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Skyward is the first of a quadrilogy of books by Brandon Sanderson. This Top Gun/How To Train Your Dragon mashup is a YA sci-fi story that tells the story of Spensa, the daughter of a coward, and her battle against both the alien Krell and the very Defense Force she is trying to fight for.

Until Brandon Sanderson, I was mostly a sci-fi guy, with Brandon being my first foray into fantasy. As such, I was very excited for my first ever Brandon sci-fi (I haven’t read much outside of the Cosmere). Brandon has said before that he doesn’t see much difference in the way he writes his fantasy and his sci-fi, and I have to agree, Skyward is a Brandon Sanderson novel through and through.

Badali Jewelry, makers of all sorts of amazing jewelry from the cosmere, from Stormlight, Mistborn, and Elantris, is having a fall sale until November 22nd. Not everything is on sale, but a lot is, from the Steel Alphabet rings we reported on, Aon pendants, Cosmere symbol pendants (which I am currently lusting about), and also some pins. There's a huge variety of things there. Be sure to check them out.

This week on Shardcast, not only do you get to continue getting some spicy Words of Brandon from the Legion release--which remind us of how crazy these weird stormstrider things are--but you also get some bonuses. That's right, you also get a special edition podcast of Tasercast, as well as Dresden Files Cast. Did we know where that would lead us today? Not even remotely. We also learn about Heralds and their bodies (which is a great sentence to say out of context), the classics of Gavilar's black spheres, and also... bears. 

We're back with another set of Coppermind objectives and a special award up for grabs this month! We've made some terrific progress on all things Stormlight Archive since Oathbringer released nearly one year ago, and much of the thanks for this goes to all of you who chipped in on objectives--both big and small--over the last few months. As always, we're happy for any help we can get, so don't be shy. If you're new to editing the Coppermind, don't worry; we'll help you out with guides and plenty of assistance. You don't need experience, just the will to help out! We'll also provide awards, because everyone loves fake internet points.

So, apparently last week on Instagram (the... place for your book news?) Brandon posted that last week's batch of chapters would be the last of them. My apologies for being misinformed and getting your hopes up last week in the last release that you might get Chapter 17 today. Indeed, more chapters did not arrive this morning, but yesterday we did get a short bonus chapter, Chapter 15. 

If you are looking for a new series to read, have you heard of this Brandon Sanderson guy? He writes some pretty great stuff. We're fans. Among his best and most popular is his Stormlight Archive series, and if you're in the US and Canada, you can get the first three books, The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, and Oathbringer for $2.99 a piece. This sale will end November 5th, but what a killer deal. 

Today on Shardcast, there's yet more Words of Brandon, this time from the Legion release party, and boy do we have some real good ones. We get some actual, real-to-goodness confirmations about Nightblood, including some longstanding mysteries being discussed. It's exciting! This Word of Brandon episode is not one to miss. We also get upper and lower bounds on how many Desolations there are! Are you not entertained! Some theories are also destroyed in this one. 

It's Wednesday, so you know what that means: more Skyward! This time we're back to three chapters, Chapters 12-14! As usual you'll need to scroll down to the newest stuff. One's a short chapter but this is still a meaty week for Skyward. Discuss it in our discussion topic! There's only one more week of Skyward previews left, because Skyward comes out November 6th!

It's the last bit of our "short," "surface-level," and "one-episode" series on the Kholins. We're finishing up Dalinar's family unit, and we have to talk about Adolin and Renarin and their family dynamics! And, of course, how it evolves after Dalinar's visit to the Valley or not. Guest starring: Kaves Kholin. This is also our 50th episode! How crazy is that?

Last week we all had a pretty brutal cliffhanger in Skyward, but now we get the resolution in Skyward Chapters 10 and 11! There's just two chapters, but action is pretty fun. As usual, that GetUnderlined link has every Skyward chapter released, so you'll have to scroll down to Chapter 10 for the new stuff.

We're back with Keeping Up With The Kholins, and this time we are talking about Dalinar's side of the family, and Dalinar's adult relationships, like Evi and Navani. It's a great wholesome experience except for all the horrible stuff. Nothing a bit of amnesia can't fix! Also, this episode features fantastic Shardcast Relationship Tips(tm), and literally the... best voice acting you'll ever hear. (Oh, there's also a lot of good character analysis.)

Last week, we got more of Skyward than revealed before, going from the prologue all the way up to chapter 6. Well, Wednesday looks to be the day for new Skyward chapters, and we get three more, chapters 7 through 9! It's actually in the same link as last week, so if you missed the last preview Skyward stuff, you can still read it all in one page! That's convenient. Once you do, you can discuss the new chapters in Discord or our forum topic on the chapters. 

Thursday, Brandon did an AMA on Skyward, and we thought we'd give you a quick rundown of what occurred in it. He also answered some questions on Facebook, which we also have. If you'd like to read them all, check them out on Arcanum for easy reading.

First up, Brandon "My Books Become More Books" Sanderson said that Skyward, though originally planned as a trilogy, may now be four books. Brandon says the first three will stand pretty well on their own, but the final one will be more reliant on the other three.

We're wrapping up FanX Words of Brandon on Shardcast today. Perhaps most interesting is that Brandon said Navani will likely be the prologue character in Stormlight 4, and Gavilar in #5! We also get some discussion of Shardplate, some RAFOs on Dawnshards, and Hoid and his Lightweaving. We discuss end-positive and end-negative magics for... no discernable reason? We make some Star Wars memes and pitch an "amazing" fanfic idea. Lastly, Argent propositions Hoid. This one is a fun memey episode.

You've been able to read the prologue through chapter 2 of Skyward on io9, and you could read chapter 3 from a signing, but today, you can now read it all in the same spot and up through chapter 6 on Getunderlined.com. Brandon's assistant, Adam, also says that they will be releasing new excerpts each week until Skyward's release until November 6th.

Yesterday, Brandon turned in the second draft to the sequel of Skyward. This is good news, as he said that he had to scrap large chunks of Skyward 2. Brandon figuring out how to make that book work is good news for all of us! He also updates us with what his plans are for the future. Writing on Stormlight 4 begins, for sure, in January! In the meantime, Brandon says he will get revisions done on a few smaller projects.

On today's Shardcast, we discuss the huge amount of things that Brandon has talked about in August and September events, in particular WorldCon and FanX Words of Brandon. There's so much to analyze that we are doing a second one of these next week, and then there will be Legion Words of Brandon soon too. 

This episode has some crazy bombs: a third storm, a Cultivationlight? What!

With the release of Legion: The Many Lives of Stephen Leeds, we thought we'd do a spoilery Shardcast episode where we discuss our feels. There are things to talk about Lies of the Beholder, and so we dig deep into it now!

This week we have Eric (Chaos), Ian (WeiryWriter), the return of Evgeni (Argent) from World of Warcraft, and Grace (gatorgirl) whose microphone is somehow much worse despite the fact that she just moved and nothing else changed. It's a mystery.

In JordanCon 2018, Isaac Stewart (Dragonsteel's art director) did a panel on creating Stormlight glyphs. We don't have full video for it, but we do have some. We mixed that in with the audio so you can feel like you're there at the panel. If you're into glyphs, maybe this will be of use to you!

Legion: The Many Lives of Stephen Leeds is now out. If you aren’t familiar with Brandon’s Legion stories, they’re a mix of action, mystery, and a splash of a Brandon magic system. The first two novellas have been released before, but this omnibus is currently the only place where you can find the final story. 

Legion is about a man named Stephen Leeds who is perfectly ordinary except for one small detail: he see hallucinations of people he calls aspects. Each aspect is an expert in a different field and he uses them to solve crimes.

The Skyward tour dates have been announced, and Brandon is going to his usual west coast areas, as well as a new place: Alaska! If you can come to a signing, mention it in the respective topic in the Events forum so we can see who is doing what, and so you can meet up with other Sharders and Sanderfans!

We're continuing what was supposed to be a brief dive into Kholin family dynamics. Unfortunately we recorded for five hours about it, so "brief" didn't really come into it. Last time we discussed Gavilar and Navani's relationships, now we continue Gavilar's side of the family. We nerd out about how well Elhokar is written (so effectively a twerp), Aesudan conspiracy theories, and of course, Jasnah's amazingness. 

Welcome to Keeping Up With The Kholins, the newest reality show about your favorite and most powerful (and very Radiant) Rosharan family. Oh wait, it's just Shardcast. We're here to talk about characters in the Kholin family, their relationships, and what we feel about them. Adorably, we thought we could keep this to one episode. It will be four. 

Between moves, job changes, new universities, and a baby, the Coppermind staff had a pretty busy August… And yet it was a month full of terrific progress thanks to all of you! The hard work you've put in to help us reach our objectives is much appreciated! We're continuing the initiative this month, with a brand new set of objectives. As always, we're happy for any help we can get, so don't be shy. If you're new to editing the Coppermind, don't worry; we'll help you out with guides and plenty of assistance. You don't need experience, just the will to help out! We'll also provide awards, because everyone loves fake internet points.

The news is coming fast and furious this week. Brandon's store is having a fall sale, with a very exciting new item: the Rosharan foil map. It's a beautiful rendition of Roshar, and trust me, it's even better in person. It's $45 on sale now, but it looks like its regular price is $60. It's a special limited edition of 1000 unnumbered posters. Why pay so much for a poster of a map of Roshar? That's the "foil" part. It shines.

This week we talk about a Shard of Adonalsium that we think we know a lot of, but there's a lot of mystery about her: Endowment. We discuss her plans, what her Shard means, the Returned, the Tears of Edgli, Austre, and, of course, dragons. We also of course talk about Nalthian TSA agents, and are sad about how long the Warbreaker sequel will take to get in our hands.

Brandon announced yesterday that he will be doing a live reading and Q&A this Saturday, September 1st, at 6:00PM PDT for Read for Pixels 2018. Just follow this link to join the livestream on Youtube when the time comes, and if you log into YouTube you should see a chatbox to participate in the Q&A. Questions will be selected by a moderator. There's no news yet on what he will be reading, but Legion or Skyward are safe bets!

You can pre-order a signed hardcover copy of Legion: The Many Lives of Stephen Leeds, releasing on September 18th, from Barnes & Noble at no additional charge. This collection includes the full trilogy of novellas, including the original Legion, Legion: Skin Deep, and, new with this release, Legion: Lies of the Beholder. If you've never delved outside the Cosmere, Legion is a great place to start--especially with the story now complete!

This time on Shardcast we are talking about all the weird things in the cosmere that were mentioned just a few times and forgot. Like Vax. We also discuss Senna, Lutha, Reya, a lot of Threnody, and a lot of Scadrial. Oh, and a lot of me complaining about the Lord Ruler's kids, because it doesn't make sense. But just know: Vax is the answer to all your questions. Where's the kandra worldhopper? Vax. Where's Vivenna? Vax. How's Stormlight 4 coming along? It's on Vax. Easy.

This week's episode of Shardcast we discuss the recent (ish) signing in Idaho Falls in late July. We get you up to date with "Adonalsium's opposition" (whatever that means) and somehow that's related to Hoid's immortality. What? We also bring up aluminum too much, and Eric tries not to talk about Dragonsteel. There's other Words of Brandon too at this signing. We make bad analogies, and name someone Mr. Conqueror and another Mr. Sarcastipants. This episode has something for everyone. Including onions!

This week on Shardcast, we are going to talk about a Stormlight MYSTERY! In the vision of the Recreance, Dalinar says there are more Shards there than known in the present day. That was just a subset of two orders, to say nothing of all the others. So where have all the Shardblades gone? Even the most conservative estimate would mean we are missing a lot. Well, we are here to speculate, and we go through all the possibilities, from sensible to insane. Are you smuggling a Shardblade, or are you just happy to see me?

Recently the company Brotherwise Games, launched a Kickstarter for a new "hero-crafting" card game titled Call to Adventure. As part of the Kickstarter they announced their first expansion, themed around the book The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss. Earlier today, in honor of the Kickstarter reaching $300,000 USD and GenCon 2018, Brandon announced that Brotherwise Games will also be releasing a Stormlight Archive themed expansion in Fall 2019.

I won't go into too much depth about the game (they do a pretty good job of that over on their Kickstarter), the gist of it however is this: you start with a hero, defined by their origin, their motivation, and their destiny, and you choose different cards to help craft them into the greatest hero (or antihero) possible. The Stormlight expansion will add special destiny cards for the Orders of Knights Radiant. This is the first I've heard of the Kickstarter, but this game seems right up my alley so it is safe to say I will soon be a backer. It's unclear whether the Stormlight expansion will also be Kickstarted, of if it will go directly into production.

Welcome to Shardcast - Civil War: Episode 2, Half-Shards Edition. We are continuing our discussion on fabrials and we are going straight into a spicy, perhaps infuriating discussion regarding whether half-shards use Radiant spren. Is the answer obvious? What do you think? Tell us down below!

Last month, we began a new initiative for the Coppermind. Lots of people want to help out with the wiki, but simply don't know where to start. So we offered up a list of specific objectives that we hoped to complete by the end of the month. The response was overwhelming, and we want to thank everyone involved! We're continuing the initiative this month, with a brand new set of objectives. As always, we're happy for any help we can get, so don't be shy. If you're new to editing the Coppermind, don't worry; we'll help you out with guides and plenty of assistance. You don't need experience, just the will to do help out! We'll also provide awards, because everyone loves fake internet points.

Today on Shardcast, we are digging into fabrials. What are they? How do they work? We discuss all the types of modern fabrials. We also discuss Soulcasters and ancient fabrials and their differences. We also talk a lot about why gemstones crack when a Radiant Soulcaster uses them.

This week on Shardcast, we are going to complain. That's right. Many think we are just shill who love everything Brandon does, but that's not true. We're talking about our cosmere beefs this week. Hear us complain about things you maybe had no issue with. Spook. Kelsier. Wayne. Szeth. And, of course, Zane, in an epic rant to end all rants. Welcome to Complaincast.

It's time for a big, spicy episode on the Heralds. We go through each Herald (with more dramatic reading!) and talk about all sorts of things. Jezrien, how do you pronounce his name? The Heralds, and their body issues. And yes, I wrote that sentence knowing that has a strong double meaning. Lastly, Ian is a Cognitive Shadow. What a twist!

Today on Shardcast, we have mega-Oathbringer spoilers, because we are talking about the Oathpact! First we start by performing Oathbringer Chapter 38, starring Evgeni has a very bored Stormfather. Then, of course, we dig into everything. How do the mechanics of Desolations work? How do the Fused get back to Roshar? When does a Desolation end? And of course we discuss the Everstorm and "new but old of design," because of course we do.

This month, we are beginning a brand-new initiative for the Coppermind. The Coppermind is a living, breathing thing, and there's so much to write that it's impossible to have the wiki succeed without your help. But often, people are interested in writing for the Coppermind but don't know where to start. To this end we are going to have monthly objectives to help guide people towards what should be done.

Ladies and gentlemen my name is Eric and we're here to ask and answer one simple question: WTF is Unity?  What is Dalinar? Honor's Perpendicularity and why it has to move, and also, for good measure, Odium's Perpendicularity. Spren genocide, strange warmths, all manner of weirdness is discussed here. Obviously, Oathbringer spoilers, and some Mistborn Era 1 spoilers too.

 “Beautiful destroyer. Blunt and effective. Of all those I've claimed over this brief thousand years, you are the only one I think just might be able to understand me.”

-Ruin, Hero of Ages, ch. 57.

Brandon's characterization of Vin and Dalinar, arguably the two most violent figures in the cosmere, displays a sensitive and nuanced approach to depicting violence, thrilling readers with incredible fights scenes, without glorifying killing and death.  Awe and disgust may be opposites, but they are brought together in Vin and Dalinar: the beautiful destroyers.