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Stormlight Book 5 Acronym


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Yeah, we have confirmation from Brandon this is what he intends to do.

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Questioner

So far, the Stormlight Archive's book titles have the abbreviations: WoK, WoR, O, and RoW. Will Book Five's abbreviation be KoW, making the complete ketek?

Brandon Sanderson

Great question. Way back when I started working on the Stormlight Archive, I wanted to do this. And then I just didn't think it would work out, for various reasons, and I backed away from it, coming up with my kind of working titles that were not a ketek. After I changed Book Two to Words of Radiance, I realized I might have a chance to do this, and it started to kind of get in my head, that maybe I do it, maybe I wouldn't. I waited to see if Book Three would work as a single-word title, which it did. And so I am intending to do this.

The question we have internally is where we put the "T." Because Way of Kings actually has a "the" in it, where Words of Radiance and Oathbringer do not, and neither does Rhythm of War. So, is it going to have a T at the end, or not? That is subject to debate, even internally, right now.

YouTube Livestream 5 (March 16, 2020)

One thing to consider is that according to the ketek rules, an 'h' could be substituted for other letters. So there's a bit of leeway with naming SA book 5.

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1 hour ago, Frustration said:

It's King of the world, and I won't be convinced otherwise.

Taravangian:

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King of the World is one of the few suggestions I’ve seen that sounds natural. Can we have a free-floating The? “The Way of Kings” is the actual title if the The counts it should  be at the end. Although if it counts we have too many words to fit the form. I guess the The is invisible. 

I’m good with your suggestion though. 

1 hour ago, ILuvHats said:

Yeah, we have confirmation from Brandon this is what he intends to do.

One thing to consider is that according to the ketek rules, an 'h' could be substituted for other letters. So there's a bit of leeway with naming SA book 5.

So the O can be swapped for an h word? The O is what makes it hard to me. Hard to think of O words that fit well and that aren’t Of. 

There are WAY too many Brandon books titled “______ of ______” already. Like 80% of Cosmere novels, even the unpublished early works like Liar of Partinel and Aether of Night. 
 

Edited by Child of Hodor
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I may be in the minority here, but I don't think the "H" will play a part. This pattern is something that Sanderson would want to be recognizable to both hardcore fans and casual fans alike; using the "H" substitution for "one letter/symbol off of perfection" and extra creativity may not be worth it in the long run. I'm afraid we'd get too many posts of newcomers here and on Reddit saying "Book 5 's acronym isn't symmetrical compared to the rest of the series," and then energy would either have to be spent saying "yes it is because of this obscure rule in-world," or "you're right, it's not, and it's not supposed to be." Wouldn't it just be easier to have fans say "OMG the book acronyms are symmetrical," and go on to congratulate the lucky reader/listener for figuring it out?

 

36 minutes ago, Child of Hodor said:

There are WAY too many Brandon books titled “______ of ______” already. Like 80% of Cosmere novels, even the unpublished early works like Liar of Partinel and Aether of Night. 

I agree with you, but there are other words that start with "o" that can be used in this case. "On" and "over" are just examples. 

But if "of" fits the pattern here, I'd rather Brandon use it and start branching out for titles on Mistborn and Elantris sequels. 

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30 minutes ago, Use the Falchion said:

I may be in the minority here, but I don't think the "H" will play a part. This pattern is something that Sanderson would want to be recognizable to both hardcore fans and casual fans alike; using the "H" substitution for "one letter/symbol off of perfection" and extra creativity may not be worth it in the long run. I'm afraid we'd get too many posts of newcomers here and on Reddit saying "Book 5 's acronym isn't symmetrical compared to the rest of the series," and then energy would either have to be spent saying "yes it is because of this obscure rule in-world," or "you're right, it's not, and it's not supposed to be." Wouldn't it just be easier to have fans say "OMG the book acronyms are symmetrical," and go on to congratulate the lucky reader/listener for figuring it out?

I feel like Brandon probably has a similar mindset, and will try to make it perfectly symmetrical. However, I'm a fan of using the 'H' rule because it opens up a lot of options for naming. In general, I'm not a huge fan of the plan to make a palindrome out of the title abbreviations because it's so restrictive. It worked out for RoW (which btw is my favorite SA book title so far), but then again, it seems like the title Oathbringer was devised for book 3 in order to make the plan work. Not that I'm against breaking the _____ of ____ pattern, but Oathbringer has always felt bland to me, and is definitely my least favorite title. I'm also salty that Stones Unhallowed got dropped as the name for book 5.

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1 hour ago, Child of Hodor said:

There are WAY too many Brandon books titled “______ of ______” already. Like 80% of Cosmere novels, even the unpublished early works like Liar of Partinel and Aether of Night. 

And this is nearly definitive in Epic Fantasy.

 

‘The Blank of Thing’ or ‘The Thing of Blank’

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27 minutes ago, Gregk said:

Knights of Honor.

IDK, because there is computer game with this name so this can resolve with some legal issues (very good game btw, its going to have sequel).

Maybe Brandon wasnt going to name books like this (Oathbringer was first Stones Unhallowed) but this is very Brandon thing to do, give book comunity-made title. So KoW make sence.

Kingdoms of WIll.

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2 hours ago, RazeU said:

My first reaction is the K will be for knights... but this brings about the phonetic vs spelling debate. So I don’t really know. King of Worlds? Knights of Wisdom? I can’t think of anything that sounds suitably epic lol.

I mean if you go with the phonetic route you could make it "Kollector of Words" :P

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On 10/23/2020 at 9:39 PM, Use the Falchion said:

I may be in the minority here, but I don't think the "H" will play a part. This pattern is something that Sanderson would want to be recognizable to both hardcore fans and casual fans alike; using the "H" substitution for "one letter/symbol off of perfection" and extra creativity may not be worth it in the long run. I'm afraid we'd get too many posts of newcomers here and on Reddit saying "Book 5 's acronym isn't symmetrical compared to the rest of the series," and then energy would either have to be spent saying "yes it is because of this obscure rule in-world," or "you're right, it's not, and it's not supposed to be." Wouldn't it just be easier to have fans say "OMG the book acronyms are symmetrical," and go on to congratulate the lucky reader/listener for figuring it out?

On top of that, he wouldn't use "H" because then it wouldn't be a perfect Vorin sequence, and does any word better describe the Cosmere than "Perfect".

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22 hours ago, Wyndleblade said:

Not that the title necessarily has anything to do with who has the flashbacks but it is Szeths book.

Killer of the West

 

Don't forget that the titles are in-world books as well. So unless someone is writing a biography of Szeth, this is probably not it.

With the Rysn heading out west, maybe Aimia and Aimians can play into it. Plus I think including the "t" from The Way of Kings allows for more variety. Here is my thought:

Knights of the Western Throne

 

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This has basically nothing to do with the Skybreakers or Shinovar, but I randomly came up with the title Knights of Wrath and I love it. We already have Words of Radiance, which was an in world book about Surgebinders, but what if there was a book about Voidbinders? We don't really know much about Voidbinding other than it's connected to Odium and the Unmade, so we're probably going to have to learn more about it eventually. Odium basically just means hatred, so I think naming his "knights" after wrath is somehow fitting.

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