Back before I had a reading list, never mind one stretching over two hundred books, I often struggled to find the next book that I wanted to read, and so I fell back on a handful of known authors and series which I knew to be reliable. In those days, a series like Shannara, that stretches dozens of books, was perfect, whereas today I am far more interested in novels most of the time, and rarely read a sequel, much less an entire series. There are notable exceptions, of course, but a book really has to seize my imagination for me to pick up the sequel…but that’s not really the point. Going back to those Shannara days, I eventually got around to reading what starts as one of Brooks’ few non-Shannara books, Running with the Demon, which becomes a trilogy…that becomes part of the Shannara world.
While the first novel in the trilogy was decent (it’s urban fantasy, which does not tend to be my favorite sub-genre), I did not enjoy the others, and the whole exercise became something of a cautionary tale for me in both reading and writing. Most authors, I think, have certain ideas that they like to explore more than others, and it can be difficult to put aside a world and characters that you’ve invested so much time into understanding. Combine that with commercial incentives, and it can be very tempting to spend an entire career doing spin-offs, prequels, sequels, and so forth. These are not necessarily bad, but they are difficult to do in a way that will match the original sequence (whether that original sequence was a single novel or a ten-book arc). Where it becomes dangerous, though, is when an author tries to connect disparate pieces into a cohesive whole, especially retroactively, like Brooks tried to do with his Knight of the Word books.
All of which is to say that, unlike a lot of people, I was skeptical when I first read about Sanderson’s intent to connect most of his stories in a shared universe. It seemed the kind of project that risked turning his highly original output into something more mediocre and uniform, and I felt that I’d seen how it could go wrong in numerous other authors’ attempts. Still, if any author could do it well, I figured it would be Sanderson, and I’ve been diligently reading along as he’s built his Cosmere concept.
Well, The Sunlit Man marks Sanderson’s fiftieth novel, and it is probably the deepest dive yet into connecting the Cosmere. Early novels, like Elantris or Warbreaker, stand alone, and only if you know what you’re looking for can you see any sign that they are supposed to be set in the same wider universe. Even as the Cosmere became more defined, it wasn’t really until Arcanum Unbounded and the most recent Mistborn book that the stories began to intersect in any kind of overt, significant fashion. I thought Arcanum Unbounded did that quite well, while The Lost Metal floundered. Now, with The Sunlit Man, we have what I’ll call our first Cosmere-perspective story.
By that, I mean that it is told from the perspective of a character who has some understanding of the broader Cosmere, as opposed to the perspective of someone tied to the world we are on for the story who happens to interact with other Cosmere-aware figures. The Sunlit Man plucks a character from Stormlight Archive and has him world-hopping, down on his luck and pursued by a necromantic mercenary group about whom details are scarce. For a threat hanging over the entire novel, we never really learn much about them. However, unlike what I might have expected, we still spend the entire novel’s action on a single planet.
There is a kind of supersymmetry theory applying to the Cosmere’s magic systems, with the various forms of “investiture” (magical energy) functioning the same under certain conditions. As the Cosmere grows more advanced, the magic necessarily begins to be less like magic, and more like alternative physics. The Sunlit Man, therefore, becomes a kind of hybrid science fiction/fantasy. It has a fantasy plot, with science fiction elements that are powered by magic that is actually just an alternative form of energy. Like a shortcut to achieve normal physical effects, like jet engines and rocketry, which makes the magic a lot less, well, magical.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it didn’t quite work for me in this implementation. While it has moments that I enjoyed, The Sunlit Man has too much science fiction to be fantasy, and too much fantasy to be science fiction, and therefore is only middling in each. It had less of that sense of wonder that I look for and that I enjoy so much in many of Sanderson’s other works. Also dragging down the narrative is how complex the Cosmere is growing. The integrated Cosmere mythology and magic system is well structured, thought out, and I’m confident that the continuity is sound, but there is now so much of it that an effort to bring it all together like it is in The Sunlit Man left me spending much of the book trying to remember every other Cosmere book I’ve ever read.
For as creative a world as The Sunlit Man features, the book didn’t capture my imagination. Because of where we pick up Nomad’s story, even with exposition his key moments lack the impact that they should have. It’s a good book, but for me it lacks that key element of wonder that makes a story stick with me. While I enjoyed it, I was left feeling like I needed more for the book to capture what I wanted from it. If you’re picking and choosing your Sanderson books, there are far better ones to read, but this one is likely to be important to the wider Cosmere.
IGC Publishing 