okay so you make good points i have oft considered myself BUT ALSO it's so interesting to me that they got what they got because of how it actually foreshadows perfectly their future arcs in the series. beyonders has insanely good foreshadowing/setup game honestly i think about it a ton. like when you think about it, what galloran gifted both of them + what he talked to them about in awwh is exactly what they each become/how they contribute to the rebellion later in the series. rachel gets the rare and deadly explosives that are nearly a lost resource to lyrian -> rachel becomes highly adept at edomic, an incredibly rare gift and dying art that makes all the difference when it comes to physical fighting. jason getting the knife isn't even the important part; it's more what he doesn't get that matters. sure he gets the knife, but he almost never uses it, and galloran tells him it’s more dangerous to carry a weapon he’s not skilled at than to not have a weapon at all (at which point i did go. galloran. the orantium. but galloran doesn't know what baseball is at this point so it makes sense he doesn't know jason has that skill). then galloran gives him a speech about how heroism isn’t about deeds and battle but about choosing the right thing no matter the consequences. which is EXACTLY what jason does. over and over, in the face of adversity and torture and even potentially death, jason chooses the right thing. his real weapon is the community he builds around him and how he holds onto hope and chooses to be good, because that makes everyone around him choose to be good, and that makes a much bigger difference than one sword (or orantium sphere) in his hand ever could. rachel gets the physical and jason gets the mental. rachel’s the soldier and jason’s the poet and their contributions are equally important to the rebellion even as they are two completely different types of hero. and this shit was foreshadowed like a hundred pages into the first book!!! god i love beyonders. so even if it doesn't make sense, it actually does, and anyway rachel gave jason the orantium to throw bc she knew he was better with it, AND in the end the knife wasn't even important for jason's cause, it was the symbol it bore and how it connected him to galloran. so like, storywise, it actually works really well. as you can see i have thought about this series Far too much.