Garfield

There are several thought that popped up in my mind about the spren Firstly, helping the humans to keep desolations at bay. What exactly is their stake in the game? Spren are in and by themselves quite happy in their own cognitive realm/Shadesmar it seems. Now, why were they even interested in humans in the first place? They emulated Honor, bonding to humans to give them surgebinding to fight off Odium and the desolations. But why? Are they in any way, as a species or individually, negatively affected if Odium takes over Roshar, so do they gain some advantage if they prevent Odium from taking over Roshar? Next, apparently all spren that are non-conscious in our realm, but seem to have some kind of conscious representation in the cognitive realm. Aren't they furious that humans trap some of them to harness their power in fabrials?

As I understand it, there aren't many spren around that would be willing to bond with a human. They don't have a death wish.

I guess the unbalanced impression comes from the fact that most of the time in the books we see K interacting with lighteyes in power, not with normal, low rank lighteyed citizens like the quartermaster

He doesn't stigmatize them in general, he is quite okay with Dalinar's quartermaster, despite being a lighteyes. He only has a problem with lighteyes in a position of power. Why? Because since Wistiow as a child until Dalinar all he had been confronted with have abused their station and harmed him considerably.

We also have to take into account that Alethkar doesn't have a UN carta of acceptable warfare techniques. Taking hostages was a perfectly acceptable strategy in medieval Europe. I would despise Dalinar if he had raped women or slaughtered civilians to shock the enemy into submission or something

Indeed. The Sons of Honor and Taravangian are the most deluded and dangerous players on Roshar. I wonder how the situation as a whole political, religious and social structure on Roshar will play out, now they get regular everstorms and monster infestations to cope with while crazy T and Dalinar both stupidly compete for control instead of working together.

Oh, I like Jasnah. It s just not very advisable to step on her toes. She is not very erratic in her aggression and her ultimate motivation always seemed rather constructive and not overly selfish.

As far as I remember, Dalinar bonded one of the blades that Adolin had won in the duel.

Yeah, sweet Jasnah. LOL. Adolin would duel you to get rid of you, Jasnah would send an assasin or soulcast you into a ball of fire. Sweet.

We also have to keep in mind, Adolin's chosen Calling is not warfare or politics, it s duelling. That s more of a fairness based gentleman's activity, not something cunning, or crudely aggressive. He seems to be a very, very capable generic good guy growing up in a basin full of sharks and is only accpeted in his society because he is so good with a sword. With his attitude he is almost as much of a misfit in his society of cunning, backstabbing a-holes as his brother is.

Frankly, in the flahsback chapters to Kaladin's early years we always get to see him during times when some kind of trouble is brewing for him or his beloved family. It is mentioned that Kaladin feels quite miserable every year through the weeping weeks and his brother helped him considerably to get through these. The rest is situations that wouldn't be easy or happy for any teenager. After the death of the old citylord he is isolated and has no friends, his family is living in a situation of oppression and isolation, his father urges him to become a surgeon to enable him to escape the life in Hearthstone. Would you feel in general happy and relaxed growing up like that?

The problem with you is not that you disagree with something, the problem is, that you aggressively attack people with different opinions,claim that your opinion is the only valid opinion and you are entitled to call people with different opinions "ignorant". Again, we are talking about OPINIONS about a work of fiction. This is not mathematics. There is no absolute wrong or right when interpreting a piece of fictional writing. It's all subjective OPINION. So stop trolling threads on this board.

Nah, Kaladin has had seasonal depressions all his life (means he had considerable periods of time where he was not depressed) and recently went through some serious traumatic experiences. I would rather call him a PTSD sufferer right now, not the typical clinically depressed. Kaladin lost his brother, was betrayed and enslaved by Amaram, several times beaten to unconsciousness, forced into risking his life twice a week while again seeing friends die, and then put under the strain of being responsible for the life of Dalinar s family and the training of the ex bridgemen while figuring out his strange new abilities, training to fight shardblades, riding etc so he probably had 16 hours work days. Clinical depression is when you get depressed without a plausible drastic outer cause for the mood problem. Kaladin had plenty of reasons to lose his emotional balance over the course of the past year.

The level of entitlement as the opinion police of this forum and the impertinence you display while trying to enforce your superiority complex this is intolerable. The only ignorant person in this thread is you.

Ah, and you are the allknowing judge on who is ignorant and who is not.. Yeah, great......

It seems Adolin likes and accepts his brother no matter what, something that I find is the highest recommendation for a person living in a society like that and growing up with the blackthorn as a father.

I guess he didn t want to disappoint his father, for that reason he didn t tell him about the screaming in his head. As for the Vorin religion. I don t think that at this point in history the ardents still knew, that a more or less sentient spren talking to you meant you would become a Radiant. We don t know enough about vorin theology and doctrin to determine how much factual knowledge they have about Radiants.

It s not even clear what the human population did to piss off the Radiants. There was a lack of military discipline at the Keep, at that time, sure. That points to maybe the humans taking too little responsibility themselves, expecting the KRs to do everything for them. On the other hand, after the last desolation, for unknown reasons the cycle of the desolations ended (at least for the time being) so the KRs were no longer needed. BTW, one question came to my mind. Did KRs die of old age when they weren't killed in battle just as regular humans are? Shouldn't there be spren that had lost their human partners due to old age or battle rather than betrayal? Do KRs become immortal or at least very very long lived through the bond and the healing abilities of stormlight? One would assume the aging caused by degradation of the gene material through cell division doesn t affect a human with access to stormlight healing as it does a normal human. So, where these KRs that broke their oath "newbies" that had never fought in a desolation or were they maybe really old and tired.

I found that a bit odd too, when comparing the Recreance vision and the mechanics of Kaladin's bond-breaking. Kaladin's bond broke once he had made two contradictory promises, one of them explicitly deciding not to protect someone worthy of his protection (Elhokar was not a harmful villain that needed to be removed but just incompetent and annoying, harming others not with intention but through his personal unsuitability as a king, so removing him from this office might be reasonable, but not outright killing him) The bond broke in Kaladin's mind the harmful intention formed and solidified, not with an official declaration of his intention to others. So the spren of the old KRs should have died the moment, the human bondees had decided to abandon their duty. They shouldn t have been able to travel to that Keep as intact KRs and then lay down their armour and blades.

Do we know who the other godspren are? What other godspren exist?

I decided to read Terry Goddkind now and then maybe give the Stormlight books a second round, watching out for little hints of all kinds that I might have missed the first time.

That would be like needing an extra comment of JK Rowling to understand the magic system in her universe. I want that that background info to be woven into the story I read, not in an interview with the author. This is only volume 2 of a longer series, I expect those details to be explained within the later books, I expect it to fully work as a standalone if I am not interested in other works of that universe and companion literature/interviews by the author. Like if I read a Superman comic, I don t want to depend on also reading Batman to understand the lore of the world, even if its happening in the same universe. I don't want to read Batman to understand Superman and vice versa plus a comment of the author to fully understand what is going on in one given story.

I think with Amaram the whole thing was about Amarams assumedly flawless honor and credibility. Once Dalinar had caught Amaram shamelessly lying about a shardblade he believed Kaladin's version of the story more than Amaram's. When I remember correctly, this scene also happened after Kaladin had publicly demonstrated that he can handle himself against a shardbearer quite well and had turned down plate and blade a second time, when Adolin wanted to give both to him.

Yep. The fairly long thing he had used to slice up the belly of the chasmfiend only a short time earlier. He couldn't have archieved that with a shard-dagger and he probably would have wondered and remarked on it if she had handed him a dagger length shardblade. I'd have to re-read that scene to see what exactly happened.

We still don't know exactly what the motivation of the parshendi leaders as well as Gavilar had been and why they continued fighting the war, never tried to retreat and disappear, or explain themselves in the hopes of a peace treaty, if they had a valid reason to kill Gavilar. We do not even know why parshendi suddenly wanted the gemhearts too. There are plenty of groups and individuals with shady, more or less unclear motivations in Roshar and the parshendi leaders are one of them. The only player where we know what he wants and how he is about to get this done is Odium. All sort of people think they know how to stop him or in their ignorance want Odium/voidbringers back. It's a muddle of unclear conspiracies, some of them apparently fairly dumb and/or dangerous, that's all we can say at this point.