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Siaun Sanche

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Everything posted by Siaun Sanche

  1. My big world-building hope for the series is that the Parsh continue to rule over Alethkar where they were held as slaves, even if (especially if) large number of them turn against Odium.
  2. See, I think that's more of a grimdark idea than the Stormlight Archive is really built for. To my mind, the lesson that Kaladin needs to learn is that the Singers also need to be protected.
  3. I don't know if this will happen, but one natural way to structure Song of Secrets is with a Singer uprising storyline (Venli/Eshonai + probably Kaladin) and an Urithiru storyline (Dalinar/Szeth/Jasnah/Shallan), and then tie them all together in one climactic battle. You might slightly reduce the number of view point chapters that the main three have while keeping them active in the narrative and giving them plenty of screen time.
  4. My instinct is to say OB>WoR>>>WoK. I think the second half of Way of Kings has pacing issues, particularly on the Dalinar/Elhokar/Sadeas side of things, until the big fight at the end happens. My broader Sanderson ranking would probably be something like OB>WoR>Mistborn 1>Edgedancer>Warbreaker>Mistborn 2>>WoK>>>Elantris, with the proviso that Elantris is a book that I basically like so IMO none of these books are bad.
  5. It seems weird to humanize those Listeners and establish their broader POV (as distinguished from that of the Forged or the odiumspren) as reasonable if the upshot is that Kaladin should have killed them. It would be like Dalinar's OB story ending with him deciding that the Blackthorn was awesome and he should burn more villages.
  6. I'm not sure that Kaladin's fourth Ideal is going to be about protecting himself first, or letting people protect themselves or something. Kaladin's intended to be a heroic character; he doesn't need to learn a lesson about being less heroic so that he can be sure to get to bed at a reasonable hour or something. Dramatically speaking the story requires something that will push him to greater exertions, not something that has him watching his fiber intake and limiting his screen time right before bedtime. Also the second Ideal already says that Windrunners need to protect specifically those who cannot protect themselves, so that would be covered already. I'm also not sure that I buy that Kaladin needs to learn something about choosing a side. Kaladin's arc to date has been about him widening the scope of his empathy/responsibility. At first it's just the one guy who is sick in the slave pens. Then it's the guys in Bridge Four. Then it's the bridgemen as a whole and Dalinar. Eventually it expands out even further, to include all the new people in Bridge Four and the Listeners and so forth. Is all that going to be undermined by the message that you have to ignore the humanity of your enemies in service of your narrow tribal loyalties? That seems like a big step backward for Kaladin and antithetical to the ethos of the Stormlight Archive as it has evolved to date. (Also this is more or less what Moash does; he decides that the Listeners are better than the humans, and that it must be their time now. He picks a side and doesn't question it.) I'm having trouble defining specifically what I think the fourth Ideal would be, but if anything I would think that it would have to do with shedding personal loyalties in service of protecting all life on Roshar. As of Oathbringer, Kaladin has a lot of conflicting loyalties: as an Alethi soldier he's loyal to the Alethkar against the Listeners. As a former slave he's loyal to the downtrodden in their cause for freedom. He's loyal to those who are or were under his command. All of these loyalties are so meaningful to him because they're informed by tragedies that he's endured. Men from Bridge Four have died from Parshendi arrows. Slaves he knew died seeking freedom with him. Transcending those loyalties would be like declaring those deaths meaningless. I think something similar is holding back our boy in chapter 86. If he thinks of protection in terms of protecting good Veden kids from Thaylen coastal raids, then widening his sphere of responsibility to include the nasty Thaylens sounds like not wanting to help the Vedens. And yet if the Windrunners didn't have an Ideal like this, wouldn't you have Windrunners fighting each other in every major war in Roshar for thousands of years?
  7. Gavilar gave one of those to Eshonai and one of them to Szeth, so I would guess that he wanted the Parshendi to bind to them, not he himself.
  8. I am really on board for it too. Reading Eshonai's prologue chapter in OB really snapped her character into place, so when I was re-reading WoR last month I was really invested in her chapters and I was bummed to learn that she had died. And the Venli chapters slowly had me believing in a redemption arc working for her, and the idea of ordinary Listeners taking a stand against Odium and the Forged is a cool idea. It's probably the thing that I'm most looking forward to in the series at this particular moment. Something that I'd like somebody to verify: when Sanderson was trying to decide the flashback character for Oathbringer, the two alternatives were Dalinar in Stormlight 3 and Szeth in 5 or vice versa, right? That is, the plan as we understand it now says that Stormlight 4 will be an Eshonai book, right?
  9. Did he say that there would be only one dead POV character? Because I thought that he just allowed for the possibility that this could happen, and didn't say that it would happen only once. Having said that, Venli as present day character and Eshonai as flashback character is an unusually strong combination to make this device work; presumably the flashbacks will have a lot about Eshonai's relationship with Venli and how that informs Venli's arc in the present.
  10. I think this is true. Thematically the idea of taking responsibility for your choices is important in the Stormlight Archives. It's the basis of the story that Wit tells Kaladin in TWoK, and the thing that keeps Dalinar from succumbing to Odium in the OB final battle. Moash has a lot of sympathetic qualities, but that flaw makes him susceptible to Odium.
  11. Yeah, it does seem like the guys who leaned hardest on the "bad deeds to achieve a good end" logic were the most susceptible to Odium.
  12. I was really satisfied with Oathbringer. - I was bummed to see Eshonai dead (I had just reread WoR with the OB prologue in mind and she really came alive for me as a character), and I too was just starting to like Elhokar when he got killed. (This has an interesting ripple effect on the final chapters of WoR; Kaladin went through a big character realization to stop Moash from killing Elhokar, and then like a month later he watches Moash killed Elhokar.) - I really liked the Bridge Four POVs. (BTW, did we have an indication that Teft was an addict before book 3?) - I wasn't sure about the Venli redemption arc at first but Sanderson brought me on board, and I'm ready for the Listener rebellion arc that I assume is coming in book 4. - There has to be major fallout from the fact that Gavilar's murderer has now sworn allegiance to Dalinar. There's no way that the Alethi highprinces are all going to be okay with this. - Maybe this is just me, but I thought the significance of the Recreance reveal wasn't that the humans were invaders but that the Surges that the KR use already destroyed one world and thus posed a threat to Roshar too. Did I misread that? - I agree that Adolin killing Sadeas didn't have the significance that I expected it to have. I think that's a loss for Adolin's character (unless Ialai's going to make a big deal of it in book 4). But I always imagined that it would be the catalyst for Dalinar's moral authority being fundamentally called into question, and instead that ended up happening in another fashion, so I don't miss it too much. - As for the death of Helaran, I assume that there is much more to come on that. Shallan's not done with the Ghostbloods by a long shot, and her brothers arriving in Urithiru means that she can't ignore family issues either.
  13. Yeah, I don't think that we're seeing Re-Shepnir at the height of her abilities. But at the same time I think that she did have this effect in a small fashion. The lowlifes that Shallan meets in the bar mention that they wouldn't have killed Ned just because he murdered his wife (real charmers, that group), but when he went after a barmaid then they had to kill him. Now this didn't turn into a massive orgy of bloodletting, I agree. But I think the big issue is primarily that there was only one of Re-Shepnir's creatures wandering around making trouble. She's obviously capable of producing many more. Imagine if she sent out dozens, all at once?
  14. I don't find Amaram to be terribly likable--he reads as smug to me--but my conviction that Taravangian is evil did not stop me from finding him likable in chapter 28 from Oathbringer. (Or more to the point, my finding him likable hasn't changed my mind that I think he's evil.) I've also occasionally found myself sympathizing with Szeth, but as I've argued elsewhere, I think Szeth is evil too. I think that there are a lot of people who perceive characters the way you describe, but that's never been how it is for me. (And again, not doing something good is not the same as doing something bad, so I don't buy that Hoid belongs in this conversation based on what we know so far. Down the road, could he be another Taravangian on a much larger scale? Totally possible. We don't know nearly enough to say one way or another. But based on the comment that he made to Dalinar, I don't see it.)
  15. That is what I'm saying. I think Taravangian's certainty on this matter is a species of hubris.
  16. I don't know. When Adolin is thinking about killing Sadeas in Chapter 50, he seems pretty certain that it would be illegal and lead to his death or exile. He doesn't think, "Oh, the light-eyes will generally believe that I had no choice but to answer his insults with violence, and thus I'll be able to go about my business." And, to the OP's argument, I'm not aware of anywhere where the king's boon is understood to be a general license to murder Sadeas when he's been particularly insufferable. I think it's quite possible that, had Dalinar attacked Sadeas in that moment, other brighteyes would have been sympathetic to his response. Just as assuredly, I'm sure that a lot of people will be sympathetic to Adolin should he confess what happened. But I don't think that there's a legal argument that would save him from formal punishment.
  17. Must is a strong word. We don't know that the Death Rattles and the Diagram are ultimately reliable, and that they provide the best way to stop the Desolation. But re: Hoid, I'm not sure that we know enough about him (his abilities, his agenda, his actions) to establish whether or not his actions are moral. I'm just saying that his statement doesn't in and of itself put him on the same level as Taravangian.
  18. I'm a little unclear on what makes something a Windrunner or a Lightweaver book. (I didn't even realize until this thread that this was a way that Sanderson categorized the Stormlight Archive books.) Does it require a major character to be progressing through the oaths and learning the powers of the order?
  19. Well, Dalinar does say that it would "shatter the Vengeance Pact", which means that he's not talking about about a sanctioned duel, he's talking about murdering Sadeas.
  20. Arguing for the rebuttal is one Adolin Kholin: "He gritted his teeth, and found himself reaching his hand to the side to summon his Blade. No. He pulled his hand back. He'd find a way to force this man into the dueling ring. Killing Sadeas now--no matter how much he deserved it--would undermine the very laws and codes Adolin's father was working so hard to uphold."
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