Golden Knife

You are not the only one to think that they might be cute together, if Kaladin can get over his "grr lighteyes" phase. Jenet didn't seem to care about the whole light eye/dark eye issue, just that ignorant men were going to touch her precious horses. I liked how Kaladin thought her lecture was the most boring thing in the world, but he still managed to absorb it and name the various tack and the theory of riding. Also, she throws rocks at Adolin, which is just awesome. Even if they don't get together, Kaladin needs more friends. As an aside I would like to see Jenet's commentary on Kaladin and/or Shallan vs their hypothetical future Ryshadium*. The Ryshadium are huge, fast, and magically strong-willed horses that were associated with the Radiants, but both Shallan and Kaladin don't like horses, because they are intimidatingly large, fast and have minds of their own. Jenet would despair of them both. Probably at length. *at the end of Way of Kings, Gallant lets a slightly glowing Kaladin take his reins and lead him through the circle of Parshendi to Dalinar; In Words of Radiance, Dalinar has to sweet-talk Gallant into letting Adolin even touch the reins. I wonder if Ryshadium can recognize Radiants instinctively and that's why he let Kaladin near? or is Gallant just smart enough to go along with the "get him close to Dalinar" plan rather than be picky in the heat of battle?

Did anyone else notice the four-fold symmetry of Kaladin's "save a lighteyes from a shardbearer" episodes? I really liked how the parallel situations played out in Way of Kings, considering the Vorin emphasis on symmetry and not-quite-perfect reflections but Words of Radiance gave us two more similar situations, with more permutations, which I thought was a cool play on the four-fold symmetric glyphs and cymatics and suchlike. 1st time: Saving Amaram from an unknown and unexpected shardbearing assassin, with an audience of allies, enemy shardbearer dies and Amaram lives; Kaladin is betrayed by the one he saved, his men are killed to contain the truth, Kaladin loses his freedom. 2nd time: Saving Dalinar from the mostly unexpected Parshendi shardbearer, with an audience of the enemy, enemy shardbearer and Dalinar both live; Kaladin is NOT betrayed by the one he saved, his men (and the other bridgemen!) are saved, Kaladin gains his freedom from Sadeas. 3rd time: Saving Adolin and Renarin from the expected/unexpected four shardbearers duel, with a huge audience of enemies and allies, and everyone lives; Kaladin is betrayed by his own rage/ignorance of the dueling codes/Elhokar, his men are still okay, Kaladin loses his freedom temporarily. 4th time: Saving Elhokar from the expected assassins, with no audience but those involved, unnamed enemies die, main threat lives, king lives; Kaladin is betrayed by Moash, but regains Syl and his powers, (enabling him to save Dalinar and his men in Old Stormseat) Kaladin regains the freedom of the skies, but must publicly accept the mantle of Knight Radiant I made a little chart to help me keep track of this, but my BBcode is not ninja enough to reproduce it here. The main points are: who is getting saved? was the attack expected? was there an audience for this awesomeness? who lives and dies as a direct result? was there a betrayal and by whom? status of Kaladin's men afterward? and does Kaladin gain or lose his freedom as a result? And aside from the consistent Victim Lives line item, the results are different but still forming a pattern. I have to assume that this level of plotting was by design, because B'Sanderson does love his outlines. Note: I didn't include the fights with Szeth because I anticipate that Kaladin might have to fight him two more times, for another set of not-quite-perfect permutations on a theme. For the record, In the first fight vs Szeth, Kaladin saves Dalinar by falling, and in the second he saves Dalinar from falling.

And Kaladin laughs, truly laughs, and for a moment, everything was beautiful.

its a little moment compared to some of the others, and is subverted with the next sentence, but in The Hidden Blade (chapter 76), when Dalinar drags Amaram over to where Kaladin is sitting with Bridge Four. I just imagine Kaladin fighting to keep his spine straight, to not slump onto Lopen shoulder, to not let the pain show, as he prepares for Dalinar to hammer "untrusted" into the "I am a weak/horrible/useless/unwanted person who killed Syl." mental deathspiral he was trying to stave off by seeing his men before they left. (His men, incidently, were not being terribly helpful in this regard.)

Also this?

I thought Kaladin's little meditation on breath might have something to do with the body focus "inhalation" as associated with the first essence from the Ars Arcanum (1 Jes, sapphire, zephyr, inhaltation, protecting/leading). ? The Windrunners are associated with that essence (see also, Kaladin's eyes at the end of the book, when they are described as brown in tWoK, and their position on the Double Eye Chart of Orders and Surges). I agree it supports the Stormlight = investiture =~ Breath or close enough for Zahel/Vasher's needs. Now we need to experiment on Shallan and Kaladin to see if holding certain amounts of stormlight gives them perfect pitch (2nd heightening), enhanced color perception(3rd), or life sense(4th). Is there a mention from one of Kaladin's POV chapters of being able to see better in the dark with stormlight in him? (I'm an audiobook person and my hardback has yet to arrive.) Did speaking the second ideal grant the entirely unnoticed gift of Perfect Pitch along with more effecient Stormlight use? I noticed that the Pre-Radiants we get POVs from (Kaladin, Shallan, Dalinar) all seem to notice each other/ trust each other because of 'instincts'.... Could it be related to a 1st heightening type of aura perception, but with Stormlight capacity instead of Breath's color intensification? Working on a subconcious level, probably, since neither Syl or Pattern noticed that the other person in the snark-fests was a (pre-)radiant... I do enjoy watching magic systems collide...

Listened to the audio book, so it took days to get through (though I did stay up far later than I should have to finish the last several hours) which tempered my reactions somewhat, I think. Also, first post on these forums, please be kind... Wow, oh no, nononononono, and Yes, finally! at appropriate moments. Kaladin delivers the grumpy and the badass, Adolin the cheery and the badass, Shallan the overcompensatingly clever and the terrifyingly cold badass. I still quite enjoyed the developing dynamic with these three. Kaladin understands your social awkwardness, Renarin, because outside of being The Captain, he has similar problems! Behold his Grumpy Glory! Dalinar (still badass) and Renarin (trying!) clearly had things going on, but they were somewhat out of focus in this book- hopefully more with them next time. I really wish we could have seen more of Dalinar's plans and thoughts about the Amaram & Kaladin situation, because when and why he decides to move beyond a simple investigation of Kaladin's claims to a Secret Test of Character for Amaram seems like a vital piece of information for Kal and Dal's relationship going forward. I was rather annoyed that the only thing holding Shallan back from being Roshar's most Stupendous Badass was her own mind/ tendency to disassociate: none of her external conflicts ended badly for her. She bullies Tvlakov into doing her bidding, Turns the Deserters to her Side, plays at politics with HighPrinces, infiltrates the Ghost Bloods, etc etc without much more than temporary wobbles. Compared to Kaladin (and Dalinar, in tWoK)'s failures and the consequences (Chaos of the Sidecarry in battle and being strung up in a HighStorm; getting caught between two promises and losing Syl; Trusting Sadeas and getting betrayed at the Tower).... Shallan doesn't fail at anything important. I expect/hope that she'll get knocked down more in the next book. RE: the ends Ah, Jasnah, you'll have to up your game to reclaim Shallan as your ward, I think. Nightblood....! I think I might be the only one who immediately assumed the Szeth was brought back as some form of Lifeless, perhaps having his own Breath-equivalent and thus most of his mind returned to him? Or a Returned, dependant on Stormlight instead of Breath- not true resurrection, but something like it- I am not copacetic with Fabrial-based Resurrection, but Fabrial Created Lifeless, that seems plausible. Came Back Wrong(er) + Szeth-the-MAD-Truthful = Flying Zombie assassins! And what is with Author's love of Zombies? Really, has that question been asked: Mr. Sanderson, you never call your zombies the Z-word, but they do show up a lot: Elantrans, ForgedEmperors, Lifeless, Mistwraiths/Kandra- Hang on, just realized the dead shardblades are actually spirit-zombie swords! OMG Shardblades are ZOMBIE SWORDS!!! One moment while this post goes off the rails completely..... I repeat, Dead Shardblades are Zombie Swords. ZOMBIE SWORDS!!!!