New year, new bingo, let's go!
The planet "First of the Sun" has historically been low-tech. While most people live on the "homeisles," there are a few who travel to the Pantheon archipelago, where everything from insects to trees to sea monsters to dinosaur-like land monsters can and will kill you. Sixth of the Dusk is a trapper, one of these brave souls. Trappers spend their days doing things like trying to sic poisonous rodents on their rivals, although Dusk thinks that might be a little unnecessary.
Most people in "First of the Sun" have magical companion birds called the Aviar, most of which are parrot-like, which can grant them magical powers. At first I was like, okay, nice made-up fantasy-world name. Only on page 72 was it like, the places where the Aviar are raised are called...Aviaries. Lol.
However, once interstellar travelers called the "Ones Above" make contact, technological progress comes quickly. Dusk finds his traditional way of life becoming outdated, and struggles to find a fulfilling vocation, while the planet in general tries to avoid being colonized and made puppets of the newcomers. A lot of the plot revolves around different people patronizing or belittling Dusk in various ways, and pushing back against the "noble savage" trope. Vathi is a homeisler:
"We could kill them all," Dusk said. He rushed over to Vathi, taking her with his right hand, the arm that wasn't wounded. "With those weapons, we could kill them all. Every nightmaw. Maybe even the shadows, too!"
"Well, yes, it has been discussed. However, they are important parts of the ecosystem on these lands. Removing the apex predators could have undesirable results."
"Undesirable results?" Dusk ran his hand through his hair. "They'd be gone. All of them! I don't care what other problems you think it would cause. They would all be dead!"
Vathi snorted, picking up the lantern and stamping out the small fires it had started. "I thought trappers were connected to nature."
"We are. That's how I know we would all be better off without any of these things."
"You are disabusing me of many romantic notions about your kind, Dusk," she said, circling the dying beast.
And Dajer is one of the "Ones Above":
"I like you, Sixth," Dajer said. "I like your bluntness. Your uncivilized, simple sense of pure morality."
Did Dajer...think people were honest because they were less advanced in technology? Did he think that people on Dusk's planet were somehow nicer than ones from the stars?
It was an incredibly stupid perspective. It stood out in this man, who was otherwise so calculating and expert at maneuvering conversations. This flaw in Dajer was like a long scratch, leaking water, in an otherwise well-crafted hull.
But Dusk supposed everyone had their flaws; that was part of what made them people. And not...beings from some story, with an "uncivilized, simple sense of pure morality." Dajer had exposed a weakness to be exploited; Dusk could only hope that he had not unwittingly done the same thing.
The first section alternates between the "present day" and "five years ago," the latter being the narrative originally contained in the standalone novella "Sixth of the Dust." I had read that many years ago in a collection of Sanderson short fiction, but remembered basically none of it, so it was good to have the refresher, and I thought the interweaving of Dusk and Vathi in the present and retracing their steps in the past was handled well without being gimmicky.
There's another POV character who shows up in the prologue and reappears in the second part; Starling, an eighty-seven-year-old dragon (that's young in dragon years) who is in exile from her own people, now shapeshift-trapped in human form indefinitely, and living on a spaceship with a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits from elsewhere in the Cosmere. Like with "
The Sunlit Man," there are so many callbacks/allusions to other Cosmere books that it's sometimes overstimulating for those of us who are trying to remember "wait, do we know so-and-so?" and I'm not sure how it would land for someone not familiar with the wider series. A non-comprehensive list, under spoiler cut:
I liked this part, and it'll be funnier if you know Mistborn:
"Quite upsetting of the Scadrians, claming someone else's homeworld, but you know how they are. Rusting this! Rusting that! I scowl and throw coins in your face!"
"Don't you literally worship a Scadrian?" Nazh asked.
"That's different," Ed said. "He is nice."
But if you've read "Tress" and the "plucky crew rallying together behind their cheerful and optimistic captain," a lot of it is going to feel familiar. So this part was less gripping for me.
The running joke is that, in Dusk's POV, he regularly points out "that wasn't a direct question, so he wasn't obliged to answer." Starling's impression:
What a curious man. It was like...he knew the rules of ordinary conversation, but chose to live outside them, like a verbal conscientious objector.
And even by the end, when he's changed a lot:
Of course, the bones did not reply. He liked that about bones.
I'm currently in a mood where it's like "every time we come across a quote that makes me emotional about polar exploration in a book that has less than nothing to do with polar exploration, take a shot:"
"Coming here was a disaster."
"Yes."
He turned to her.
"Yes," she continued, this whole expedition will likely be a disaster, a disaster that takes us a step closer to our goal."
He checked Sisisru next, working by the light of the now-rising moon. "Foolish."
Vathi folded her arms before her on the roof of the building, torso still disappearing into the lit square of the trapdoor below. "Do you think that our ancestors learned to wayfind on the oceans without experiencing a few disasters along the way? Or what of the first trappers?"
It does stick the landing well, with hope for a brighter future for First of the Sun in general, and for Dusk--Sanderson is good at adding a line or two to assure us that the meaningful friendships which have been built won't be completely abandoned, even in a new era!
Bingo: perfect fit for Explorers/Rangers (hard mode), also Published in 2026, Politics. Technically Starling could qualify as Older Protagonist, and if you want even more of a technicality, non-human protagonist, but in both cases I suspect we can do a lot better in terms of the spirit of the square.
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anneapocalypse) wrote2026-04-13 12:27 pm
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