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General
- Seeing how Dalinar's relationship with his sons has changed following the revelations from the previous book is quite sad - Adolin is in a defiant rage, unable to forgive Dalinar, while Renarin believes that he has to forgive Dalinar.
- Elhokar's death from the previous book has left lingering marks on Navani, and moreso on his son Gavinor. Navani grieves more than once for the things her son never got to see or do, and Gavinor asks for a sword so he can be prepared to kill the man who killed his father.
- Raboniel's and Navani's relationship has an element of tragedy to it. It's clear that they are excellently matched both in science and in personality, and in a better world they would probably have made universe changing discoveries together. However, the human-Singer war ensures that they can never trust each other and that their work together is tainted by betrayal, ultimately ending with Raboniel unleashing Anti-Magic into the war in the hopes that the carnage that results will finally end it.
Chapter 2
- Kaladin is facing off against a half-dozen singer warforms left behind by Lezian the Pursuer:Kaladin: You can fight a Radiant all on your own, if you'd like. Alternatively, if you don't feel like dying today, you can can gather the singers in this town and retreat half an hour's walk to the east.The six soldiers rushed him.
- And a little Fridge Logic makes it worse: Kaladin is a Surgebinder and still has partial Stormlight reserves, so even if one of the soldiers got in a lucky hit they wouldn't take him down. Lezian was willing to throw away the lives of half-a-dozen of his soldiers merely to wear down Kaladin's Stormlight reserves a bit.
Chapter 65
- There's a particular insane Fused that Raboniel tends to keep close. Navani wonders if she's a spy or something else terrible, but it turns out that she is in fact Raboniel's daughter. Occasionally she will ask where her mother is.Raboniel walked to her daughter and turned her to steer her out the door. And while singers tended not to show emotion on their faces, Navani thought for sure she could read pain in Raboniel's expression—a wince—as the daughter continued to ask for her mother. All the while staring unseeingly past her.
Chapter 93
- The revelation of Shallan's deepest trauma, the thing Veil has been protecting her from all this time: Pattern was her second Cryptic. The spren she bonded as a child, the one whom she summoned as a Blade in self-defense and used to kill her mother, was a different Cryptic. And in the aftermath of her mother's death:Past Shallan: I don't want you! I hate you! I'm done! You never existed. You are nothing. And I am finished!Present Shallan: I killed her. I killed my spren. My wonderful, beautiful, kindly spren. I broke my oaths, and I killed her.
Chapter 97
- Raboniel has just learnt how to create anti-Light, which she theorizes can be used to utterly annihilate spren and other entities of Investiture. Her first test subject to see if this works? Her own daughter. What makes this worse is that she clearly loves her daughter and views this as a long overdue Mercy Kill.Raboniel: No more rebirth. No more Returns. Free at last, my baby. Free.
Chapter 113
- Raboniel begging Navani to annihilate her with the anti-Voidlight dagger, rather than letting her die and come back mad.
Interludes
- Taravangian betrays the Radiants to help Odium because he truly believes it was the only way to save humanity. While awaiting execution, he thinks about how instead of a proper funeral, his body will be burned like garbage. That thought horrifies him even though he can't tell why he should care, since he'll be dead. He then starts wondering what will happen to him after his death. He decides that he'd like it if he ceased to exist entirely, because the alternative would be far worse.
