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If there is a Shallan subplot where she struggles with alcoholism, it could be good, actually. It would be an understandable development after what she's been through, and fantasy so rarely deals with such issues in a grounded way. There are plenty of characters who do nothing but drink, but there never seems to be much in the way of consequences. I'd prefer for things to not go that way, personally. As @maxal noted previously, Shallan has enough to worry about as it is. In a book where three different characters are pretty much equally the main character, and you've got tertiary characters getting enough POVs to fill a novella, you can't have 50 different problems piled onto a single character. Of course, I don't even see the warning signs that others are. I know a guy who had to go to rehab, and at one point, his average daily consumption was about a liter of vodka a day (for at least two years straight). He's an extreme example, but knowing him, it's hard to take Shallan occasionally drinking wine and getting drunk once for the sake of a role as a warning sign that she'll become an alcoholic. Her mental health issues put her at risk, to be sure, but I wouldn't say that her actions worry me at all right now (well, they do, but not with respect to her drinking).

I am accounting for Intent, but I'm looking at it as just another factor in the hacking. I don't think Intent changes the base essence of the Investiture. We may learn differently eventually, but that is my impression, based on what I've read so far.

@Pattern What I mean is that the raw power of Investiture is all pretty much identical. It all originated in Adonalsium, and it should therefore be essentially the same, in its raw form. My laptop needs energy to run, and there is energy in a stick. My laptop cannot run on that stick, of course, but if I could find a way to get the energy out of the stick and turn it into electricity that I appropriately funnel into the laptop, then it absolutely would. I can say, "energy is energy," but still be aware that I can't lock a guy in a room with a dead laptop and throw a twig at him, then wait for him to get the computer booted up. I'm looking at Investiture in the same way. When I say that a feruchemist wouldn't experience any resistance storing Investiture from, say, Endowment because Investiture is Investiture, I do so assuming that however they got a hold of a Breath, they have managed to create a Connection to it and key it to their Identity, such that they can store it. My argument is that they could do that with any source of Investiture, from any Shard. Granted, the process for hacking it might differ, but once you've got it hacked, there is nothing essential about the raw Investiture that would make it different from any other Investiture.

@maxal I had the exact opposite reaction as you to this week's chapters. I felt like finally stuff has started happening, maybe not in terms of action, but with a lot of plot details being kicked off. With Dalinar, we get the Honorblade and basically the confirmation that we'll see someone wield it soon. We start to see the depth of the conflict that Dalinar is setting off with the church. The fact that the Voidbringers are going to cause problems with unifying Roshar, not by wreaking havoc as an invading army but by normalizing political relations with various governments--that is very much coming into focus. And, of course, Dalinar's memories are coming back. With Kaladin, I don't see this as a retread of his WoK arc at all. Rather, it is a return to a role that he is suited for, after spending a whole book being too depressed to fill it. Granted, if tutoring the parshmen is his whole arc in this book, it will be disappointing, but I see this as a welcome sign that Kaladin is accepting himself and growing into his role as Radiant nicely. Also, we've got mentions of how Realmatic stuff works from Syl, and the most important thing to happen, from my perspective, is that we really are made to understand that this is not going to be a simple good-and-evil morality tale. The parshmen are not orcs or trollocks or even just brutish barbarians. Since WoR, we've known that the Listener plotline was going to be more complex than a monstrous enemy that we can feel okay about seeing our heroes slaughter. But at the time, we were lead to believe that this would be because we knew that there were good people trapped inside stormform monsters. This is even better for a complex story with difficult moral choices. The parshmen are slaves escaping oppression. Then there's Shallan. As I've said before, I think that this chapter really sets up the character's central conflict for this volume--her attempt to avoid painful memories by creating separate identities for herself. As much as Kaladin's failure to protect damaged his bond with Syl, I think that Shallan's failure to tell herself the truth at such a grand scale will damage her bond with Pattern. Maybe it won't be as dramatic as what happened with Kaladin, but I'd say that her Oathrbinger arc will echo Kaladin's WoR arc. And then the murder mystery threw us for a loop that no one predicted. There is something going on here that none of us guessed. And the thing is, it should become apparent very quickly that while they do have a serial killer of some kind on their hands, every time that killer murders someone, there's a second murderer to worry about. I think this makes things more dangerous for Adolin. Soon, everyone will know that the killing of the Kholin ally was not linked, in terms of motive, to Sadeas being killed. That means that the Sadeas camp will have more reason to regard his death as a politically motivated assassination.

I think some people are misunderstanding the concept of Investiture resisting Investiture (it is possible that I am the one misunderstanding, but that seems unlikely to me ). So, yes, Cognitively distinct entities that are Invested will resist being acted upon by outside Investiture, as in the example of attempting to Steelpush a metalmind. However, after the feruchemist in this example rids themself of the meddling Coinshot trying to mess with their metalminds, they will not find any resistance when they try to put more Investiture into that metalmind. While we haven't seen it happen yet, I would wager that this would still be the case if they managed to get themselves some Investiture from a different Shard. Investiture is Investiture. I think that it is a mistake to look at the Nightwatcher's influence as something Invested within Dalinar that resisted being healed. Unless we look at the influence as something of a distinct foreign entity residing in Dalinar's mind (or soul or whatever), it ought to be part of the same Cognitive entity--that is, Dalinar--and therefore not resist any kind of Investing that Dalinar is doing. In fact, it that scenario, any Investiture Dalinar put in would only serve to fuel the magical device blocking his memory. As it has been noted, Dalinar himself perceives the memories, not as being blocked, but as a hole. Like I said before, in the very next chapter, Syl explains how what seems to be the exact same thing was done (albeit much more thoroughly and dramatically) to the parshmen. A piece of their soul was cut out, their Connections to their entire Identities were severed, and Investiture healed that. Surely, Investiture was involved in the severing, but it isn't sticking around now to maintain the rift. If I cut a piece of paper in half, I don't leave the scissors there to maintain the slice. I think that it is very simple: Stormlight healed Dalinar's memory, just like Odium's Investiture healed the parshmen's minds.Why did it only happen now? I believe that it was because he was holding Stormlight when Navani mentioned Evi's name. With the Connection to her memory severed, it didn't register as part of his Identity, and much like Kaladin's scars, was therefore not ever healed. However, when the name tried to follow the Cognitive pathway into Dalinar's perception, instead of just stopping where that path was severed as usual, the Stormlight "noticed" the cut and healed it. That's my hypothesis, anyway.

Possibly, but if so, I don't think it will be much like the example of the Knitting Circle. I think that a lot of fans have been kind of ignoring the fact that almost every single lead character in this story has absolutely no problem with slavery, and I don't think Brandon intends to let us continue to get away with it. He almost set it up that way, lulling us into a false sense of what Alethi slavery is like, with the parshmen as human automatons or clever beasts and comments on how ardents are technically owned, even though it doesn't really seem like it. Yeah, we have the negative examples (Sadeas), but it has been easy to write that off as what happens when you have an evil man in charge. Now, we're being forced to confront the fact that horrible things were done to the parshmen. Sure, by people who didn't realize that there was a trapped soul in there, horrified at their lot, but the parshmen were still bred like animals and torn apart from their families. Kaladin helping them might yield mixed results, but I sincerely doubt that the outcome will be, "Kunta Kinte was the real villain all along! Take that, Toby!"

I definitely agree with you. I already posted something along these lines, but I really felt like these three chapters finally really got things going, for me. It helps that it was one chapter each for our three main characters in this book, but also that each chapter brought so much cool stuff to the fore--stuff that has major implications on a number of levels. Dalinar - Hiding the Honorblade & the Stormfather revealing (quite cryptically) that the Honorblades can make one like a Herald, the conflict with the church is taking shape, and he remembers his wife(!!!). Kaladin - Info on the parshmen deepens the plot--these people were actual slaves, not just human-like animals, and they have become fully conscious, not been turned into slavering monsters--and Kaladin is back in his element as a leader, reminiscent of his work to turn Bridge 4 into a true unit in TWoK. I am also quite certain that Syl's explanation of how the parshmen were healed has direct bearing on how Dalinar's memories are coming back, but I've already been through all of that. Shallan - The central conflict for her character in this book is really emerging. We saw hints of it with Brightness Radiant, but now we can be fairly certain that her attempts to fragment her personality are going to be a problem. Also--and this is big--the copycat murder situation has been totally turned on its head. Everything we've been talking about is almost certainly wrong. Someone or something is precisely copying others' murders, it would seem, and all of our conjecture about the first copycat murder's relationship to Sadeas being killed is apparently waaaaay off base.

Investiture is Investiture. While there is nothing in canon to completely rule out the idea of different sources of Investiture fighting each other, there is a lot that suggests that it's all basically the same stuff. Mistborn (only spoilery if you haven't read the first trilogy): I am sticking to my hypothesis that the Nightwatcher severed Dalinar's Connection to Evi and her memory. The healing of that wound is just a simple healing, not a counter to the Nightwatcher's magic. The magic was spent in creating the injury, and all the Stormlight did was heal that injury--not challenge the Nightwatcher's power.

It works if my conjecture is correct--that the Connection was healed specifically because Navani said her name while Dalinar was holding Stormlight. The tiny fissure in Dalinar's soul had become a part of him, so normal Stormlight healing wouldn't fix it. But when Navani said Evi's name, the Investiture "noticed" the hole and filled in the gap to let the name register in his mind.

@The Invested Beard Why, thank you kindly. I have to admit, I was pretty proud of myself for making the Connection (pun intended, hue hue hue) because I feel like others always beat me to the punch with such insights. To comment on the chapters more generally, this set really ramped up the excitement factor for me. Everything else so far has been really great, to be sure, because--hey--it's The Stormlight Archive! But now we're really getting into interesting material. Kaladin reuniting with his family and awing everyone with his Radiance was cool, but now his plot is really getting interesting. He's getting into his teacher/protector role again, and that is great to see, after the events of WoR. The parshmen just being people--being actual slaves who were deeply wronged and not just automatons who were cool with their captivity so long as they remained mindless--is a great story element. I think we're starting to see something important about the structure of the series in Shallan's plot. She is echoing Kaladin's arc in WoR, and I think that we're going to keep seeing that (i.e. flashback volume, the character comes into Radiance -> next volume, they almost lose it as they deal with the crisis of what comes next). I don't think it will always be as dramatic as Kaladin losing his powers, since that would probably become tiresome, but SA is all about structure--the trilogy-in-one-volume arrangement, the Interludes, the prologue dealing with the night of Gavilar's assassination from a different POV, etc. A lot of us are worried about Shallan's fracturing of her identity (Identity, even?), but I just think that's just her conflict for this book. Things are going to get dark for her, but she'll come around in the end, and we'll get a scene comparable to the awesomeness of Kaladin exploding in Stormlight and glowing glyphs at the end of WoR.

I'm thinking insane Dysian Aimian. I don't know why, exactly, but it seems to fit. Brandon already said that Edgedancer was important for bridging the gap between Nale's disposition in WoR and how he will behave when we see him in Oathbringer. Obviously, Edgedancer's introduction of a Dysian Aimian was to build up to their appearance in the main series, but maybe it was also a direct bridge to something in Oathbringer, just like Nale's Edgedancer arc. It would be a good idea, if you're going to introduce a completely foreign non-human race, to not have the only member we know of be a homicidal maniac. Otherwise, readers immediately get the impression that the entire race is basically made up of monsters, and as Kaladin's parshmen subplot is currently telling us, that is not what Brandon is trying to do with this series.

I've noticed that there is some interest in Dalinar's returning memory (perhaps that's something of an understatement ). I think that how it happened is explained in the very next chapter, when Syl says: And that, on a much smaller scale, is exactly what happened to Dalinar. The Nightwatcher ripped off a tiny piece of his soul, broke his Connection to Evi and her memory. The precise mechanism of the healing may remain a mystery (for example, did it happen because he was holding Stormlight when Navani said the name this time, and the Investiture flowed into the wound as it was thus revealed?), but I think we have a general answer to the "how" of it in the restoration of the parshmen. As to the fear that Odium is somehow involved, I think it significant that Syl only says, "Power has filled the holes"--power, not Odium's power. In other words, Investiture. And Investiture is Investiture. If Odium's Investiture can Heal something, then so can Stormlight, even if it needs to take another path to do it.

More the latter, I suppose. I was well into the fourth book of a series, and I still didn't really care very much about any of the characters (in fact, I stopped caring about characters that I had started to become invested in because the story didn't really go anywhere interesting). There were a couple of mysteries built up and everything, but I just didn't care to find out what the answers were. The series also goes all grimdark in ways that just didn't seem to work, for me. And I've read R. Scott Bakker, so it wasn't the mere presence of grimdark elements that bothered me. Maybe that's the problem: if you're going to do grimdark, you'd better do it in a reasonably good book. If it's just okay, then it hardly seems worth it to wade through a bunch of doom and gloom and senseless, graphic violence. There's no real payoff, and personally, I am not interested in reading about gore and murder for its own sake.

@Ammanas I read most of The Seven Forges, then gave up halfway through the fourth book. I just didn't care anymore. I read The books back to back and really tried to get invested, but I just couldn't.

I don't think that their mnemonic abilities are their Resonance; I think that they are the means by which they use their Surges. When Kaladin uses a Lashing, he just does it, like flexing a muscle. For Shallan's Lightweaving to be most effective, she has to draw the image first, and I think the taking of memories is related to how this works, as well. The reason, then, that she hasn't gotten the hang of Soulcasting is likely that she hasn't worked out the proper mnemonic device yet. That's not to say that this wouldn't tie into her Resonance, too, but the mnemonic abilities are, in my thinking, more than that (or even more basic than that, one might say).

That makes sense, but I think the Resonance idea works better. If Shallan hadn't already demonstrated a similar Resonance, I would say, sure--it's probably him seeing his Spiritual self. But since we've already seen something like this, it just makes sense that it would be the same kind of thing. Granted, I don't know that we have any official confirmation that Shallan's ability to help better turn into better versions of themselves is her Resonance, so my premise could be off here. However, I am fairly certain that it is, and based on that, I would say that we also saw Renarin's Resonance. But I guess we'll have to wait and see.

I think that Adolin getting a glimpse of himself, perfected, when Renarin touched him may be the most interesting piece of information from this run of chapters. This is obviously his "extra" ability, and it is very much like Shallan's ability to draw an idealized version of someone and transform them into a person closer to that ideal. Here, the contribution of the Surges becomes clear, as we can see the contrast in how Progression and Transformation contribute to the ability, while Illumination seems to do the same thing (that is, show someone a different version of themselves).

Well, yeah, that's what I meant: break the gem, which is generally accepted as the way one severs the bond, but he remains bonded to the Blade.

I haven't been following the discussion over the weekend, so I'm totally lost, but I have to say, I think @maxal's idea that Adolin will sever his bond with his Blade and still be able to summon it is a good one.

You know, I had been thinking about this question in terms of the implications of the killing in the public eye, and I may be wrong in doing so. @maxal noted that everyone was ready to forget about Sadeas until the second murder happened. I disagree. I think that no one in Dalinar's circle cared much about it, but that surely the entirety of the Sadeas camp was shouting for Kholin blood, and others must suspect someone from the Kholin camp as well. Most of the other highprinces tend to be fickle and foolish, and a murder accusation--even if impossible to prove--could damage Dalinar's reputation pretty seriously. I therefore found it very unlikely that Ialai was behind this second murder. The man killed was an ally of Kholin, and everyone assumes that he was killed by the same person as Sadeas. That being the case, it makes it seem like whoever killed Sadeas must not have been doing so for political reasons. Some have made the case that the copycat murder (perhaps murders, in the future) are intended to stir up the guilt of whoever killed Sadeas--yes, I know that we know it is Adolin, but Ialai doesn't--and trip them up enough to get a confession. The one possibility that I didn't consider--and I feel dumb now--is that Ialai is behind the other murder, but she assumes that the Kholins were behind Sadeas's death by assassination. The murder is supposed to be payback (in which case, more are surely to come, since she won't consider a random Sebarial man as equal to Sadeas), and staging the body to look like Sadeas is supposed to send a message to Daliner et al that this is a revenge killing. Maybe this was never supposed to manipulate anyone's thinking, and it was intended as direct reprisal that Dalinar was expected to immediately understand as such. It is possible that Ialai will realize that Dalinar really has no idea who killed Sadeas and genuinely thinks that they have a serial killer randomly killing people on their hands. This could actually help Adolin out because she will then turn her focus from the Kholins, never realizing that it could have been a crime of passion and not a deliberate assassination.

It is possible that it was one of the Sadeas men who found the body and therefore knew how Sadeas looked, laying there. Assuming that it must have been a political assassination from the Kholin camp, he killed one of their allies and laid him out in the same way to send a message.I don't that we'll find out before November, though. This has the feel of a mystery that will stretch out for a while, much like the saddle strap in WoK.

I don't think that they're working against Dalinar. I think they're working for him. Or at least, for the sake of this hypothesis. I have no idea who is responsible for the copycat murder and will concede that it is possible that Ialai or even Renarin is responsible. There is precedent for secret societies to work both for and against Dalinar (different factions of Diagramists did both in WoR). That's why I suspect them: if killing a Kholin ally was meant to shift blame away from Sadeas's enemies, a secret society seems the most likely culprit. The only reason that Renarin is not my prime suspect is that that would be sad.

I'm sure that Oathbringer does still have a role to play. I imagine that it will be discovered (as I said above, I could imagine Shallan spotting it when Kaladin comes back, and she has him fly her out to get a better perspective on Urithiru). I just don't see Adolin being forced to give up his Blade. I could see Dalinar wanting to do that because he's mad at Adolin, but it would set a dangerous precedent. And just about everyone is glad that Sadeas is dead. I think everyone that has Dalinar's ear would be unhappy with him even suggesting such a punishment. We'll see, though. And, yes you're right about the colors. It's the Dustbringers, not 'weavers, but they are indeed crimson, while the Lightweavers are more magenta (but I bet if you saw someone with eyes glowing magenta, you'd be like "Aaaaah! Somone with glowing red eyes! Run!")

@Kingsdaughter613 The text has already dealt with the difficulty of bringing a Shardbearer to justice. If memory serves, they are generally exiled because they cannot be imprisoned. Forcing someone to give up their Blade just isn't going to happen, unless they choose to do it. You could argue that Adolin might be convinced that he must, but it really isn't a common sense notion, in general. How would you make the average Shardbearer willingly break their bond? They would have to summon their Blade to do it, and that is a dangerous situation, even if you surround them with guys in Shardplate. Kholin has enough Plate to go around to try that, but that isn't going to be too common. And you really have to remember how valuable Shardblades are. You'd be asking someone to voluntarily give up something that they could easily trade for an entire kingdom--and also to do so by pulling out an insanely deadly weapon and choose to just surrender that fortune instead of using it to kill everyone trying take it away.

I don't think that anyone will think that they can necessarily infer anything from the Shardblade being ditched instead of taken. How would you be able to get away with a massive Shardblade? No matter how valuable a prize, it's worthless if it costs your life to abscond with it. One might ask, "Well, why didn't the killer just leave it where it appeared?" I still think that this would imply nothing about the killer's identity. They could have picked it up to take it, not being able to resist, then immediately realized there was no way to get away with it. Or they could have already had one and didn't need it, sure. Or they could have tossed it out the window because they hoped that it would not be discovered, and it would send people off on a false trail, trying to find someone hiding out with a Shardblade, trying to bond it before they are found out. You know, Oathbringer may well not be discovered until "Brightlord Brooding-Eyes" flies Shallan out to get a better perspective on the city. Urithiru is huge, and more likely than not, it got ditched somewhere that is not currently inhabited.