Chaos

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. Discuss the recent chapters in our spoiler topic and we'll see you next week for another set of chapters. Skyward is released November 6th.

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.) We have Eric (Chaos, and best voice actor NA), Alyx (FeatherWriter), Shannon (Grey, and feels ash), and making his Shardcast debut is Joshua (jofwu) who unfortunately is on the podcast just to get steamrolled by Alyx and Shannon. But I think he did great, and you'll see him more! Next week, we will finish up Keeping Up With The Kholins with talking about Adolin and Renarin. This was supposed to be a surface level analysis, and here it took four episodes. Oops.

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. In other news, we have heard from Dragonsteel Entertainment that if you are ordering a book from Brandon's store (http://store.brandonsanderson.com/) and you want that book personalized, and you want it to arrive before Christmas, you need to order it this weekend! You can get a lot of hardcovers and beautiful Dragonsteel editions of novellas there. So if that's on your Christmas agenda, do it now, otherwise they will not be personalized prior to Christmas.

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. The second book's title will be Starsight (which I think is a very strong title), and he is thinking the third book would be called Nowhere, but Random House doesn't like it much. There are no other plans for Skyward after this series. Skyward universe is in a universe on something he's mentioned before (though isn't cosmere). When asked what novella Skyward is in, Brandon said it's a "pretty big spoiler." He said you might want to read Skyward first if you hate novellas, but if you really want to know, the answer is in chapter seventeen of Skyward. Skyward Universe is probably the best name for the connected Skyward universe. Also, apparently Brandon has an idea he's planning where a world has no ground at all. How many chapters will be released before Skyward is out November 6th? Brandon doesn't remember, but somewhere between a third and a half. I guess Brandon liked how releasing a lot of a book worked with Oathbringer. Legion and Perfect State We jokingly said in our Legion Reactions podcast that maybe with the VR tech in the third Legion novella makes it into the Perfect State universe. Yeah... about that. Someone asked about a relationship between Legion and Perfect State and Brandon said: "If you look closely at the last Legion book, there is a strong clue about this." Mark Lindberg noted the connection, and u/Genabackan noted that the VR company in Legion 3 was "Walters and Ostman Detention Enterprises." WODE. So, yeah, this is actually as confirmed as it gets. What's Brandon Working On? Jofwu asked Brandon what he's working on before the end of the year. Brandon said: Cosmere Stuff We will hopefully get a novella like Edgedancer done during Stormlight 4 writing so we don't need to wait until 2020 for more cosmere. It'd be called Wandersail (which Brandon has said before), but would not be about the mythological characters, but Rsyn. Brandon legitimately started to write a Nalthis essay! He said he started it upon someone on Reddit reminding him, but then got distracted! so we should totally remind him to finish up that Nalthis essay. If you were hoping out for Shalladin... well, I have some bad news. Brandon said: "Shallan has made her choice. I wouldn't expect that to change" and also, "If it's any comfort, tell [the questioner's friend] I think she'll eventually be very pleased it went this way. It might take a few more books, though." If you were wondering how Stormlight 3 could have originally been Szeth's book and Stormlight 5 be Dalinar's instead, Brandon says book five will have a lot more Dalinar, and we'll see why it could have been Dalinar's book. Book four will have less Dalinar than Oathbringer. Smaller Cosmere Stuff Silverlight was founded much earlier than the current books, at least in its first form. "I think it will help a little--but not a ton, as the real challenge to Mistborn eras three and four is going to be making good on the promises of the earlier trilogies, and using them well. They will need to be more "hard" SF than Skyward, except with made-up science." Later Stormlight books will be "more of a pre-shattering focus" with the Heralds, but Brandon warns not as much as a questioner may want. (For this one it pays to look at the full context.) The Ones Above in the time of Sixth of the Dusk are not the most technologically advanced in the cosmere. Brandon says: "There has been some concurrent development, and a lot of sharing technology--to the point that you could make an argument for several societies being equal, though some better in specific areas." There's a moderate chance on a story on King Lopen. Hoid predates the other Vessels, pre-Shattering. "he'd already started aging oddly before the Shattering" but Brandon is quick to say that is not canonical yet. There's a bunch of other Words of Brandon I left out, but you can check them out on Arcanum!

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. We have Eric (Chaos), Ian (WeiryWriter), Evgeni ("Why do I keep thinking about females," I mean, Argent), and Ben (Overlord Jebus). Keeping Up With the Kholins returns next week and the week after, so don't worry!

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. Adam also said in a Reddit thread that Brandon will be doing a little AMA on Skyward, so leave your questions in that Reddit thread! Last but not least, if you look at the Skyward pre-order giveaway page on Getunderlined, you can see the map of the world Skyward is set on. If you fill out the form, you can get a free print of the poster, signed by Brandon. You need to have preordered Skyward to get it. Still, that's certainly one way to get people to preorder the book! Nice marketing, Random House. You got me. (Note, this is US only.) Discuss Skyward in our Skyward Spoiler Board!

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. But you might be wondering, "wasn't he planning to write The Lost Metal, the last Wax and Wayne book, before January?" Well, Brandon's been saying at signings that might not happen. In this tweet, Brandon says, "I do promise to find time for the last Wax and Wayne book somewhere, too." At some signings, he has said he may do it in between parts of Stormlight 4. This will likely mean no cosmere in 2019, since Brandon isn't writing Lost Metal this year. Steel Alphabet Rings by Badali In other news, Badali Jewelry, who has done a variety of Brandon related jewelry, now has custom Steel Alphabet rings. You can have your own phrase, written in the Steel Alphabet! Your phrase has a maximum of 20 characters, but it's pretty awesome nonetheless. They are pretty pricey though: the cheapest is $129 for a sterling silver one, and uh, $1500 if you want it in real gold! Still, the effect of the ring is really nice: Isaac Stewart, artist extraordinaire for Dragonsteel (who made these symbols), says, "I can vouch for these rings. They're very well-made and are so beautiful. (Of course, I'm biased, but I have one with my name on it, and I absolutely love it!)" Of course, let us know if you happen to propose to your significant other with these rings.

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! There's a surprising amount of detailed questions on the kandra. And, of course, we have the classics, like the Everstorm and Gavilar's black sphere. There's Hoid stuff, Bloody Tan, and, of course, obviously, Jurassic Park jokes. Yes, we're 100% on task on this one. We have Eric (Chaos), Ian (WeiryWriter), Evgeni (Argent), and back from the dead is Ben (Overlord Jebus) who got married! We also completely wreck this week's Who's That Cosmere Character (55:30). It's incredible.