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Chapter Twenty-Eight Part One

I added the white dress–and the paragraphs here–because several women I know complained that they never got to see what Vin was wearing in this chapter. Honestly, women are so strange. A fight for life and death could be occurring, and all they would want to know is whether or not the blood spurting out of the dying men complimented their clothing or not. 🙂

I think Vin makes a very important realization in this chapter–that the nobility are a lot like the thieving crews. The more connections like this she makes, the more natural it is going to be for her to go among the nobility. You might have noticed that she doesn’t really focus on her act any more. That doesn’t mean that it’s gone–however, it does mean that she’s getting better.

The Venture-atium connection is something I wish I could have foreshadowed a little bit better. However, without Elend being a viewpoint until this chapter (the reasons for which I’ll explain in a bit) there really wasn’t much I could do to connect Venture and the Pits.

By the way, the ‘something a few years ago’ that Elend mentions happening to disturb the atium production was Kelsier, the Survivor of Hathsin, Snapping and coming to an awakening of his powers–then bursting out of his hut and slaughtering every soldier or nobleman within ten miles of the Pits.

So, as I said, I felt that I needed to wait to make Elend a viewpoint character. There are several reasons for this. The primary one is that this book is really about Vin. Kelsier has some time, but really everything in this book is focused around its effect on Vin.

Elend couldn’t come in as a viewpoint character earlier because I think he would have been distracting. I like him a lot as a character. However, by leaving his viewpoints out, I allow readers to wonder whether or not he’s playing Vin. My writing groups responded quite well to Elend, having constant discussions about whether or not his motivations were pure. They could do this because they didn’t know his mind, and I think that by letting them do this, they could grow more attached to Vin. After all, whether or not Elend’s viewpoints were pure only mattered in relation to her.

But, finally, I decided to ease that tension and let the readers know that he really was the person they thought. This should come as a relief, which relief will quickly be destroyed by the worry I create in this chapter. (In short, I couldn’t bring Elend in as a viewpoint until doing so twisted the plot more, rather than simply untwisting it.)

Oh, and TenSoon makes a cameo in this chapter. This will only mean something to you if you’ve read the third book.