Solant

(I posted this to the Facebook Cosmere group earlier, but I wanted to share with you all and see what you think. I know a couple of these points were made already) I really enjoyed the surface story, character building, and Cosmere implications, all which have been discussed at length, so I won't go into it too much. One thing I would like to point out is that when the spirits are drawn to people stacking rocks, it was very reminiscent of creationspren showing up on Roshar like when Shallan is drawing. The act of turning into fabrials in exchange for the art is how I imagine fabrials are created without having to capture the spren. That means that what the scholars are doing with the machine is the same as what the Sibling accused Navani of doing by capturing spren in gems and forcing them to power fabrials. What I enjoyed the most, however, was the themes explored in this book. The value of art, to the artist is in having someone to share it with. To the audience itself, in the way the art changes you fundamentally. It feels like an extension of the monologs given by Hoid at the end of each Stormlight novel. The importance of trying new things, pushing boundaries, taking risks. What is beauty/art and how they relate/ differ. The way that art has no intrinsic value or function without an audience. Good art from a bad artist is considered great, while the same art from a master would be considered mediocre or even bad. What happens to someone when they lose passion and sense of purpose and identity, and they become disillusioned and just go through the motions of doing the job. He literally just calls himself Painter. I also felt like a strong analogy could be made between the father machine and AI art that we are seeing in the real world. The machine performs the same function as the the yoki hijo (artist) but without inspiration or other value i mentioned above, and is actually harmful to the spirits (audience). It literally sucks the souls from the people around it. Never meet your heroes. It's better to hold yourself to higher standards and become the hero you want to see in others. The flip side of this is knowing how to strike a balance between fulfilling your duty and allowing yourself to be happy. I'm also happy they got the ending they deserved. Edit: You know those quirky love-em-or-hate-em characters like Wayne, Lift , Hoid, Lopen? I'd like to formally petition the community to accept the fanon new secret society of these characters called the Wahoopli. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

In spirit with the season, I'm going to say its something horrific like say, a corrupted fused Dustbringer Evi. "You burned me, Dalinar, and now I have returned to burn YOU!" <suspenseful horror music>

I thought so too, but Kal didn't hesitate to break whatever rules he needed to in the name of protecting people as a slave, or in either military career. Skybreakers seem like right or wrong, they will follow the letter of the law without question

Lawful Neutral vs Neutral Good?

I suspect she's is physically aging at a standard rate, but is maturing mentally and emotionally very little.

I think we have confirmation that Urithiru wasn't a ship, but I could be wrong. I've had the beginning of a theory for awhile that the key to taking KR and their spren off world will lie with peoples perception of space and the ways it could change the landscape in the CR, since spren existence is tied so closely with the cognitive and changes depending on the way its perceived

You are in for a treat, reading the entire thing knowing what you know know. You'll pick up on all kinds if things the second time through a first time reader would ignore

See, I'm completely in the other camp on this. I suspect that she forsaw the contest between Dalinar and Odium, and her meddling with Dalinar/ Lift/ T was all in service to the long game and making sure that not only Rayse but Odium the shard would be at a great enough disadvantage to lose. I'm out of the loop, so I don't know if we have confirmation that T is still affected by his bane/ boon, but if it hadn't been for his smartest day he would have never been able to manipulate events to where he would be holding Odium. The same goes for Dalinar and being a Bondsmith and being in the position to confront him. I don't know if Lift has a greater role to play in the contest, but I think if she was using regular storm light like the other radiants, its possible she may have been incapacitated like the majority of them were during the tower sequence during RoW and those events would have ended much differently. Most importantly though, what happens if the god of Divine Anger at a crucial moment lacks the capacity for anger? I could be way off here, but I always interpreted Cultivation as controlled growth by design. I don't see her changing people for the sake of change, or being completely random without an end game at all.

@Use the Falchion I saw it too. Page 104 around 44 percent. I think it's supposed to say "I didn't know what it meant..."

My biggest question is what rank to they need to be promoted to before their taynix will manifest as a Mindblade and Mindplate?

Since so much of this story is built around symmetry, I fully expect the last flashback to be a scene adjacent to the feast/assassination,either right before or immediately following the events in the WoK prologue Szeth pov scene that started off this whole arc. I really like the idea of the whole thing going full circle like that. I personally am looking forward to some insight into Shinovar's culture, and maybe some more explanation on the shin invasions and what they were looking for. My prediction is a giant cache of shardblades!

I like it as an idea, but several don't sit well with me. I feel like cultivation is controlled growth, so could fit easily in either row. Odium doesn't feel like something that unites, and I've always wondered if that shard was interpreted that way due to Rayse being hateful anyways. And whimsy feels hard to categorize by definition. Im sure there is a definitive chart or something close to it, and I've wondered about it too. I just wonder if we have enough information without more dawnshards.

@Player22 Don't let it discourage you, our theories get shot down immediately 90 percent if the time, but it's still fun to share them anyways! Plus, you never know when one will stick, or at least spark a discussion. I used to take it personally but nobody means it that way. Keep at it

Maybe I'm not looking into it closely enough, but i always assumed the prophesy was speaking of Sazed. I also agree with Weltall about harmony and discord, but with a twist. We are seeing him struggle right now with having two shards with opposing intents. His story isn't yet finished, i believe, and it's totally possible for him to shift to Discord later if he fails to keep the two balanced (and it would make a really interesting story). But yeah, I'm almost completely certain the prophesy is all about Sazed.

PICA powers!

It's a good question, and difficult to answer. I feel like one of the underlying themes of the cosmere is that having a pantheon of gods, each embodying an aspect of a broken, more complete god, and each ruling more or less independently and with those aspects remaining out of context from one another, is a greatly flawed system which drives most of the conflict. None of them can be great, because their answer to every question will be the same. Ruin wasn't inherently malevolent or evil, he was just the god of entropy, and as such was just trying to create some. I also believe him when he said that everything would be frozen in one perfect moment in time if left completely up to Preservation. Having said all that, I like Harmony the most because he is closest to understanding humanity and the human plight, if only because he was part of it most recently. I expect that to change as time goes by, however.

My impression in drawing the parallel between deadeyes and something that happened before in the cosmere was that he was talking simply about when an external event caused a disruption in the function in a shard's splinters, meaning the geographical changes on Sel and the imprisonment of BAM. I can't say why her imprisonment would do that, but judging by the way the sibling reacted to Navani trapping spren for fabrials I can't help but feel that it might have been what caused the sibling to withdraw as well. That's just my impression, though... I don't have a fully formed theory or anything.

Right now my money is on Nale, but it would be a bigger stranger twist if it was Nohadon

I mostly agree that it'll probably stay in Roshar, but I wouldn't be surprised to see some scenes on other planets in the same system since they low key tie into the story already, but our main characters mostly don't understand the depth of it yet, and Ashyn still has a human population that Roshar is as of now completely unaware of.

I don't play games like this, because it's too close to trying to see into the future, which everyone knows is blasphemy, and my Vorin sensibilities won't allow it.

I've held a theory since OB that Tarah is in Urithiru. I fully expected her to show up in this one.

It's hard to guess what a final oath would be without more of a baseline do go by, I do like the idea of there being a unifying theme of an order's final oath being a declaration of "I am X", being the same for everyone in a given order, but only being accepted when the spren believes the Radiant truly understands what their oaths mean not only individually, but as a whole, and how it embodies the spirit of the order. For example, " I am a protector ". To be a Wind runner, I shall protect the innocent. I shall protect those who may not even be deserving of it. And in the end I know I will I will fail, because no one can hope to stand between everyone and everything that wishes them harm, and we all fall in the end. But it is my duty, as so long as I live, I shall protect. Etc etc, light up like a Christmas tree, go fly around waving your spren stick etc.

It's just in the narrative, but I think he did say he would take a little time for other stories between arcs. Not 10 years worth though @Sart . . I love me some puzzles, even if they likely have no solutions. I suspect this is just a Brandon word that means nonsense that is part of his lexicon that we're unfamiliar with, but I'm off work from a surgery and have absolutely nothing to do, so I'm on it. I'll post it if I come up with anything

@coolsnow7 I mean, I'm sure the would be more to it than that, and it might not go exactly as planned, but I'm sure that Cultivation has a long game vs Odium, and I think that she manipulated him into that position for a reason because she's had a hand in his destiny ever since he visited her, and I suspect that it didn't end when he picked up the shard. She and Tanavast were romantically involved, so I have to imagine she's been planning on how to neutralize not just Rayse but Odium itself for a long time. What better way to do that than to put a new vessel in and cultivate an intent change?

Everything listed so far, especially concerning the Fused we've seen in depth so far. I was concerned prior to this book that they would lack dimension or individual motivation and just be typical baddie minions and extensions of Odium, but we are seeing now that they don't always align with him, and can care about so much more than just killing all the humans. Everything Dabbid was amazing. My favorite line of the book is still "That dog is a storming hero!" Prior to that story, Kal didn't know what a dog was.