusBruiser: Kaladin, a skilled surgeon in addition to having enough martial skill to kick all kinds of ass.

* GodIsDead: [[spoiler:In multiple ways. First, the Shard "Honor" (and called God by the Alethi) is splintered, which is as close to dead as the shards can be. Second, its holder and conscious mind, Tanavast, is dead, presumably killed by Odium.]]

* TheGoodKing: The ancient author of the book-within-a-book ''The Way Of Kings,'' Nohadon. Not only was he a key figure in helping humankind on Roshar survive its near-extinction, but later in life during peaceful times he disguised himself as a commoner and travelled alone from one end of the continent to the other on-foot with little-to-no belongings, and documented his experiences as well as the lessons he learned in this book, which ages later was an integral part in Dalinar's reformation into a Good "King" himself, before the story begins. Or, at least into arguably the only decent ruler (or man) out of his peers.

* HollywoodAtheist: Subverted. Shallan expects Jasnah to be like this, but she's actually a much more sympathetic (and interesting) character. Jansah's atheism is a personal philosophical stance; she'll enthusiastically defend it in an argument, but she doesn't try to force on others.

* HumanoidAbomination: The ''things'' that appear [[spoiler: in Shallan's drawings]], which look like human figures but wearing stiff cloaks made of metal and whose heads are shaped like strange symbols. [[spoiler: Jasnah]] apparently is more familiar with them (they are [[spoiler: somehow connected to Soulcasting]]) and [[spoiler: Elhokar]] is seeing them in mirrors as well...

* LastRequest: Before he dies Gavilar gives his assassin a dark-glowing sphere of unknown origin and nature, to keep away from "them", and a cryptic message for his brother. Szeth obliges in taking the sphere and leaving the message because he believes the last wishes of the dying are sacred. The cryptic message causes even more confusion when it is found, however, because Szeth leaves it as though Gavilar himself wrote it yet in Alethi culture only women write and read. Also, it makes no sense.

** Kaladin originally didn't like his name because it sounded too close to a lighteyes name (which are frequently one syllable off from being a palindrome), but he gets over it. This mirrors his later hatred of lighteyes ([[spoiler:including his refusal to become a shardbearer, because doing so would ''make'' him a lighteyes]]), but eventual reconsidering. The end of ''The Way of Kings'' also sets him up as [[spoiler:Dalinar's NumberTwo -- the next best thing to a lighteyes, without actually being one]].

* oreInsultingThanIntended: Kaladin puts on armour from dead enemy Parshendi to DrawAggro in the next battle, knowing that it's a [[DesecratingTheDead taboo to them]]. He underestimates the gravity of the taboo: ''every'' enemy archer focuses on him, and his [[TokenNonHuman one Parshman squadmate]] is [[InsultMisfire so appalled]] by him that it takes a long time to mend their relationship.

** [[spoiler:King Taravangian]]. According to WordOfGod, this is not a true example. [[spoiler: Taravangian's intelligence actually ''changes'' randomly from day to day. This is probably a curse or boon from the Nightwatcher. So in the scene with Jasnah and Shallan, he's not obfuscating anything, he's actually an idiot that day.]]
** Also Wit, though in his case it's more that he appears to refuse to take anything seriously than that he's stupid. [[spoiler:Since he knows far more about the coming apocalypse than anybody else and is actually a dimension hopping BigGood in disguise, he simply knows that the political games and pointless fighting is far less important than what is coming.]]
* OneDialogueTwoConversations: [[spoiler: Dalinar eventually realizes [[OhCrap to his horror]] that The Almighty isn't actually responding to him in his visions--he's simply talking to whoever is receiving the visions. [[ApocalypticLog The Almighty]] ''[[GodIsDead is dead]]''.]]
* OnlyTheChosenMayRide: The Ryshadium, a breed of horses that pick their riders. Dalinar and Adolin each have a Ryshadium mount, larger and smarter than other horses. Their antagonist, Sadeas is frustrated that he is unable to have a horse as fine, despite his great wealth.
* OnlyOneName: We don't learn Sadaes' first name until ''The Words of Radiance.''

* RobbingTheDead: Canyon duty requires the Bridgemen to do this. It's their most hated duty because it's both disgusting and dangerous.

* TheSocialDarwinist: While it's never outright stated, Alethi culture as a whole seems to take this trope as a basic assumption, with a ranking system even for civilians. There's hints that the nation was set up to be the front-line military for defense during Desolations, but military disciplines have been forgotten in favor of the quest for personal glory. Letting weaker people die to gain advantage seems to be a national sport, and Sadeas has taken this [[WeHaveReserves to its logical conclusion]]. Dalinar seems to be the only major leader to remember and cherish older concepts of honor and quality, but [[HonorBeforeReason he's having trouble applying them to anyone but himself.]]

* SpookyPhotographs: Not really photographs, but Shallan's drawings of the symbol heads certainly fits the trope.
* ToBeLawfulOrGood: Kaladin and Szeth both face this question, and go to HonorBeforeReason lengths to uphold their choice. Kaladin chooses good, which initially gets his squad killed and himself branded a slave, while Szeth chooses lawful, performing horrible acts under orders simply because he swore to follow whoever holds his oathstone.
* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome: After weeks of training with his Bridgemen, Kaladin [[spoiler: successfully turns one of Saedas' bridges into a shield to protect him and his team while on a plateau run. Not only do they not suffer any casualties, but Kaladin manages to get to the plateau ridge first, giving Saedas an easy head start to fight the Parshendi. Unfortunately, almost every other bridge team sees what Kaladin is doing and tries to mimic it to protect themselves, which ends poorly. The bridgemen outside of Kaladin's team lack the coordination, discipline, training and companionship that Bridge Four fostered over the course of months, which their haphazard methods of mimicking his team's movements fail and turn the run into a complete slaughter.]]

* TheUnpronounceable: Numuhukumakiaki'aialunamor. Most would prefer "Rock" too. Oddly enough, his name actually translates to "Rock". Specifically, a very special rock his father discovered on the day he was born. And it's a poem. Poems-as-names is typical for his culture.

* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Gaz basically disappears two-thirds of the way through the book. To be fair, the characters comment on this, likely making this a ChekhovsGun.

--->'''[[spoiler:The king of Jeh Kevad]]''': What are you?\\

* WhamEpisode: Part Five of ''The Way of Kings'' is as Wham as it gets. When this part of the book is responsible for about half the spoilers on this page it should tell you something.

* YouJustToldMe: [[spoiler:Kaladin gives Teft an order in military jargon, to which Teft responds appropriately for a sergeant, revealing some of his hidden backstory]]

** Parshendi blood is described as having a similar smell to that of chamsfiends. [[spoiler: The Parsh, like the chasmfiends, are natives to Roshar, while it is ''humans'' who are not native to the planet.]]

* FamousLastWords: Roughly around the same time that Gavilar Kholin was assassinated, people around Roshar began spouting cryptic ravings near-death. which are apparently the result of seeing ''something'' while at death's door. And ''someone'' is recording them, going by the epigraphs. [[spoiler: King Taravangian is deliberately killing people to record their last words, though at least one person who was dying in this manner realized what was going on and refused to speak of what he saw.]]

* RealityEnsues: After weeks of training with his Bridgemen, Kaladin [[spoiler: successfully turns one of Saedas' bridges into a shield to protect him and his team while on a plateau run. Not only do they not suffer any casualties, but Kaladin manages to get to the plateau ridge first, giving Saedas an easy head start to fight the Parshendi. Unfortunately, almost every other bridge team sees what Kaladin is doing and tries to mimic it to protect themselves, which ends poorly. The bridgemen outside of Kaladin's team lack the coordination, discipline, training and companionship that Bridge Four fostered over the course of months, which their haphazard methods of mimicking his team's movements fail and turn the run into a complete slaughter.]]