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he Sunlit Man is the fourth and final book in Sanderson's Kickstarter "secret projects" series. I feel that Tress of the Emerald Sea was the best book in
the set. The Sunlit Man drops the reader into action with lots of unexplained constraints on our hero, called Nomad, on a bizarre planet that cannot logically exist. It is okay for an author to put the reader
in a strange situation, but by the end of the story, all of mysteries should have been explained. Yet when I reached the end of this book, I was still unclear about a lot of things. I think The Sunlit Man
presumes that the reader has read Sanderson's Stormlight Archives, which I have not. And since I have not, the Torment that prevents Nomad from attacking anyone remained unexplained. What was this business
about a super powerful weapon called a Dawnshard that Nomad once possessed? How is the Night Brigade able to track Nomad as he Skips across the cosmos? Nomad is powered by a magical energy called Investiture - but how it works is not explained. I felt that I was reading the middle
book of series, rather than a stand alone novel.
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Nomad has comic-book hero powers. He can absorb tremendous punishment and immediately heal (throughout the novel, Nomad keeps receiving updates that his energy level is less than x percent and about to run out.
Yet somehow he always is able to recharge just enough to face the next crisis). He has a psychic link to a sentient Auxiliary that can be shaped into to any object that he imagines.
Throughout the novel, Nomad continues to reveal more and more abilities. There are hints about how Nomad acquired these skills, but Sanderson never gives us the complete background to explain Nomad's current situation. Frankly, it is not that
exciting to have a protagonist with super-human skills, because where is the real peril when you are a superman?
I was troubled by the bizarre planet that Sanderson describes. Just 200 miles in diameter, yet with Earth-like gravity and atmosphere? The planet orbits so close to the sun that the
mere exposure to direct sunlight will burn a person into ash? Yet the slowly turning planet has flora and fauna that flourish for an hour or two each "day" before being fried by the rising sun (how do the seeds survive the killing sunshine until the next rotation of the planet)? The planet seemed so improbable that I was
hoping for an explanation of how such a unique planet could exist, but Sanderson again fails to provide any explanation.
The pace of the story never flags as Nomad is constantly escaping from one crisis only to immediately confront another dire emergency. The villain, the Cinder King, is so evil that his very eyeballs
glow red. It is the Cinder King's goal to be the tyrannical ruler of the few humans that live on this tiny planet (the humans live in mobile cities that move over the surface at the same rate that planet rotates, so the
cities are never in blistering killer sun rays nor in the frigid maelstroms of the dark side.) Nomad is not interested in the Cinder King's dreams of conquest - his goal is to charge up enough BEUs to allow him to
Skip ahead to the next planet, hopefully putting further distance between him and the pursuing Night Brigade. But what kind of superhero runs away and leaves vulnerable people at the mercy of a tyrant? So naturally
Nomad ends up involved with the rebel faction, even though he ought to be thinking about nothing but fleeing and saving his own skin.
The characters are good, and the plot is also well thought out, given the constraints of the contrived planetary conditions. Perhaps if I had read the Stormlight Archives (which I hope to
get around to enjoying some day), I would understand a lot better what was happening here.
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