Nomad woke up among the condemned.
Nomad is a man who has been running from world to world for a very long time. Running from his past and the enemies who hound him for what he once held, he finds himself on a new planet, with a new enemy: The sun itself.
On the world of Canticle, light kills. The only way to survive is race ahead of the sun and its wave of death that melts the land itself. The locals live in flying cities, pieced together from smaller ships that can break apart when needed. In many ways, this world is perfect for Nomad, who can never put down roots. All he needs is enough power to travel to a new world, and power is plentiful here.
Unfortunately, the first thing Nomad does is fall afoul of the local tyrant, the Cinder King. He allies with the hidden rebels of Beacon instead, but Beacon does not have enough power to spare to give him any. All they have is the dream of a deep cavern, a place where they can rest while protected from the sun's deadly rays. They have stolen a key to this legendary cavern from the Cinder King, and Nomad recognizes the artifact. He promises them that he can open it for them, but guarantees nothing beyond that. He warns that they will likely not find what they seek.
Nomad is in a hurry, though, so he will promise almost anything he can to escape. The Night Brigade is never far behind, and if they find him, they can use him to find a weapon more terrible than what anyone on this world can imagine.
Now he just has to outrace the sun.
The Sunlit Man is a novel of The Cosmere by Brandon Sanderson, the fourth of his "secret projects" written during the Covid-19 pandemic.
This book provides examples of:
- Absurd Cutting Power: As in The Stormlight Archive, a Shardblade is capable of easily cutting through any non-living matter. Unfortunately, Nomad can't summon it as a weapon any more.
- Actual Pacifist: As a former Dawnshard, Nomad is incapable of taking any action with intent to harm. Over the course of the story, he learns how to partially reverse this effect.
- Advancing Wall of Doom: Since sunlight kills, there is always a line of burning death behind everyone, and they must advance ahead of it to have a chance to survive. The planet rotates at a slow enough rate that ships can easily outrun it, but it's still too fast for a person to do the same.
- The Ageless: Nomad's aging stopped shortly after he gained his Torment. To be specific, when he took up a Dawnshard. This hasn't changed even though he's given it up. Though he only held it for a short time, he's stronger and tougher than baseline humans, and doesn't age. Nomad says that Hoid, who held it for much longer, simply can't die any more.
- Alien Non-Interference Clause: The Scadrian scholars can't interfere with the locals. Or to be more specific, they're under no obligation to interfere with the locals. They've been supplying the Cinder King with scraps of technology in exchange for captives and sunhearts.
- And Now for Someone Completely Different: After regaining her free will, Elegy replaces Nomad as the book’s viewpoint narrator for a couple of scattered chapters, showing how events are progressing when he’s not present.
- Baby Planet: Canticle is tiny. Nomad estimates it at a few hundred miles in diameter.
- Badass Long Coat: Nomad gets a brown leather duster after meeting up with the Beaconites.
- Bittersweet Ending: Nomad/Zellion manages to defeat the Cinder King and help improve the lives of the people of Canticle so they don't need to sacrifice each other for Sunhearts, but not only did Auxiliary sacrifice himself, Zellion is still on the run from the Night Brigade, and is forced to leave behind Canticle and all the people he befriended there, seemingly forever.
- Broken Bird: Nomad has spent a long time running and has become jaded over the years.
- The Conqueror: The Cinder King believes it is his destiny to unite the entire planet into a single city. He controls the Charred and the planet has never had to deal with a conqueror before, so he's having a surprising amount of success despite being an idiot with no notable skills.
- Curse: Nomad speaks of his "Torment," which prevents him from doing any physical harm. It is a side effect of, however briefly, holding a Dawnshard diametrically opposed to violence.
- Cryptic Background Reference: Nomad drops many, hinting at the future of the Cosmere.
- Damaged Soul: Nomad's Torment, the side-effects of briefly being a Dawnshard, renders him unable to knowingly cause harm to another living being. The Charred also have their Identity and Connection burned out, leaving nothing but aggression and submission to the Cinder King. It turns out that sunhearts can be used to heal this; by speaking the Command that gives some Investiture to the sunheart, it takes unwanted or damaging Investiture first, acting as a sort of spiritual filter. Nomad is able to remove his Torment this way, allowing him to summon his Shardblade and fight, whilst the Charred have their free will and intelligence restored, although the parts of them that are burned out do not return and they remain pretty aggressive, leaving them as Blank Slates with Blood Knight tendancies.
- Deadpan Snarker: Both Nomad and Aux have a well-developed sense of sarcasm, even if they mostly use it on each other.
- Death World: Canticle has sunlight that is strong enough to burn anyone or anything caught in it, forcing the inhabitants to constantly outrun the dawn. The people fled to this world from Threnody, proving once again that Threnodites will take absolutely anything as better than the Evil.
- Energy Absorption:
- Nomad has the power to absorb most forms of Investiture. Unfortunately, he can't really absorb the sunlight, since it will kill him too quickly, so he decides to look for the Scadrian scientists in the hope that they have something he can use.
- The inhabitants of Canticle have an innate ability to leach Investiture from each other with skin-to-skin contact. It usually needs to be initiated with Intent, but can accidentally activate with prolonged contact. It's mentioned that this makes touch a very intimate act, and most of the inhabitants wear nearly full-body clothing.
- For Science!: The Scadrian scientists are on Canticle to study the investiture there and don't care a whit for the locals' lives. Not only did they help create Charred as a scientific curiosity, they don't bother to share their technique for recharging Sunhearts even though it would save innumerable lives, simply because they see no reason to.
- Heroic Sacrifice:
- Auxillary burns up the last of his mind and soul to briefly restore Nomad/Zellion's access to Surgebinding and Shardplate.
- Elegy burns up the last bits of her memories to keep the cinderheart implanted in her sister Rebeke from burning away her memories and personality.
- Hover Bike: The smallest type of "ship." They usually come attached in racks of six, all charging off a central hub, and being able to split off when needed.
- Human Resources: Sunhearts are the primary form of Investiture on the planet, incredibly dense fuel sources. Unfortunately, the only way to get them is to leave someone to die in the sun, then come and collect the sunhearts the next rotation. The Cinder King uses criminals, while Beacon uses volunteers from the old and the sick. The Scadrian scientists have discovered a way to recharge depleted sunhearts without sacrificing anyone, but saw no need to tell the locals. Nomad spreads the secret right before he goes off to fight the Cinder King.
- In Mysterious Ways: The people of Canticle are convinced that everything is part of Adonalsium's plan, though its partly because they simply want to believe there is some reason why everything happens. Nomad is unconvinced. Although he begins to notice certain favorable coincidences that do indicate a larger plan, like his Torment prepping him to deal with the way the Cinder King hobbles him in the final fight, to the point that he even jokes he needs to leave Canticle before the coincidences actually get him believing.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: Implied. The Scadrian scientists don't face any direct punishment for propping up the Cinder King's regime, but the Admiral of the Night Brigade is quite put out that the Scadrians didn't pass on what they knew about Nomad, and is considering interrogation options.
- Living MacGuffin: Nomad retains a Connection to the Command he once bore, and if the Night Brigade captures him they could use that Connection to find the current Dawnshard.
- Luxurious Liquor: The Cinder King offers Nomad a glass of something surprisingly good to show off while making a job offer. It's especially notable as the only flavourful foodstuff Nomad experiences on the entire planet.
- Meaningful Name: Being a culture descended from Threnody, there are a lot of these. In particular, Elegy is a "song for the dead," and Elegy is an undead abomination.
- Meaningful Rename: Nomad is given the name Zellion by the people of Beacon and the narration refers to him as thus from then on.
- Mercurial Base: Canticle's super-charged sunlight will burn or melt anything that it touches, so the "cities" of Canticle have to constantly keep flying to stay in the planet's shadow.
- Misapplied Phlebotinum: Nomad notes that the locals aren't really using the sunhearts to their full capacity. He theorizes that between constantly being on the move and the fact that the only way to get a sunheart is to kill someone, they don't have the right mindset to experiment. He shows the engineers some starting ideas, and they iterate off them pretty quickly.
- Mobile City: The cities of Canticle are actually airships docked together that fly to outrun the sunlight.
- Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: The Scadrian scientists have no problem watching the locals fighting and dying, and doing nothing to help. Nomad notes that while plenty of scientists are perfectly moral, groups like this self-select for a lack of empathy. In fact, they figured out how to recharge sunhearts, which would solve the vast majority of their society's problems, and saw no need to tell the locals.
- Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Though more than normal on his own planet, Nomad was never among the mightiest Radiants, outclassed by the likes of Kaladin, Dalinar, and others. Once he regains his ability to fight, however, his combat experience and Outside Context Magic make him the World's Strongest Man.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: Being descended from Threnody, everyone on the planet should be leaving behind a shade when they die. It turns out that being turned into a sunheart prevents that from happening. If they aren't turned into a sunheart, their shade instead eventually joins the Chorus, a writhing mass of shades at the heart of every city. The Chorus remembers history and will build anything if given proper diagrams, but warn that they will kill anyone who enters their enclosure.
- Outside Context Magic: The Cinder King and his Charred are made from corrupted Investiture given to him by the Scadrians he was trading with.
- Outside-Context Problem: Nomad to the Cinder King and his charred upon regaining the ability to wield Aux as a Shardblade/spear and perform surgebinding again, making him utterly unlike anything they’ve ever faced before.
- Overly Long Name: One of the inhabitants of Beacon is named Adonalsium-Will-Remember-Our-Plight-Eventually.
- Perfect Pacifist People: For a very long time, the people of Canticle didn't fight outside of occasional "crimes of passion." Between their constant need to escape the sun and their ability to just fly away from people they didn't like, battles were unheard of, much less wars. The Cinder King was able to conquer a significant fraction of the planet simply by trying. This also means that Nomad, far below his normal strength and literally unable to fight, manages to be the most dangerous foe the Cinder King has ever faced.
- Phlebotinum Rebel: Thanks to Elegy's intervention, the cinderheart implanted in Rebeke failed to destroy her mind. As such, she is immune to the Cinder King's control and capable of influencing other Charred.
- Plain Palate: Food on Canticle is so universally bland that there isn't even a local word for "spice". It might be due to the harsh limits on agriculture.
- The Power of the Sun: Sunhearts, the primary source of Investiture on the planet, are made when people are killed by the impossibly powerful sunlight.
- Punny Name: "Nomad," as it turns out, sounds very similar to "Sigzil" in his native Azish.
- Rigged Spectacle Fight: The Cinder King flaunts his supernatural strength by fighting Charred in the arena, but he's a Smug Snake who hobbles them with invested restraints first, and everyone knows it. When he pulls the same stunt against Nomad, Rebeke convinces the Cinder King's own soldiers to leave him behind for the sun.
- Small Name, Big Ego: The Cinder King believes he was destined to rule his people due to all his strength. Not only is his strength the result of Scadrian scientists trading him trinkets because they found it mildly convenient, but he is much less intelligent than he thinks. Most of his people are well aware of how he rigs his fights, but he thinks he comes off as a badass for fighting hobbled enemies.
- Soul-Powered Engine: Most technology on Canticle is powered by the sunhearts, which are essentially crystalized and enhanced souls.
- Space Is Cold: Discussed but averted — the Beaconites assume that taking a ship outside the atmosphere, even briefly, will result in it freezing. Nomad explains they'll actually have the opposite problem, and advises them to construct heat-radiating fins. However, he forgot that getting up that high will require traveling slowly through very cold air. This results in the ship freezing, then overheating, and by the time it crash lands it's mostly dead.
- Talking Weapon: Auxiliary, although it'd be more accurate to say he's a talking tool as he can change into many forms.
- The Undead: The Night Brigade uses the shades of the dead—their own and others—as soldiers. They are also Threnodites, like the people of Canticle.
- Unfinished, Untested, Used Anyway: Nomad repeatedly acknowledges that his modifications to Beacon's engines to let them operate outside an atmosphere would need far more testing to be remotely reliable, but it's use those modifications or be caught by the sunlight. While the modifications manage to get Beacon over the mountain range, they end up wrecking about half the city's remaining engines in the process, and drain Beacon's last sunhearts dry.
- Wandering Culture: Everyone on Canticle has to constantly move to stay ahead of the deadly sun. Even their cities are just countless ships joined together, able to split apart again at a moment's notice. "Stopped" is a deadly word on this planet.
- You Can't Go Home Again: Nomad has to keep running to stay ahead of the Night Brigade and can't return to his homeworld, or any place where he's cared about people, as that will put the people there in danger. At the end of the novel, he's forced to leave Canticle behind too. In the epilogue he sadly notes that he'll likely never know if he was able to save the people of Beacon as he can't go back to check on them.
