LightReader

The Japanese and Korean Light Novel/Manga/Webtoon vibes were strong with this one. Which worked for me because I often enjoy those mediums, and also made a lot of sense once I read the postscript/afterword. I love the artwork in this one. I'd say I enjoyed the story in Tress slightly more, as it took me a bit longer to get hooked by this one, but not by much. I'll need to re-read them both to be sure. I did not see most of the twists in this one ahead of time, which was cool. As I was reading it I made the assumption that Hoid's audience this time is probably Rosharan, as most of the cosmere references he makes seem to be related to Roshar, however I will need to read again more carefully to be sure though. I might've missed something and it's just that Design's references are to Roshar since that's where she's from. I'm curious if anyone noticed a line that specifically marks the audience of this one. He does seem to be telling the story relatively shortly after it happened considering that he assumes Painter and Yumi to still be alive at the time of storytelling. (He notes that they like off-world visitors in the present tense.) This book may be a clue about where Design was during the events of Tress: maybe she was just doing the same thing, living as an eccentric human in some city there, running a noodle shop or some other thing from her list of human experiences she wants to try. Design is fantastic and fabulous in every way. The fact that their spaceship landing on the Sho Del planet and having first contact with aliens will probably be completely overshadowed in their planet's history books by the revelation that the sun exists is kind of hilarious to me. It also made me laugh when I realized Hoid's ridiculous situation here, the protocol he set up, was most likely in response to what Taravangian did to him in the RoW epilogue. I think my one plot nitpick is that none of the painters at the end use their bell thingies to get more painters to come help. I suppose they were just overwhelmed and didn't have a moment to spare, but I kept waiting for someone to think of it during that last fight. They were introduced but Yumi failed to take advantage of it because of her lack of training, which made me think that the people who were trained would obviously know that it would be a good idea to get more help in that situation, especially since there were Dreamwatch painters known to be in the city, and the only painter who knew they were probably useless at that point was Painter himself. Also, if I am remembering correctly, and while it may be simply that Hoid is choosing to translate it this way, I found it interesting that Yumi uses the same -nimi suffix as a mark of respect (e.g. "Warden-nimi") that Szeth uses when he speaks to Nightblood, which he calls "sword-nimi" a few times. Overall, a very enjoyable read.

I've seen a few people ask the question in other threads but I haven't really seen anyone give a theory about it. This story is clearly meant to be taking place in the later stages of the Cosmere, well after SA, so why is Ulaam the one who shows up to record Hoid's embarrassing poems instead of Design? Because if anyone was going to be there just making fun of Hoid I would've expected it to be her. Is she just hanging out somewhere else on the planet or maybe in the cognitive realm? Are they still bonded? Did he just get so sick of her interrupting/spoiling his stories that he decided to find a way to undo the Nahel bond? He didn't seem to use any of his Radiant powers at all, and I didn't notice any Cryptic-like designs on his clothes or anything either. Thoughts? Did anyone see a clue that I missed?

Actually, even if Vin doesn’t realize that what she’s doing is Allomancy, her use of her “luck” as she calls it initially, does seem to be intentional at least some of time. She wills Camon to calm down and then it happens. It’s not a passive effect. There is an argument to be made about pewter burning unconsciously though. But even if there are occasional exceptions, it is rare for magic to happen accidentally in the Cosmere, and the more complex or powerful or precise the magic, the more intent seems to be required.

I think the main idea of intent is that within the cosmere you generally can’t do magic by accident, and often the more precise your intention is the more control you have over the results you get. So basically you can’t do hemalurgy by accident, someone has to intend for it to be done. In the case of Vin’s mother, the intent was coming from Ruin directly. When Kaladin seems to accidentally stick something together, I would guess that the intent actually comes from Syl. It’s possible for the intent to come from someone else other than the actual magic user, but I suspect they would have to be Connected to that person. It’s also possible that external intent would have to come directly from a Connected Shard or splinter(such as a spren).

We need to see what the Regals look like in Shadesmar to know the answer to this, since they’re the ones with voidspren in their gemhearts.

The way the guy talked about laws suggests Skybreaker to me and it seemed like his plate was functioning as a spacesuit. I agree that he was likely using warlight or some other hybrid light and that the gun was his spren. I was imagining the gun would be essentially a laser gun, firing some kind of concentrated hybrid light that would burn out the eyes of anyone living it hits and blast holes through inanimate objects. The fabrial powerpack being like a high-tech gemstone battery able to hold super-condensed light so they can carry a lot of light in a small container. Their other powers could also be fueled by directly accessing a similar light-storage device. I don’t think the weapons themselves would use/apply the surges, same as the current blades don’t.

Actually one of my favorite flashback moments was seeing Rlain interacting with Thude and Eshonai pre-war and getting a little insight into his personality back then. And of course, Eshonai’s send-off gift from the Stormfather was fantastic.

Ham would be a Stoneward, Kelsier would make a good Willshaper. Most of the others could go several directions... It’s harder to go the other direction since allomantic powers aren’t related to your personality necessarily.

If Ruin and Preservation were each others’ anti-investitures, then Sazed would never have been able to pick up both Shards and mix them together. Anti-investitures don’t mix, they cancel each other out, which seems to result in explosions. I don’t think the intents are really relevant once the investiture is brought to the physical realm. I think the Shard/intent is more like a filter that the investiture goes through when it is brought over from the spiritual realm, which results in the different rhythms (which are essentially frequencies of investiture). This is also why the Shard’s intent has more to do with the ability to access investiture and than with the actual powers that the investiture fuels. The names Towerlight and Warlight are something people gave the hybrid lights after the fact because they needed something to call them and these names seemed fitting/descriptive. They aren’t indicative of some new Intent being given to the investiture. I don’t think investiture itself has intent, or else you couldn’t use Preservation investiture to destroy things. It’s the Shards themselves (and people) that have Intent, which shapes the rhythm of the investiture that they bring into the physical/cognitive realms.

I was assuming it was Cultivation who accepted Venli’s oath because the listeners have always seemed closer to Cultivation than to Honor. Wasn’t it a femalen voice that accepted Rlaine’s oath too? Or maybe that was his spren. It could’ve been the spren in both cases actually, since I think they were both female spren. I’d go check but my husband is currently reading.

That does seem to be the case, since there are ten surges here... maybe this is referring to what happens when radiants use voidlight? Except that when Venli uses voidlight the results seem to be the same as when she uses stormlight, so that seems unlikely as well. So maybe it’s the surges powered by anti-light... like anti-surges? Would a radiant even be able to use anti-light... and what would happen to a radiant if they tried to suck in anti-stormlight when they were already had some stormlight already? would they just not be able to absorb it, or would they just explode? That seems really dangerous. These questions might require a thread of their own, if there isn’t one already.

@Honorless The Fused surges powered by voidlight are voidbinding, though it seems each brand of Fused only has one surge and the void-surges are all slightly different from the Radiant ones. But we’ve definitely seen voidbinding. There is the issue that the current Singer forces are barely trained, while the ones in the past were probably much better soldiers. Their numbers were probably a lot higher too, with maybe a lot more Regals. I think Melishi’s gambit had more to do with making sure the war wouldn’t happen again because he knew Honor was in trouble and wouldn’t be able to support future Radiants. I would guess that he hoped to remove their access to forms of power but didn’t realize they’d lose access to all the forms. Also, it seems like past bondsmiths couldn’t open Perpendicularities the way Dalinar can? That ability of Dalinar’s seemed to scare Odium quite a bit at Thaylen Field. Although Ishar was able to do it to travel to Shadesmar... but he is also a special case since he doesn’t have oaths, and Honor may have prevented that before he died, so it might be a relatively new skill for Ishar too.

Could be some of both, most being Singers with a few humans thrown in. I also think there’s a good chance that some of the Unmade were originally humans.