Knotai

I have to say, I read the end of Part 3 and was pretty stunned. That was an awesome climax. Nothing, though made me drop the book like I did...(spoiler for non-Oathbringer texts) (pls remove if this isn't allowed under the spoiler policy)

I want to consult Occam's Razor and throw out something I haven't seen yet (although I haven't read many of the recent forum posts on this topic). What if Dalinar's boon was to forget Evi, and his curse was to remember her again? What if Dalinar did not include the quantifier "for eternity" in his boon, and the Nightwatcher decided to curse him by eventually bringing back painful memories of her once he had changed as a person?

I'm glad other people noticed a bit of a stylistic change from WoR into Oathbringer. For me, it was a little bit of a surprise at first, but I'm definitely coming to like his "new style more. I say "new" because I feel like it's a change that started around the transition from SoS --> BoM and into the later books of the Reckoners, where Brandon seemed to start writing a little more "improvisatorily", as he calls it, and less "planned" (although a huge amount of planning still goes into these books). From what I've read in Oathbringer, the new style takes away from some of the gravitas and epic quality of the prose in WoR and sometimes reads a little cliched or awkwardly, but there's a huge improvement in characterization. You learn more about the characters, they're deeper in a different way, and funnier; a move away from a Jordan character and maybe a bit towards one from Pratchett. I find it hugely effective when discussing Shallan's identity issues. Pardon the comparison, but to me it seems an awful lot like the composer Stravinsky's Russian style (very heavy, myth-based, derivative of earlier works by others) to his Neoclassical style (lighter, more original, with a thinner texture, and more comical, but still accommodating of large-scale works). I'm still not sure which "style" I like better, but the change certainly isn't for the worse.

I definitely had issues with a couple passages, but I felt that it started to ease into a normal standard midway through the second chapter. The description of the abilities of each person who'd gained powers recently seemed a little awkward to me, but maybe that's just me disliking authors dropping facts in readers' faces. I'm definitely intrigued by May as a possible Radiant/secret society member--I think she'll return, as Brandon doesn't usually name-drop characters and leave them in Jordanian fashion. Also, it's probably nothing, but her name seems surprisingly un-Alethi, especially for a daughter of a highprince.

After Shadows of Self, which I think is Brandon's most well-constructed Cosmere book, I was really let down by Bands of Mourning. Bad character writing, deus ex machina, and too much expansion. There was also a bit too much Cosmere infodumping only in the context of "look, here's an Easter egg!" I haven't read the White Sand graphic novel, but I was really impressed by Eric's character in the original manuscript, which managed to overcome some of the problems with the plot and Khriss.

I seem to recall there being a (possibly separate) thread that pretty much narrowed these guys down to Moelach and Nergoual. Which is which, I'm not sure. But if the skinnier one is what Dalinar sees when he is in the midst of battle, that points to it being Nergoual (who grants the Thrill).

If you consider it in terms of particle physics, you could imagine an iron metalmind almost like a graviton capacitor in a sense. In that case you could store gravitational potential energy...

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised at all if Eric shows up in later books, either as a revenge-seeking worldhopper or a Shardholder. Last time we saw him, he was walking away from Kenton's appointment (or whatever it was) depressed. He doesn't even get a proper ending. Which is tragic, but it also opens the door for his story to continue. It's one of the things I want to ask Brandon if/when I get a chance.

It seems like each system of investiture is closed e.g. changes in investiture on one planet do not have effects outside of that planet. That said investiture is universally compatible to different degrees across the cosmere. The 2nd Law of thermodynamics still applies as well e.g. entropy of the Cosmere will increase when a spren turns into a shardblade. IMO the 1st law is not being violated because no matter is being created or destroyed, only converted using energy taken from the environment/Shard, when a spren turns into a Shardblade or something like that. Because matter is being neither created or destroyed and we use the matter-energy paradigm we use today in relative physics, we can assume that neither the First nor the Second Law is violated in the Cosmere.

We have a WoB that the kandra worldhopper is female and we are unlikely to have seen her in a male form.

I don't think it's feasible that Hoid has swallowed the bead of Lerasium. He and is most likely keeping it for someone in the future; putting it in his mouth could have been a red herring to fans. That said, with Iyatil being a descendant of the South Scadrians, it would not surprise me if there were several Allomantic capacitors lying around Roshar somewhere.

Moelach is the one who causes the Death Rattles--King T notes that whenever he is close, the death rattles increase. That said, the movement of the Unmade in the physical Realm is linked to their motion in the Cognitive Realm, so I do agree with that he is doing something to people as they pass through the Cognitive Realm on to the Spiritual on Roshar.

From Alloy of Law annotations, chapter 17:

I was wrong about Warbreaker. It happens after Mistborn I, not before. But the kandra could not have appeared in Elantris because that happened about 6000 years before the Way of Kings prologue...they didn't exist yet. Which eliminates any worldhopping or mission to another planet under TLR's auspices.

Two additional points brought up earlier in this thread that will help narrow the search process. There was a WoB that he would not write a female kandra as a male character. I'll try to look it up but I think it's somewhere earlier in this thread. ​ Whoever is the kandra in SA has to be alive to appear in Mistborn books set afterward (Alloy of Law onward). Therefore they cannot die in the non-Mistborn book they appear in.