Cracking into Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere is no small feat. Few fantasy series out there are as sprawling or have as many loosely connected elements as the shared universe where all of Sanderson's adult fantasy novels are set. There are vast epic sagas like The Stormlight Archive, tighter series like Mistborn, and a smattering of standalone novels and short fiction, all of which add to the wider story of the Cosmere.
Sanderson has long played coy about connections between his series, keeping them fairly light so that each individual work remained accessible to readers. But after Wind and Truth, the picture for what's going on in the Cosmere is finally coming into focus. The fifth book in The Stormlight Archive series was a major game changer, with implications we'll be sifting through for years to come.
However, there is one book that Sanderson has already published which is now a totally different read: The Sunlit Man, the fourth of Sanderson's "Secret Projects" that he released as part of his record-shattering Kickstarter campaign. The Sunlit Man is a standalone Cosmere novel set in the future of the Cosmere, when factions from different planets collide on a remote, inhospitable world called Canticle. It follows a man named Nomad who is stranded on Canticle and has to figure out how to escape, and just maybe carve out a brighter future for the beleaguered people there.
The Sunlit Man is a bit of an odd book, and if I'm being honest, I didn't love it on my first read. It's a solid Sanderson story with plenty of fun Cosmere nods, but it seemed like there was something missing because it takes place so far into the future of the Cosmere that it felt a bit disjointed. Toss in the fact that Nomad's true identity didn't hit especially hard for me, and it made for a mid-tier Cosmere read at best.
That's all changed with Wind and Truth, which gives a lot more context for Nomad's past as well as the state of the Cosmere by the time The Sunlit Man takes place. Now, I'm chomping at the bit for a re-read — something I would have never believed I would feel just a few short months ago. Now that Wind and Truth has been out for a bit, let's talk about how it totally recontextualizes The Sunlit Man. There will be FULL SPOILERS FOR WIND AND TRUTH AND THE SUNLIT MAN below.
The main character of The Sunlit Man is now way more interesting
We first need to get into some spoilers for The Sunlit Man itself, which is about an immortal man named Nomad who ends up on a planet where the sun is deadly. Around halfway through the novel, we find out that the true identity of Nomad is Sigzil, a minor character from The Stormlight Archive. Sigzil is a member of Bridge Four — the slaves-turned-elite-warrior group led by Kaladin Stormblessed — and even more importantly for the purposes of The Sunlit Man, he is the former apprentice of Hoid, the mysterious world-hopping man who appears in every one of Sanderson's Cosmere books to date.
The Sunlit Man builds up a lot of mysteries around Sigzil's past, most of which had not yet occurred in The Stormlight Archive proper. At some point, he acquired a Dawnshard — a mythic object of immense power which rewires the person holding it. That Dawnshard fed on the Investiture of his spren companion Auxilliary, killing all but the barest amount of the spren's consciousness and "body," which manifests as various tools throughout the story. After this tragedy, Sigzil gave up the Dawnshard, but he's still being pursued by the Night Brigade, a deadly group who can use him to fashion a means to track the Dawnshard's current location. We learn very little about the Night Brigade in The Sunlit Man beyond their ultimate goal of grabbing that shard.
Then there's Auxilliary. Aux talks to Sigzil in a very specific sort of way that's different than most spren we've seen, often referring to himself as a "knight" and Sigzil as his "squire." Auxilliary was a highspren before the Dawnshard sapped him of most of his life. That's curious because in The Stormlight Archive Sigzil is a Windrunner, an order which bonds honorspren — highspren are the partners for Skybreakers, the strict law-worshipping order of Radiants that includes Szeth-son-Neturo.
That's a lot of mysteries to place on the board, but on my first read of The Sunlit Man I just didn't care enough about Sigzil to be that invested in them. Yes, his story in The Sunlit Man is compelling in its own right, but he hadn't yet become a major enough player in The Stormlight Archive for it to feel like that big a deal that he was Nomad.
That's no longer the case after Wind and Truth, where Sigzil finally steps into the forefront, serving as one of the leaders of the Windrunners following Kaladin's departure to Shinovar with Szeth, as well as the main war leader for the battle on the Shattered Plains. At last, we get to follow Sigzil a little more closely, and learn about his relationship with his honorspren, Vienta.
Yup, that's a totally different spren than he had in The Sunlit Man. But we do meet Auxilliary in Wind and Truth as well — though he goes by a different name back then.
How Sigzil met Auxilliary has finally been explained in Wind and Truth
If you read The Stormlit Man before Wind and Truth, a question which probably loomed over your readthrough of the new Stormlight novel was "how will Sigzil get separated from Vienta?" For people current on the Cosmere, we went into that book knowing that for one reason or other, Sigzil's relationship with his original spren was doomed. But even with that expectation, the details were surprising.
The battle on the Shattered Plains is the most ferocious of any of the battles we see during Wind and Truth, where Odium brings a massive army of magically enhanced Fused warriors to bear against a resource-strapped force of Knights Radiant. There are multiple casualties in that pitched battle, especially once the Windrunner traitor Moash joins the fray. Moash's appearance makes it personal for Sigzil and the rest of the members of Bridge Four. On more than one occasion, they clash, usually with Moash gaining the upper hand and leaving bodies in his wake.
In the final instance where Moash appears on the Shattered Plains, he uses a device to negate Sigzil's Stormlight, leaving him helpless as he plummets to the ground. Moash takes advantage of the situation, wielding an anti-Stormlight dagger with the intention of killing Sigzil's spren, Vienta — which would in turn leave Sigzil open to being murdered as well. Sigzil had gotten a glimpse of this fate earlier in the book, when his dying friend Leyten prophesied his demise in a Death Rattle after being killed by Moash during a previous stage of the battle. As Moash goes to kill Vienta, Sigzil saves her by renouncing his oath, which sends her back to the Cognitive Realm.
This is traumatic for both Sigzil and Vienta, but they both survive the encounter with Moash as a result. However, it does sever their bond for good — Sigzil is no longer a Windrunner as of that moment, and in the final pages of Wind and Truth, we learn that Vienta can't bring herself to see Sigzil again, though she does understand and appreciate that he saved her life.
The Dawnshard and the flight from Roshar
That brings us to the Dawnshard and Auxilliary. In Wind and Truth, we also learn how Sigzil gained the Dawnshard, which had previously been in the possession of Hoid, known on the planet Roshar by the name Wit. Once Odium emerges triumphant from the contest of champions, his first order of business is to kill Hoid, who is the single most dangerous being on the planet to Odium's aims. Before Odium can locate him, Hoid goes to Sigzil and gives his former apprentice the Dawnshard, beseeching him to keep it safe from Odium and flee Roshar. Hoid is vaporized mere moments later.
When we next see Sigzil, he's heading off-world with a caravan of Iriali. There he meets the highspren 12124 — the very same highspren who was bonded to Szeth-son-Neturo, until he renounced his oath and broke the bond to 12124 during the climactic events of the book. The final scene of Sigzil is of him and 12124 leaving Roshar together. They're not bonded by this point, but it seems like a very safe conclusion that 12124 will eventually become Sigzil's spren. In The Sunlit Man, Aux tells Sigzil, "I don’t like the person I was back on Roshar either, before we knew each other." That lines up very neatly with 12124's storyline in Wind and Truth, where he fails to be a good partner to Szeth. I imagine Sigzil eventually gives 12124 "Auxilliary" as a nickname to replace his numerical name, which will surely only bring them closer before tragedy once again strikes when the Dawnshard saps Aux of his life.
Wind and Truth still leaves questions open before The Sunlit Man
All told, this gives us far more details for how Sigzil became the person we meet in The Sunlit Man. That book is going to be a totally different read after seeing how Sigzil parted with his first spren and left Roshar, as well as how Auxilliary changed over the course of his travels with Szeth.
However, it still doesn't totally close the gap. We still haven't seen the events which led to Aux being nearly killed, or Sigzil relinquishing the Dawnshard, or his first encounter with the Night Brigade. The Sunlit Man seems to hint that Sigzil returned the Dawnshard to Hoid — but when, and under what circumstances? And now that Roshar is trapped in a time relativity bubble, how much will have changed there by the time Sigzil eventually returns to his home planet? If he returns...
This is one of those fun instances where a new Brandon Sanderson book has retroactively made a previous one much more interesting while still leaving the door open for plenty more stories to come. As the Cosmere heads into its next phase, the chances seem good that Sigzil is poised to be a major part of it.
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