In the original drafts of the book, I had Sarene feeling a sense of foreboding here at the beginning of her section. My thought was that we’d just seen the Dakhor attack Raoden—the reader is going to be feeling some tension, so I thought I’d like to keep it up in the Sarene scene.
There’s still a little bit of it there, but I cut most at Moshe’s recommendation. He felt that having Sarene feel an unnatural eeriness about this particular night was too melodramatic, and implied a kind of psychic link. Personally, I think there’s nothing psychic about it—it’s just a general storytelling convention that characters can sense when something is wrong.
Either way, I do think the more subdued tone of this first part has its own advantages. By having Sarene completely ignorant, even unconsciously, of what is coming, I think I build a sense of tension. The reader knows danger is approaching.
If you are viewing this on github.io, you can see that this site is open source. Please do not try to improve this page. It is auto-generated by a python script. If you have suggestions for improvements, please start a discussion on the github repo or the Discord.