GENERAL SPOILER ALERT FOR THE COSMERE. The crew discusses Brandon Sanderson’s novella, The Emperor’s Soul. Most of the discussion is about the philosophical importance of the story, but we do stray into some discussion of the Cosmere and how it works, with a few references to other stories that you may not want spoiled.

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Craig’s Recap Script:

Last week, in our discussion of Fahrenheit 451, I mentioned that it’s refreshing sometimes to read a piece of fiction that’s shorter than our normal fare, and that’s driven by philosophy rather than story or worldbuilding. It can be exhausting, and certainly time-consuming, to get to know everything about the politics, religion, and key players in a 700-page novel. This feeling is familiar to Brandon Sanderson fans, and indeed, I offered Sanderson as the epitome of the author who buries his philosophy under several layers of story.

Whoops.

As it turns out, I had, sitting on my shelf for months, a wonderful example from Sanderson himself of just the sort of style I had juxtaposed him against. The Emperor’s Soul is a 100-page novella about the complexity of a life, and how small decisions have a dramatic effect over what we eventually fashion ourselves into. Shai is a Forger, someone who uses magic to change one object into an imitation of another. She is caught, then forced by the ruling council, under threat of death, to secretly forge a new soul for the emperor, who, after an assassination attempt, has lost all cognitive function.

Shai spends the next 3 months learning everything she can about the emperor: his personality, his past, his hidden secrets and motivations—all in an attempt to counterfeit a life. Tension comes in her knowledge that whether she succeeds or not, forces around her are conspiring to kill her at just the right moment. In the end, she does succeed, and escapes into the countryside, leaving behind a counterfeit emperor who, as her forgery takes hold, will eventually become a better man than the real thing had been on track to be.

This is, on the thin surface, a story about a young woman who forges someone else’s soul. Ultimately, it’s about what we are all doing every day to understand ourselves, and to forge our own souls … and our own futures.