Elantris 36: Hrathen

Hrathen nearly dies of thirst but then the poison wears off. Miraculously he is rescued from Elantris by one of the few remaining guards (the rest being off with Telrii). The people are pretty impressed. Dilaf is pretty impressed (but not impressed enough). Even Hrathen is pretty impressed that the plan worked, and is putting it down to the work of his god, Jaddeth.

In Hrathen's absence, Dilaf had been trying to get into his secret box containing his seon and the poison. The seon says no-one had successfully opened the box, though.

The next day Hrathen hires an assassin, giving him the last of the poison. What will he ask the assassin to do? Poison Dilaf?

Elantris 35: Sarene

Sarene's dad is quite proud of her for dethroning the king. Who is now dead, by the way, having hanged himself despite being in prison. I'm gonna come out and say it: Iadon did not commit suicide!

Now there is the problem of the succession. Sarene does not want Telrii taking over. However he is both the richest man in the land and has bought off the city guard.

Shuden has the excellent idea of Sarene marrying Roial and combining their wealth and convincing the people that this is the continuity option, since Sarene is already a princess. This is possible because her marriage contract is now void. Yay! So she can marry someone she likes. Yay! But to save the country she is going to have to marry some random old guy. Boo!

It could be worse, he's quite a nice old chap and she gets on okay with him. And there is to be absolutely no hanky panky, since no heirs are required (she can get those from her next husband after Roial is dead). This is purely a marriage of political convenience. How much more civilised than Westeros is Araluen!

So that's all sorted then. Except Sarene then finds out that Hrathen has been healed. Which means all the people are going to think he's awesome and it's a sign from god. And he is going to support Telrii.

Elantris 34: Raoden

Shaor is missing and presumed dead, since only her wig remains. Her followers are now following Raoden, treating him as their new god, since he has power over food. They're not terribly bright, but somewhat obedient and useful.

Meanwhile Raoden has solved the mystery of the slime. It's just dead fungus. Apparently Elantris has always been covered with it but it wasn't unpleasant or bothersome when it was alive. That at least means that new slime is not being made and once cleaned off it should stay gone. Raoden is hoping that figuring all this stuff out will lead him to the ultimate mystery (the only mystery left?) of why Elantris fell. But he's running out of time since his pain is increasing.

Presumably he is going to solve enough of the mystery to stop himself becoming Hoed just in the nick of time. Or someone else, probably Galladon, will save him just before he gets dissolved in the acid lake.

 

In the meantime he's trying to organise a successor to his work. Galladon is a bit scathing about this, pointing out that Raoden has still got plenty of time. Even apart from Raoden's mystery accelerating pain which Galladon does not know about, it seems a bit optimistic, given a trip on the stairs could be enough to finish someone off in Elantris.

There's some discussion about what happens to Seons if their owner dies without leaving a will. Maybe they float around aimlessly acting mad, just as all the Elantrian seons are. My guess is they've lost their connection to the cloud: Alexa is similiarly useless when this happens.

Raoden gets news that Hrathen is healed. It's a miracle!

Elantris 33: Hrathen

On the night of the lunar eclipse Hrathen stops praying and meditating and eats his food. He somehow needs to avoid being seen to be dependent on food before he gets better and miraculously emerges from Elantris.

Elantris 32: Sarene

Iadon has been ignoring Sarene since she shouted at him. Other people in the court have become wary of her, too. Nonetheless, she gets Roial to host a lunar eclipse party. Telrii is there having his own sub-party next to the king's sub-party, indicating that he's building power ready to take the place of the king.

This might happen sooner rather than later because Sarene follows the king into a sewer and discovers him naked and covered in the blood of a virgin. So that's what he's been up to, and it explains the mystery of the disappearing servants. Dilaf has also followed and soon the whole city knows and that's the end of the king. He's been arrested. I'm not sure what that means for "princess" Sarene.

Elantris 31: Raoden

Raoden takes Shaolin to the acid lake. Over the next few days, absent Sarene's food handouts, his followers start to return, and he gets new followers too. They want purpose in their lives.

Raoden and Galladon are intrigued by Hrathen's appearance in Elantris. Fjordell's don't become Elantrians. Hrathen gets attacked by some of Shaor's men and beats them easily.

Elantris 30: Hrathen

Hrathen appears to have been taken by the Shaod, but it's probably just that poison he drank. He stays by the gates and prays to his god, Jaddeth. Perhaps the idea is that the poison will wear off and people will see that Jaddeth has performed a miracle.

Elantris 29: Sarene

Sarene is crying because she thinks her boyfriend is a baddie. She thinks Shaor's men were only attacking because they were so desperately hungry. She doesn't know they were like that anyway.

The king massively overreacts about the attack in which no-one was hurt and sends men to kill all the Elantrians. Sarene has to yell at him to stop it, and he does. And he starts crying.

Sarene goes to the walls of Elantris to have a look. She notices the corpses are still alive. She realises that they don't need food to survive and wonders why the still want to eat. I suppose she'll figure it out eventually. She watches Raoden grieving and cradling Shaolin, supposes a tyrant can still love his followers, and wonders if he can really be a good man. I'm not entirely sure why she assumes he is a tyrant at all.

 

She goes to visit her uncle and learns that the whole court heard her chastising the king. That could cause rather a lot of political instability, I would think. There is news that someone unexpected was taken by the Shaod. Probably Hrathen.

Elantris 28: Raoden, Sarene

Raoden is reading the books in the secret underground bunker. He's keeping the acid lake a secret for now because he doesn't want the whole city to commit suicide. He learns about the Dor, the magical energy that can only fit through Aon shaped Aons and whose effects are controlled by the shape. Makes sense. I still think they're in the Matrix and the computer program that controls the magic just needs restarting.

Ien the Seon is floating about being weird.

It's becoming clear that they can't hold Shaor's men back much longer. Sure enough, on Sarene's next visit, they attack. Luckily nobody gets hurt.

In the middle of all this Raoden admits he's been holding back food from Shaor's men. This is one of those annoying plot devices where the plot is driven by people just not explaining themselves properly. If he just said, look, they're madmen and they can't be helped and I was actually just protecting you and your feed-the-hungry scheme. Oh, and I'm only taking extra food to help the suffering. Then she would be like, ok , cool. Instead she thinks he's a thieving tyrant. Oh well, I'm sure they'll sort it all out in the end.

Elantris 27: Hrathen

Hrathen mopes about a lot because all his plans are failing and he is losing his religion. Then his delivery of poison turns up. He was going to give the poison to Dilaf but drinks it himself. Presumably it is not fatal. There is a lot of talk about the poison having very specific effects. My guess is it makes you look like an Elantrian.

Elantris 26: Sarene

The plot to keep King Ioden from going bankrupt seems to have worked. The conspirator Edan, who was at risk of losing his title for being too poor, has done a runner. Aunt Daora seems to think Sarene is in love with Shuden but actually she's in love with Spirit/Raoden. Just wait until she finds out he's her husband!

Elantris 25: Raoden

Raoden is keeping his identity a secret because he thinks if people knew what happened to him it would cause instability in Arelon, owing to his popularity exceeding the king's.

His pain is increasing faster than he expected. I do think it odd that people are able to overcome pain so effectively with mental attitude. Perhaps more is going on, involving magic.

Raoden is taking extra food from Sarene's handouts and giving it to the Hoed. I don't know why this has to be such a secret.

Meanwhile, as he predicted, his followers are leaving him for the free food. Although it wasn't just food they got from him, it was a sense of purpose that helped them overcome their pain. So I don't know what they are doing all day after they've eaten.

Raoden's remaining soldiers are struggling to keep Shaor's men away from the food carts. Again, why keep this a secret? Just tell Sarene's guards about the threat so they can help defend and hand out food in an orderly way. Raoden explains it's to stop the guards from killing the Elantrians. Also he suspects Sarene has another motive for feeding the Elantrians (he doesn't know about Hrathen).

Raoden continues to study Aons. He finds out that AonDor is the energy that drives the magic and speculates that something is blocking it. Galladon admits that his father was an Elantrian. Then he realises that one of the Hoed men was an Elantrian before the Shaod. This man directs them to a secret underground chamber filled with books. There are lanterns to provide light, which presumably are not lit, so I don't know how they can see where they are going. There is a passage leading to a lake outside the city. The Hoed man is placed into the lake and he dissolves in the...water? Acid? Anyway it seems like a way out. Presumably it is better than being burned.

Undoubtedly the secret chamber of books contains the secret to getting Elantris back to normal.

Elantris 24: Hrathen

Telrii is not pleased about Sarene making the Elantrians look harmless. Hrathen convinces him not to worry because she has countered the wrong scheme and the king losing all his money will be enough. He appears not to know that she is working on solving that problem, too.

Hrathen figures out that Dilaf is a lot more old, clever and devious than he had thought. He is also having a religous crisis.

Elantris 23: Sarene, Raoden

Raoden introduces himself to his wife as Spirit. She doesn't recognise him. He takes her somewhere and does a deal whereby he will "allow" her to distribute food in return for supplies. She gets the notion that rule of Elantris depends on controlling bare necessities rather than wealth or power. I think Sarene, and possibly Sanderson, are confused, though: wealth is not money, it is control of stuff: and bare necessities are just the first "stuff" that you need when you haven't got anything else. The question for Sarene is what Raoden is going to do with the stuff: is he using it for good or evil?

Raoden is trying to keep his attempt at civilisation a secret because he thinks it will scare people into attacking Elantris. This seems like a mistake: it will not help Sarene think he is good, and who wouldn't want civilised neighbours?

Sarene seems to have forgotten everything she knew and is thinking that the gang leaders are keeping the people in a state of near starvation. Why does she suddenly think there is a supply of food to keep from people?| They are starving because there is no food, not because there is food that people are keeping from them. She also notices that people are afraid and assumes they are afraid of the gang leaders. They are afraid of suffering an eternity in agony due to their condition. How hard could it be for Sarene to find this out? How hard would it be for Raoden to just show her?

By the end of the chapter she at least realises that Raoden is the leader and is also hungry. There is some hope that she will figure it out. She also seems to like him, proving their inevitable compatibility.

Elantris 22: Raoden

Raoden and Galladon go on some crazy mission to confront the leader of the rival gang, Shaor. I'm constantly amazed how much danger Elantrians put themselves into. It turns out that Shaor is none other than Telrii's daughter. I'm surprised Telrii is going along with the whole Elantrians-are-devils thing given his daughter is one.

There is the mystery of why everything is so crumbly. Not to mention the sludge. I hope we get to the bottom of where the sludge is coming from.

Raoden spots Sarene coming into Elantris, handing out food. He is worried that free food will demotivate the people he's got helping him plant food. I've heard that international food aid can sometimes cause local farmers to go out of business. On the other hand, free food is free food. It will be interesting to see how Sanderson models the economics of this situation.

Elantris 21: Hrathen

Hrathen continues to be useless. He tries to offer the position of head arteth to someone who just refuses. What's the point of a tyrannical hierarchy if people can refuse things? He tries to send Dilaf away on a mission where he will be less annoying, but Dilaf threatens to take half of Hrathen's supporters with him, since it turns out they're Dilaf's supporters, not Hrathen's. There are some fundamentally flawed limitations to this tyrannical hierarchy, it would seem.

Hrathen gives some money to a suspicious looking beggar, possibly to sow seeds of support. He goes to the walls of Elantris, where Omin, the leader of the rival religion, points out that Hrathen appears to be losing his faith.

Elantris 20: Sarene

Sarene cooks up a plan to help Iadon by arranging some sort of trade deal with her father so that he does not get too poor to be king, leaving Telrii the richest man to become king and help Hrathen.

When she makes this offer to Iadon she gets him to give her permission to enter Elantris to give food to the Elantrians for her Widow's trial. This will also frustrate Hrathen by demonstrating that the Elantrians aren't demons.

Because of all this Iadon figures out that Sarene is not the total airhead she made out she was.

Sarene is worried that the kingdom is on the verge of collapse now that Raoden is gone, since everyone hoped life would be better after he took over.

There is a mystery of disappearing servants. And also there is a mystery of strange noises in the night. Sarene figures out there is a secret passage near her room leading to Iadon's chambers (presumably the one Raoden and Karata used) and the king is making secret excursions in the night.

Elantris 19: Raoden

Raoden has a dream in which he remembers the time his broken leg was healed by Elantrians. Except in the dream it does not work. There's something funny going on with Raoden's sensation of pain: it keeps coming and going. Maybe some residual magic is helping or else the pain varies with his mood.

He gets attacked by some ruffians from a rival gang. There is a fight in which one of them is beheaded. Luckily it turns out beheading results in death. The injured ruffians are taken to a building where Raoden has been putting all the other Elantrians he can find who are injured beyond being able to function. They are given some comfort and it seems to help.

Raoden's guard, Saolin, has become injured and says he is not worried about the pain since it just reminds him that he earned his wounds honourably. Normally I would say that mind over pain only gets you so far, but it's possible residual Elantrian magic is at work here, too.

Raoden finally gets back to his study of the mystery of Elantris and the Shaod. With Galladon's help he figures out that there is some force called Dor that surrounds us, binds us... no wait. Anyway it's the source of the magic and is probably just weakened, hence the Aons have lost their power but the Elantrians are still being kept alive. The magic machine is booted in safe mode, or whatever.

We also have clues that the magic is tied to the specific location of Elantris. Probably they just have to find a secret cave containing the magic machine.

Raoden is now openly suspicious that Galladon is not just a simple farmer.