A Side Quest, If You Will

Edgedancer is a small novella about the character Lift from Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive series, wherein we get a little more exposition regarding her character and how she falls into her role in Oathbringer, after first being introduced via a small interlude section in Words of Radiance. As far as the book goes, it is a quick and fun little adventure that fits easily within the already established story. It does, however, also serve (as mentioned in the post-notes) to solve a few problems and continuity issues within the main Stormlight Archive series. Normally, I would be annoyed by this, as I hate having to do extra work and research to understand a series and what’s happening (sort of how I feel like I have to see every Marvel movie even about characters I don’t particularly care about in order to follow the overall character arcs of others), but given the huge scope of Sanderson’s works, I will let it go. And I really didn’t notice any issues within the series so far so, que sera sera.

The plot of Edgedancer is really about Lift as she learns a little more about her powers and comes to speak more oaths through her adventures alone in a city, following a figure known as The Darkness who was hunting her down when we first saw her. This all occurs during the coming of the first Everstorm. There isn’t much to the story that changes anything beyond a little more knowledge of how Lift came to speak her oaths, although there are hints about how she tried to make a deal with the Nightwatcher in order to stay young forever which had some implications with her mother’s life. I would have actually liked to know more about this, but it never was more than the odd line here or there in Lift’s mind.

I mean, there isn’t really much to say here beyond that if you are reading the Stormlight Archive series, it is a fun little addition to get a little more of this character who (as of now) has not been all that involved, though I feel she will become more important as the series goes on. It is a little awkward having some of the lines from Lift’s POV come through in the narration at times, but otherwise smooth writing with a quick pace to get through this little side-adventure in little more than 200 pages (once you get through the original interlude where we met Lift presented as a prologue again). Lift is a fun character who I was curious to know more about: I still don’t have all the info I was searching for, but at least there is a little more that came through in this book.