Aldric

Oh I agree with you in general. I mean he's specifically said the comment about the gloves being off from now on with Cosmere tie-ins. I just personally felt that this story is a reasonable starting point because of it's relative brevity, fairytale feel, and while there are plenty of Easter-eggs, I didn't feel the reader noticing them was very necessary for the story. The fact that the "Evil Sorceress" was an ancient Ire Elantrian wasn't that necessary to the story, I didn't think. I could fully see somebody disagreeing with that though, seeing as how one of the meta-points of the story was Hoid getting his Elantrian Groove On. But a first time Cosmere reader wouldn't really notice or care that much about that final point, at least theoretically. Similarly I don't really see knowing that the tablet that translates spoken words was an advanced Awakening application is really necessary for the story. Stuff like that.

When they're quite minor characters from existing stories, I don't really care. I usually have to look them up anyway to have remembered them. I certainly didn't remember a specific Ire from SH, I didn't remember one of the kids from Elantris in TLM, without looking her up. Based on some of the things she mentioned, I vaguely thought it might be her, but yeah. I'm basically saying I personally don't think the original poster has to worry about Cosmere tie-ins in this book putting off new readers. But that's totally just an opinion, obviously. I don't think many of these things "matter" for the story at hand. If you're not SUPER into doing Cosmere studies, you usually have to look up things online to be sure of XYZ anyway. Though I suppose if people feel they are "missing" something by missing various Easter Eggs, then for their personality, they'd need to have read the entire Cosmere.

Does it even count when it's a shard? Their body dissolves when they become a shard, though I forget the term that is used when that happens.

This is totally both beautiful and awesome!

I recently (within the last month) bought a similar one to Wilar's. Mine is enameled, and I like it quite fine thus far. Warnings, I have a crappy phone with a mediocre camera, but here's mine: (edited to add a link to what I bought like Wilar did:) https://badalijewelry.com/products/bridge-four-badge-enameled-bronze?variant=22193399791701

I also understand where you're coming from. The coppermind (wiki about Sanderson's stuff) now has a time machine feature, that you can see what the wiki was prior to X book comes out. So you can now use the coppermind instead of reference book you want. It's never going to be perfect, but would let you look up whatever you want without ruining the current book you're reading. Try it out at: https://coppermind.net/wiki/Special:TimeMachine. By using it a bit just now, it appears that once you do a search using it, you need to either hit back on browser, or go back to the time machine page for your next search.

I agree seeing various internal politics for Radiants would be cool. Hopefully we'll get it more in the future. It would especially be more of a forefront thing if they weren't directly at war with Odium/Fused. So I expect to see more of it in the latter 5 books. I don't really think Radiants directly followed off how Heralds did it, because you're totally right about Jeziren being in charge of them, but the Bondsmiths' were in charge in ancient times. It's totally valid to say they don't have to follow ancient rules about this and that, but I think Dalinar will remain in charge until during/after book 5, where he'll either die and become a fused, die and get vaporized by Nightblood, ascent fully to honor/unity, or maybe just retire by the time book 6 happens.

I think historically Bondsmiths were supposed to be in charge. Dalinar is basically in charge of the Radiants. The dustbringers don't seem to be paying much attention to what he is telling them to, nor obviously are the Skybreakers, but most everybody else seems to accept him as the Radiant leader. Granted, I think Kaladin could have told Dalinar to stuff it, and it would have caused all kinds of issues in all directions. The truth was, Kaladin was freezing up all the time, both in the text of the book, and we were told he had been doing so over the past year, so something had to happen.

I saw you responding to another person on this welcome thread about Era 2. I think that person liked AoL best, and you commented on your love of Era 2. I can totally see that when you comment on the heart/humor. I do like Era 2 a lot, I just love the "epic feel" of Era 1 so much. Also I think I got feeling a bit disjointed on the series because of the long delays in the final book. I imagine once Lost Metal is out, and I reread the entire series again I'll enjoy it even more. I'm super looking forward to Era 3, I'm interested in seeing how the society with more (normal) tech and magic-tech will work with together. I also love that BS has said something about the newspaper/broadsheets (where in Era 2 we get things like Allomancer Jak) will be stories about Wax and Wayne. WoR is definitely my second favorite SA. The ending is Oathbringer is just so utterly epic to me, and all the threads seem to come together so well. I realize a lot of people think Oathbringer was draggy/boring at parts, but somehow I never really felt that way. I was pretty invested in all parts of the book.

Favorite book is kind of hard. I think I might say Oathbringer (which I know is utterly not in the running for the average person's favorite Stormlight, much less favorite book). I totally love Mistborn Era 1, we'll say that as a series, since it's done. I imagine Stormlight (first 5) will probably really be my favorite when book 5 is done. My listing of Stormlight is probably: 1) Oathbringer 2) WoR 3) RoW 4) tWoK. That's largely a rating based on how much I loved them the first time I read them. tWoK had so much worldbuilding and less focused plot, that the first time I read it I (only) liked it a lot, instead of loving it. I still like Mistborn Era 2, but not nearly to the degree I liked Era 1. Warbreaker is great fun for a standalone. I didn't like Elantris as much as anything else Cosmere, even if I still enjoy it when I do rereads. What was your favorite book or series?

I signed up to this site in 2011, but mostly just lurked off and on over the years. I'm an avid shardcast follower for the past 6 months, and have been an avid Sanderson fan since 2008 or '09. I've read everything (written word) he's published barring the last 3 Alcatraz books. I never got back to the middle grade stuff, after initially reading Sanderson had published at some earlier point. Also I haven't read the graphic novels (though I read the prose White Sand). I also haven't listened to Dark One, as I only really do ebooks, at least thus far. Greetings to all, and I've enjoyed reading various theories and memes and misc of lots of what this site has to offer.

I don't think Hemalurgic decay would screw up compounding very much. "Oh no, I only get 5x what I should get instead of 10x or 100x." Anything more than significantly more than 1:1 would allow for huge power.

I've been assuming that inquisitors were intentionally not given gold allomancy, to keep them more manageable by The Lord Ruler. Remember that the inquisitors weren't natural mistborn, so you could easily leave out something like gold allomancy on purpose. Did the "default" inquisitor setup, during TLR's time, include any feruchemy beyond gold?

I don't understand this. I guess after posting this I'll go reread some of the earlier parts of this thread, but: I thought to get compounding, you have to burn your storages? Unless you're saying at an earlier time he burned the storage then, got the 10x multiplier, or whatever it exactly is, used that to fill lots of metalminds, and then coasts along using that until he has to rinse and repeat? But if that is the case, why do they talk about Miles constantly needing new sources of gold?

Holy crap! The absolute best title ever is Wafflebringer. That so totally owns Worldbringer from HoA. At least I think they were called that Back In The Day. Regardless... The Wafflebringer is now my favorite title ever. I can only aspire to one day be known as one.

I really thought that Brandon had said before that Hemalurgy can be used throughout the cosmere, not just on Scadrial. I have no quote handy, though. I guess that could mean only that you could transfer the Metallic Arts to people on other worlds, but I always assumed that meant that this thread was correct. That it could be used to steal other magics.

I totally thought the bullet deflection only happened on its way out of the bubble. Otherwise the entire idea of dodging bullets via the field kind of goes out the window. You dodge away from where the bullet would go, and suddenly it goes random upon entering the field. That isn't what happened as far as I recall in the book. It only deflects when leaving the field that I recall. So since the bullet hit her in the head, and she would have been in the field, there would have been no deflection, the bullet never left the field. I just wanted to make that point, though. Because I don't at all think Bloody Tan was that type of allomancer.

There was one thing I didn't really understand. If you're a twinborn and you are burning your feruchemical metal allomantically, will you get the allomantic effect also? That makes the most sense to me, but that isn't what Miles seemed to do. He didn't get the allomantic-gold effect all the time when he was healing himself. At least he didn't seem to. Also: I loved the the aluminum-foil hats also. It was the first thing I thought of, but somebody else earlier on this thread already said it, heh.

I wanted to ask a clarifying question. All of these non-published books, including his master's thesis -- none of them are canon, right? I can totally see people wanting to read them, but you can't utilize stuff from them to try to modify existing, or create new theories... Is that correct?

Oooh, oooh, pick me, this would be great to win!

I'm going to have to go with book 1. Book 3 was right behind it for me, but book 2 was pretty easily the weakest of the 3, I feel. Everything was so much more of a surprise in book 1. That is probably what makes it edge out 3 for me. The hidden demon in book 3 was awesome, though.

Wait, WOW! You guys haven't read ten things on that list? I've read at least a quarter of that list, and I think more like a third. I found it almost impossible to decide on only 10 to pick. Do you guys largely not read sci-fi/fantasy, and are more into other genres?

Brandon Sanderson has explicitly said there will be 3 complete Mistborn Trilogies. The only real question concerning Alloy of Law, as I understand it, is whether it is the start of the second trilogy, or a standalone between the first and the second. The first was epic fantasy, as we know. The second was supposed to be the equivalent of Urban Fantasy, in the same world as the first, with technology roughly equivalent to where we are now, but allomancy/feruchemy still existing. The third was supposed to be a few hundreds of years later, and will be Sci-Fi, and they will have at least some limited space-travel, I think. Though it very well might only be limited to within the solar system alone. We know Alloy of Law was an unplanned work, in that it came from one of his side-projects he lets himself do between major novels. Like Death By Pizza, except that one wasn't good enough, or didn't fully work in the end, so it wasn't sold. Alloy of Law, being unplanned, and not as far ahead technology as that supposed plan I mentioned, makes me think it will just be an in-between stand alone between the first and the second trilogy. But that's certainly just my assumption.

Brandon Sanderson has explicitly said there will be 3 complete Mistborn Trilogies. The only real question concerning Alloy of Law, as I understand it, is is the start of the second trilogy, or a standalone between the first and the second. The first was epic fantasy, as we know. The second was supposed to be the equivalent of Urban Fantasy, in the same world as the first, with technology roughly equivalent to where we are now, but allomancy/feruchemy still existing. The third was supposed to be a few hundreds of years later, and will be Sci-Fi, and they will have at least some limited space-travel, I think. Though it very well might only be limited to within the solar system alone.