Welcome to my liveblog of The Lost Metal! Intro post here, beware of spoilers.

Chapter 3

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“Thank goodness she had trousers on. If she was going to slip and break her skull, she could at least do it with dignity.”

Ah, yes. The primary benefit of trousers. 

I like how Marasi’s daydream about the Survivor’s Cradle is cut short with an “oh yeah, Wax has been there.” It’s got to be a disjointed experience to live alongside the larger than life figures that are cosmere protagonists, even taking into account her own impressive accomplishments in these adventures.

Wayne hasn’t even noticed the footprints? He appears to be genuine here, and not building up to a joke. I’m not super surprised, I guess, but he’s usually quite observant of details.

Huh, neat development of the Malwish mask culture. “Moving the mask is like … emphasis to the Malwish. It’s not wrong to let people see under the mask, though they pretend it’s taboo.” Not gonna lie, this sounds like something Allik might have made up for his own benefit in pursuing Marasi. If there weren’t other Malwish around for the past few years to confirm this I’d have been very suspicious.

Wayne: you get a lucky hat, as long as you promise to take it off before something unlucky happens. 
I like the logic!

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“...a cavern full of men and women boxing goods…”

See, when your established currency is called a boxing, sentences like this can trip you up. Took me three tries to remember the standard (non-pugilist) meaning of the word.

All this sneaking seems a bit ill-conceived. Maybe I’m jumping the gun here, but wouldn’t any self-respecting criminal enterprise employ a Tineye or two to listen for intruders?

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“By Harmony’s True Name”

– this not being a Stormlight novel, I won’t really be collecting a comprehensive list of swears, but I’m still in the habit of noting them down. Here’s a good one.

Oh, wait if this is Set-affiliated, they’ll have all sorts of off-world devices or powers that will be harder to anticipate than a simple Tineye. Marasi is gonna be in trouble. 

Ah, nope. They just surprised a mundane guard. I guess this gang is more patsies / cat’s paws than actual Set manpower, so they don’t get any of the good stuff.

On that topic, we learn a bit about Set hierarchy: Cycle<Suit<???
Hopefully there’s more info soon.

Chapter 4
I like seeing that Marasi and Wayne have good teamwork in this fight scene. It’s a development that makes their partnership feel like it’s actually been meaningful and substantive in the intervening time between books.

The allomantic grenades really are a game changer in many ways, but especially so for Marasi’s cadmium. I can’t wait to see what game changers accompany the next Era’s developments!

Interesting that Wayne’s affinity for bendalloy, i.e. his progression toward savant-hood, is noticeable to an outside perspective, as Marasi notes his charge time is decreasing. Presumably there are other effects as well. Hopefully the side effects are not of the tragic variety. Bendalloy and Wayne both seem to fall in the “live fast, die young” category, though.

The magnitude of time speeding/slowing from bendalloy and cadmium always feels a bit excessive to me. The other allomantic abilities are powerful as well so from a balance perspective it makes sense that they would be high-end, but time powers are super useful, even without them being strong enough to reach bullet time. I’m not complaining or criticizing, just pointing out that it throws me almost every time this happens in an action scene because I expect the time dilation to be less extreme.

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“Aren’t most of these boxes full of stuff what goes boom?” 

Ah, there’s the callback to Wayne’s earlier comment about being the guy who sometimes gets blown up. Fireworks on the way!

Oh, he just dropped a flash-bang grenade inside a box of explosives. That’s a bit less accidental than I was anticipating.