Dawnshard

I wasn't engaged by this book at the very beginning, probably because it featured side characters from the Stormlight Archive so far whom I'm not that interested in, and seemed to be primarily set aboard a ship. Naval stories aren't my most preferred subgenre and I've read a few consecutively recently so I wasn't thrilled to be honest. But Dawnshard really turns things around.

In this one, Rysn, who has generally been relegated to interludes in previous Stormlight books, is now sent on a journey by Navani Kholin to investigate the mythical island of Akinah, from whence a ghost ship devoid of its crew had appeared. She embarks on the voyage accompanied by Knights Radiant the Lopen and Huio, as well as her assistant Nikli. Secretly, Rysn was also given to hope that Akinah might provide an answer or treatment for her ailing pet larkin, Chiri Chiri.

This is a short enough novella and, at least past the 20-30% mark, makes for an entertaining read. Rysn and the Lopen have not been interesting characters to me thus far which made the beginning of the book drag a bit, but by the end I definitely appreciated them a lot more than I had in the whole series (even if I wouldn't say they're new favourites).

Unlike Edgedancer, where we're introduced to a prominent new character who will be playing a significant part in subsequent Stormlight Archive books, Dawnshard doesn't do any such thing. Instead, Dawnshard introduces things and concepts that are entirely different from anything we've read before in the series thus far, which leads me to believe that this is a set-up not for the rest of the SA books in this first arc, but really a taste of the second arc to come (books 6 to 10). Sanderson has mentioned before that SA will split into two arcs like that, and it makes sense to me if the second arc was going to concern a very different type of magic system set in the same world.

That's as far as I will say without going into spoilers. Also that I always visualize the Lopen as Pedro Pascal.