I really am just getting more confused as we go along, but it’s the type of confused where I think I should understand just slightly more than I do! Luckily there are no end of guides to the Cosmere, and if all else fails there is Evin the Magnificent and their Magnificent Brain to answer questions for me, even when they are so very spectacularly boneheaded (the Lopen woud laugh).
SO rather than try and do a bit of a plot synopsis–there is a blurb, after all–I’ll talk a bit about how bizarre it is to have what seems to be a novella (and “hefty” novella, even) that nevertheless includes some key, fundamental plot points (or what seems like so). Is the idea that you must read this book? If you don’t read this book will the others still make sense? It feels like any magical object/item that is capitalized is like, 🚨🚨 stay alert stay alert 🚨🚨 but also this is a <200 page (ish?) book that is about a 1/6 of the size (literally) as a normal Stormlight Archive book.
The other element that I find myself both impressed by and wary of is the slow rise in the ‘stakes’ of this book series on the entire ‘world.’ We know that there’s a larger Cosmere, and that there’s worldhoppers (hi Hoid!) but any time I hear someone say that x or y is a threat to the Cosmere, my MCU-fried synapses start to tiredly retreat from engagement. It just cannot be that every threat is world-ending, but here we have one of the first and I’m still a bit wary. Maybe, again, because it’s introduced in a novella! I trust that a book this well paced and plotted will have the proper build up. The Mistborn trilogy, after all, is like this–we think we’ve defeated the Big Bag in book 1, and then it turns out there’s a bigger bad in books 2 and 3. But an entire trilogy later we learn (via the Secret History, sort of) that Scandrial is just one world in a much larger universe, and what goes on here is both monumental and relegated to one universe.
Onward and upward, time jump ahoy!