News

It’s drought season for cosmere content, and with six months to go until the release of Rhythm of War, waiting feels like a never ending Desolation. Never fear, good adventurers, Brotherwise Games has just announced that their upcoming board game, Call to Adventure: The Stormlight Archive, will be available for pre-orders from Monday, May 26th, with full release on July 1st. The announcement was made by Daniel DeVita over at Winter is Coming and includes an exclusive first look at new card artwork, this time of Szeth, by Art Demura.

This episode we're talking about characters and tropes. Let's talk about the dead spouses (mostly wives) and dead parents in the cosmere. Well, dead fathers in non-cosmere works, but hey. We talk about the Lost Lenore trope as well as fridging, and a good bit of poking fun about all the dead wives in Brandon's works.

You know how we say on Shardcast that we don't need rails? Well turns out we rarely had rails to begin with. Today we are taking a look at our old cosmere theories. And when I say old I mean real old, like from 2008, pre-Hero of Ages. We'll talk about some fandom history on the forums, tell you how we got into the fandom, and mock old our old theories all around. Then at the end we'll give you some advice on how you can theorycraft better. Hopefully you'll enjoy this retrospective, and I imagine eventually we'll do another one of these!

The lovely Drew McCaffrey has interviewed the equally lovely Isaac Stewart, Art Director for Dragonsteel Entertainment, in a Tor.com article on the Art of the Cosmere. And if you've read a Stormlight book recently, you know there's a ton of art in it! In this interview, Drew asks about how Isaac got started with Dragonsteel, his maps, and Nazh. You should really go check it out, because it's very well done. 

I'm here to talk about a few tidbits at the end that might interest you about some upcoming cosmere things. 

The Brandon news train does not stop! We have a bunch of things this week, like this spiffy Bridge Four Poster, styled like a movie poster. There's some new jewelry by Badali. Brandon's YALLFEST keynote now has a VOD. And lastly, just a reminder since it is time-sensitive: the Tor.com free Way of Kings ebook ends today. They extended their giveaway due to some site difficulties on the 4th.

Tor.com's eBook Club is giving away The Way of Kings, the first Stormlight Archive book, on May 4th. It's super easy, all you need to do is sign up for Tor.com's eBook Club mailing list and you'll receive it on May 4th. Nice! (Turns out, this was a very popular event and Tor's site crashed for a bit, so they are extending the deal for another day through May 5th. The site seems to be doing better now.)

 

Have you missed PedantiCast? Well, then you're ready for this episode! Today we are talking in-depth about the magic in Warbreaker. We talk about Awakening and BioChromatic Breaths. We discuss the Heightenings and more. Also, surprisingly, lizards, and Ian returns with new pedantry.

In lieu of an in-person event, JordanCon is happening online this year and the folks at Dragonsteel have been kind enough to come onto a panel. Isaac and Kara Stewart, Brandon’s art director and event manager, respectively, gave us a rundown of what’s happening with the Kickstarter for the Way of Kings leatherbound edition and answered some of the most burning questions. Also, more of Isaac talking this Saturday!

A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far away, it was pointed out on Shardcast that I am rather bothered by the mechanics of blood Soulcasting. Or more specifically, how it is used to save Shallan’s life during The Way of Kings. I have a background in molecular biology and have spent several years working with blood products, so to have some fun, I decided to put my nerd cap on and combine two of my passions.

News time! The UK cover for Rhythm of War, the fourth Stormlight Archive book, has been revealed. What do you think of it? I'm told by Ben (a fan of the UK covers) that generally UK covers don't depict any particular scene but more are trying to convey an idea. I'm not sure how much analysis we can get out of this one. What are your thoughts on the cover? 

Well, we are all in quarantine, so we wanted to do some fun nonsense to take our mind off things. So it's time for some more Ship it or Rip it! We ask the real questions here, like "what is kingdom," will Shannon continue her commanding lead from last time, and will Eric be just as terrible at this game as before? 

Lots of changes have occured since our last one of these posts, so let’s look at all the news Brandon has recently released. 

First, for those of you who missed it, Brandon released Stormlight Book Four Update #8 on Reddit about two weeks ago. In it, he mentions that the summer kickstarter is looking uncertain with world events currently going as they are. He also confirms that that Rysn is the novella he’s started to write for between Oathbringer and Rhythm of War, since Aimia has some importance coming up in the series and Rysn is the best character to set that up. While he’s talked about releasing that as part of the summer kickstarter, he’s only written the first two chapters--about 10 percent--so far, so the future is looking uncertain as he transitions back into Rhythm of War drafts. 

This episode, we're talking about the history and cultures of Sel, featuring sharks! Well, somewhat. Today we have the debut of the Shardcaster Benny. What's a Svordishman's favorite weapon? A Svord, of course. Okay, but really, there's a lot of interesting history and lore on Sel, and it'll be pretty cool to see Elantris sequels someday.

It’s official folks - Stormlight Four has a confirmed title! First announced by Tor then retweeted by Brandon, the newest edition to the Stormlight saga has been confirmed to be named Rhythm of War. Brandon floated this as the tentative title back in February 2019 during the initial outlining of the book, and it appears it stuck firm. 

After Brandon's marathon writing session at the end of 2019, where he wrote 19k words in a single day, Brandon has confirmed via a reddit update that the first draft of Stormlight 4 is complete. Although Brandon still has four other drafts to do between now and July 1st, this marks a major milestone in the writing of this book. While Venli is the focus character for this book and has many viewpoints, it will be more of an ensemble than the previous Stormlight books. 

It's time for a very loopy and entertaining podcast on the Horneaters. We talk about their origins, their culture, Rock and his mysteries, and more. And it is sometimes a little silly sometimes. This week we have Eric (Chaos), Ian (WeiryWriter), Evgeni (Argent), and Shannon (Grey).

Happy Koloss Head-Munching Day!

Yep, it's that time of year again folks. (Or will be, in a few hours, when the 19th rolls around.) The Christmas trees are decorated, the menorahs are polished, the koloss are looking for some heads to munch... And with birthday cake in one hand, Brandon Sanderson is using the other to type out his annual State of the Sanderson address!

Stay tuned for more on that... Oh, and sorry of this post title got your heart thumping. ^_^ No, nobody knows exactly when it will be posted. But you can bet, when it does, it will be all the buzz in every corner of the fandom. In the meantime, I've got something for you to do before resuming your furious CTRL+F5 mashing...

STATE OF THE SANDERSON 2019 BINGO!

Fans of the Stormlight Archive, get hyped because Tor and Brandon Sanderson have officially announced November 17, 2020 as the release date of book 4! 

From what we know, there’s a lot to be excited about in the book. In an article on Tor.com, Brandon says that book 4 will have one of the first scenes he created for Stormlight, and that it may be his favorite in the entire series.

Okay, for reals, podcasts won't stay this long, but we had so many thoughts on Starsight. This is a bit more of a mixed reaction on this one, and so we have an extremely spirited--and not at all salty--discussion on Skyward's sequel. What did you think? Did you like it? Did you dislike it? Obviously, major spoilers in this episode!

Hi all, this review will be a FULL SPOILER review of Starsight. There are full book spoilers here, so if you haven’t finished reading the book, you may want to turn back. Unless you don’t care about spoilers whatsoever, then by all means, continue on!

This review is actually two reviews. The first is by Greywatch, who liked the book, and the second is by Overlord Jebus, who didn’t. Please enjoy and let us know what you think in the comments!

It's November 26th now! Well, I know it has been November 26th for quite a few people in the world, but now it's November 26th in American timezones, which means Starsight is officially out! (I can confirm, I just bought the ebook.) That means you can discuss it in our spoiler board or our #starsight_spoilers channel on Discord. We hope you enjoy reading it! Of course, it's fine if you don't, in which case let us know in our discussion threads! Standard reminder: it's fine for people to like something you didn't, and it's fine to not like something other people liked!

There is a ludicrous amount of stuff to talk about on today's Shardcast. First up, we show off Crafty Games's metal Mistborn dice, which are awesome, then we dig right into the Nalthis Star Chart, which has some... anomalies, you could say. Then we get more of the Stormlight 4 Prologue and confirms what we were thinking last time. Then Harmony, there are so many Words of Brandon from Brandon's trip to Israel and Prague. We get stuff on Dawnshards, Cultivation, avatars, and we get into the weeds. And Rafotory. Obviously. 

Today, Warbreaker leatherbound preorders went up! Dragonsteel is teaming up with a variety of bookstores to do the preorders. See below at the bottom of this post on Brandon's site for up-to-date links where you can preorder the book. This year, they are doing something different for damage prevention and numbering. They are going to pre-sign and number all books before binding them, so each book can be shrink-wrapped and individually boxed. This means they can't offer personalizations, but you'll get a book in the best condition.

Shardcast: Autonomy

By Chaos, in Shardcast,

It's time to talk in-depth about maybe the weirdest Shard of Adonalsium: Autonomy, and its Vessel, Bavadin. There sure is a lot to discuss that have huge cosmere implications, from avatars, Trell, Patji, sand mastery, and Taldain. It's crazy! Also crazy but not unexpected: Ben's terrible pronunciation. This episode also contains possibly the most salt-inducing Who's That Cosmere Character yet. Evgeni isn't a sand master, but he sure might be a salt master.

Isaac Stewart took to Instagram today to share an image of the brand new Nalthian System star chart! Check it out, and watch out for the cognitive anomaly!

Meanwhile, Dragonsteel is running a contest next week, and the prize is an early reading copy of Starsight AND a copy of all four currently released Cosmere leatherbounds! Look for contest details, and two preview chapters for Starsight, in Brandon's newsletter tomorrow. Not signed up for Brandon's newsletter? Do that soon!

Lastly, we've got a quick glimpse at samples for Crafty Games' next Kickstarter campaign: metallic dice for all twenty known Allomantic metals!

Hope you enjoyed your Fall break, because we're back with a new set of Coppermind objectives for November!

First we need to say a big thank you to everyone who helped out with the last round of objectives. The Coppermind has NEVER been in such a good state! We've got less than 5% of articles as stubs and over 2/3 of our articles are marked as complete! So thanks again to everyone for getting us here.

With the release of White Sand Volume 3 and Starsight on the horizon, there will be plenty to do in the coming months, so we hope you'll join in!

After a long and confusing wait, the much barely anticipated conclusion of the White Sand graphic novels is finally here! Those of you following this thrilling saga will know that the listed release date has been pushed back many times since the listing first went up on Amazon. Well, we finally have confirmation that the listed release date is accurate because you can actually purchase and download the ebook. The hardcover, however, is still listed as October 1 and will not get delivered for a few weeks if that’s what you ordered. 

It's been a busy few weeks here at Area 51 Dragonsteel Entertainment the 17th Shard - you can tell because all weeks are busy for our hardworking, handsome, and horribly hantastic (look, I tried) team - and it's pretty much all Brandon's fault. The highlight of it all, of course, was his visit to DragonCon where he held a panel and multiple signings (only days after he posted the fifth Stormlight #4 Reddit update) and read from the prologue of the storming book.

Today we are talking about the Iriali, the strange gold-skinned people in Iri. We're talking about their religion, the Seven Lands, the One, and more! And you know what we talk about more? Kurth. A lot. You could say we were kurthed to talk about it. Did you think there was enough to talk about a single city? Apparently!