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About this blog

I'm going to post my reactions and analysis of Rhythm of War chapter by chapter as I go through. Contains spoilers for RoW, obviously, and for the Cosmere in general as I'll probably be theory crafting as I go.

Entries in this blog

Interlude I-2

Welcome to my liveblog of Rhythm of War! Index post here. Beware of spoilers. Interlude I-2 Sja-Anat. Huzzah! I am really excited for this one. I spent a long time during Oathbringer trying to translate the Keeper of Secrets text, and we still only got ~60% of it worked out. Plus, she’s a fascinating character that we need more insight into, and who recently accepted an offer from the Ghostbloods. Secrets, here I come! Odium trapped the Unmade in “a halfway existence” fully in neithe
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Interlude I-1

Welcome to my liveblog of Rhythm of War! Index post here. Beware of spoilers. Interlude I-I Sylphrena! Hooray for spren interludes. (Sprenterludes?) First thing first, have to acknowledge the chapter header art with an interesting depiction of Syl. I’m pretty sure that even in Oathbringer the non-recurring characters didn’t get unique chapter art, right? With respect to this piece, it isn’t very similar to most of the fanart I’ve seen, even accounting for the consistent style across
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Chapter 19

Welcome to my liveblog of Rhythm of War! Index post here. Beware of spoilers. Chapter 19 (Garnets) Title: I really don’t remember what garnets do in fabrials. Are they the opposing-motion counterpart to spanreed rubies? I know they soulcast blood, but that’s not the association we care about for a Navani chapter. Epigraph: Open exchange of scientific research? Looks like Jasnah isn’t the only one shaking up cultural norms and having a huge impact on Rosharan society. Industrial Revol
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Chapter 18

Welcome to my liveblog of Rhythm of War! Index post here. Beware of spoilers. Chapter 18 (Surgeon) Title: I’m expecting more disappointment from Lirin this chapter. Maybe Kal will ask if he can go back to a healing role? I can imagine the response would not be encouraging. Epigraph: The Fused have a “stormlight draining” fabrial that relies on a second unknown metal (i.e. not the aluminum alloy used for blocking blades). By the analogies we’ve seen so far to the metallic arts it seem
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Chapter 17

Welcome to my liveblog of Rhythm of War! Index post here. Beware of spoilers. Chapter 17 (A Proposal) Header: Navani chapter, with kalak. Significance: someone has bad breath? Yeah, not sure why I’m even noting the herald icons. Epigraph: learnin’ about Aluminum. Or, whatever alloy of it is being used in the Fused weapons. We know from Shallan’s necklace that aluminum is a known material on Roshar, and I would have expected the scholars studying this stuff to figure out that connecti
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Chapter 16

Welcome to my liveblog of Rhythm of War! Index post here. Beware of spoilers.   Chapter 16 (An Unknown Song) Oh, hey. This is the first time seeing Navani’s chapter-header symbol. I like that shining gem.  Incidentally, I also paged back through to look at the herald symbols gracing each chapter, and much like Oathbringer all of the chapters so far have 4 of a kind (in contrast to WoK in which usually there were two heralds per chapter). I’m not great at analyzing the heraldic attr
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Chapter 15

Welcome to my liveblog of Rhythm of War! Index post here. Beware of spoilers.   Chapter 15 (The Light and the Music) Finally! On to the next chapter! Title: This is a Kaladin chapter, so I’m guessing it’s a reference to the things other people enjoy that he can’t because his life is suffering and depression. Sorry, Kal. Epigraph: So logicspren can reproduce any Boolean operation, timing gate, or similar mechanism based on the design of the fabrial they are used in. I see compu
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Back Cover Copy

Welcome to my liveblog of Rhythm of War! Index post here. Beware of spoilers. Back Cover Before jumping into this, I want to share something very cool that I learned this week. Did you know that the Coppermind has implemented a time machine function where you can access the articles as they appeared prior to the release of a particular book? That means you don’t have to avoid the wiki entirely if you are trying to stay spoiler free. Props to the Coppermind staff and contributors for ma
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Internal Art (Part II)

Welcome to my liveblog of Rhythm of War! Index post here. Beware of spoilers. Internal Art (Part II) Nale. Darkness. Oh, yes. His detached expression really works for what we know about his emotionless approach to things, while at the same time that eyes-closed transcendence looks almost rapturous despite the internal focus. He’s centering himself like a completely self-assured Javert from Les Mis.  Also, he’s floating in a very defying-gravity sort of way, which is appropriate. A
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Internal Art (Part 1)

Welcome to my liveblog of Rhythm of War! Index post here. Beware of spoilers. Internal Art (Part 1) The book is out! Hooray! I imagine that all of you did the same thing I did, which was immediately open to the endpages to pore over the beautiful Herald images. This post will be my reactions to those images, as well as the sketchbook pages that accompanied the chapters I’ve already read. Before that, though, a brief note about my current plan. I will continue to liveblog Rhyt
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Chapter 14

Welcome to my liveblog of Rhythm of War! Index post here. Beware of spoilers. Chapter 14 (Voice) Title: I got nothing. My pie-in-the-sky hope is that this is about Maya finally having something to say, but there’s no possible way that happens until something far more dramatic on Adolin’s end plays out. It’s not Part 1 material. I guess it might be more Venli stuff? Just spitballing here. Epigraph: Come on, Navani. Don’t just give us inanities and then drop that logicspren are importa
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Chapter 13

Welcome to my liveblog of Rhythm of War! Index post here. Beware of spoilers. Chapter 13 (Another Hunt) Title: Is this a Ghostblood chapter? I want a Ghostblood chapter. Epigraph: Did we see any flamespren in their shadesmar forms? Did they appear more divisible, either by being composed of multiple parts or by being more symmetric? I wonder what happens to spren that aren’t susceptible to splitting in this fashion. Does the attempt to do so injure them at all? Have the artifabrians
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Chapter 12

Welcome to my liveblog of Rhythm of War! Index post here. Beware of spoilers. Chapter 12 (A Way to Help) Title: Kal looks for a new job. Epigraph: Yeah, industrialization is not going to work as well when everything is locked up in trade secrets and fabrials are designed specifically to make reverse engineering them more difficult. Then again, without a system of intellectual property protection you may have a hard time encouraging artifabrians to contribute to the Kholin war machine
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Chapter 11

Welcome to my liveblog of Rhythm of War! Index post here. Beware of spoilers. Chapter 11 (Passion and Courage) Title: I’m immediately looking at this as a reference to the Passions (thus a Venli chapter or a focus on the forces of Odium), but in the last chapter Dalinar very conspicuously called Kaladin passionate as a compliment. This just after Vyre’s emotional emptiness is shown to be an exploitable weakness seems to emphasize that Odium’s forces are robbed of their passion. So this co
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Chapter 10

Welcome to my liveblog of Rhythm of War! Index post here. Beware of spoilers. Chapter 10 (A Single Casualty) Well, that’s an ominous title. Who’s gonna bite it in this chapter? Epigraph: Tin cage in this case is operating in its opposition to pewter, as a diminishing effect, rather than anything related to its allomantic or feruchemic properties. The next bit is also significant:  This is making it sound much more complex with factors such as cage shape and contact points avai
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Chapter 9

Welcome to my liveblog of Rhythm of War! Index post here. Beware of spoilers.   Chapter 9 (Contradictions) Epigraph: Pewter cages. Nothing revelatory here. I do wonder what a duralumin cage would do, since the pewter version seems to be a fast and hot expenditure of stormlight. Would it really be near-instantaneous? Is there a way to control such a device without the more mental control of allomancy or other internally directed magics? By extension to a related metal, is it poss
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Chapter 8

Welcome to my liveblog of Rhythm of War! Index post here. Beware of spoilers.   Chapter 8 (Surrender) Epigraph: Bronze for the seeking fabrials makes obvious sense. Heliodor is associated with (checks the cheat sheet) Ishar and the Bondsmiths, with a soulcasting property of flesh. It’s the obvious choice if you want to be alerted to people nearby, as we saw in Rysn’s interlude in Shinovar, but this epigraph confirms that you can use other gems in the same type of cage to detect other
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Chapter 7

Welcome to my liveblog of Rhythm of War! Intro post here. Beware of spoilers. Chapter 7 (The Rarest Vintage) Just a guess that this title is hinting at my hidden larkin prediction for the Ialai scene. Endangered animal all but relegated to myth = rare vintage. Epigraph: zinc and brass as opposing metals. I wonder where I’ve seen that before… Interesting that they influence the strength of the spren’s effect, when a subset of spren are manifestations of emotions, and the metals cor
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Chapter 6

Welcome to my liveblog of Rhythm of War! Intro post here. Beware of spoilers. Chapter 6 (A Loose Thread) Epigraph: Confirmation that the type of metal is important to the fabrial effect. Glad that we have a term for the metallic portion of a fabrial now (“cage”). Our terminology has been seriously lacking in this department.  Ooo, secret passageways inside the chasms! Sneaky, but that sounds like a real maintenance issue. Flooding would be atrocious. I hope not too many slaves died m
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Chapter 5

Welcome to my liveblog of Rhythm of War! Intro post here. Beware of spoilers. Chapter 5 (Broken Spears) Epigraph: Oh, interesting. I thought the spren would enter the gem, then be trapped there when the stormlight ran dry. Instead, it’s more like you create a sudden vacuum, pulling the spren inside. That can’t be a pleasant process on the spren’s side.  Although, I really have to wonder who first discovered this phenomenon. Was this a chance discovery when a larkin was feeding and happene
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Chapter 4

Welcome to my liveblog of Rhythm of War! Intro post here. Beware of spoilers. Chapter 4 (Architects of the Future) Epigraph: I thought you just said these methods were secret and proprietary. I guess you’re the queen mother and the lecturer, so you can disclose what you like. It does look like the speed of stormlight consumption/removal is important for entrapping the spren. Another mention of radiant abilities, this time lightweaving, as belonging to Shallan as distinct from Veil or
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Chapter 3

Welcome to my liveblog of Rhythm of War! Intro post here. Beware of spoilers. Chapter 3 (The Fourth Bridge) Epigraph: So unless the stormlight is removed, the spren has an escape route. Which is interesting, because we know that fabrials must be infused to function, so it’s not an easily reversible process. I’m not sure I’m ready to speculate on the mechanics of how removing the extra investiture congeals the spren into a frozen space, but there’s some very suggestive principles there tha
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Chapter 2

Welcome to my liveblog of Rhythm of War! Intro post here. Beware of spoilers. Chapter 2 (Severed Cords) Epigraph:I wonder why the gem can't be fully infused. Does the Stormlight take up too much space that the spren needs to occupy? In addition does the Stormlight sustain the spren or merely make it more comfortable? (Side note: apparently my dictation tool recognizes “Stormlight.” That will be useful.) A Kal chapter? No, a Syl chapter! Huzzah! In the first book Syl was my very fav
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Chapter 1

Welcome to my liveblog of Rhythm of War! Intro post here. Beware of spoilers. Chapter 1 (Calluses) Epigraph: not much of interest here, except for the word choice to “calm” the spren prior to capture with something it knows and loves. I wonder if failing to do so is really the result of agitation on the spren’s part. It’s clearly not bait, since the gem itself seems to serve that function. Maybe a matter of hypnosis/getting the spren to let its guard down? Alternatively, it may ju
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Cover and Prologue

Welcome to my liveblog of Rhythm of War! Intro post here. Beware of spoilers. COVER We have cover art! Michael Whelan does it again and the release on tor.com of the new cover art for Rhythm of War means I have the impetus to go ahead and start this live blog.  I know that multiple chapters have already been released, but I've been busy with other things and haven't made time to enjoy the hype.  In addition I have tried to keep myself spoiler-free. It's worth noting that the artwo
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