The Storms of Brandon SandersonDalinar Kholin, Highprince of Alethia, the Blackthorn, reaper of the battlefield, exchanges a priceless sword for a band of tired and worthless Bridgemen. He gives little thought to it and declares the worth of his honour as unmatched by anything under the sky. Who is this knight Brandon Sanderson brings to us in the pages of his colossal books? No more is he the racist Highprince, the killer, the un-disgusted warrior who can't lose an appetite even as the scent of blood mires fork and knife. He's our moral guide in a world where honour is proclaimed to be dead. And as many things that die, honour and Dalinar are made better in rebirth.
Honour is brought back, no longer latched to the tit of culture but given new life in the moral decisions of an individual prone to loss and suffering. And for Dalinar, his rebirth comes with revelations to a conscience once lost, now found. What he did to his wife, to the people of his world, and to himself in those years of valiant cultural ordeals, cannot be repaid. Knowing this is his rebirth. The awakening of his true conscience, and the rise of a moral man where once there lay only brute immaturity. But there's more to this from an outsider's perspective. There's more to the enfeebled reader of post-Cold War South America, where proxy wars were unfought yet left thousands in the dirt. Where leaders were killed for ideas in their seedling shells. There's more, for the rest of the world too, and especially for those isles we call japan, where not one but two bombs were dropped.
One could argue back and forth about the merits of military action in a state of war. Just wars are also justified wars; actions within blessed by merit of what they prevent. War is easy to justify when we cannot know the outcomes either way. And so we argue. Just like our politicians and, more to the point, our heroes. And Dalinar certainly is both. He must have justified his actions. Given his intellect, he surely could. But, after all that's happened, I'm not sure he would. I think his silence on the matter of his crimes is telling. Like America, the great America that will not call itself an empire, and that dropped the bombs, and waged the proxy wars, and neo-colonised the new economic colonies of Latin America, he remains quiet, hoping his rebirth is enough to have cleansed the past and forge a new man. A moral man.
This, I believe, is one of the storms of Brandon Sanderson. And like all storms, there are secrets behind the eyewall. Like the governments in turn for the blaming, we cannot fully respect or even like Dalinar Kholin. Who could? He was a monster of the battlefield, but not merely a soldier with a soldier's goals. He was merciless, even to those he ought to serve and protect, he was cruel to children, a genocidal pre-modern utilitarian warlord. And just like Sanderson's America, he dropped bombs when needed. He dropped them because others would have done so as well. He, it, would act in this immoral way because everyone else also would, and therein rests the black of the argument. The Hobbessian Trap springs and suddenly we're caught between our judgement of the man, the government and the empire from the privilege of hindsight in an age of relative peace. We ought to say it was right because it was less wrong. Even more, we ought to say it's right because it has changed. The Empire, like the hero, no longer sheds innocent blood. It avoids battlefields, it helps allies, it wants to talk when others want to fight. It, he, is better now.
The storm grows, however. We are no longer a people to justify violences of any sort. We are no longer a people to forget our past. Our modern world turns deeper and deeper into the consequences of memory and history. We seek a way to right the wrongs of a recent past where honour was widely spoken of but was most certainly dead. For this, we have created our own form of honour, and in some cases even enjoyed using it to judge the past. Judge it harshly. We don't want to forget. We don't want the perpetrators to forget, since the victims can't. We want history to live today, to impregnate even the children with the sins of their fathers... 
Right?I'm not so sure. If Dalinar, the genocidal hero, can have a rebirth, can I? Can we?
I believe Sanderson's Stormlight Archive is just that, a story about the light we find in the storm —sometimes cruel and deadly, sometimes sublime and beautiful— of an archive. Of the past. The United States of America dropped two bombs. Yes. It created proxy wars and neoliberalised the weak economies of as many countries as it could. Like Dalinar's, there is no justifying these deeds. But can it be reborn? Is this the wish of its people? Of its kindest and humblest and greatest people?
I'm just a humble fantasy writer, unlikely to ever meet Brandon Sanderson. I'll never have a chat with him or know who he is truly. I'll never have the extra money to pay him a visit in one of his many conventions or get a signed book. I know only what articles and booktubers will say of him, for better or worse, and I have a feeling, a very strong feeling, that he's a wonderful guy. And this what this all comes to. He's a good guy writing about a monster, wanting us to like him. And isn't that the dream of all Americans? Isn't that the storm of all Americans? After all that has happened, don't they, too, just want to be liked? Don't they, like honour and a monster, have the right of rebirth?