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No.  Sosol was a whole body.

Reviewed CJ's Chapter 66 in Raven's Curse.

The URL ends with April-Chastain-Ingrigue/dp/1537186833/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1475459745&sr=8-2&keywords=wilted+magnolias

From 'ref=' onward you have info about where the link came from, etc.  Some of it may tell Amazon if it came from a link that earns a commission.  The query part (including, I think, the alphabet-encoding spec utf8, tells Amazon what the original lookup was.  They can use that if the book is not found, or to provide additional items for display.

Maybe.  But he's still both magic-sick and soul-sick.  Put a sick man on a mission?  Yeah, baby.

But how sure is he that the absent Wolf will be targeted?  Or is it just the McGuffin to get him going?  If he knows that Drezdorf is there?

His haste with fear for Airen will rule out stops and dawdling.  No listening to Karl, no thought of Madame Z. or The Milky Jug ...

Always tradeoffs.

Does the Hearth Witch link to the plot or develop Kha's character?  Or othrrwise contribute to his journey?

Teary Mace soup?

I'm not convinced.  You need a reason for your reader to identify with Kha before the new dangers appear.  You have it: what Kha has lost, and what Kha is seeking (which might not be quite the same thing).  You can have him consider stopping at Madame Zia's, or even The Milky Jug ... and discard the idea.  No, Airen's the only one left, the only one still whole ... if she is.  From the market square, a jump cut to the last fifty feet before Airen's guardhouse.

Wait, you need to get the Centrillium ... okay  that happens as he meditates on backstory.  He tries to imagine the fate of his friends ..., he's thinking of Drezdorf when it happens ... and the laughter seems at first to be making mock of a damaged man.

You've created the basis for so much theater here ...

Before you begin serious revision, read at least the opening part of Bird's book.

Sometimes too the writer is working for an effect with the 'oddity' and may prefer either to keep it or to reinforce it, rather than to give up on it.

Don't be so sure they don't help.  The only thing I really dig my heels in about is commas.

Take the issue of tags.  If I were a stronger writer the extra tags might not be needed, and I might find ways to pace the dialogue without them.

Often someone will say I've aimed too far left.  I'm sure I haven't  but why did the reader think so?  It takes me multiple rereads over a few weeks to see that, back in chapter N-4 I set the target too far to the right.

There are placed where I may or may not be trying too hard, such as adjusting the narrative voice to reflect the PoV chapters.

I'm including you-the-reviewer in the thesis-antithesis-synthesis, and you're free to tell me why I'm wrong.

But I dig in my heels on commas because I believe the whole stylebook approach to be not even wrong, based as it is on a LOCAL examination of the grammar tree.

Can the fourth book play the Airen-Kha-Marion chord?

I spent most of the night with Bird and my notes, and I've got a way to handle Erevain.  It won't make things shorter, but it might make things fit better.  I also have some thoughts on Merran's training and Melayne's suggestions on it.

And although I am quite fatigued, I'll try to lay out my Bird-inspired thoughts on Mandates.

Acts works because we identify with Anver from the get-go.  Why?  Because he has a problem that we can understand, and because we sympathize as well as empathize: He has to protect those kids--his family.  If we didn't have that, nothing would work, not even the threat of the whole world subjugated to the Defiler.

Why not?  Because we don't have to buy into the world.  And because once we buy into the protagonist, we buy into the protagonist's view of the dilemma.  Look at The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth and the whole solar system are destroyed in the first chapter, blasted out of the way to make room for a bypass off a Vogon skyway.  But we hardly care because we are invested in the two sky-hitch-hikers.

For Mandates to work, we have to buy into Kha, and we must buy into Kha's dilemma.  We have to have a sense of what that dilemma is, even if he doesn't quite know what it is.  What is it?  It's loss: Loss of power, loss of people he loves like family, loss of confidence in whatever ability he brought to the Wolves, loss of purpose, loss of--what?

(And I maintain that we need capsule descriptions and illustrations to bring those losses to the reader.)

Kha is flinty.  Airen is flinty.  Anver can be flinty.  Tilly can be flinty.  Kha needs Anver and Tilly, but he has somehow lost his sense of connection to the Guildhouse and its people.  He needs the flint not contaminated by his present life--that's Airen.  (And I think Airen should understand that Kha needs her to be flinty, though as an outsider, not through his eyes.)  And through his time with her, he finds Sil.  That moves the story to about where Acts is after Alina's death.

(And maybe Anver and Tilly aren't willing to be flinty to the recuperating Master, not understanding that the flint is what he needs to recover.  I can see him saying something like this to Airen.  God, you do characters well!)

Kha's love for Sil has to give him determination to save her when he might not have the determination to save himself.  And ... he's long-lived; she's as near to immortal as you'll find.  Without actually having Kha say it or think consciously about it, that ought to free him to love her wholeheartedly.  (Or did you already have this in mind?)

Most of my suggestions about how to open Mandates seem to fit this model.

And with all this in mind, maybe Mandates isn't the best title.

Now I'll get some sleep.

(Oh, an I right in thinking that Kha found comfort in Tazar's taciturnity?)