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Rainier

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  1. Thanks for putting together the timeline, it's quite useful. Riina's presence in this backwater planet makes perfect sense to me, in the same way that you hear of billionaires making bunker compounds in New Zealand. It's someone with wealth and power looking for a safe place to hide out when SHTF. Riina is pretty clearly selfish, she doesn't seem to have much in the way of large goals, she just wants to keep living in relative peace away from the realmatic threats that abound on larger shardworlds. Hence, why she's so upset with the dragon, and why she leaves when Hoid's curse is broken. All she wanted to do was retire to the proverbial countryside in peace.
  2. Rainier

    Shardcast: Moash

    I'm just here to remind everyone... Moash did nothing wrong.
  3. Considering my other comment, that it should really be just Kaladin and Dalinar, then yes, no flashbacks would be better. These flashbacks did not serve any purpose and didn't move the story forward. They didn't add any mystery or build any tension. They were completely irrelevant to the events happening in the present. The Kaladin backstory was pretty well done. The Shallan backstory less so. Dalinar was great, but came too early. I have lowered my expectations for Szeth, which is sad, because I had such high hopes for him and his flashbacks. Navani stole the show from Venli, who should have been our primary POV in Urithiru, if we are to respect the ten-books-for-ten-orders theme. I think a similar thing happened with Adolin, who became a much larger character than he otherwise would be, and it takes away from the focus.
  4. The book was kind of a mess. Too little focus on any one story means none of them were well-served. The 'backstory character' got completely shafted and the whole book would have been better if it were skipped completely. Jasnah's POVs were also useless, and it would have been better to skip them and keep Jasnah as mysterious as possible for the back 5. Especially the scenes with Ruthar, which were among the worst I've read in any of Sanderson's novels. Some have complained about her relationship with Hoid, as if Hoid has been chaste since he was 50 years old, but I think the real problem is showing too much of what should be mysterious characters. The entire plot at Urithiru was poorly executed, and while there was an attempt to make it seem urgent, it ended up feeling contrived. The stakes just never seemed real to me. Kaladin's arc should be more than simply rehashing what he did in book 1. The first time he contemplated suicide and chose life it was powerful. The tenth time it was boring, and cheapens everything. Teft got done dirty. I'm OK with him dying, I'm OK with Moash killing him, I'm not OK with him being helpless the entire book just to die in order to make Kaladin go super saiyan like he's Goku on Namek. Now, for the real unpopular ones: The entire series would be much, much better if it had simply focused on Kaladin and Dalinar, instead of trying to shoehorn 10 'main' characters into it. Each book has been worse than the one that came before. The Way of Kings is still the best book he's ever written, but the more he expands the series, the worse it gets. Obviously, this isn't unique to Sanderson, bad books don't get sequels and all, but it doesn't leave me hopeful for book 5.
  5. Homer, maybe. Perhaps they're both overrated. And Gollum died the same way. Moash is Gollum, and my heart tells me he has a part yet to play. Redemption? Who cares? Will he matter? I hope so. Tolkein came out and promised us Gollum would play some part in the future, and he fulfilled that promise. I see people compare, and ask themselves, who they would prefer to live, at the end of Fellowship, Boromir or Gollum? Boromir, of course! His betrayal doesn't come until the start of Two Towers, and his death is noble and valiant despite his failings. And yet...Gollum, the miserable betrayer becomes more important to the outcome than Boromir, by his guiding and, at the end, he is the only one to challenge Frodo when the latter claims the Ring. Brandon hasn't made us quite those same promises, but Moash is much more than a throwaway. He is bound up in the fate of Kaladin, if not all the Radiants. The hook to his story is obviously this new affliction, blindness.
  6. It took me a while to find this. Just as Frodo is paralleled, and stalked by, Gollum, so too is Kaladin paralleled, and stalked by, Moash. Just because he deserves death doesn't mean he's going to get it, and he is bound up with the fate of the Radiants. There is a part for him left to play, but so many are so sick of him that they can't see and don't want to look.
  7. I thought the chain was what we saw in OB at the shop. I assumed the fused simply pillaged that shop and took the chain, which Raboniel then inventoried and studied.
  8. None of the sequels have managed to capture the spirit of the original book. Something about it has yet to be duplicated or improved upon. The best scene is still the one where Syl realizes what kind of spren she is, followed closely by Navani burning a giant glyph.
  9. Well, neither Ati nor Leras were killed by Nightblood. Whatever oomph was in Rayse's body was likely consumed, in part, by Nightblood. Still, 1% of the body of a god is still pretty significant. Isn't the godmetal supposed to be the body of a god? Shouldn't that body have some Raysium somewhere? Or is it poetically the body of a god and specifically the condensed power of a god that makes the godmetal?
  10. I just made another post touching on these lines, but I agree with that this contest seems foreshadowed to end in neither a win nor a loss, releasing Odium from the system. This twist is going to come smack dab in the middle of the book, either the end of parts 2 or 3 if I had to guess. That way we'll get two parts of our main characters trying desperately to fix their mistake, grappling with the consequences, and raising the stakes and setting the stage for the back half of the series. My understanding is that what ties Odium to the system is a pact Rayse (Odium) made with Tanavast (Honor). Since Dalinar is acknowledged by Rayse (Odium) as acting on behalf of Honor, the agreement we saw is a modification of whatever deal is holding Odium there.
  11. If all of book 5 is just the ten days, I will be massively disappointed. Think about these novels: they are each a trilogy of smaller books. This will be the same for book 5. Usually it's parts 1 and 2 as one book, parts 3 and 4 as another, and part 5 as a shorter concluding novel to the 'trilogy.' Brandon doesn't take a whole book to answer all the questions from the previous book, he answers them relatively early then introduces new, more interesting questions to ask by the end of the book. For RoW, it was strange, but part 1 was basically the ending of the first book in the trilogy. Parts 2 and 3 were book 2, culminating in the fall of Urithiru. Parts 4 and 5 were book 3, with the conclusion of this particular trilogy. Whatever your expectations for the next book, I think it would be illuminating to think in this framework. We're going to have more questions to answer by the end of book 5 that we don't yet know to ask. We might even get some answers to questions we don't yet know to ask. Ten days is enough for the opening novel of a trilogy, it isn't enough for a trilogy unto itself. I think we'll see parts 1 and 2 as the lead up to the contest, the ten days themselves. Part 3 will have the contest itself, the revelation of whatever twist we'll see, and the characters start to react to what just happened. This is the end of the Answering Questions section of the book. Parts 4 and 5 will be leading towards the ultimate conclusion of the front half of the series, which I don't think is the contest itself. I think we'll get some perspective early in book 5 that resets our sights higher.
  12. Yup, you're thinking of the "Honor is dead, but I'll see what I can do" from WoR duel scene.
  13. She can't go anywhere else, she's stuck in Urithiru for the rest of her life, because that's where the Sibling is. In all honesty, she needs to figure out a way to get the spren to agree to be confined in fabrials in order to placate the Sibling. I'm thinking something to do with oaths: "I swear to offer you this fire, which you love, if you stay in this gemstone for a year. I swear to release you at the end of the year." Then the spren goes into the gem, willingly, with an oath from the person who will free them. Or, ditch the smaller spren altogether, and only make deals with spren intelligent enough to enter into a deal in the first place.
  14. I think she wants Odium out of the system, and is trying to get him freed. That's what will happen at the end of 5: Odium freed, revealed to be Cultivation's plan. As to why she would want Odium freed, that's surprising. I was thinking the other day about how the nine remaining shardic Vessels form a natural oligarchy of the Cosmere. That no matter what you think is happening in your life, you're being ruled by the Vessels that hold the shards. I can't get the idea out of my head that there will always be these rulers of the Cosmere until they are too shattered and small to wield that kind of power again. Turn the 16 shards into 65,356 Slivers (that's 2^16) and see what happens. Then instead of each Shard getting a planet all to themselves, the largest splinters, and the Vessels that hold them, are more like Returned or Mistborn or Radiants than they are like gods. They could be great generals or kings, but never again gods. This is certainly more egalitarian, and considering that Taravangain thinks the Cosmere is horribly mismanaged, that means that the people who are in charge should be indicted. The Vessels have done a crap job. Maybe this is Cultivation's plan to get fresh blood into the Vessels, to spur the Shards from their stagnation, to refresh the Vessels to spur them into making the Cosmere better instead of simply slavishly following the Intent of their Shard.
  15. This one is easy. Information is power. The longer it takes for the other Vessels and relevant people in the Cosmere to find out what happened, the longer it takes for them to react. Especially Hoid, who knew Rayse and was counting on dealing with him. From the Part 2 Epigraphs: Yes, these are the events that we should fear the most.
  16. I'm still in shock at the ramifications. First of all, The Diagram was ultimately part of Cultivation's plan to murder Rayse with Nightblood, then have Taravangian in place to take up the Shard. Second, Taravangian may have read all of Hoid's memories, which should have caught him up nicely with the state of the Cosmere, and more importantly the history of the Cosmere and the Shattering. Third, he is on a collision course with Dalinar in just ten days time Cultivation had a significant impact on the person he became after he visited her. She wanted it in the hands of someone she had sculpted, instead of anyone she had not. And the sly dragon has gotten her way thus far. The only question now, what the heck is her way? Why maneuver Dalinar and Taravangian into place right as the final clash between Odium and what's-left-of-Honor? What is she planning on happening in ten days?
  17. This one really bothered me. Dozens two sentences before calling twelve a strange number. Should be scores (pairs of tens) or hundreds, to keep it Honorable.
  18. Hoid isn't missing information except the one clue that something was wrong with Rayse. Now he has the other clue that something is wrong, and he's missing some breaths. I wonder how many he had, exactly, and therefore how many he's missing. As we see from the example from Warbreaker, losing your Breath loses some memories, especially the most recent memories. Who knows what Hoid is doing, exactly, to store the memories of his life in Breath, but I would guess that all his memories are only in his Breath, and they are created and stored there. How else could it be, given what we saw at the end? This is the big deal, and the way Brandon gets to simply bypass the knowledge gap Taravangian has compared to the other Vessels. Now he knows what Hoid knows. Everything that Hoid knows, and all of his memories, at least since he first acquired the Breath. I think Taravangian used the loophole that the Vessel is separate from the Power. Hoid is the Vessel of all of the various forms of Investiture he's collected or infused himself with, just as each other Vessel holds the power of a Shard. The difference is one of scale, not kind. People holding Power.
  19. I still maintain that she's right, she's not a scholar, she's a Project Manager, or in other words, someone who unites, and brings people together. Bondsmith oath, right there in front of us. I'm also partial to Rushu as a Truthwatcher, since she seems to be getting more scenes, but Truthwatcher is definitely the order most relevant to understanding the deeper workings of the Cosmere. To the point of this topic, however, count me among those guessing Sleepless POV. It's long overdue, and we already got a taste of it in Dawnshard. Just a taste, but I think we'll get an interlude from the perspective of one of the Sleepless accompanying Rysn to learn to imitate humans. Frankly, I expect her to very much play the Babsk role, and it would amuse me to have the Sleepless POV mirror the Rysn POVs from book 1.
  20. I think this will happen, and the foreshadowing I like the most is every time Navani tells herself that she's not a real researcher, she just brings people together so they can do the real work. BRINGS PEOPLE TOGETHER Yeah, Bondsmith Navani revives and bonds the Sibling, and also convinces the ancient spren to resume its place as the spren inhabiting the fabrial called Urithiru. It's that last piece that I'm interested in seeing, since clearly the Sibling doesn't want anything to do with humanity right now. That's also a possibility: she convinces the spren to enter the fabrial, but doesn't bond it, so no second Bondsmith. Or, perhaps, Navani convinces the spren to inhabit the tower, but someone else bonds it (Rlain is looking to Unite some peoples, too, and he's also looking for a spren that wants to bond him).
  21. I don't see why this is a surprise. Moash and Kaladin are the same person. They are two sides of the same coin. That's why Kaladin agreed to help Moash in the first place/ That's also why I'll defend Moash endlessly. Kaladin's mistake was pledging to protect Elhokar, not promising to kill him. Elhokar was a crap character and a worse king, I'm glad he got what was coming to him for his years of misrule. He, more than any other, is the reason why Alethkar fell to the singers. I'm guessing Moash was an anomaly, and that they did need a human to kill Jezrien, probably because the Oathpact was a pact with very clear racial lines. Humans on one side, singers on the other. Honor pledging to protect humans from the singers means that a singer killing Jezrien would have just continued the Oathpact cycle. It remains to be seen how this gets explained, but I'm excited for it. Moash is one of the new Heralds that many expect to be created? I could get behind it. There's your redemption arc everyone: he gets to be tortured for eternity, but he saves humanity doing so.
  22. Thanks! I couldn't help myself, so I'm going to spout on about the following paragraphs. The following are predictions, etc. with all caveats applied. So this is our Navani-Kaladin-Venli group, and the arc I'm calling the Siege of Urithiru. This is where much of the character work is going to be done, and we're going to be torn up over it. Climactic events being the Sibling inhabiting Urithiru as a spren does a fabrial, bonding Navani in the process. Kaladin swearing the Fourth Oath. Venli has nothing so obvious except a full change of sides, or speaking the Second Oath. I'm excited to see her enigma revealed, especially in the flashbacks, so we can better understand just WTF happened to bring about these apocalyptic events. Szeth will seemingly get left behind. I'm expecting him to be Told to Guard Navani by Dalinar, which will keep him involved in her POV and make sure he's where he's needed during the siege. Lift is probably the other main character staying in Urithiru. It might make more sense for her to be with the army, but she's a well-lit character and that means she's getting screen time somewhere, someway. There's Renarin, who is absolutely staying to examine the Tower and will continue to be involved in revealing her secrets. Here's Shallan and Adolin's journey. The stunning culmination has to include both Shallan's Truth and Reconciliation Committee as well as Reviving Maya. I'm very excited for exactly what those mean and how they happen, as it's very clear what has to be addressed, but not very clear how that's coming about. It's where we'll get some significant unknown unknowns becoming known unknowns, which is both thrilling and infuriating. I find myself most looking forward to this arc. Single viewpoint of Dalinar, Jasnah's POV still being withheld until the back 5. Least amount of information going in, least amount of speculation to do. What we learn is going to be the primary setup, the A story, of book 5. We're almost there. I'm still scrawling on the walls compulsively. Five Days Remaining.
  23. Another week, another book to read In this long-awaited story Brandon surely knows the way But when he's asked he will not say One week more
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