Edgedancer (The Stormlight Archive #2.5) by Brandon Sanderson

Hahaha, one of the other reviews of this I read said something along the lines of Lift being like DeeDee from Dexter’s Laboratory and I was all “yassss, I love her!” which prolly wasn’t the other reviewer’s intent but he sounds boring anyway.

So! If you are bothered by exuberant protagonists whose primary concern is usually filling their bellies, then you may not like this novella, but I found Lift to be a hilarious and charming reminder of my own pubescent years (excepting her mulish insistence on illiteracy, tho I was sympathetic to her desire to not grow up and have to accept the burdens of maturity.) It was a surprisingly great meditation on what it’s like to be a girl at that age, not wanting to give up the joys of childhood but knowing that your body will betray you to adulthood anyway, and the too-real but under-discussed fear of how girls so easily lose control of their autonomy in the face of society’s expectations of womanhood. I’m not surprised that Brandon Sanderson wrote such a terrific feminist novella but I continue to be in awe of his powers of empathy and expression. The compassion Lift shows, particularly on the rooftop, made me weep: I could never be that good a person, but she and Mr Sanderson make me think I could one day try.

I don’t know how well this novella reads on its own but you should all be reading all his books anyway. Edgedancer is a crucial part of the Stormlight Archives and I daresay that certain parts of Oathbringer (Book 3 of the series) will make little sense unless you read this first. Oh! One thing that did make me go hmm was the fact that Yeddaw exists in its present state and NO ONE thought to link its structure to the Shattered Plains before Shallan? An unusual misstep in an otherwise very well-thought-out cosmology.