Um...I don't know what to say about this. I feel kind of like an idiot. Maybe it's just that it's been so long since I read the beginning parts of the book, but a whole pile of stuff in the last couple of chapters just seemed to come out of nowhere.
I don't mean the bit about the statues. I had an idea that something was going to happen with the statues all along, and as soon as Vasher mentioned a secret army at the beginning of this chapter, I thought of the statues right away. So that made sense.
But...
Super Saiyan Vasher. What? I mean, uh, WHAT? Where'd that come from? Why'd he have to change form just to tell Susebron that the statues were a secret army? And assuming his new form gives him extra strength or something, why didn't he change form earlier and use the glowy-ness to beat up Denth before the Lifeless marched, and stop the war without having to unleash his "terrible tool"? (Or for that matter, change form during that final council, use the glowy-ness to make everyone else think he's a god, and then use his god-hood to go see Siri and the God King instead of sneaking into the palace and getting his butt captured?)
Susebron kneels to Vasher. Even though Vasher is some kind of historical figure, Susebron shouldn't know him, since Susebron is only sixty-ish years old. And he knows hardly any history, which was why Siri had to get Lightsong to hire a historian. Unless Susebron has been lying to Siri about his past the whole time, which doesn't bode well for their marriage.
Susebron is an awakener. This doesn't make sense on two levels: I thought the returned couldn't awaken stuff, and even if they could, when did Susebron learn the commands? The priests sure wouldn't have taught him.... (Actually -- this is part of why I feel like an idiot, I guess -- I guess I still don't really get what Susebron is. Is he really a returned, or just a guy with a whole lot of breath?)
Scared of the lifeless. Since the Pahn Kahl have been defeated, the Lifeless army now has nobody commanding it. Which means it's now an army of forty thousand idiots. From what we know about lifeless, they can't plan, they can't communicate with each other, and they sure can't react to changing battlefield conditions, react to the enemy's strategies, and come up with new tactics. Their actions, in short, will be utterly predictable. With forewarning, any creative and guileful military captain should be able to take out that army by himself. (I thought of several ways to do this as I was reading this chapter, didn't you?)
My life for your tongue. Maybe it's clearer in version 3.0, but somehow I'd gotten the impression that the Returned's power was to turn someone else into a returned when they died, not to straight-up heal them. (Although straight-up healing does make some stuff from the earlier chapters make more sense.)
If you prick us do we not bleed? How were the returned kept unaware of the fact that they can be cut, hurt, and killed? It makes sense that the priests wouldn't have hurt them, and would have tried to keep them from harm. But surely the gods would have on occasion stubbed their toes, or cut themselves with their eating utensils, or bitten each other during bouts of rough sex. Or did I miss something that was done to Lightsong and Blushweaver when they were captured, in order to make them vulnerable?
Engage Nightblood mode. Vasher's power when he drew Nightblood wasn't too unexpected -- we always knew something crazy would happen. But I'd had the impression that the reason for not drawing Nightblood was that it made you go insane, not that it drained your breath. (And it did seem rather like engaging a super-power mode in a computer game.)
I can only give you all of my breaths at once. But I can store all the breaths I don't want to give you, transfer the rest, and then take the ones I stored back, which pretty much makes this restriction moot. Vivenna can't have been the first person to realize this. And that being the case, there doesn't seem to be much point in having that restriction in the magic system at all.
I suppose some of this stuff might get answered in the next chapter. And, except maybe for Super Saiyan Vasher, none of this stuff was really that big a deal, it's just that it kept adding up.
But anyway. Definitely looking forward to the next chapter. Robots versus zombies!