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[OB] Full Book Reactions / Full Spoilers Thread


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10 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

funny thing, he actually did change the world. now the abuse don't happen anymore to some people or some other. no, they happen to everybody. human? kept as a slave and scheduled for exterminatiion. singer? will be sacrificed to reborn a fused. spren? voidspren are conquering shadesmar as we speak. everybody is suffering. yay for equality!

Thanks Moash. <_<

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i must be in the minority, i felt this was easily the weakest of the 3 stormlight books so far.

it was still good, dont get me wrong. but it just wasnt as good a read as the other two. he did ALOT of world building in this book, which is great, but i think thats why so many people are so high on it.

i have 3 major problems which detracted from my enjoyment:

1- the shallan chapters were just annoying to read, and didnt feel at any way earned. she went from a strong character to one teetering on the edge, cause reasons. easily the weakest part of the book. which is surprising, i enjoyed her alot in my recent re-read.

2- While the payoff for Dalinar's arc was great (bringing the 3 realms together was the best part of the book) i felt the underlying tension was weak. he didnt  *actually* kill his wife, she lived up to her reputation of being dull of wit by sneaking into the city Dalinar was there to attack. like This post has been reported for attempting to skirt the rules? i actually found myself agreeing with younger Dalinar, which i really dont think was the intent here. i can understand why Dalinar would have so much strife for this, but it didnt come across to myself as i was reading. i couldnt empathize, which lowered impact it had on me.

3- this is the most minor, but while i understand these are broken people...enough is enough. we need more Adolin characters that arent neck high in angst to break up the flow. and i really hope he stays on the path hes on regarding murdering sadeas. that being, sure he can have the occasional moment of guilt, but he seems to realize it had to be done. i really hope he doesnt backslide.

 

on the positive side, Kaladin continues to be strong. i continue to think he is the best written protagonist ive ever read.

 

the Brandalanch at the end was really good, as usual, but again not as good as the other two books` Brandalanches at the end.

 

all in all, Brandon Sanderson has easily earned any benefit of the doubt required and continues to be my favorite author. i'll be curious to see if people are still so glowing about this book once the shine of it being new wears off, or if it really is just me in regarding it as the weakest of the books so far.

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6 hours ago, taliefer said:

all in all, Brandon Sanderson has easily earned any benefit of the doubt required and continues to be my favorite author. i'll be curious to see if people are still so glowing about this book once the shine of it being new wears off, or if it really is just me in regarding it as the weakest of the books so far.

You might want to see this thread:

 

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It's interesting how it seems everyone either considered this book pretty much the best book ever or the worst of the three. And how some of the issues people have with the book are what other people love.

I saw a discussion over why people like Adolin when he isn't troubled and is mostly perfect and most of the rest of us like him for exactly that.

There was the post a bit above this one about not liking Evi's actions in trying to save the Rift, and a lot of us (going by this thread) love her for it and how amazingly kindhearted she was.

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I've seen a lot of anti-Shallan comments on this book. I actually liked her story arc a lot. I think the split personalities and her struggle with them is really interesting - definitely not something you see in fantasy pretty much ever. She's teetering on the edge of legitimately crazy and being a planet-saving hero, and that dichotomy is fascinating to me. I dunno, maybe I can strangely relate some days (not that I'm going crazy or anything, just that sometimes you can feel completely overwhelmed or lost and other times you can accomplish something amazing and feel great about it).

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47 minutes ago, vividox said:

I've seen a lot of anti-Shallan comments on this book. I actually liked her story arc a lot. I think the split personalities and her struggle with them is really interesting - definitely not something you see in fantasy pretty much ever. She's teetering on the edge of legitimately crazy and being a planet-saving hero, and that dichotomy is fascinating to me. I dunno, maybe I can strangely relate some days (not that I'm going crazy or anything, just that sometimes you can feel completely overwhelmed or lost and other times you can accomplish something amazing and feel great about it).

YEAh! 

Also, she's not teetering on crazy. She, at times, is full fledged insane. 

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2 hours ago, Blacksmithki said:

It's interesting how it seems everyone either considered this book pretty much the best book ever or the worst of the three. And how some of the issues people have with the book are what other people love.

I saw a discussion over why people like Adolin when he isn't troubled and is mostly perfect and most of the rest of us like him for exactly that.

There was the post a bit above this one about not liking Evi's actions in trying to save the Rift, and a lot of us (going by this thread) love her for it and how amazingly kindhearted she was.

A forum divided.. 

I'd say after further reflection the issue is these books are just so massive.. The format of the different parts make me feel like this is a collection of smaller stories. In the first two books the parts seemed to have a pretty cohesive flow as an ongoing continuation of an overall story but this one felt more segmented to me. So there were parts I thought that were the best writing Brandon has written so far while others fell a little short for me. I will say I appreciated the book as a whole more the second time around but this book felt a lot more loose than the previous two with some plot lines either not explored fully (to my satisfaction) or resolved in a somewhat underwhelming way. On the same hand some of the revelations in the book were almost overwhelming and completely unexpected this early on. Brandon does have an uncanny way of making me change my views and feelings of the characters from book to book which I think is done very much on purpose so I think some of the let down for people is how he changes our opinions sometimes of the characters we liked the most in previous books. There is a lot of limelight swapping going on and I can see how this can be frustrating to some.  I'd say I would rate this book behind WoR but in front of tWoK. 

 

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Boy there are a lot of responses to this thread... I got through page 6 and thought I'd better go write my stuff before I forget it.

So I liked the book, but maybe because of all the hype, I was just expecting more.  I will need to reread it and I hope it grows more on me because it does have a lot of potential. 

Scenes that I liked:

Kaladin returning to Hearthstone; reuniting with parents and meeting his brother.

Kaladin stopping the highstorm protecting the human slaves in Revolar

Jasnah's return

Bridge 4 POVs in Part 2, especially Rock's family reuniting.  Annoyed with Teft.

Kaladin's illusion as they initially infiltrated Kholinar 

Storming the palace and subsequent battle/loss of Elhokar

Azure was a good character, wish she stayed with the group

Szeth POVs.

Part 5 was all awesome.  Felt dreadful initially because nothing was going there way, then things got brighter.

Characters I dislike:

Taravangian went even further down the pooper.  My least liked character now that Sadeas and Amaram are dead.

Moash.  Though I guess I still have some hope that he will return to the 'Light side of the force'

Nale.  I was hoping we were going to see him helping the humans, based on what we saw in Edgedancer and Brandon's comments that he needed this to explain Nale's new perspective in OB.  Was not the perspective I was expecting I guess.  I was expecting all of the Skybreakers to come help and Thaylenah.  So I wonder now what they were sent to do in Marat.

Thoughts/Unanswered Questions

Who is the Traitor mentioned on the back cover?  Seems several could fit this.  Moash.  Taravangian.  Nale.  Malata.  Even Venli could be considered a traitor to the parshman/Fused.

I wish we saw them figure out how to power Urithiru.  Was kind of expecting that after they found the gemstone pillar way back in Part 1.

My overall impression of the Ghostbloods increased positively.  Their intentions seem more altruistic than I originally thought.  At least they keep promises.

So maybe I just missed this and need to do a reread. (Of course I will, but not right now).  What exactly are the Fused?  They aren't spren are they?  Wit mentions dancing with one in the epilogue centuries earlier.  Are they shadows stuck in the Cognitive realm? Or shadows stuck in Damnation?

Oh, and also, yes, I was annoyed with all the Shallan personalities as well.  That being said, I'm surprised one of her personalities didn't mention being into Jasnah ;)

 

 

 

Edited by Rock's Stew
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20 minutes ago, Rock's Stew said:

So maybe I just missed this and need to do a reread. (Of course I will, but not right now).  What exactly are the Fused?  They aren't spren are they?  Wit mentions dancing with one in the epilogue centuries earlier.  Are they shadows stuck in the Cognitive realm? Or shadows stuck in Damnation?

According to the Stormfather

Quote

THEY ARE THE SPREN OF PARSHMEN LONG DEAD. THEY ARE THEIR KINGS, THEIR LIGHTEYES, THEIR VALIANT SOLDIERS FROM LONG, LONG AGO. THE PROCESS IS NOT EASY ON THEM. SOME OF THESE SPREN ARE MERE FORCES NOW, ANIMALISTIC, FRAGMENTS OF MINDS GIVEN POWER BY ODIUM. OTHERS ARE MORE … AWAKE. EACH REBIRTH FURTHER INJURES THEIR MINDS. THEY ARE REBORN USING THE BODIES OF PARSHMEN TO BECOME THE FUSED. AND EVEN BEFORE THE FUSED LEARNED TO COMMAND THE SURGES, MEN COULD NOT FIGHT THEM. HUMANS COULD NEVER WIN WHEN THE CREATURES THEY KILLED WERE REBORN EACH TIME THEY WERE SLAIN. AND SO, THE OATHPACT. THEY GAVE THEMSELVES UP. AS ODIUM IS SEALED BY THE POWERS OF HONOR AND CULTIVATION, YOUR HERALDS SEALED THE SPREN OF THE DEAD INTO THE PLACE YOU CALL DAMNATION. THE HERALDS WENT TO HONOR, AND HE GAVE THEM THIS RIGHT, THIS OATH. THEY THOUGHT IT WOULD END THE WAR FOREVER.

Sanderson, Brandon. Oathbringer: Book Three of the Stormlight Archive (p. 406). Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition. 

 

Edited by StormingTexan
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14 hours ago, taliefer said:

1- the shallan chapters were just annoying to read, and didnt feel at any way earned. she went from a strong character to one teetering on the edge, cause reasons. easily the weakest part of the book. which is surprising, i enjoyed her alot in my recent re-read.

3- this is the most minor, but while i understand these are broken people...enough is enough. we need more Adolin characters that arent neck high in angst to break up the flow. and i really hope he stays on the path hes on regarding murdering sadeas. that being, sure he can have the occasional moment of guilt, but he seems to realize it had to be done. i really hope he doesnt backslide.

In regards to 1, I assumed Shallan's mental 'descent' in this book was a direct result of her oath/truth at the end of WoR.  I loved that Brandon didn't gloss over that and that it played a huge role in OB.  I may be wrong, but that's the impression I got.  Either way, I thought the switching personalities, especially as they started to meld, was fascinating to read.

3-  While I love how in depth Brandon has gone into the broken aspect of his characters, I love that Adolin is both power-free and more (seemingly) stable then the rest.  Plus in general seems happier, for lack of a better term.  He's a great foil for the rest of the main cast.  A couple more 'Adolin's' would not be amiss, but between Syl, Bridge 4 and Lift (to a degree, at least what has appeared on screen so far,) we have a fair amount of those.

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15 hours ago, taliefer said:

2- While the payoff for Dalinar's arc was great (bringing the 3 realms together was the best part of the book) i felt the underlying tension was weak. he didnt  *actually* kill his wife, she lived up to her reputation of being dull of wit by sneaking into the city Dalinar was there to attack. like This post has been reported for attempting to skirt the rules? i actually found myself agreeing with younger Dalinar, which i really dont think was the intent here. i can understand why Dalinar would have so much strife for this, but it didnt come across to myself as i was reading. i couldnt empathize, which lowered impact it had on me.

I feel you. I think Dalinar was a monster with all his savagery, lack of empathy, etc etc. But. Evi was indeed an idiot. She should have seen Dalinar was totally lost into bloodthirst, and if she should have begged of anyone it was of him and not the city. Plus she just thought Dalinar was dead, killed by the treachery of a lordling who Dalinar had given several opportunities of peacefully coming into the fold as a highlord. Did she really expect anything out of any of the two combatants in the field? That been said, what Dalinar did was terrible. Burning an entire city alive? Killing every single person in it? And even if acidentally killing his wife? Its not easy to stomach. I simply think Dalinar was a monster and Evi was a moron.

21 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

funny thing, he actually did change the world. now the abuse don't happen anymore to some people or some other. no, they happen to everybody. human? kept as a slave and scheduled for exterminatiion. singer? will be sacrificed to reborn a fused. spren? voidspren are conquering shadesmar as we speak. everybody is suffering. yay for equality!

Nice catch ;).

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Also, worldhopper sighted?  When Dalinar went to visit the Nightwatcher one of his men was Felt, who was more 'foreign' than Dalinar.  Mentioned before in TWOK or WoR as somebody in Dalinar's army, but also the house spy from Mistborn.  I'm like 95% sure it's the same person based on his wording with Dalinar.

If this has already been mentioned, sorry.  Too many pages to go through lol.

Edited by Rock's Stew
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8 hours ago, StormingTexan said:

THEY ARE THE SPREN OF PARSHMEN LONG DEAD. THEY ARE THEIR KINGS, THEIR LIGHTEYES, THEIR VALIANT SOLDIERS FROM LONG, LONG AGO. THE PROCESS IS NOT EASY ON THEM. SOME OF THESE SPREN ARE MERE FORCES NOW, ANIMALISTIC, FRAGMENTS OF MINDS GIVEN POWER BY ODIUM. OTHERS ARE MORE … AWAKE. EACH REBIRTH FURTHER INJURES THEIR MINDS. THEY ARE REBORN USING THE BODIES OF PARSHMEN TO BECOME THE FUSED. AND EVEN BEFORE THE FUSED LEARNED TO COMMAND THE SURGES, MEN COULD NOT FIGHT THEM. HUMANS COULD NEVER WIN WHEN THE CREATURES THEY KILLED WERE REBORN EACH TIME THEY WERE SLAIN. AND SO, THE OATHPACT. THEY GAVE THEMSELVES UP. AS ODIUM IS SEALED BY THE POWERS OF HONOR AND CULTIVATION, YOUR HERALDS SEALED THE SPREN OF THE DEAD INTO THE PLACE YOU CALL DAMNATION. THE HERALDS WENT TO HONOR, AND HE GAVE THEM THIS RIGHT, THIS OATH. THEY THOUGHT IT WOULD END THE WAR FOREVER.

Sanderson, Brandon. Oathbringer: Book Three of the Stormlight Archive (p. 406). Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition. 

Can someone explain how this fits in with what we now know about the origins of humans on Roshar?  So humans brought Surgebinding to Roshar (i'm assuming it was thru Odiums spren/voidspren) and confronted the Parshmen who served Honor. At some point, the humans and Parshmen switched roles/Gods. 

The Stormfather says above that even before the Parshmen learned the surges, men couldnt defeat them.  Were the human voidbringers that invaded Roshar losing to the Parshmen even with their Surgebinding abilities? 

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6 hours ago, fievelgoespostal said:

Can someone explain how this fits in with what we now know about the origins of humans on Roshar?  So humans brought Surgebinding to Roshar (i'm assuming it was thru Odiums spren/voidspren) and confronted the Parshmen who served Honor. At some point, the humans and Parshmen switched roles/Gods. 

The Stormfather says above that even before the Parshmen learned the surges, men couldnt defeat them.  Were the human voidbringers that invaded Roshar losing to the Parshmen even with their Surgebinding abilities? 

odium come with the first men. after some time the man abandon odium for honor, the singer outrage from the 'god's betrayal' pledge their loyality to odium, and odium make the fused after. the men don't gain the surge before the heralds, because the spren mimicked the honorblade.

Edited by Fulminato
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9 hours ago, fievelgoespostal said:

Can someone explain how this fits in with what we now know about the origins of humans on Roshar?  So humans brought Surgebinding to Roshar (i'm assuming it was thru Odiums spren/voidspren) and confronted the Parshmen who served Honor. At some point, the humans and Parshmen switched roles/Gods. 

The Stormfather says above that even before the Parshmen learned the surges, men couldnt defeat them.  Were the human voidbringers that invaded Roshar losing to the Parshmen even with their Surgebinding abilities? 

@Fulminato

Presumably they use surge binding for anything of that type, like chicken for any bird, so it could be drastically different from the surge binding we see.

Also, this could be post god swap that this quote is referring to, it seems implied to be as much due to the fuzed being implied to have been created by Odium.

Edited by Blacksmithki
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5 minutes ago, Blacksmithki said:

@Fulminato

Presumably they use surge binding for anything of that type, like chicken for any bird, so it could be drastically different from the surge binding we see.

Also, this could be post god swap that this quote is referring to, it seems implied to be as much due to the fuzed being implied to have been created by Odium.

the fused are powered by odium, and we see they can use the surge (gravitation and abrasion for sure). a surgebind is a bond between a man and a spren. the spren saw the honorbalde (honor sliver give to the heralds) and mimicked them.

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I disagree with Shallan and Adolin being boring. I think it would be boring to have a love triangle between them. There tends to be a trend in literature that makes strong female characters involved in love triangles between two men. I think BOTH situations simulate real life situations- I’ve seen many people get caught up in a messy love triangle. I’ve also seen people who recognize their temptation for other people, but practice self-control. Honestly, I think it’s super refreshing to see a character NOT get sucked into the triangle. I could definitely see Sanderson killing off Adolin at some point to explore this relationship in the later years, though I hope it doesn’t happen. Personally, I’m crossing my fingers for a Kaladin-Jasnah relationship. I think that would be such a unique and interesting storyline.

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I disagree with Shallan and Adolin being boring. I think it would be boring to have a love triangle between them. There tends to be a trend in literature that makes strong female characters involved in love triangles between two men. I think BOTH situations simulate real life situations- I’ve seen many people get caught up in a messy love triangle. I’ve also seen people who recognize their temptation for other people, but practice self-control. Honestly, I think it’s super refreshing to see a character NOT get sucked into the triangle. I could definitely see Sanderson killing off Adolin at some point to explore this relationship in the later years, though I hope it doesn’t happen. Personally, I’m crossing my fingers for a Kaladin-Jasnah relationship. I think that would be such a unique and interesting storyline.

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On 11/14/2017 at 9:42 AM, Pattern said:

Moash. What a jerk. And now equipped with a mysterious blade, enabling him to kill the Heralds for good.

Spoiler on the mistborn original trilogy!

 

That seems to be the general opinion. However, if this series has shown me something, it probably is the fact that no matter how evil a deed might seem, one should first find out the motivation behind it before judging the character doing the deed. The fact that Sanderson so blatantly encourages us to hate him makes me wonder, especially since his reasons are not very explicitly presented. The situation reminds me of a similar one in the Mistborn series, namely Kelsier's brother, Marsh ( and not just because of the name ). I think that Sanderson will radically change our opinion about Moash in the fourth book...

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23 hours ago, Rock's Stew said:

Also, worldhopper sighted?  When Dalinar went to visit the Nightwatcher one of his men was Felt, who was more 'foreign' than Dalinar.  Mentioned before in TWOK or WoR as somebody in Dalinar's army, but also the house spy from Mistborn.  I'm like 95% sure it's the same person based on his wording with Dalinar.

If this has already been mentioned, sorry.  Too many pages to go through lol.

Yeah, Felt is a confirmed (by Brandon) worldhopper.

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/2-jordancon-2016/#e138

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7 hours ago, Fulminato said:

the fused are powered by odium, and we see they can use the surge (gravitation and abrasion for sure). a surgebind is a bond between a man and a spren. the spren saw the honorbalde (honor sliver give to the heralds) and mimicked them.

It's a bit questionable to say that surgebinds are a bond between a man and a Spren because Surgebinding (to surgebind presumably) is the act of manipulating the surges (natural forces exterior to the shards or Spren) and Heralds can do that without a bond with a Spren (so can anyone with an Honorblade)

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2 hours ago, Housedunn said:

So let me get this straight:

Bridge 4 and Bridge 13 are not wind runners. 

Kaladin, Teft, Rock, Lopen, Skar, and Drehy are all full radiants

and Bridge 13 is Teft's squires

I'm not convinced Skar and Drehy have bonded spren. Kaladin notes when he meets them that Drehy has cuts on his face and Skar looks like he hadn't slept in weeks, which means they haven't healed with stormlight. Also, they have practiced lashings as squires, so they could have flown back to the oathgate if they were full radiants. It's possible they had no stormlight for the duration of their multi-week trip from Kholinar to the coast where Kal found them, but the merchant they were with had a functioning spanreed which requires an infused ruby. I think they are still squires and needed his presence to use stormlight.

Also, he mentioned having all his squires speak the first ideal back in Part 2, so it makes sense that they may have spoken the second ideal without bonding their own spren, or follow the same ideals their radiant.

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