Shardcast: Adolin's Wind and Truth Plotline

Fun episode! Your conversation about the Fused villains was interesting, though I have a thought to add:

To me, Abidi worked in the story, because he continued to show how truly crazed the Fused are - and therefore how limited Odium's options are. Whether Odium was aware of it or not, his once-powerful "monarch" is now an absolute buffoon. 

Additionally, I think this sort of over-the-top and (for us) short-lived villain was necessary given Wind and Truth is the first book where Odium is the tangible, primary villain. He has a ton of POVs and is the #1 threat the characters are working to stop. 

Just my two cents! Abidi was a strangely memorable character to me lol

I think Abdi would have worked better as crazed insane loser if we could have seen him in the Spiritual Realm and learned some of what had caused him to be how he is to make us feel bad he's this insane. Or have someone close to him try to calm him down and be upset at how insane he appears to be now. Or have him lose someone close to him via anti-light and have Abdi get more insane. 

There was just no pathos there at all with Abdi which makes him pretty ridiculous. And that's a real shame since the book could have maybe made us conflicted here and feel for the former King Abdi in some way. Hell, we could even justify his increased vigilance because of what he saw Shallan do with forbidden double bond dangers. I mean ... just anything....

But I guess the book suffers from trying to split between so many human narratives and forgetting to give us perspectives and motivations from the Singer side of things. The book seems to have given up on the Oathbringer "Kal learns the singers are not cartoon villains" plotline. We have completely reverted to "Singer and fused crazy bad crazy town banana pants" with this blood drinking stuff. 

On 4/15/2025 at 3:45 PM, teknopathetic said:

I think Abdi would have worked better as crazed insane loser if we could have seen him in the Spiritual Realm and learned some of what had caused him to be how he is to make us feel bad he's this insane. Or have someone close to him try to calm him down and be upset at how insane he appears to be now. Or have him lose someone close to him via anti-light and have Abdi get more insane. 

There was just no pathos there at all with Abdi which makes him pretty ridiculous. And that's a real shame since the book could have maybe made us conflicted here and feel for the former King Abdi in some way. Hell, we could even justify his increased vigilance because of what he saw Shallan do with forbidden double bond dangers. I mean ... just anything....

But I guess the book suffers from trying to split between so many human narratives and forgetting to give us perspectives and motivations from the Singer side of things. The book seems to have given up on the Oathbringer "Kal learns the singers are not cartoon villains" plotline. We have completely reverted to "Singer and fused crazy bad crazy town banana pants" with this blood drinking stuff. 

I agree mostly, except that with Kaladin, he doesn't really need to learn most lessons twice. He fought that battle already, and was needed elsewhere. Other people did need to learn that though, and it's a shame we didn't see more of it, but Kaladin's progress has bled into the rest of bridge 4 with Sig so it's all debatable. Excited to see where the singers can go! I'm thinking they'll start more of Odium's listeners thinking about making real peace with the humans, potentially sparking some rebellion, especially with the state of the planet. Adolin is one of the characters I'm most pumped about seeing again though. He's come a long way towards caring about other people, not being apathetic towards darkeyes and lower classes in general. He and his oathless are probably the only way we'll see non-radiant shardbearers in the last half.

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@beantheboy12 you have some explaining to do

Ghosts = Phantoms. You got it in the end. Good job!

Gotcha though