Random Thoughts after reading (Spoilers)

[Erik Holmes]

I finally finished WoK's. What a great book!

I had a lot of thoughts/questions/ideas after reading it. I'm sure some of these have been gone over before, but who knows, maybe I noticed something that hasn't been spoken about yet...

1. Shallan possesses a Shardblade. She used it to kill her father, cutting up the Soulcaster he possessed during the fight, which is why the chain and crystal were cut.

2. The Death visions come form Talenel while he was suffering in agony in that damnation place. But not all of them, I think a few of those are just ones Brandon threw in there to throw us off. They are just the random things people said as they died that ended up getting recorded too.

3. I'm thinking that Dalinars gift from the old magic was either to make Navani love him or to become the Blackthorn.

4. I really want to know what this paragraph is hinting at:

Holding his breath, he clung to the Stormlight. He could still feel it leaking out. Stormlight could be held for only a short time, a few minutes at most. It leaked away, the human body too porous a container. He had heard that the Voidbringers could hold it in perfectly. But, then, did they even exist? His punishment declared that they didn

[Zayde he/him]

10. The round things are actually the ten war camps of the high princes. I don't see any resemblance to Aons, but they could be related to the symbol phenomenon with the ten main cities of Roshar having a symbol hidden in their street pattern.

[Munin he/him]

Speaking of symbols, one of the chapter heading images is a crescent moon with a few spears through it.

Does it look like the Allomantic metal symbols to anyone else?

[Silus - Shard of Flame he/him]

1.  I'd actually say that she killed him first, then took his Shardblade, cuz it says there was blood which there wouldn't be if he was killed with a Shardblade.  Alternatively, her brother was fighting with him and Shallan tried to stop them but he used it as a distraction to kill him, and Shallan blames herself for his death.

2.  Makes sense, but what about now that he's out?  Would the prophecies stop?  And does this mean that Taln can see the future?  I doubt it, really.

3. I idea is that Dalinar's wife betrayed him somehow and he wanted to have her taken from his mind.  This would explain why he doesn't exactly seem perturbed by his lack of memory.

4. Good catch.

5/6.  I'm pretty sure Thaidakar and Restares are Highprinces that Gavilar thought particularly inclined to want to kill him and take power.

7. I don't think so.  I'm thinking that something humanity did made them quit, or maybe the breaking of the Oathpact.

8. But what does that mean?  Is it a Shard?  The Vorin call Jezrien the Stormfather, but I don't think it was him.

9. That's a good thought.

11.  I really don't think so.  From what we've seen of Kaladin using it, it doesn't seem nearly as instinctual as Allomancy.

12. It's possible there's some kind of magic involved with it, looking at Kabsal's notes.

[Earendil]

My personal theory regarding number 4 is as follows.

Since the last desolation, Shin have been forbidden to become Shardbearers, since the purpose for shardbearers (to protect against the voidbringers) was gone.  The penalty for taking up a shardblade is to become truthless, the only thing lower than a regular warrior.  Szeth took up the shardblade because he was convinced that the threat had not yet ended, possibly because of some kind of prophecy.  Whatever the reason, he only preserves his honor if the threat actually exists, allowing a higher purpose to his actions.  However, his punishment is only justified if the threat is gone--if there is still a need for shardbearers, than a punishment wouldn't be appropriate, even if servitude was.

In regard to number 7, I don't think we need to concoct a case of mistaken identity to find the source of the feelings of betrayal.  By quitting, the radiants essentially abandoned everyone to the chaos that would inevitably follow.  Sure, it wasn't their fault, but it's hard to avoid the feeling of betrayal if the person you hold as a pillar of honor turns his back on the world.

[Munin he/him]

Hang on. Are there highstorms in Shinovar? I seem to recall something about there not being any there...

If that's the case, then how did Szeth get the Stormlight to learn to become a Surgebinder? The Shin seem to regard Stormlight as holy, and presumably wouldn't trade with infused spheres. Szeth would have had to either leave Shinovar or violate his people's beliefs.

[Silus - Shard of Flame he/him]

They either don't have them or the mountains break them up enough not to be potent.  So, I'm not really sure.

[Andrew the Great he/him]

That could possibly go a long way toward explaining why the Shin consider the Stormlight to be sacred, though. If they never get storms, Stormlight is going to be hard to come by.

[Silus - Shard of Flame he/him]

But how would Szeth have learned to do Lashings without Stormlight?

[Munin he/him]

But how would Szeth have learned to do Lashings without Stormlight?

Maybe there's some other way to get it.

[Andrew the Great he/him]

Well he couldn't. So he obviously got some from somewhere. But that makes Szeth all the more interesting as a character.

I wonder if his use of Stormlight is considered profane by the Shin. I also have to wonder if that doesn't have something to do with him being Truthless.

EDIT: And Munin beat me to it. But I essentially am meaning the same thing. Though I also think that the Shin do see some storms - they're just exceedingly rare.

[leinton]

I don't remember him mentioning using stormlight to be sinful, and he tends to mentally freak out whenever he does something sinful. And I really doubt that the Shin see the storms if they don't have the strange geology the rest of Roshar does.

[Ryan he/him]

I don't remember him mentioning using stormlight to be sinful, and he tends to mentally freak out whenever he does something sinful. And I really doubt that the Shin see the storms if they don't have the strange geology the rest of Roshar does.

He mentions that he considers the use of Stormlight for illumination to be profane, but I don't recall him ever mentioning whether his own abilities are considered profane.

[Earendil]

I don't remember him mentioning using stormlight to be sinful, and he tends to mentally freak out whenever he does something sinful. And I really doubt that the Shin see the storms if they don't have the strange geology the rest of Roshar does.

He mentions that he considers the use of Stormlight for illumination to be profane, but I don't recall him ever mentioning whether his own abilities are considered profane.

When Szeth first describes the lamps, he is impressed by the casual use of something sacred.  Interestingly, it offends him much less than the use of stone, which leads me to two conclusions.  First, the use of stormlight isn't proscribed, it's just regulated, so the casual wastefulness demonstrated by the Alethi is only slightly disturbing.  Second, I can't help but think that the Shin revere stone as the physical manifestation of their god, since Szeth's name for the Alethi, Stonewalkers, implies that no Shin would ever willfully walk on stone.

[Andrew the Great he/him]

That also goes along with the fact that the Shin refuse to mine for metals because it harms rock. However, I fail to see how that means that stone is the physical manifestation of their god. All it really means is that stone is sacred.

The more important question there is why do the Shin find stone to be so sacred?

And I think that Stormlight being regulated is as good a guess as any. From what we've seen, his abilities aren't necessarily what make him Truthless, though they could be.