derrickthewhite

Sorry, I was referring to character motivation, not to what was possible or not. Folks generally don't normally burn their spikes, as far as I'm aware.

That makes sense! Thanks a ton!

but those are both hemalurgic metals that won't be burned under any circumstances. The metals he stores age in ARE something he burns, and while he could turn burning them off, wouldn't that kill him? I though duralluminum depletes any metal that you are currently burning at the same time as it. But Rashek has to compound his age metal mines at all times, doesn't he?

I'm wondering if Rashek could burn Duraluminum without killing himself. He dies pretty quickly when his age metal minds are removed, and duraluminum burns off all of your reserves. So would using duraluminum kill him by burning off all of his age, or would he survive some way? Thanks?

May I point out that your counter examples are heavily wars of independence rather than anti-nobility revolutions (with the notable exception of spain -- and I'm not sure how significant that one was, its relatively minor and bracketed on both sides by other conflicts of a similar nature). Independence wars do have a much better track record than revolutions aimed at the social order. Of course, the conflicts we see here is not a war of independence, its a social restructuring. And those have a very bad track record.

viva la revolution! hail madame guillotine! Killing them all is the lazy, hateful, ineffective way to handle things.

I actually don't find Kelsier to be right. Kelsier was just as much the tool of a god trying to destroy humanity as Paalm was. The lord ruler was bad, but he actually was doing his best. And Kelsier didn't improve the lives of the scaa. Elend improved the lives of the scaa in one corner of the world while those in the other dominances were slaughtered by tyrants. Lord Ruler was bad, but was he worth the wars that came afterward? Kelsier has more redeeming qualities than Paalm, and was working against a system that was more horrific than Paalms. And Lord ruler was actually trying to implement putting everyone into their tidy little place in his plan and world. But those comparing Paalm and Kel really aren't that far off.

Two points: First, Mind Control is not the end all evil action. Yes, there are some people who believe that, but 30 seconds of mind control is preferable to death. That's not very poetic, but its practical. "Give me liberty or give me death!" sounds wonderful, but the vast majority of humanity when faced with those circumstances will choose servitude. And I see very little difference between magical mind control and other harsh forms of coercion. Being trapped in your own body is bad, but we don't exactly see paralyzing someone as worse than killing them. Harmony's seizure of Paalm is no more torture than a police officer using a painful grip to arrest someone: Temporary, and while it can be used as torture, its primary purpose was to win a struggle. Second, Paalms primary claim is that everyone is under harmony's thumb. That they do what he wants them to do. Including that the houses are part of his apparatus. That everyone is stuck living the lives he's outlined for them. Despite the fact that the houses are corrupt and Wax is acting as a tool of harmony to try and fix the current order. Despite the fact Harmony complains these people aren't going out and colonizing like he wants them to. She's attributing far more power and precision to Harmony than he actually has. She's blaming the entire system as the intention outcome of a single (admittedly powerful) person. Which is quite far from the truth.

I'm going to argue that odium is number one, not harmony. harmony has the most 'raw power', but odium is far older, and has far more tricks up his sleeve. He has more experience in shard to shard combat, is capable of destroying shards (which ruin didn't seem to know how to do). Its hinted he may have been involved in whatever happened to aldonosium. In a fight between the two, my money is on odium. Also, if we have four splintered shards, aren't their 11 living shard bearers? because harmony has two?

I ran across brandon via writing excuses ! (I'm a fan of howard taylor). Additionally, I live in provo, which means brandon fans are everywhere. I think I borrowed Elantris from a roommate, but I know of a number of places I can get his books. Notably NOT the public library. the provo library has five or more copies of most of his books and most the books are on hold at any given time.

For what its worth, the mentioned list gives compounders their own names, and any twinborn with a solid compounding ability is probably going to be known just as a 'gold compounder' or a 'steel compounder'. And in many cases they are in a category of their own as to power. Some compounding isn't as impressive though: An iron compounder is probably less useful than a skimmer.

Mistborn starts slower than a lot of brandon's other books, including some of the cosmere stuff, like warbreaker or elantris. Just keep in mind that a lot of the fun in this series is in the twists -- which don't show up until late in the book for obvious reasons. Yes, there are a lot of twists. No you will not see them coming. If you avoid spoilers on anything, avoid them on this series. Its really good. trust us on this one.

I did not come up with the terms. I used the terminology of the objection I was responding to: namely, that David being an epic cheapens a core theme of the series. I wondered if David somehow ended up with epic powers and simply didn't notice because of his current interaction with his weakness almost as soon as I put the book down. Gaining powers when you shouldn't is a repeating theme in brandon's work. I'm not sure I'm commiting to the theory yet, but I think its a strong one. The gifting is a pretty strong counterargument though. At this point I support it mostly for story reasons rather than in-universe evidence.

I'm not really sure that the message is there. The reckoners use epic powers. They filter them through gifters and technology, but they rely heavily on them. They took down steel heart only by actually using their epic directly rather than having him function as a gifter. Lines like "sometimes you have to help the heroes along" are about how the layman can influence things through the 'important people'.