News

News time! The UK cover for Rhythm of War, the fourth Stormlight Archive book, has been revealed. What do you think of it? I'm told by Ben (a fan of the UK covers) that generally UK covers don't depict any particular scene but more are trying to convey an idea. I'm not sure how much analysis we can get out of this one. What are your thoughts on the cover? 

Well, we are all in quarantine, so we wanted to do some fun nonsense to take our mind off things. So it's time for some more Ship it or Rip it! We ask the real questions here, like "what is kingdom," will Shannon continue her commanding lead from last time, and will Eric be just as terrible at this game as before? 

Lots of changes have occured since our last one of these posts, so let’s look at all the news Brandon has recently released. 

First, for those of you who missed it, Brandon released Stormlight Book Four Update #8 on Reddit about two weeks ago. In it, he mentions that the summer kickstarter is looking uncertain with world events currently going as they are. He also confirms that that Rysn is the novella he’s started to write for between Oathbringer and Rhythm of War, since Aimia has some importance coming up in the series and Rysn is the best character to set that up. While he’s talked about releasing that as part of the summer kickstarter, he’s only written the first two chapters--about 10 percent--so far, so the future is looking uncertain as he transitions back into Rhythm of War drafts. 

This episode, we're talking about the history and cultures of Sel, featuring sharks! Well, somewhat. Today we have the debut of the Shardcaster Benny. What's a Svordishman's favorite weapon? A Svord, of course. Okay, but really, there's a lot of interesting history and lore on Sel, and it'll be pretty cool to see Elantris sequels someday.

This episode, we're talking about the Shin! Who are they? They *invaded* Roshar? The Stone Shamans? Well, there's stuff we know, but also even more we don't... 

We have Eric (Chaos), Ian (WeiryWriter), Ben (Overlord Jebus), and Grace (thegatorgirl)!

This episode, we discuss our Rhythm of War (now the confirmed title of Stormlight 4) predictions! Or at least, we recap where our characters last were, and go through our hopes for each character one by one. We don't really know what the soul of this book will be. So hopefully you find this one enjoyable?

It’s official folks - Stormlight Four has a confirmed title! First announced by Tor then retweeted by Brandon, the newest edition to the Stormlight saga has been confirmed to be named Rhythm of War. Brandon floated this as the tentative title back in February 2019 during the initial outlining of the book, and it appears it stuck firm. 

This episode we are talking about the sapient types of spren, and what we know of their societies and culture! We have Eric (Chaos), Ian (WeiryWriter), Evgeni (Argent), and Grace (thegatorgirl). Thanks to Ben for editing this one.

It's time for yet more from the Starsight release, where we actually go a bit faster through the Words of Brandon this time. There's even some actual things related to Skyward and Starsight, whoa! Oh, and don't forget the random destiny tangent we forced Ian to take us on.

After Brandon's marathon writing session at the end of 2019, where he wrote 19k words in a single day, Brandon has confirmed via a reddit update that the first draft of Stormlight 4 is complete. Although Brandon still has four other drafts to do between now and July 1st, this marks a major milestone in the writing of this book. While Venli is the focus character for this book and has many viewpoints, it will be more of an ensemble than the previous Stormlight books. 

Whoa, even though there was no Starsight tour, the release gave us a lot of crazy Words of Brandon. We go deep in the weeds this episode. But first, Eric has to tell everyone about his fiance, and we also discuss an Eshonai reading from Stormlight 4. Oh, and no big deal, Brandon finished the rough draft of Stormlight 4. Exciting stuff this episode!

It's time for a very loopy and entertaining podcast on the Horneaters. We talk about their origins, their culture, Rock and his mysteries, and more. And it is sometimes a little silly sometimes. This week we have Eric (Chaos), Ian (WeiryWriter), Evgeni (Argent), and Shannon (Grey).

Yesterday, State of the Sanderson 2019 came out (read it and vote here: https://www.brandonsanderson.com/state-of-the-sanderson-2019/) and we're here to talk all about it. We discuss the Stormlight 4 Release date and more! We have Eric (Chaos), Ian (WeiryWriter), Grace (thegatorgirl), Joshua (jofwu), and David (Windrunner).

Happy Koloss Head-Munching Day!

Yep, it's that time of year again folks. (Or will be, in a few hours, when the 19th rolls around.) The Christmas trees are decorated, the menorahs are polished, the koloss are looking for some heads to munch... And with birthday cake in one hand, Brandon Sanderson is using the other to type out his annual State of the Sanderson address!

Stay tuned for more on that... Oh, and sorry of this post title got your heart thumping.  No, nobody knows exactly when it will be posted. But you can bet, when it does, it will be all the buzz in every corner of the fandom. In the meantime, I've got something for you to do before resuming your furious CTRL+F5 mashing...

STATE OF THE SANDERSON 2019 BINGO!

Fans of the Stormlight Archive, get hyped because Tor and Brandon Sanderson have officially announced November 17, 2020 as the release date of book 4! 

From what we know, there’s a lot to be excited about in the book. In an article on Tor.com, Brandon says that book 4 will have one of the first scenes he created for Stormlight, and that it may be his favorite in the entire series.

Okay, for reals, podcasts won't stay this long, but we had so many thoughts on Starsight. This is a bit more of a mixed reaction on this one, and so we have an extremely spirited--and not at all salty--discussion on Skyward's sequel. What did you think? Did you like it? Did you dislike it? Obviously, major spoilers in this episode!

Hi all, this review will be a FULL SPOILER review of Starsight. There are full book spoilers here, so if you haven’t finished reading the book, you may want to turn back. Unless you don’t care about spoilers whatsoever, then by all means, continue on!

This review is actually two reviews. The first is by Greywatch, who liked the book, and the second is by Overlord Jebus, who didn’t. Please enjoy and let us know what you think in the comments!

It's November 26th now! Well, I know it has been November 26th for quite a few people in the world, but now it's November 26th in American timezones, which means Starsight is officially out! (I can confirm, I just bought the ebook.) That means you can discuss it in our spoiler board or our #starsight_spoilers channel on Discord. We hope you enjoy reading it! Of course, it's fine if you don't, in which case let us know in our discussion threads! Standard reminder: it's fine for people to like something you didn't, and it's fine to not like something other people liked!

There is a ludicrous amount of stuff to talk about on today's Shardcast. First up, we show off Crafty Games's metal Mistborn dice, which are awesome, then we dig right into the Nalthis Star Chart, which has some... anomalies, you could say. Then we get more of the Stormlight 4 Prologue and confirms what we were thinking last time. Then Harmony, there are so many Words of Brandon from Brandon's trip to Israel and Prague. We get stuff on Dawnshards, Cultivation, avatars, and we get into the weeds. And Rafotory. Obviously. 

Today, Warbreaker leatherbound preorders went up! Dragonsteel is teaming up with a variety of bookstores to do the preorders. See below at the bottom of this post on Brandon's site for up-to-date links where you can preorder the book. This year, they are doing something different for damage prevention and numbering. They are going to pre-sign and number all books before binding them, so each book can be shrink-wrapped and individually boxed. This means they can't offer personalizations, but you'll get a book in the best condition.

It's time to talk in-depth about maybe the weirdest Shard of Adonalsium: Autonomy, and its Vessel, Bavadin. There sure is a lot to discuss that have huge cosmere implications, from avatars, Trell, Patji, sand mastery, and Taldain. It's crazy! Also crazy but not unexpected: Ben's terrible pronunciation. This episode also contains possibly the most salt-inducing Who's That Cosmere Character yet. Evgeni isn't a sand master, but he sure might be a salt master.

Isaac Stewart took to Instagram today to share an image of the brand new Nalthian System star chart! Check it out, and watch out for the cognitive anomaly!

Meanwhile, Dragonsteel is running a contest next week, and the prize is an early reading copy of Starsight AND a copy of all four currently released Cosmere leatherbounds! Look for contest details, and two preview chapters for Starsight, in Brandon's newsletter tomorrow. Not signed up for Brandon's newsletter? Do that soon!

Lastly, we've got a quick glimpse at samples for Crafty Games' next Kickstarter campaign: metallic dice for all twenty known Allomantic metals!

Hope you enjoyed your Fall break, because we're back with a new set of Coppermind objectives for November!

First we need to say a big thank you to everyone who helped out with the last round of objectives. The Coppermind has NEVER been in such a good state! We've got less than 5% of articles as stubs and over 2/3 of our articles are marked as complete! So thanks again to everyone for getting us here.

With the release of White Sand Volume 3 and Starsight on the horizon, there will be plenty to do in the coming months, so we hope you'll join in!

It's been forever since we've done a Who's That Cosmere Character megasode, and so here another one is. This one has some hilarious moments and salt all around. Send your Who's That Cosmere Characters to [email protected]

White Sand Volume 3 is out, and so it's time for our last White Sand podcast for a long time. Will it be as salty as our White Sand 1 and 2 podcasts? Well... actually, things end on a reasonably high note!