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I'm glad that someone else brought this up. I wonder if we will see Kaladin continue to be able to fight this well. I feel like this is a moment that showed that perhaps radiants could be on equal footing of the Heralds. We see Taln grabbing the darts out of the air, Nale grab an arrow out of the air, Ishar easily able to fight 5 windrunners at once. Clearly they have speed and reflex abilities that go beyond the average radiant or human. If wonder if Kaladin in this state would have been able to take on Heralds. I'm curious to see what comes of this in the future. Will Kaladin continue to be this fast? PS. The ripping off of Lezian's head was amazing and so satisfying. This is such an interesting use of the surge that we haven't seen before and I look forward to seeing Kaladin attempt to use this ability in battle in the future, probably less gruesomely, but still to perhaps disarm opponents or actually force them to move. Could Kaladin use adhesion to essentially pull a large group of people?

After completing this part I am terrified that I am going to get to the end of this book and find Kal still at the 3rd oath. I was also kind of peeved to find that our first experience of living shardplate was through Jasnah and it was seemingly nonchalant. I feel like I have been waiting so long for Kal's big 4th oath shardplate moment and we get this instead, a scene with Jasnah struggling to defeat a fused that we saw 3rd oath Kal kill in Oathbringer... crossing my fingers for something for substantial in Part 5 regarding Kal swearing oaths and getting a big plate scene that provides a smidge more excitement surrounding it.

Yeah everything for me still just says pre-order

Thanks

Anyone on the west coast in PST able to get it?

curses. Stupid Kobo is slower

I recall Brandon talking about writing a specific scene in this book that is a foundational scenes and one that he first imagined, as the book approaches I really wonder what this scene is and if as readers it will be obvious that this is the scene as we read the scene.

He summoned her as a spear. I would also imagine that this is the only desolation where the fused would ever have a chance to change their feelings about the human since in previous desolations the Fused would have been so limited in interacting with humans. I would imagine every encounter they have is just battles in which one or another is killed which would limit how they see each other. In this desolation there is a unique situation where Leshwi has had the ability to battle with Kaladin multiple times in which Kaladin has survived and likely killed her before, which gained some measure of respect for him. If Kaladin had died their first battle I'd assume this situation wouldn't have happened. Then clearly with Jezrien and Honor dead this impacts her opinion of him further. If anything the Fused hated the Heralds, who would be the original voidbringers themselves, and Honor, who betrayed the Fused for the humans as well. Kaladin appears to be someone from a different generation who isn't led by these individuals and seemingly fights for the same thing and the same reasons as Leshwi does. To fight for their world and the survival of their people. The situation in earlier chapters where Leshwi and Kaladin stop fighting and agree on the draw and then agree that Kaladin should go to the manor show a certain level of trust between them that would have been founded over various other fights. I think at this point Leshwi and the Heavenly Ones do fight with honor and care about it and this is a rare opportunity where they can actually interact multiple times with the same person and gain mutual respect. Therefore I think this is historically the only desolation where it makes sense that they could change. Chapter 11 makes me pretty positive Leshwi isn't attempting to trick Kaladin in any way, although its hard to know for sure considering the whole Moash situation. I would assume Leshwi is fully aware of Moash's connection to the Windrunners and has some measure of leadership over him.

Do we have a WoB about the fused becoming savants? I would imagine it would be quite different since they go to Braize and get new bodies, and would having a gemheart change things?

I'm thinking that the fused and regals have abilities that do not require voidlight. I think the best evidence we see of this is stormform which would throw lightning, and so far as we know and can tell, did not have access to voidlight. So I think that the fused would have similar abilities that are ingrained into their being through the gemheart that keeps their powers working.

She already did that with the oathgates technically. You are correct. Totally forgot about that.

Does anyone have an idea of how Sja-anat may impact fabrials? We saw in Oathbringer the issue with the screaming when investiture was used either by Kaladin or by fabrials (I always assumed this was due to Sja-anat's work). Is Sja-anat able to corrupt spren that are in gemstones and being used for fabrials? It is noted that the spren corrupted by her act strangely, however the spanreeds appear to continue working. Could she be used by either Odium, or perhaps if she changes sides, by the Radiants, to disrupt and sabotage the use of fabrials?

I agree, windspren are still around, even if he doesn't have is power, he still has his bond with Syl, no reason to suspect anything special. Maybe we will see this book if other Windrunners describe the same thing? I believe that the only fused he kills is the teleporting one. The other singers are simply war form.

"Repeated infliction of full paralysis. A clever way of dealing with an enemy who could heal. Kaladin’s Stormlight would run out quickly at this rate." I'm thinking that healing full paralysis takes a decent amount of stormlight to heal. Making Kaladin do this over and over is what will quickly win this fight for the fused. Kaladin otherwise may just hold the stormlight, not healing the paralysis, and survive far longer.

Could just be that they saw Windrunners and Kaladin is well known to Odium at this point. We don't know how many operations the other Windrunners have been going on. But its definitely not far fetched to say a spy was responsible. It's hard to see a situation where Odium didn't know about Fourth Bridge in the first place though. It's giant, why hasn't it been attacked before? Perhaps more reasoning why we find Moash there now, Odium is letting it happen.

Now that I think of it, it isn't stated in the text and we don't see Lirin's point of view after the fight, but I wonder what his thoughts are seeing Kaladin come back from the fight covered in blood from being stabbed in the neck so many times. Or anyone else now that I think of it, Kaladin has his neck cut a bunch of times, he's probably got a huge amount of blood on him.

This was kind of funny to me, he wouldn't have had a clue about this. I originally expected Moash to lead to Kaladin's issues from the Syl interlude as I expected him to be around since it was evident he would hunt Roshone. But this chapter makes me believe that Lirin is the actual cause. Whether Lirin survives this mission and his poor attitude toward Kaladin causes it, or Lirin dies on the mission and that makes Kaladin become a surgeon, is the important part of it. Although I'm kind of now expecting a talk with Hesina to be what allows Kaladin to progress, as Kaladin's relationship with her seems to be solid.

I also hope that it is over quickly, the operation itself seems small in the grand scheme of things, but I suppose that it can lead to new larger things. But I wouldn't be surprised if it is part 1 for the group.

Awesome reading the two chapters. Big takeaways for me regarding Shallan, she seems to be doing better with her personalities, it sounds like we could be getting her saying her 5th ideal (truth) this book. Her hunting the Son's of Honor is also interesting, it raises the question of if this is a Ghostblood mission, and how much she knows about the Son's of Honor and what they and Gavilar were up to. From Kaladin's chapters, it's interesting to see Kaladin struggle so much with fighting a fused, but I suppose it's refreshing to know he can struggle and that he needs to keep learning and adjusting. I wonder how often Kaladin has gone out and fought a new fused and then had to go back to Urithiru to teach his fellow radiants and perhaps the army the technique for killing them, especially since it is apparent they know how to effectively kill Radiants. Since a large number of Windrunners are present, I'm interested in the total number current is and how many are from bridge 4. I'm assuming Kaladin is their commander. With so many Windrunner's I'm very curious to find out why the Honorspren stop bonding with humans since they seem to have no issue. What revelation is going to cause this? The airship is awesome, I'm curious to see how the battle will go with the Shanay'im in the next chapters as we get to see them defend the airship and get to see the new Windrunners in action (how many are of the third ideal?). Overall lots of exciting stuff happening early in the book.

Yeah that's why I was thinking maybe the Mink was unwilling to journey straight to Urithiru, I find it unlikely for her to leave for any reason except if maybe Dalinar was going as well. You're right that fabrials probably wouldn't matter, she would probably train people, testing would likely be done in Urithiru or at the Shattered Plains. We will probably find her back in Urithiru.

I agree Navani is likely not there, as it's rather difficult to find good reasons for her to be out in the field and be risked in such a manner. However the text can easily be read in a way that suggests that she is. Plus getting it to Navani doesn't mean she's looking at it immediately and I don't think the reading suggested she could do something with it, Kaladin just wants it in her possession. The possibility exists and it's fun to consider the possibilities.

Well the assumption would be that the Mink isn't just going to go with them willingly, and they don't necessarily need to be there for an extended period of time. I'm just looking for explanations for why Navani would be there, them using the flying boats as we saw in Oathbringer could be another reason for this. Another thought that comes to mind is that Kaladin is there with two edgedancers, who would be concerned with the regular people affected in the war, as well as perhaps Shallan. Perhaps part of the mission isn't just to extract the Mink but they have been traveling around and soulcasting grain in various places since food was clearly a concern. I fully expect that all of Kaladin's squires are present, I think it would be silly if continued to see Kaladin separated from his squires. I half expected that there would be a description of Lirin inspecting a man with a description to match with a member of bridge 4.

We don't know what information they had about Hearthstone and what they expected to need to fight against, and if the Mink is sufficiently important, they may not be willing to take risks in losing him and have brought a larger force as a precaution. Based on the fact that the fight starts in chapter 1, and ends in chapter 7, I think it's safe to say a large number of people are present in Hearthstone, I don't see Brandon splitting up a fight with such a large gap unless there are other perspectives of the same battle between. I also can't recall, but do we know for a fact that the plan is to extract the Mink? It says that Kaladin is expected to fetch him, but does that mean bring to Urithiru, we can't count on Lirin knowing everything. You could read it in a couple ways, either Navani is there, or she is in Urithiru still. It could be that the expectation is that they are meeting with the Mink, if he is a dustbringer as suspected, he may not be willing to join with Dalinar, as we have seen with Malata, therefore Dalinar and Navani are there in person to meet and convince him.