The gloves are off.

[Frustration]

Each new book is more Cosmere aware than the last, and Brandon recently said that he is no longer concerned about hiding Cosmere references, and there are going to be more crossovers.

I cannot express how happy this makes me.

[TheOneKEA]

15 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Each new book is more Cosmere aware than the last, and Brandon recently said that he is no longer concerned about hiding Cosmere references, and there are going to be more crossovers.

I cannot express how happy this makes me.

I was beyond pleased to see so many deliberate and obvious Cosmere references in this story. I feel like Brandon has finally reached the point where he simply isn’t concerned any longer about fans not being able to figure out what’s going on. He probably feels that it’s pretty straightforward for newer fans to find inexpensive copies of his books so that they can learn more about the references they encountered in TLM.

[StormingTexan he/him]

I am torn on this. I love all the details we get but I also kind of always liked how the Cosmere stuff was subtle and in the background. I started feeling this way in RoW but this one is for sure pretty "in your face" with Cosmere details. Not saying it is bad I will probably warm up to it as we go. 

[Captain Coffee]

I love it. I know some people are concerned for people who only read Stormlight or Mistborn, but I'm not. My wife reads Mistborn quickly, but struggles with Stormlight. I have been dodging spoiling the Thaidakar reveal from RoW since I finished the book. She asked if this book spoiled RoW, but I don't think it does. I think there are two places you can first encounter that Kel is Thaidakar, and whichever way you find out will color the other book. But, finding out in Lost Metal doesn't ruin the reveal in RoW, it adds tension because you know stuff the characters don't.

[Treamayne]

7 hours ago, Captain Coffee said:

But, finding out in Lost Metal doesn't ruin the reveal in RoW, it adds tension because you know stuff the characters don't.

Not to mention that if you go TLM > RoW, until you hit the eveal it is still possible that Thaidakar is somebody separate from Kelsier because it is implied through the first three books that Thaidakar is on Roshar (or just the leader for that branch of Ghostbloods). 

Since I also have a friend going through this method, I'll be sure to ask him when he gets to RoW if he felt that reveal was "spoiled."

He started with Elantris, followed with Mistborn Era 1 and Warbreaker, but since the Lost Metal release was close he read Emporer's Soul and went straight to Era 2 (with Secret History) and is saving Stormlight Archive for after Lost Metal. As of this afternoon, he's doing the Audible version and was on TLM Chapter 20ish. 

[lacrossedeamon]

Honestly I would love to rewrites of the earlier books with this "gloves off" mentality.

[+ShardlessVessel]

I never agreed with the sentiment that having too much Cosmere in the books means you have to read the entire Cosmere before any future releases. It really just means that the other books exist for greater context, and you can get all the information you need to understand their relevance for the plot inside the current book. Just like in TLM. You can go read TES if you want to better understand soulstamps, but TLM already tells you what they do, so it's not like you have to read TES first.

On the other hand, I don't care about spoilers and am not particularly attached to "reveals," so my perspective is skewed in that direction.

[Returned he/him]

I'm torn as well. It was an inevitable development, as long as the series remain distinct from one another (which they likely always will), and the inter-series conflict has been building for a long time. So it's nice to see some of those pay off. But the separation of series also seems to be leading to a shift in how plotting and events are handled within a given book. Like, we potentially lose some of the content that relates to a particular book in order to get hooks and teasers for other series, while also getting infodumps shoehorned in about settings and events that are largely unrelated to the current story. There also seems to be some pressure to give the spotlight to cross-series characters, expanding the cast that needs to be dealt with in any given book.

I'm excited for the new, larger conflicts between planets and Shards, as those have been implied forever. But I've also found myself enjoying recent Cosmere releases less than some of the previous ones. I enjoyed Lost Metal, but I also felt that most of its content was there to service the Cosmere generally rather than to advance stories in Mistborn proper, especially elements raised in Bands of Mourning. Lots of good character pieces, and an exciting, fast-paced adventure in its own right, but I felt that a lot of what was in it was really just opaque hints about what's happening elsewhere in the Cosmere and some blunt statements about the state of Scadrial, either plainly setting up future things (Discord is approaching) or flatly capping off things set up previously (the Community was a good explanation of events in Alloy of Law, but ended almost as soon as we learned about it).

[Dawnshard]

I frickin love this! At Dragonsteel he talked about doing the assignment vs what he actually wanted to do. He has worked long enough keeping it subtle. There are hundreds of authors who can't write like Brandon. If you want selfcontained stories, you should read those other authors. He is the only one doing hard magic system crossovers. I loved the new information we got in Lost Metal. Identity locks? Awakened Locks that know if you have the passcode! Aetherbound! I'm so excited to see what he will come up with! It will be like nothing ever before. And when it eventually comes on screen? A whole new world. It will be like JRR Tolkien again. That much of a revelation.