shawnhargreaves

I like this theory a lot. Admittedly not much solid evidence yet, but it just smells right to me and is exactly the kind of thing Brandon would do.

Re-reading WOR, the chapter 34 epigraph jumps out at me: This sure sounds like Odium, but I thought we had WoB that Odium had resisted too much investiture because he didn't want to weaken himself? So how can the Parshendi gods (plural) (which I'm assuming perhaps incorrectly are the unmade?) be splinters of Odium?

I think you are onto something with part #1 of this theory, but cannot agree with the rest of this. Chapter 27 of WOR springs to mind: Exemplar of an ideal, soul of a country, described using attributes ("solitary, strong, towering") that could equally well fit in an epigraph describing one of the Radiant orders? Based purely on this paragraph, I'm calling Jah Keved as linked to Kalak and the Willshapers.

Brandon's prior pacing is significantly different from the standard of the epic fantasy genre, though, much of which follows the formula established by Tolkein: "Gandalf sits down with a Baggins and explains the parameters of quest; Baggins sets out on quest; many adventures and much character growth ensue; triumphal success of the quest; final return home with a little sting in the tail..." The level and magnitude of twists in Brandon's works is highly atypical for the fantasy genre, although would be expected in other styles such as thriller, or much of scifi.

I don't buy that this is Hoid's goal. We've seen him collecting various invested artifacts from different worlds, and sometimes giving advice to people who are involved in the big events on those worlds, but this advice does not seem to be his main goal. His comments in WoR about how he would let Roshar burn if that could help his goal seemed to me as a warning that, while he probably would like to see Odium defeated, this isn't his main purpose.

We all know how Brandon likes to surprise his readers with unexpected plot twists. The nature of these surprises varies from book to book (Brandon is too imaginative a writer to repeat himself exactly) but all his major works to date have ended with the Big Bad antagonist being someone other than we expected near the start of the story. I believe we can predict the timing, if not the details, of future Stormlight Archive reveals by looking at how Brandon has paced these things in previous works. Let's start with Mistborn. My paperback editions are 643, 763 and 724 pages long respectively, = 2130 total. How about Warbreaker, which is 652 pages? How about Elantris, which is 615 pages in my edition? This pacing surprsingly consistent (although not identical) across all three sources: Average location of first major "whoah, what I thought was going on here is fundamentally wrong" moment is 42% of the way through (the first such moment in any of the three stories was at 29%). Average location of first unveil of ultimate Big Bad is at 74% (first such moment in any of the three stories is 66%) But wait a minute... Stormlight Archive is 10 books. After WoR, we are 20% of the way through. If this series is paced anything like what Brandon has done in the past, we have not yet reached the first significant plot twist, and will not meet the true Big Bad of the epic until book 6 or 7! And what about the Cosmere as a whole? Brandon says there will be 36 novels total, of which we have seen 7 so far. That's 19%. From this I conclude that: Odium is not the Big Bad of Stormlight Archive, let alone the Cosmere as a whole (if he was, this would mean Brandon has unveiled his ultimate enemy a full 46% sooner than in any previous Cosmere works) We ain't seen nothing yet!

Good point, I'd forgotten about the Baxil interlude. Solid evidence against my theory. Something about that story in particular feels off to me though. "Here, have a big pile of physical stuff which you can sell for money" just isn't how Brandon magic usually works - that story as told comes across with more of a fairy tale vibe, so I bet we'll later find out it was misunderstood or there was something more going on.

Everyone on Roshar thinks that the Nightwatcher gives both a boon and a curse. But we all know that with Brandon, what everyone in-world thinks is highly likely to be wrong, especially during the early stages of an epic when we only have glimpses as to what is really going on. What do we know for sure? Dalinar went to the Nightwatcher, but we don't know what his curse or boon were. Much speculation that one of them could be losing the memory of his wife, but it's not clear which that was. Lift gained abilities from the Nightwatcher. Massively lacking details. And then there is Taravangian... Taravangian's interlude in WOR offers by far the most solid information we have seen so far. And it turns out that what he thinks of as his boon (days of extreme intelligence) and curse (days of extreme stupidity) are actually just variations along a single axis. I've already seen speculation that Taravangian could be confused as to which of these is the curse and which is the boon. What if the pattern holds for all Nightwatcher magic? My theory is she actually changes only one thing, alterating the spiritual web of the petitioner to make some attribute extremely variable over time (increasing its standard deviation, or you could think of it as giving some strand of the spiritual web a tug so it vibrates more extremely than usual). In Taravangian's case this manifests as radically different levels of intelligence from day to day. Not yet clear how this applies in other cases, so my theory is admittedly based on insufficient data. Mostly posting it to gain "told you so" rights if future books reveal a similar pattern of variance of a single attribute over time for Dalinar, Lift, etc. Side note - where else have we seen a magic where a single attribute can be increased at one moment or decreased at another? Yup, this smells a lot like Feruchemy... If I'm right, Nightwatcher boons are closely related (and thus a balance neutral form of magic), difference being the variation is random rather than controlled by the magic user.

Need more! I am addicted to these awesome reactions that make me remember how much I loved my first readthrough (currently starting my 1st re-read) Yes yes, I know real life gets in the way, but surely spending hours laboring away editing audio recordings for the idle gratification of strangers ought to take priority over all more important commitments? :-)