Title: Dawnshard
Author: Brandon Sanderson
Publisher: Dragonsteel Entertainment
Genre: Fantasy
Year published: 2020 (Print edition 2021)
Pages: 208
Binding: e-book
Isbn: 9781938570261
Price: $7.99
Reviewed by Liz Busby for the Association for Mormon Letters
The joke around fantasy fandom is that every time you turn around, Brandon Sanderson has accidentally written another novel. This year is no exception: in between finishing his latest thousand-page epic and its release, Sanderson has written a short novella bridging the gap between the latest volumes. Dawnshard is a novella that is a gift to his fans. I’m guessing that most readers of this blog probably already know whether the Stormlight Archive is the series for them, so I won’t spend too much time trying to help you decide if it’s worth a read. Instead, I’ll try to focus on interesting Mormon-related themes I spotted in the novel or in my personal experience reading it.
Dawnshard centers around several minor characters from the main Stormlight Archive series. After a ship returning from the mysterious isle of Akina is discovered abandoned, Rysn, a young paraplegic tradeswoman, is assigned a mission to discover the island’s secrets at all costs. Coming along with her are Lopen, the humorous formerly one-armed soldier; Cord, the daughter of another minor character; and Rysn’s pet Chiri-Chiri, the last of a nearly extinct species. It soon becomes apparent that someone is sabotaging their voyage. The balance of the novel focuses on uncovering the secrets of the saboteur and the mysterious island, a scope much smaller than the main series.
Where Dawnshard really shines is in the development of its characters. Sanderson has brought to this book several minor characters from the larger Stormlight Archive and turned them from sketches into fully realized people. One of these characters is Lopen (or “the Lopen” as he would have it), who hails from a fantasy culture that Sanderson based on Mexico. Lopen is full of machismo, always cracking jokes at others’ expense, and bringing in his numerous illiterate “cousins” to assist the main group. Sanderson himself admits that Lopen is one place where he is most closely “walking the line” between inclusive portrayal and offensive stereotype.
But in Dawnshard, Sanderson brings Lopen beyond a stereotype by showing us his relationship with his cousin Huio. Where Lopen is quick-tongued and quick-witted in Alethi, the native language of the series, Huio only utters one thickly accented phrase over and over again, leading the reader to assume he is unintelligent. This assumption is overturned when the two cousins speak to each other in their native Herdazian. We discover that Huio is in fact a highly intelligent engineer who is just bad at languages, and Lopen is seen by his relatives as generous but lazy and harsh in his teasing. I was absolutely floored by this revelation and ashamed at how my own mind had fallen into the trap of assuming that language proficiency is intelligence. (Perhaps this motif is rooted in Sanderson’s experiences as a missionary in Korea, the culture that the dominant Alethi culture is based on?)
This relationship between Lopen and Huio also leads to a fantastic character moment, where Lopen realizes how his loved ones are really being hurt by his “harmless” teasing. I think this repentance moment is the most Mormon part of the book. When Lopen realizes how his teasing has hurt others, he is nearly overwhelmed with shame for his previous actions. He then makes an oath to overcome his shortcomings and be better, which results in him receiving further magical ability. This moment, like many moments in the series where characters speak “oaths” of power, felt so true to my experiences of realizing my own weaknesses, choosing not to succumb to shame, and receiving spiritual power as I resolved to overcome them.
The theme of language proficiency disguising intelligence is repeated with Chord, the daughter of another character from the main series. She too speaks haltingly in Alethi, leading Rysn to think that her motives must be simple, crude, and superstitious. Rysn dismisses Chord’s religious beliefs out of hand. But when Rysn finally speaks to her in Vedan, a language they have in common, Chord is revealed to be an intelligent young woman with a keen political mind. The reader also finds out that Chord is a skeptic about the religious traditions of her family. The next novella is supposed to be about Rock, Chord’s father, so I am hoping this faith tension will be explored further, adding to the complex portrait of religious experience that Sanderson is creating in the series.
Sanderson also does an excellent job with Rysn’s struggles as a disabled person. Paralyzed after an accident in Words of Radiance, Rysn now uses a wheelchair to get around. Her everyday struggles with feeling looked down on and coddled by well-meaning people are relatable even to readers who have never experienced physical disability. I rooted for her as she fought to reclaim at least part of her expected future as a traveling merchant despite her new limitations. Reactions online indicate that at least some disabled readers are very satisfied with Sanderson’s portrayal of this character. (For example, see the read-along on Tor.com with reactions from a paraplegic beta-reader). In the end, Dawnshard avoids the fantasy trope of using magic to erase Rysn’s disability. Instead, Sanderson creates a situation where Rysn is not held back by her physical limitations and can use her strengths to resolve the central mysteries of the book.
Pieces of Dawnshard do fall into info-dumping about the world, and not in as interesting a way as the training sequences in Mistborn: The Final Empire. Then again, these can perhaps be forgiven in a book that is in fact a bonus book for people who are already three thousand-page books into a ten-book series. These are the details his readers want to know about the larger universe of his world but will be of less interest to those who haven’t already bought in.
Overall, Dawnshard is a delightful novella but doesn’t stand alone outside of the larger series. The expansion on an already expansive universe, especially just after completing the next 1000-page volume, is an impressive feat. I highly recommend it, and the larger series, to fans of the epic fantasy genre, but Mormon literary critics might also take a look at it for its nuanced portrayal of the human experience.