In this passage from Rhythm of War, Rhythm of War, Chapters 39-41: Eshonai's Flashback — The Discovery That Changed Everything, readers encounter a pivotal moment that illuminates the novel's central themes.
Rhythm of War opens with a time skip and a war that has reached a grinding stalemate. Kaladin, now a leader of considerable authority, is struggling in a way that his authority cannot fix — he is experiencing depression, the kind that does not respond to willpower or achievement or the gratitude of the people he has protected. Sanderson decided to write Kaladin's mental health arc with direct input from mental health professionals, and the result is one of the most carefully rendered portrayals of depression in popular fiction.
Navani Kholin — Dalinar's wife and the queen of Urithiru — is foregrounded in Rhythm of War in a way previous books did not allow. She is a scholar and engineer, working to understand the nature of fabrials and Stormlight. Her arc is about the relationship between science and magic in the Cosmere, and about whether a person who has defined themselves through what they can discover can survive learning something that challenges everything they built.
The occupation of Urithiru by the Fused and their allies is the novel's central military situation, and it is experienced from the inside rather than the outside. Characters who are trapped must organize resistance under surveillance, make decisions about collaboration and refusal, and maintain cohesion under conditions designed to break it. Sanderson uses this situation to think about occupation and resistance with more complexity than fantasy usually allows.
Shallan's dissociative identities are treated as a significant part of her character in Rhythm of War, and the novel makes explicit what was implied in Oathbringer: Veil and Radiant are not just costumes but genuinely distinct modes of existence that Shallan created to survive her past. The question the novel asks is not whether this is pathological but what integration might look like — whether it is even desirable, and what it would cost.