Child of Hodor

I think Brandon has got so many ideas and has so many different interests he wants to pursue that it comes down to either someone else writes these books with Brandon's supervision and the support of Dragonsteel or these books don't get written. I've made peace with it by choosing to only care about Stormlight 5 and view everything else as a little bonus, but I know that won't work for everyone.

I didn't mind the info dump that much, but it was inelegant. I love the FF14 reference . The experience of this book was: "I see exposition is in order" *Brandon leans in close to your face, stares you dead in the eyes and speaks 4 paragraphs of exposition without blinking*

Nightblood killed Rayse allowing Taravangian to ascend. That's huge. It's true Vasher hasn't done much, but attack Kaladin with scarves and such. Spren like Syl change when they go from unbonded to bonded when their radiant dies. Even when they bond someone new they have trouble remembering their past for a while. It could also be that Stormfather chooses not to mention it to Dalinar. Towards the end of the prologue Gavilar is like "You can lie?!". He speaks very differently to Dalinar from how he interacted with Gavilar. It could be that the Stormfather's personality changed for magical reasons or he's choosing to behave differently this time because last time was a disaster. Stormfather as currently constituted is a merger of the cognitive shadow of a dead shard vessel (Tanavast) and a Bondsmith spren that used to be a separate entity. This entity is both the ghost of the guy that charged the spren to seek out Bondsmiths to show the visions AND the spren that received the charged to do it. He's a weird amalgam we don't fully understand and he may have been playing dumb on some things while genuinely not remembering others.

Roshar system is number is 10, Braize's # is 9. Which is a nitpick by me, but that's what we do here :). Roshar has 10 planets in it which were created before the shattering (or at least not by Honor and Cultivation). So it seems like it was set to be that way before they existed. My pet theory is that Braize is 9 because of what was done to trap Odium there, more than Odium's mere presence. Honor & Cultivation used Adhesion against Odium and made it Your question is still totally valid. Shardworlds tend to have a magic number 1 -16. 13 pops out in this story with Yumi's rituals.

Hoid being the narrator again bugged me. A little if him goes a long way. The Lopen and others I don’t mind when they aren’t a main character or the narrator of the whole thing. I was so tired of Wayne as that series went on because of overexposure and Brandon is just not that funny to me.

These people take a lot of baths, huh? It was pretty good. *shrug* I was a little thrown by Hoid narrating this similar to Tress. I don’t need Hoid’s smug asides to the audience all through a book. I did appreciate Design being there and a part of the story. I felt like most of the twists were not well disguised. I immediately thought the idea that they were from separate planets was wrong no matter how much they kept saying it. Painter confronts a nightmare and next thing he knows nightmare is gone and Yumi is there. I assumed she was Nightmare and they are just misunderstood. “I, the one they call Painter, am actually good at painting!! I was pretending to be less good” didn’t add much to the story or the character imo. Sometimes maybe there doesn’t need to be another secret.

Good thought. It kinda sounds like the Godking from Warbreaker, but obviously that's not what he is talking about. It's a little different because they give him all this power but take away his ability to actual use it. Somewhat off topic, but this isn't first he pitched something he kinda already did. On a recent Intentionally Blank episode Brandon was pitching as an idea for a story: what if an evil overlord comes to kill his underling, like Vader does in Empire, but the underling manages to kill Vader and then tries to masquerade as Vader to cover up that Vader died. I'm thinking isn't this exactly what you did in SA4 ending and epilogue?

The Voidbinding chart that was in the back of WoR will be much more relevant in the back 5. People could Voidbind long ago, probably on Ashyn. No one in the modern day knows what it is, not even Khriss. I think Odium get folded into the surgebinding Magic system making it modern Voidbinding. Only other thing I can think of is the character specific chapter icons have a hidden meaning.

I just typed "Brandon Sanderson" into google and got an interesting suggested question. Is he Religion? Sound off in the comments!

Kelsier has a history of setting himself up as a religious figure despite not being anything close to a god. He sets up a fake resurrection with a Kandra in Final Empire which begins a religion, Survivorism. He masquerades as the Lord Ruler in the south after he gets a new body. It seems like his solution to all problems always involves him being worshipped. He can't leave the system he's in because of cognitive shadow issues with Connection. He is looking for a way to change that on Roshar. He doesn't want to admit he has limitations so he pretends to be a god too important to be bothered with coming to Roshar in person. In reality he just can't.

I agree Adonalsium wasn't a separate Vessel for the power, he was the power. Some of it may want to rejoin. I would argue that the Shard Odium is not interested in that. In the RoW epigraphs we get Harmony telling Wit that Odium is still going around destroying because it is what the Shard itself wants. Odium has been splintering shards this whole time. I think it wants to stay mad. It doesn't want to be merged with the other aspects of Adonalsium that would give it "context" as Frost put it in his letter to Hoid. Odium is the divine hatred of a specific god that these 16 people killed and took the power of. It seems to be holding a grudge. This is just my head canon based on what Harmony said.

Fun Hitchhiker’s Guide-esque romp. I can see why something like this was a good palette cleanser for him.

My question is why 16 (or 17) and not 4? One for each Dawnshard. What were the others doing? The Dawnshards are what allowed them to do the Shattering, but they can't do much without an invested art. Did they need so many people because they needed a bunch of different invested arts to be used with the Dawnshards and no one had access to that many arts individually? Did they rapidly hand off the Dawnshards amongst each other, do their part of the Shattering and then hand it off again? That's pretty goofy. Maybe they all worked together simultaneously through the Dawnshards? The Dawnshards could make use of what the non-Dawnshards were doing, something like that.

Updating my old thread to show that the technology has gotten far better. From Midjourney AI Art bot: Kaladin a muppet: Dalinar Kholin fighting alongside muppets:

*Shardcast voice* What IS a moon? I agree those moons are super weird could be artificial.