Bands of Mourning Release, Spoiler Policies, Mistborn: Secret History Announcement

In a few short hours, the sixth Mistborn novel, The Bands of Mourning, will be available for everyone to read. Our Bands forum will allow full spoilers for the book tonight. Get excited. You can read our review of Bands here. Below we'll discuss about our spoiler policies for this novel. But, there's something more.

As we all know, there is always another secret, and with Brandon, that secret is, of course, a secret project. It is also coming out tonight on ebook formats alongside Bands. It's called Mistborn: Secret History, which Brandon revealed on Reddit after Amazon leaked its existence.

Secret History is an ebook novella (and you can find it on Amazon yourself) and it will be on all ebook platforms tonight. It is not coming out February as the Amazon listing suggests. (It will be on iBooks tonight, but when that entry appears, you'll be able to buy it immediately. No preordering there, apparently.) This novella is especially long, at 50,000 words. Just so you know, that's half the length of Shadows of Self, or one-fourth of the first Mistborn book. That's pretty big.

Secret History will eventually have a print edition in a cosmere novella anthology, which Brandon hopes will be out this fall. That anthology will have an audio version. There will probably be a standalone print copy of Secret History, in the vein of the Shadows for Silence book, but not until that anthology has been out for "a few years," says Brandon.

What is Secret History about? I'll just let Brandon say, as he said on Reddit:

3) It is a companion story to the original Mistborn trilogy, and is intended to be read after Bands of Mourning. It can be read after Hero of Ages, if you haven't read the new books, but shouldn't be read before the original trilogy as it contains MAJOR SPOILERS for those books. (And a very small one for Bands of Mourning.)

4) It is not the story from the Video Game. (That's a good guess, though, /u/Chimeraruin.) It DOES deal with the larger Cosmere, though not to the extent that the books eventually will. Consider this a push that direction, but it's still mostly a Mistborn book--and focused on characters from the Mistborn world.

If you're curious about the background of Secret History, this was initially to be a total secret and for it to come out at the same time as Bands, but Amazon did leak its page. It's a thing that exists, but we aren't going to tell you what it is. If you want a mini review, here's one: it is a totally insane, extremely special thing that you should read immediately (after Bands) if you love Mistborn.

Forum Spoiler Policies

At 12:01am tonight, Mountain Time, our Bands of Mourning spoiler board will open up for full book discussion. Why this time zone? Because the midnight release is in Provo, Utah, and it seemed the most sensible time to "start" the book. You'll know when this happens because you'll see a topic called "Bands of Mourning Book Reactions [bands Spoilers]" pinned at the top, and you'll be able to add posts there.

At the same time, there will be another subforum, the Mistborn: Secret History board, that will be open and you will be able to discuss that there--though we will judge you if you go here before finishing Bands.

Here's how spoilers are going to go. We need to be especially strict this time around.

-You must discuss Bands and Secret History in their respective subforums. Do not even use the usual spoiler tags to discuss these books in any other place on the forum.

-Topic titles should not have spoilers (be as vague as possible!) and should either contain the text "[bands Spoilers]" or "[secret History Spoilers]". The reason for this is that, though these topics will be in the Bands or Secret History subforums, they appear in the Recent Topics ticker on the forum home as well as the site home page. Topic titles also appear in the View New Content ability. So, because of this, you will need to be vague about this. Having these tags should make it clear to people who pass across the titles that they should not click those links.

-If there happens to be overlap between Bands and Secret History and you want to discuss both, use the Secret History board.

We will be using these guidelines in ultra-strict mode for the first two weeks of release. We're super serious about this, and if you break this or spoil stuff because you made an extremely poor choice in a topic title, we'll probably put you in a moderation queue, or worse. A moderation queue is a thing where, if we put you there, we will need to manually check all your posts before they will appear to the populace. If spoilers are really bad, it might be grounds to a ban. Let's just keep these guidelines in mind and I'm sure it will go fine!

After February 9th--two weeks after Bands and Secret History are public--we will be exiting ultra-strict spoiler police mode and reverting to our usual policy. You will be able to mention Bands or Secret History spoilers outside of their respective subboards only with use of the spoiler tags. If your entire topic is a spoiler, you must still put them in the subboards. You should also keep using the [bands Spoilers] or [secret History Spoilers]. It will be about six months after release when the subforums disappear (as we did with Words of Radiance) and we exit the main spoiler period.

To be clear on spoiler tags, the easiest way is to simply type this:

[spoiler](Write spoilers here)[/spoiler]

I also want to talk about Cosmere Theories. In the past, we have been lax regarding spoiler topics in the Cosmere Theories board and allowing people to have spoiler heavy book discussion (of a primarily cosmere nature) there right at release. We're going to be more strict now, and so the "ultra-strict" mode still applies in Cosmere Theories. Post the relevant topics in the subboards. On February 9th, you can post spoilery cosmere topics in the Cosmere Theories board, so long as you still adhere to the topic titling guidelines. If you would like, we can move cosmere-heavy topics in the Bands or Secret History subforum to Cosmere Theories on February 9th.

I hope you are as excited for Bands and Secret History as we are. (You should be.) We hope with these guidelines, if you haven't read these first thing, you can still use the forum effectively. Enjoy, everyone.

One final note: Splintercast Reads Shadows of Self will return on Wednesday, rather than its usual Tuesday, because tomorrow, you probably should go read some new Brandon Sanderson-y goodness. But don't worry, Alyx will return soon. She is also going to have Splintercasts for Bands and Secret History, so there will be plenty of screaming to hear for you. I hear some of her reactions on Bands have been particularly awesome...