I’m aware this is an old post, but uh. Hi there it’s me. You’re describing me. I’ve never read a single cosmere except for Tress and I dove straight into Sunlit Man with no context whatsoever.
Honestly, Sunlit Man was no different to me than starting any other ridiculous fantasy/sci fi series. I had the same base feeling when reading, say, Discworld for the first time, or when reading a terrible YA fantasy with a system that isn’t fleshed out and where everything is Capitalized. (Given the existence of the Cosmere wiki, I have absolutely no doubt that this description isn’t true for this series, but the initial feeling is very very similar. Like, okay. Investiture sure is a word. We sure do use it a lot here.)
It actually feels a lot less holey than you might think. Nomad/Sigzil/Zellion explains quite a bit about the system pretty seamlessly, and the bits that he doesn’t you can kind of guess at. At no point was I ever like “Gee, this would be so much better if I understood it!” Because I already did. Investiture is some sort of universal energy, it can be transferred or siphoned, various planets have various systems, etc. It WAS pretty funny to have God referred to as just God for a while until like 200 pages in we finally get his name and Nomad’s immediate response is “😬 who’s gonna tell these guys we killed him”. top tier worldbuilding. god is dead and the god police are after the guy who knows the weapon of the guy that did it
Something I thought was pretty cool was that the story does a great job of making you FEEL like spots were important even if you don’t understand why. And like, that’s the mark of a good story to me. I still have absolutely no idea what the hell Aux was supposed to be, but it still hurt when he fully died. Seeing Wit appear was the feeling of “I’ve never seen this guy before, but I have a very strong feeling of “Not THIS asshole again.”” Learning Nomad’s original name of Sigzil makes you go “Oh, dang. Probably we should know who that is, huh.” I have absolutely no clue what the Bridge Four salute is supposed to mean— presumably that’s important in the greater series— but I know it was important, and that’s what matters.
It’s a cool book. What do you mean Nomad has a tragic backstory.
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