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Yeah, you know, I wasn't even thinking of how Navani remembers him, which seems to be as a neglectful, cheating jerk. There is no indication that the sense of honor he discovered in his latter days altered that in any way. That, along with his apparent closeness to Amaram, suggests that the ideal visionary leader that Dalinar remembers is not what we're going to see when he shows up in flashbacks.

Ah! You're quite right. And, fortunately, though I have no book to leaf through, I was able to find it in the Tor reread. It's in chapter 55, and they even quoted the relevant section:

Maybe Marsh is just messing with him, in retaliation for not listening to the kandra. It certainly doesn't seem like terribly subtle emotional allomancy, after all... I'm not totally serious. But, you know, maybe something like that.

In addition to his flashbacks giving us a lot of insight into Davilar's evolution as a character, I think we'll learn a lot about Gavilar. Just about everything that we know about him is based on other characters' opinions of him. The temptation is to think of him as being a forerunner of the proto-Radiants we're reading about now (especially since it seems that he was the first to see Honor's Highstorm visions, before Dalinar inherited them). I suspect that things are going to be really turned upside down for us. Granted, we're probably going to get more information on him as a much younger man, but I hope that we find some things about his later actions, as well. It seems, from what we know right now, that at the end of his life, Gavilar started to become the kind of honorable guy that Dalinar has turned into. But Dalinar's transformation, in reaction to readings from The Way of Kings, is not necessarily identical to his brother's. We may even discover that Gavilar was basically another Amaram. It could be that he was actively trying to return the Voidbringers, and that his assassination, while a rash decision on the Parshendi's part, was arguably justifiable, with the fate of the world in the balance.

I think it's when he talks to Shallan at the fair or whatever it is, in the one flashback. I don't have my book on me right now, but I'll dig around for it. EDIT: Actually, now that I think about it, it may actually be when he's talking to Kaladin, possibly when he was in prison. The Tor.com reread hasn't quite made it there yet, but based upon where they are right now, I guess that it's somewhere around chapter 64 or so.

The way Donaldson writes drives me out of my mind, honestly. Like, how many things are you going to describe as "eldritch," here, H.P. Lovecraft? Geez. Words like that and "fecund" need to be used more sparingly. And I hate the archaic speech patterns that most of the characters use. Yet I still read every single book, one after the other (this was like a year ago, so no waiting for me). As for my current reading, I guess I am gonna go ahead with The Wise Man's Fear. I also picked up a Steven Erikson book, Willful Child, which seems to be somewhere between spoof of and tribute to Star Trek. I've got my eye on that one.

Like The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant? I managed to get through all ten books, and I think that I'm glad that I did. Or maybe I just have literary Stockholm Syndrome...

Why is everything in spoiler tags, guys? Anyone who is blundering around on forums for a book they haven't read--that has been out for almost two years--thinking there will be no spoilers, is in need of learning a lesson the hard way about how things work in this world. I think that Soulcasting (well, Transformation) was the Surge that Jasnah took to naturally. Transportation would be what she has to work to be able to use, so her ability to Soulcast shouldn't really indicate that she's taken more than the initial oaths. And, really, Kaladin started to get the hang of Gravitation, which didn't come as easily to him as Adhesion, before he took anything beyond the first oath. I don't think that seeing proto-Radiants using their Surges with ease is a good indication of how many oaths they have taken. The thing is, I think that every order is individual in the way that their members progress to the degree that for some of them, facility with Surges would indicate having taken additional oaths (or whatever else is required of its members, since the Lightweavers are probably not the only order who only took the first set of oaths). Other things as well. For example, it seems that Jasnah made some kind of progress in Shadesmar, as she emerges with a Shardblade, something that it doesn't seem like she knew about before. Syl only became a Shardweapon for Kaladin after the second oath. Pattern, on the other hand, became a Shardblade before Shallan had any real skill at all with her Surges. Even though information is scant at the moment, my educated guess is that Jasnah has said at least two oaths. I wouldn't be surprised if she'd also said a third, but my money is on only two, and I think that she uncovered the second during her ordeal in Shadesmar. I think that her cautious, methodical nature as a scholar and her personal history have stood in her way a little (keep in mind, I'm not trying to bad mouth her scholarship; I just think that some of the habits that she has developed may run somewhat contrary to her order's ideals). I mean, Words of Radiance (the in-universe book), the Elsecallers are described as "prodigiously benevolent." Does that sound that Jasnah to you?

I don't know if he could change how it works, exactly, but it looks like he definitely can change the degree to which people can access those powers. It looks like, with the exception of Spook, there were no more Mistborn after the changes he made at the end of HoA. It seems perfectly logical to me that as a function of his identity as Harmony, he would want to balance out restricting access to the full range of Allomantic powers by opening up access to Compounding. This would have all happened centuries before AoL, so Marsh Compounding by then makes perfect sense. EDIT: Okay, I should have read the WoB before posting. This part stands out for me: "The 'Practice' therefore for compounding is mental practice--a barrier to overcome in understanding what is happening, and what it will do to you." I would say that, in that case, my earlier conjecture is correct--that the Inquisitor's state of mind is not up to the task of understanding the method.

That is true. Well, if there's no in-universe explanation, then we'll just have to accept that Sanderson hadn't really thought the whole Compounding thing through yet. On the other hand, some stuff that The Lord Ruler did can only be explained with Compounding, so he had to have put at least some thought into it. So, assuming that there is an in-universe explanation, it must be that they simply could not Compound. In other words, there was something special about TLR, and he was the only one who could. Maybe it was because he was a Sliver, because he got his powers by burning Lerasium, or something else. Sazed obviously changed some things about the way that Scadrian powers work, and maybe making Compounding more accessible was his way to balance out having removed Mistborn from the equation.

Yeah, I guess not. The thing is, Shardholders have such a grand, cosmic perspective that it can be difficult for them act effectively on the human level. It's possible that even as he overrode the Inquistors' will, he still left the specifics of how they used their powers up to them. The way the transformation into an Inquisitor warps the subject's thinking, I wouldn't be surprised if they were a little too one-track in their thinking to figure out Compounding. If Ruin had expended a little effort on it, he could have focused enough to get them to do it, but he was completely convinced that his victory was inevitable. I think he was actually very sloppy in a lot of his planning because he just didn't take the human threat seriously.

What if Ruin just didn't want to give the Inquisitors double gold? While perfectly capable of building something up, just to make it easier to treat everything down later, surely he would be galled by doing something so very Preservation-y as giving someone double gold. He saw his victory as completely inevitable. He probably figured he didn't need the Inquisitors to have double gold.

My idea was that if you tried to Compound a Breath, the power would remain Preservation's. The Breath from Endowment would serve as a template to "teach" Preservation's Investiture to behave like Breath, but it doesn't suddenly become Endowment's.

Finally! Some story! It doesn't speak well to this show that I forgot about it last night and only remembered to watch it after seeing an article about it in my Facebook newsfeed today. But it finally is moving the story forward and being interesting for something other than cool fight scenes. I hope it keeps it up (though I'm pretty sure that there are only two episodes left, so...).

My half-hearted reread of The Name of the Wind got put on hold to reread Steelheart, Mitosis, and Firefight. Well, that didn't take long. I'm back to Rothfuss. Almost done. I'm not sure whether I'll soldier on into The Wise Man's Fear or not. It's weird: I absolutely loved these books the first time I read them.

Whaaaaaaaat?! I did not see that coming.

Kaladin actually is a very important figure in this story, even if a lot of his personal arc has been resolved. The lighteye/darkeye cultural disparity is not a minor thing, and Kaladin is pretty much the key player in addressing that huge issue. I don't think he'll have quite so much time dedicated to him as we move forward, but his arc is far from over and done with.

I haven't read the last book yet, but the Moontide Quartet by David Hair is pretty good. It's not terribly original--just about every element of the worldbuilding has clear roots in other sources or in actual history--but the story is engaging enough. Also, he manages a story that is epic in scope and features characters ending up separated from each other by huge distances but still brings characters back together and doesn't let things get out of hand. It's nothing profound, but it's enjoyable enough to read.

Isn't there a WoB somewhere that says that Nightblood is basically the same thing as a spren? I imagine that the bonding process will be a little different (possibly a lot like bonding a regular, dead-spren Shardblade), and I suspect the powers he'll get might be rather different. As for the Skybreaker thing, based on the little we see of Nalan in WoR, I suspect that he just calls his organization the Skybreakers. I don't know that any of them are actually Radiants. He seems pretty convinced that the reemergence of Surgebinders will bring on a Desolation. Granted, information is scant enough right now that we really can't know if there's a "my Surgebinders are totally fine, though" clause in that philosophy.

But Investiture is Investiture. Once you've hacked it, you should be able to mess around with the system. the only real difference between Investiture on Nalthis and Investiture elsewhere is that it conforms itself to units--Breaths. If you can hack Feruchemy to store a Breath, compounding it with Allomancy shouldn't be a problem. In the same way that Allomancy converts itself to the Feruchemical store because the sDNA has been overwritten, so to speak, the Investiture pulled from Preservation should be able to "understand" the Breath units and shape itself accordingly.

Agreed. I think that Vasher/Zahel will become an important character later on. A supporting character, to be sure, but still important. He really was just a supporting character in Warbreaker, even though he was a major supporting character. I doubt he'll have as big a role in The Stormlight Archive, but honestly, if you devoted as many words as he got in Warbreaker to him in a SA book, it probably would still seem like he was a rather minor character. Keep in mind, a Stormlight volume is almost twice as long as Warbreaker.

Or he can just tell her and say that she isn't supposed to know and can't ever let it get out, or it will mess everything up for him. That's what I would do. I mean, she's basically telling him he has to lie to Felicity. I'd be like, "Uh huh. Right. Except I'm gonna lie to you instead because Felicity is more important."

Age of Ultron

You seem to have an odd concept of what it means to have free will, Maxal. What, to you, defines what it means to actually have agency? It seems like you're saying that anyone who is influenced in any strong way by their background does not have free will. But that actually describes every single person in the world. I don't really understand what your standard is for what makes someone influenced by their background to the extent that they would no longer have agency.

I didn't like Night Angel all that much. The First book is pretty good, but the second book isn't nearly as good, and the third one squeezes in and rushed through a ton of information that should have warranted a whole other volume. Lightbringer, on the other hand, is really good and very much in the vein of what Sanderson does. I haven't read the other series you mention. I'll have to check them out.