Book Title Palindrome!

[vistacruzer]

I am sure someone has posted about this before but I just realized the brilliant palindrome hidden in the titles of the first 5 Stormlight Archive books!

The books are all named after in universe books that are relevant to the story of the book that bears their name. The in universe books are:

-The Way of Kings

-Words of Radiance

-Oathbringer

-Rhythm of War

-Knights of Wind and Truth (the stormlight book is just named Wind and Truth)

When you take the first letter of each word in the titles we get: TWoK - WoR - O - RoW - KoWT.

No way this is a coincidence, Sanderson is clever as a logic spren.

[Treamayne]

5 hours ago, vistacruzer said:

I am sure someone has posted about this before but I just realized the brilliant palindrome hidden in the titles of the first 5 Stormlight Archive books!

The books are all named after in universe books that are relevant to the story of the book that bears their name. The in universe books are:

Spoiler

-The Way of Kings

-Words of Radiance

-Oathbringer

-Rhythm of War

-Knights of Wind and Truth (the stormlight book is just named Wind and Truth)

When you take the first letter of each word in the titles we get: TWoK - WoR - O - RoW - KoWT.

No way this is a coincidence, Sanderson is clever as a logic spren.

Nope.
Wasn't the original plan, but after some changes with books 2 and 3, he tried to go for the Ketek. . . but couldn't quite make it work.

WoBs:

Spoiler

Quote

Questioner

Does titles of the five books from the first arc create a ketek?

Brandon Sanderson

No. I actually considered it but it’s just too confusing so I actually tossed that out before I even started the first book. But I did consider it. It just was too confusing.

Kraków signing (March 21, 2017)

Quote

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)

Quote

gk-sudo

Would you consider breaking the palindrome format of Stormlight titles to give Stormlight 5 a better title, or are you pretty committed to the KoWT acronym, since there's already precedent?

Brandon Sanderson

If I can find a KoWT acronym that feels right, I will use it. I would say that it's 75% likely that I'm going to, but if I can't come up with one that we all like, I will break the format. The title's more important than keeping, I wasn't even planning the ketek format until I changed book 3's title and got us, you know. And then I'm like, oh, this could actually happen. But I changed book 2's title as well. This is a happy accident that we can make it happen, but I'm not going to then become slavish to it. And I also might let the T slide, right? In actual keteks, both the "of" and the "the" can be rearranged, depending on how strictly you're following the format, so it's possible that we change the O's and T's.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 4 (June 16, 2022)

Quote

Maxinator

Save the ketek!

Brandon Sanderson

The ketek is diegetically saved. It’s perfectly fine in-world. I’m not gonna put what feels like a bad title on a book just to get the ketek to work. I spent years, and none of them feel right to me. None of the titles feel right. I just gotta go with what feels like the right title for me [for Wind and Truth].

YouTube Spoiler Stream 6 (Dec. 19, 2023)

 

Hope that helps

[Through the Living Hopper He/Him]

Where did you get KoWT from? Isn't the last one WaT?

[Treamayne]

8 hours ago, ThatOneWorldhopper said:

Where did you get KoWT from? Isn't the last one WaT?

Minor Spoilers for WaT:

Spoiler

Knights of Wind and Truth is the in-world Title of the Shin book referenced in the Epigraphs.
- Much like Way of Kings by Nohadon is refernced in the WoK Epigraphs, etc.

Hope that helps

[Epicdaf]

Absolutely brilliant!