EnderW420

I agree, with a caveat; I think Zellion is becoming a more positive foil to Hoid, and this book was the point where he shifted from following down Hoid's path to carving out his own. At the beginning, Hoid and Nomad are both former Dawnshard holders whose Torment forces them to do no harm, travel through the Cosmere to destinations they do not plan, and tend to prefer their own priorities to those of the people they are around. However, in this book, a lot of these change for Nomad; he finds a way to progress past his Torment where Hoid has not, which may make him more of an active participant in situations, and he chooses to engage with the people of Beacon rather than use something like the purified Dor to Skip out early. The Zellion naming scene seems like the most obvious method of that; Hoid seems to collect names but he treats them somewhat casually, revealing names on a whim, wheras Nomad does not even think of his old name until arguably the emotional climax of the book, and is incredibly moved by being given a new name. Nomad was quite like Hoid, but I don't think Zellion will be.

Dang if that scene of Nomad becoming Zellion didn't choke me up. Also, interesting that while this book has the mandatory Hoid moment, it's the first one I can remember where it's not based in his usual shows-up-wherever-he-needs-to-be chicanery, but because he got Cosmere-Video-Called.

Almighty, this one hurt. I really hope Shai comes out of this one okay, can't wait to see more from her now that she's a player on the main stage. Excellent book!!

To be fair, calling himself a Spren could be more of a category thing, with Spren being any sapient mass of investiture. We've seen that cognitive shadows can behave like spren, being trapped in gemstones and the like, and Vasher described Spren using his Invested Entities list. It's like how Rosharans would refer to any Invested Art, like the Metallic Arts, as Surgebinding.

Possibly, but present Sigzil doesn't have the sort of tone Auxillary spoke in. I saw Aux as more of a Lopen type more then anything.

This is an incredible theory, bravo. The fact that you're arguing for the thematic side of it makes me pretty inclined to believe you. I also really like Nameless' similar thematic parallels.

There's a good couple WoBs out there that say Lift is book 6, I just grabbed this one as an example. https://wob.coppermind.net/events/370/#e11796

Of course, this'll be a Lift with ten more years of life experience and time to mature. Lift being 13 as of RoW means we'd get 23 year old Lift for Stormlight 6, which is definitely long enough for a person to develop a more serious worldview; if anything, starting with a more jaded Lift would provoke an immediate mystery of "what made her lose what she was like?"

Ooh, this would be excellent. I'm a sucker for fun, off the wall character interactions, and a Lift/Renarin duo would be a great time. A sort of espionage style Stormlight book or two would be an excellent change of pace, and would be a good reason to have a book or two of comparatively lower stakes as the series gears back up into the Cosmere-wide implications of the latter quarter of the series (I assume). And no need to apologize! It's just a theory, one that probably isn't right, and there's no way to prove or disprove it without discussing and possibly disagreeing.

Edgedancers have a sort of enhanced ability to communicate, right? Picking up slang easier, the fact that they were described as one of the most well-spoken orders, etc. Could that be a sort of Spiritual Abrasion, where their ability to connect with people goes more... smoothly? It may be a pun but it also may be correct is all I'm saying.

Yeah, title. Personally, I do think there's a decent change that Lift becomes the Kaladin of the latter half of the series, with her as the arguable main character of books 6-10 the way that Kal has been for 1-4 (first book of the era both establishing the greater world at the current moment and also the past of the main viewpoint character, character deals with trauma related to their parents and deals with their own problems relating to doing violence for a good cause,) and we've seen her grow solidly through the present books, while also keeping her out of focus enough to prevent her from overplaying her hand in terms of history and things she has to work through. But as we've seen, she's already pretty far in her bond with Wyndle; Lift becomes a Third-Ideal Edgedancer as of, well, Edgedancer, and I'm not certain a Fourth and Fifth Ideal would be enough to deal with whatever craziness goes on in the latter half of the series. For this reason I believe Lift will bond the Nightwatcher (assuming that it is in fact a Bondsmith spren), as well as a few others. Firstly, there's the fact that Lift is a magical little goblin person. Lift is one of three characters we know of to have been gifted a boon by Cultivation directly rather then the Nightwatcher, and I personally believe her modifications are a bit more in depth then either Dalinar's or Taravangian's. Lift's spiritweb being modified to 1. run on Lifelight rather then Stormlight, 2. metabolize said Lifelight directly from caloric intake, and 3. exist a bit more in the cognitive realm (if i remember correctly) is to me a much more overt changes then Dalinar's temporary amnesia, and maybe even more overt then Taravangian's intelligence and passion. By modifying her spiritweb to run on Lifelight, it's possible that Cultivation is setting Lift up to deal with significantly more taxing abilities, such as the Connection-based powers of a Bondsmith. Lift also being an Edgedancer means she has one of the more simplified powersets of the Radiants IMO, so giving her access to four surges would be not too strong to be a main character, as neither Edgedancers nor Bondsmiths have been primarily combative in terms of abilities and instead forces Lift to continue using her intelligence and instincts in combat. (Also, having a living Shardblade already accounts for Bondsmiths so far not giving Blades.) The other important part of Lift's cultivation ties is looking, again, at Dalinar and Taravangian, more importantly looking at where they ended up due to Cultivation. Dalinar went from the Blackthorn, a man who treated the Geneva Conventions like a checklist, to the leader of the Radiants who sold a priceless weapon from an ancient time to free slaves, who is imperfect but trying, and who is one of two present Bondsmiths (and you could also make a pretty solid argument that him being in close proximity to Navani and helping her deal with her trauma due to Gav put her in a better position to be the other Bondsmith), and Taravangian, who's a frickin' Shard. Cultivation does not mess around, and that means Lift is definitely in for great things. "So," you say, "when would this happen? How do you see it going down?" Well, firstly, it's kind of rude to interrupt me while I'm writing, isn't it? But because I'm just that magnanimous, I'll tell you anyway. I see this bond being either the epilogue of book 5 (unlikely), first third of book 6, (maybe) or ending of book 6 (now we're cooking with oil!) I'll go through these in reverse order of likeliness. I doubt this'll happen at the end of book 5, because I imagine book 5 will be crammed tight already with Szeth and Kaladin vibing, the challenge, and everything else that I'm forgetting for the moment, and also because when this doesn't happen in book 5 I want a few years to hold out hope that my theorizing isn't wrong, dagnabbit. First third of book 6 I could see, but it would require a good amount of more obvious buildup in 5 and 6, and again, there's already approximately five billion irons in the fire for book 5. This bond occurring at the end of book 6 I really like, though, because buildup to a spren bond has generally taken a full book for a PoV character (Kaladin, Shallan, Dalinar, Navani, etc) so having the Sanderlanche of Book 6 include a Lift Bondsmith Bond would be enough time to establish dual spren bonds, etc; this also gives a character the ability to play with the Connection-based powers of a Bondsmith in combat more often, as Dalinar has been more of a logistics guy then a boots on the dirt combatant since gaining his Bondsmith bond, and I don't expect Navani to be jumping into combat soon but instead to explore the realmatic/scientific ramifications of Bondsmith powers instead. (Plus the whole can-the-sibling-bond-live-outside-urithuru thing.) Additionally, since there'll be a 10 year gap between books 5 and 6, I could see quite a few things going down. Dalinar either loses or ties the contest of champions and suffers a bad fate, removing him from the battlefield; and if Urithuru was destroyed/conquered again, that would serve to demoralize the Radiants and remove our second Bondsmith, giving the characters ample reason to seek out a combat-based Bondsmith to assist in the retaking of Roshar. This would give Lift, as a uniquely gifted individual in terms of Spiritweb, someone who already knows the location of the Nightwatcher, and theoretically one of the last remaining Radiants, significant motivation to be the one who directly seeks out Cultivation in order to see if she'll help them; and when she gets to where she met Cultivation as a young child, she's instead met with the Nightwatcher, who offers to bond Lift in addition to Wyndle, either on Cultivation's orders or just because Lift is that... Awesome. Anyway, hope you enjoyed the theory, been brewing on it for a while. Thank you for reading this, and have a lovely day. (Edit - Totally forgot that Lift has an Aviar now too. I don't think that factors into this theory, but it does give Lift a way to grow in book 5 without going up an Ideal, and if it has an ability like sensing other minds, could also help Lift find the Nightwatcher. )

Least favorite? God, probably Zane. I can appreciate most of what i’ve seen as controversial characters (Moash, Venli) for what they add, but Zane i feel like could be cut out wholesale and remove nothing, and was added because Sanderson didn’t want to wrap up Vins arc too quickly.

Hi, I'm Ender, he/him (because I only have enough space in my brain for a few usernames), I'm a decent fan of the cosmere (own Stormlight, White Sands 1 and Arcanum Unbound physically, Warbreaker electronically, and everything else from my local library) and am currently reading through the Wheel of Time.