Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell by Brandon Sanderson
Review by Jordan S.
Last week, a certain author published a certain long-awaited installment of his New York Times bestselling series. A certain Kaiju and a certain Narwhal might have even journeyed across the country to attend the certain convention where this certain book was released. There may or may not be a bunch of pictures of that on the Kaiju and Gnome Bluesky account (which you can find here). While that certain book was excellent and I enjoyed it immensely, this is not a review of that book. In fact, it’s not really a review of a book at all. It’s a review of a novella set in the same universe as that book that came out last week.
Yes, I, your humble Book Gnome, am going to review the masterpiece of genre fiction that is Brandon Sanderson’s Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell.
Shadows for Silence is set on the planet of Threnody, a remote world in the Cosmere, and follows Silence Montane and her found family as they try to capture a notorious highwayman by the name of Chesterton Divide. Over the course of a single night, Silence finds herself in increasingly dire conflict not only with Divide but also with the shadowy forces that haunt the forests around her.
It’s a simple story, but it’s also one of the first Sanderson stories I truly fell in love with. I’m a sucker for stories evocative of the Westerns I grew up watching on television with my dad, and this story definitely fits that genre, albeit mixed with some spooky fantasy elements. Silence fits the mold of the stoic frontierswoman so common in those Westerns, while Chesterton and Theopolis both feel like they’ve been torn from the pages of a Louis L’Amour novel.
However, more than the characters, I fell in love with Threnody and the mysterious region called the Forests of Hell. Sanderson has created some wonderful worlds, such as Roshar, Sel, and Scadrial, but if I had to choose, I’d pick Threnody over them any day of the week. It’s a world scarred by multiple powerful and mysterious entities (specifically, Odium’s battle with Ambition and the later emergence of the mysterious force known as “the Evil”) and has endured. It’s a world feared even by some of the most seasoned worldhoppers, yet there is still something beautiful and compelling about it.
Shadows for Silence evokes all the things I love about Sanderson’s Cosmere books: great characters, well-developed settings, and a non-insignificant amount of mystery. It’s why I’m so excited that Threnody seems to have a greater role in the story of the Cosmere moving forward. As I’m averse to spoilers, I won’t say too much, but there are definitely natives of the world sprinkled throughout other Cosmere books, and Sanderson has suggested that he has future stories planned about both them and Threnody itself.