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Longer White Sands preview


The Invested Beard

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Man... these previews are just not getting me hyped. Maybe it's because I'm not usually a comic reader. Maybe it's because these aren't the first pages, so there's some background info (Mastrell, slatrify, Kerla Winds) that I'm missing, since I haven't felt this thrown-off by Brandon's made-up words since I read the Mythwalker excerpts. Maybe there's stuff that will be explained soon, like what exactly Ribbons are or what the difference is in depths of sand (the page in this year's State of the Sanderson said that the area of the test was too shallow for the Kerztians, but now there's a patch of deep sand?). But compared to reading sample chapters of Alloy of Law or Words of Radiance, I am not feeling the same levels of excitement.

 

Although I won't say the Sand Masters are knockoffs of Assassin's Creed like some commenters have been doing (yes, I know this was originally written well before Assassin's Creed came out in 2007, and the similarities are just "Cool guys in white robes with a hood"), the sandling seems like a fairly straight knockoff of Dune's sandworms. (Okay, this one has legs; it's still a huge predator that tracks you through vibrations and lives under the sand.) I know Brandon likes to put his unique spin on fantasy tropes, but there's no unique spin yet.

 

I'm not so turned off by it that I won't buy it. (Let's not get crazy, now.) But I certainly hope it gets better.

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Although I won't say the Sand Masters are knockoffs of Assassin's Creed like some commenters have been doing (yes, I know this was originally written well before Assassin's Creed came out in 2007, and the similarities are just "Cool guys in white robes with a hood"), the sandling seems like a fairly straight knockoff of Dune's sandworms. (Okay, this one has legs; it's still a huge predator that tracks you through vibrations and lives under the sand.) I know Brandon likes to put his unique spin on fantasy tropes, but there's no unique spin yet.

Despite being Assassin's Creed fan, I quite dislike how the franchise has seized the "cool hoods", "cool robes" and "knife-under-arm" tropes. As if they invented it all. Now, when somebody makes use of these tropes, people are just going "Assassin's Creed knockoffs!". It is infuriating.

Because people living in the desert totally wouldn't wear robes with hoods in the colour which is good at reflecting light... like white, for example, without knowing Assassin's Creed <_<

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Having read the unpublished version of White Sand, it follows that part fairly well.

Also, Taldain rotates. It's just tidally locked, like the Moon around the Earth. Otherwise, the only way to maintain day and night was to have the planet crash into the sun, day-first.

The 99.999% of me that is a nerd just wanted to point that out.

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So if it takes sunlight to re-whiten the sand and restore its power than i guess sand masters are pretty boned on the darkside of the planet huh.

 

Also does that mean the investiture in the sand is coming from the star ? reminds me of a post i saw of someone asking brandon if the star is the shard.

Edited by Full Metal Rithmatist
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Having read the unpublished version of White Sand, it follows that part fairly well.

Also, Taldain rotates. It's just tidally locked, like the Moon around the Earth. Otherwise, the only way to maintain day and night was to have the planet crash into the sun, day-first.

The 99.999% of me that is a nerd just wanted to point that out.

Yeah, it's not about Taldain not rotating, it's about Taldain rotating in the exactly the same amount of time it takes for it to rotate around the Sun.

Edited by Oversleep
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I remember reading about a Star Wars planet in the EU that was the same way, only rotated once per year.  I thought it was the planet of the Twi'lek, Ryloth, but Wookiepedia does not support that claim.

 

Ryloth was depicted in many EU sources (such as the X-Wing novels) as being tidally locked. However, a Clone Wars episode about Ryloth portrayed the planet with a normal day-and-night cycle, so the previous depictions were, unfortunately, retconned away. Just one of many ways the new TV show didn't play nice with all the older material.

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So if it takes sunlight to re-whiten the sand and restore its power than i guess sand masters are pretty boned on the darkside of the planet huh.

 

Not necessarily. The sunlight and the sand could have a lock and key kind of relationship similar to how the metals on Scadrial work. Except instead of metals being a channel for the Allomancer to access the power of Preservation, it could be the sunlight that provides the channel, and the sand could be just a container similar to the spheres. 

 

On a different note, I love what I assume is Khriss on that cover. 

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Man... these previews are just not getting me hyped. Maybe it's because I'm not usually a comic reader. Maybe it's because these aren't the first pages, so there's some background info (Mastrell, slatrify, Kerla Winds) that I'm missing, since I haven't felt this thrown-off by Brandon's made-up words since I read the Mythwalker excerpts. Maybe there's stuff that will be explained soon, like what exactly Ribbons are or what the difference is in depths of sand (the page in this year's State of the Sanderson said that the area of the test was too shallow for the Kerztians, but now there's a patch of deep sand?). But compared to reading sample chapters of Alloy of Law or Words of Radiance, I am not feeling the same levels of excitement.

 

Although I won't say the Sand Masters are knockoffs of Assassin's Creed like some commenters have been doing (yes, I know this was originally written well before Assassin's Creed came out in 2007, and the similarities are just "Cool guys in white robes with a hood"), the sandling seems like a fairly straight knockoff of Dune's sandworms. (Okay, this one has legs; it's still a huge predator that tracks you through vibrations and lives under the sand.) I know Brandon likes to put his unique spin on fantasy tropes, but there's no unique spin yet.

 

I'm not so turned off by it that I won't buy it. (Let's not get crazy, now.) But I certainly hope it gets better.

One thing that always bothered me with Assassin's Creed is, lets take a shadowy organization, that is all about stealth kills and moving unseen, and give them a specific uniform that is easily identifiable in any crowd.  The first one made sense because of the monks you would blend in with, but after that the whole hood thing became ridiculous. Oh and let us also cut off the pinky finger to use the under arm blade. That could never backfire via our enemies checking everyone's hand before they let them in anywhere. A robe with a hood for a group of magic users that are an authority in a culture and want to be recognized on the other hand, does make a lot of sense. 

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I hid a long conversation regarding White Sand Prime/prose version. Spoiler tags are not sufficient as the book is not publicly available there.

You will need to wait in the next week (or so) until we sort out splitting White Sand forums from the graphic novel from the prose version. The prose version will remain in a password protected forum, and prose info will not be allowed to be in the usual, canonical graphic novel discussion.

Sorry! It's unpublished, so it still goes by that rule.

Are White Sand Prime spoilers allowed? Or should this discussion be continued in the PM thread?

Absolutely not.

 

It is really really annoying to have read White Sand and then not be able to comment when people say things here that were shown to be false in the book. It is like that itch you can't scratch... Argh! I wish we could talk about White Sand already.

Soon™

Sorry for hiding the discussion. It was very interesting. I just hid the whole thing because it came from a point coming from the prose version.

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Although I won't say the Sand Masters are knockoffs of Assassin's Creed like some commenters have been doing (yes, I know this was originally written well before Assassin's Creed came out in 2007, and the similarities are just "Cool guys in white robes with a hood"),  

 

I feel like if he was knocking off Assassin's Creed somewhere, it would be with the character called the Assassin in White that can climb literally anything and pulls blades out of nowhere.

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