REVIEW: THE SUNLIT MAN

5% Skip Capacity...

I was able to snag the Dragonsteel edition of this book a little while back and wanted to make sure I got to it before the fifth STORMLIGHT ARCHIVE book came out, so I decided November would be the perfect time to tackle it since I am otherwise caught up on The Cosmere. 

HOW I RATED IT 

4/5 This fast-paced action romp was a good deal of fun. It marks the end of Sanderson's SECRET PROJECT books, but perhaps the beginning of a much deeper exploration into his Cosmere.

CHARACTERS

Our main hero of this story is a man named Nomad who's a Worldhopper from Roshar, the world in which THE STORMLIGHT ARCHIVE is set. It became apparent early on that he is someone we've already met from that flagship series, but I could not figure out who he actually was and even started to wonder if maybe we just hadn't actually met him yet even though there were lots of references to suggest we had. If his true identity was meant to be a surprising, then I guess I'd feel less bad about not figuring it out myself, but I also felt kind of annoyed, because who he ends up being didn't actually make sense to me. Without getting into spoilers, I felt like the way Nomad is characterized was completely different from who he is supposed to be. A big part of this may be due to the fact that some serious time has passed for him in the Cosmere's continuity. In spite of this, Nomad, for his part, is a compelling enough protagonist who plays the role of a reluctant hero. I sort of liked his inner conflict between his identity as someone who looks out for himself even though his actions often indicate otherwise and how he is forced to reflect upon some parts of himself which he's worked to burry deeply. I just think that the next STORMLIGHT book will need to do some serious explaining in order to make this version of the character make sense. 

The supporting cast is filled with some mostly fresh faces though a couple of fan favorites do make some brief cameos. The Cinder King serves as the principle villain and even though a lot of his character boils down to being a despotic megalomaniac, he's still got some interesting little secrets up his sleeve. Early into the story, Nomad finds himself falling in with a group of scrappy rebels who've formed their own floating city composed of pieces from The Cinder King's fleet. Rebeke serves as Nomad's main companion through the adventure. She has an interesting and dynamic personality. There are moments where it seems like there will be sort of a cliché action-movie romance between her and Nomad, but thankfully things never ends up amounting to that. Arguably the most interesting side character is a woman formerly known as Elegy who became a thrall of The Cinder King and is really just an echo of her former self. The way that both Elegy and Rebeke relate to each other and how they regard Nomad made for some engaging character moments. I'd also be remiss if I didn't mention Aux or Auxilary, Nomad's spirit companion who wound up driving some of the most intense moments in the book despite being a character that's largely the source of levity in the story. Apart from these standouts, I would say that this is probably one of Sanderson's weaker secondary casts. A lot of the members of Rebeke's rebel clan blended together for me and I found myself not being particularly bothered by what happened to them, be it good or bad. I think this is the type of characterization that can work well in a B action movie (depending on actor portrayals and how visually interesting they are), but suffers a bit in book form.  

PLOT/TONE

If it wasn't clear already, this is one of Sanderson's fastest-paced books. From cover to cover, Nomad is essentially in mortal danger and must scrape by on single-digit percentages of his ideal power capacity. The way that the world is revealed to us felt just as satisfying as any other Sanderson novel and I think I actually appreciated the more on-the-fly style of worldbuilding. Although, I mentioned that the characters suffered somewhat from the decidedly breakneck pacing, the plot and the setting definitely did not. I especially liked about how new information about the world was often the source of conflict as new threats, both human and geological, rise up to threaten Nomad and his allies. One aspect of the story that readers are going to either love or hate though is that the story of this novel is extremely interwoven with other stories from across The Cosmere. Most notable is THE STORMLIGHT ARCHIVE which I think this book might be challenging to read without having gotten through at least one or two of those books beforehand (though it'd be best to read the first four novels and the second companion novella). Nomad's magic in particular is probably going to be perplexing to anyone who's coming in cold, though there are additional aspects to it which do receive some explanation though the full context of those explanations will likely not land completely for Cosmere newbies. The standalone novella, SHADOWS FOR SILENCE IN THE FOREST OF HELL, is another recommended read before jumping into this one. It may also help to have read a bit of the MISTBORN series and perhaps ELANTRIS  and WARBREAKER as well, but the connections to those books and their particular magic systems are a lot less direct (or at least less integral to the main plot). I think this makes THE SUNLIT MAN the most heavy-handed novel in terms of Cosmere connection points, but in reading the Author's Note at the end of the book, it seems this is very much intentional. I personally, rather liked this aspect of the narrative, it's just worth noting that this is not a good place to begin your journey across The Cosmere. 

For more seasoned fans, I think their enjoyment is going to vary wildly depending on how much they've enjoyed the Cosmere crossovers in the most recent STORMLIGHT and MISTBORN books as this has even more connections than those did. I've had a little bit of a mixed impression on where these aspects of Sanderson's stories are going, but in this case, I found them quite fun (outside of how I felt like Nomad's character did not really hold all that true to the one I was already familiar with). Because this is set so far into the future, I doubt much of this will have a direct impact on Sanderson's anticipated releases, but I'd also be very disappointed if it wasn't giving us some tantalizing indications of things to come. I will say though that I almost feel like this book might be spoiling some things for the next STORMLIGHT ARCHIVE book(s) as there are numerous references to things that have not happened yet. I'm not sure if I'm super thrilled about that being the case, but I'm interested to see how these tidbits are handled within WIND AND TRUTH once it releases.

SETTING/WORLD

Sanderson never fails to impress with his unique worlds and this one is no exception. If anything, this might be one of the more bizarre locations in The Cosmere, and that's even when comparing it to the ones from YUMI AND THE NIGHTMARE PAINTER and TRESS OF THE EMERALD SEA. This is a world where the sunlight literally burns everything in it's path which creates a dynamic where life is always retreating into the dark side of the planet where the soil and fauna rapidly regenerate. This is an incredibly small planet too which creates a sort of close-quarters feel that I think worked well for the action-centric narrative. The people of this world are more technologically advanced in some ways and live upon floating cities which are composed of a number of smaller airborne vessels that arrange themselves into cities. I'd say that this definitely leans a bit further into the science fiction genre, but this is still undoubtedly a fantasy story. Another interesting piece of this world is that the people who live on it are not actually natives. They are instead people who fled from the world in which the SHADOWS FOR SILENCE IN THE FOREST OF HELL novella is set (Threnody). Because of this, there isn't really a new magic system to explore. Instead, there is a greater emphasis on some of the more fundamental aspects of how Sanderson manages magic as we explore how the magic of people from different worlds interacts with the planet itself (which does not appear to contain a Shard though there seems to be plenty of Investiture to be found here regardless). While that may or may not sound appealing, I'll just say that I think it was all handled quite smoothly and the exploration of the magic never felt like it slowed down the plot. In most cases, I would argue that the discoveries made were crucial to the narrative advancing similar to how the world building was seamlessly done. In many ways, the worldbuilding of this book feels like a huge payoff for longtime fans while also teeing up some very interesting possibilities for the future that could make for some fun speculation. I also felt to key details may have re-contextualized other stories from across the Cosmere with the SIXTH OF THE DUSK novella coming to mind the most in this regard. 

DRAGONSTEEL HARDCOVER

As with the other Dragonsteel editions for the SECRET PROJECTS, this one is quite nice. One thing this one has that the others don't though are black sprayed edges. This was a very nice little bonus feature that I appreciated. While I loved the visual production for YUMI AND THE NIGHTMARE PAINTER so much that it elevated my enjoyment and overall rating of the story itself, I'd say that the presentation of this book is not quite on that level. One interesting choice is that a combination of different artists contributed to it and, for the most part, I think this works though it's worth calling out that the styles of these different contributors varies wildly. The full-color paintings are spectacular and are easily the highlight of the visuals here. That said, I found that they often tended to be placed rather strangely in that they would often depict a scene that had happened at least a few pages prior. This sometimes happened with the sketch illustrations as well which are more generously distributed throughout the pages. These images are done by the same artist who came in to finish the WHITE SAND graphic novel series and... I really did not like what they did with it. I think the images included in this book present the artist in a much more flattering light though they are distinctly comic-book-y which some might not like. For me, I think I almost preferred them to the full page illustrations just because I think the way those rendered Nomad could make him look a little rigid/sharp/stiff whereas the sketches had a nice fluidity to them. These sketches also give us representations of some of the side cast, who I'd have had a hard time visualizing otherwise. Lastly is the chapter heading art which is simple yet bold at the same time (just like the sun itself, I suppose) and I believe this was done by the same person who designed and drew the cover. I think the cover's quite strong and the color motif is very cool. 

CONCLUSION

If you are a seasoned reader of The Cosmere, then this one was definitely written for you. If you're looking for something that's a true standalone, then this is likely not going to be a great pick for you, but it tells a very entertaining action story all the same. I think people are going to be mixed on this one, but for me, it was a fun, if sometimes flat, romp through a fascinating world filled with tantalizing teases at possible directions Sanderson's other works may be heading in and complimented by some satisfying Sanderson character arcs.

(+) A fast paced action story that seamlessly blends in worldbuilding elements

(+) Tons of exciting action scenes

(+) Rebeke, Elegy, Aux, and The Cinder King were all fun side characters

(+) The art and visual presentation of the book is mostly excellent

(+) A fascinating setting

(+) The nitty gritty of the way magic interacts with different worlds finally felt really engaging to me

(+) The Cosmere expands and develops in some compelling ways here

( ) Written for long-time Cosmere friends and is not necessarily well-suited to newcomers

(-) One of Sanderson's weaker supporting casts apart from the key standouts

(-) It seems as though this book might spoil some events in WIND AND TRUTH

(-) The reveal of who Nomad really is didn't fully work for me and I think it warrants further explanation