News

Today we're beginning a new series: Rhythm of Previews, where Danielle and Marvin discuss the preview chapters of Rhythm of War, the fourth Stormlight Archive book. We're hoping to keep these a bit shorter than Shardcast, so we won't talk in incredible detail on everything, but we'll do our best to give you the highlights! Tor.com released the prologue and chapter 1 on Thursday, and then chapters 2 and 3 Tuesday, so this is a double-lengthed episode. We're going to do this weekly (assuming scheduling works out), so our next episode will half the length since there will just be one or two chapters next week. We're going in order, so we aren't discussing the chapter from the newsletter or Brandon's SDCC reading.

Welcome, welcome! One of the most common questions I saw around the time of the Oathbringer release was requests for a good recap of the previous books. Not everybody has time for rereads of the full series, of course. If you want to read Rhythm of War this November and the last Stormlight book you cracked open was three years ago... you might be in for a bumpy ride!

Well, you've found the right place! This series of four articles will serve as a brief but thorough overview of the previous Stormlight Archive books. Rather than just giving a detailed book summary, I'm going to break things down by topic. Over these four articles we will cover all the essential things you need to remember to pick right up where you left off when Rhythm of War releases this year!

It's that time of week again! Tor has posted the latest Rhythm of War sample chapters, and you can find them here. After you've read this week's chapters, we invite you to join the latest discussion in the forums and on our Discord server!

We will be picking these chapters apart together, and we hope you will join in on the discussion! If you missed previous chapters or discussion threads, you can find both linked in our Sample Chapter and Discussion Thread Index.

Hi all and welcome to The Overlady Reads Elantris!

This one was really fun as, unlike with the Mistborn episodes, I read the book alongside the Overlady. It turns out that, after ten years of thinking I didn't like Elantris, I actually really like Elantris! I was almost hesitant to recommend it when we first started this journey but luckily, Lucy was a fan as well.

We wanted to do a "short" episode of us discussing the reveal of the novella that will be out prior to Rhythm of War, Dawnshard! But then we blabbed. We blabbed a lot about a lot of things. Things we know basically nothing about. But now you will also know the nothing we know about Dawnshards and Aimians together. After all, the real Dawnshards are the friends we met along the way. 

Lots of news in the past hour, so let's cover them on the quick!

First, Tor.com has published the Prologue & Chapter 1: Calluses  of Rhythm of War! You can go read them on their website, and also bookmark the Rhythm of War index, because new chapters will be dropping every Tuesday at 9 AM Eastern. You can discuss this set of chapters in our Prologue and Chapter 1 discussion thread.

Normally, this would be news enough, but today we also have a SDCC video of Brandon reading from Chapters 7 & 8 from the new Stormlight doorstopper (also embedded below, for your convenience). Note that the second half of the video is a brief Q&A that's full of spoilers. All of the questions were selected from this Reddit thread from about a month ago, if you want to go read some of the discussion around them.

Today, at 3pm Pacific, Brandon will post a prerecorded video for San Diego Comic-Con. It's said there will be a preview of Rhythm of War, and there will be some questions answered as well. Please note question submission was on a Reddit thread a while ago, and there won't be any live Q&A. This is prerecorded! There may be some spoiler related questions. We'll just have to see in about five hours! 

We interviewed Isaac and Kara Stewart of Dragonsteel Entertainment yesterday. Isaac is the art director and makes amazing maps. Kara manages the store and merchandise. Today we talk about the Way of Kings Leatherbound Kickstarter, Rhythm of War, and more.

We could have blabbed a long time and I wish we had more time together, and hopefully we'll get to interview them again! 

Hey guys! Brandon did another signing livestream yesterday (#12, more Warbreaker signature pages), so here's a quick recap of what we learned or got confirmations about. Also, the stream was literally too hot to handle!

Dawnshard news

The novella formerly known as Wandersail and now known as Dawnshard will follow Rysn as she travels to Aimia, and will actually teach us some stuff about the Dawnshards! Also, Lopen might be showing up as a secondary POV, though it is unclear whether he will actually join her on the trip. Brandon plans to start writing that this coming Monday, and "will feel bad" if the ebook is not out before Rhythm of War even though the novella itself "is not super integrated with the book."

Last week, when the Way of Kings leatherbound Kickstarter came out, Brandon sent one of his newsletters and it contained a brand-new chapter from Rhythm of War! So that's what we are talking about today. If Rhythm of War pre-release content is not your jam, don't listen to this one! I worked hard to be as vague as possible with the title of this to not spoil you. This chapter has not been revealed before, so it's pretty cool.

If you’re anything like us, you’re pumped for the release of Rhythm of War in a few months. And there's no better way to prepare for it than by rereading all the books! But we’ve already done that about a thousand times. So instead, we’re revisiting our old Shardcast questions. This playlist has been designed to be the perfect refresher to listen to over the next few months. We take you through everything from the major characters and worldbuilding elements to the most esoteric questions still on Roshar. And of course we’ve got plenty of our trademark PedantiCast shenanigans. 

If you're out of the loop, Brandon always planned to write a Stormlight novella between Oathbringer and Rhythm of War, which is now a Kickstarter reward. It was going to be Rysn novella, and it was going to involve traveling to Aimia. The name that was floating around for it was Wandersail, but Brandon didn't like that title since that wasn't what the story was about. 

Well, what is the story about? A freaking Dawnshard. 

Last night, Brandon finished his work on Rhythm of War, the fourth Stormlight Archive novel. On a screenshot saying "The End," you can see the word count is 459,629 words, which is a bit longer than Oathbringer's 454,000 words. Brandon shared in a Facebook comment that there are 112 chapters, plus interludes, and the prologue and epilogue.

Brandon also said in his post that though the book releases in full on November (specifically, November 17th), preview chapters are coming before then. His tweet says "preview chapters soon." Hooray!

The Politics and Prose bookstore is doing a livestream today with Brandon Sanderson and Tamora Pierce, author of Tempests & Slaughter (and many more great things). It will be at 8pm Eastern time, today, July 9th. Currently it seems that links to the livestream will be posted here. It was a Zoom event which is now capped at capacity but there will be Facebook live and YouTube links on the Politics and Prose page.

Dark One (book 1) is out and it turns out the graphic novel is really good! Come here for our reactions (spoiler-free) and then we go into detail on some of the in-depth stuff of this universe. It's cool, and there's so much to talk about we'll have another episode on it later! This is the freshest takes you'll get from us since this is literally the first time we were discussing this book! You can get Dark One here: https://store.vaultcomics.com/products/brandon-sandersons-dark-one

The Dark One graphic novel by Vault Comics came out on ebook on the 26th. This story is not a cosmere story, so there hasn't been too much hype in the fandom on this one. Perhaps you're waiting for the hardcover (which comes out in August). Maybe you've been burned by the White Sand graphic novels, which could never reach their full potential because the story wasn’t written for a visual format to begin with. Even then, I wouldn't say a cosmere fan has to read White Sand. It's mediocre at best. So, on that level, I can see anyone being apprehensive about another graphic novel. 

Let's cut to the chase: is Dark One worth getting? Yes. I wholeheartedly recommend it, and I'm almost surprised to say so!

Today Brandon replied to some Reddit threads about his 2020 plans after he finishes Rhythm of War, and talked about the timeline for The Lost Metal! Hooray details, hooray Brandon being transparent with us. Please note that these aren't surefire things, and this is the "perfect world" sort of scenario. First up: looks like Rhythm of War is taking a week or so longer than planned, with its turn in date now being July 10th (it was originally July 1st). 

So, you've read some of Brandon Sanderson's books, and you liked them enough that you want to talk about it with other fans online.... But it doesn't take you long to realize that you have no idea what everyone's talking about. Shards of Adonalsium? Realmatic theory? Worldhoppers? "I don't remember any of this in the books I read!"

Fear not! This article is for you!

[See the end of this post for the June 23 updates.]

Some interesting things came out of Reddit today. User u/DataLoreHD did some sleuthing and discovered a few very interesting entries on Recorded Books, Inc., with some release dates. Firstly, The Original--the audio original story written with Mary Robinette Kowal--would be released September 14th 2020, and narrated by Julia Whelan. Then, interestingly, there's a Stephen Leeds story, in the Legion series! It's Stephen Leeds: Death & Faxes, to be released September 1st, 2021. Lastly, there are two Dark One things as well. One is Dark One: Prophetic Histories coming February 9th, 2021, and the other is Dark One: Forgotten, releasing May 5th, 2021.

Tonight on Brandon's livestream, we finally got some specific details on the hotly anticipated Kickstarter for The Way of Kings leatherbound edition, which will run July 7th (at 9am Mountain Daylight Time) through August 7th this year. For those who haven't heard of this already, Dragonsteel Entertainment has been producing leatherbound editions of Brandon's books ten years after their original publishing date. This year is The Way of Kings, which will be done in two volumes and unlike other leatherbounds will be sold initially via a Kickstarter campaign.