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Sure, they just need to score an a'dam.

@maxal I see your point about Ialai using copycat murders to draw out the killer, but I don't think that is what is going on, myself. Devious people tend to see everyone else as either devious or foolish. She views Dalinar's honorable principles as foolish, but I think that she would also believe that those principles preclude murdering an inconvenient person. Using copycat murders to draw out the original murderer depends on them having a sense of honor that compels them to go public. I would think that Ialai suspects someone who is more devious than honorable (or, in her thinking, foolish), so whoever she thinks is responsible, I doubt that she suspects Dalinar or his immediate family. Given that the second murder was specifically someone from a princedom allied with Kholin, and that the victim does not seem to be anyone of particular political significance, this second murder would seem to point to a random psychotic killer. That, to me, points to a secret society that wants Dalinar in control and does't mind getting their hands dirty to achieve that. Sadeas being murdered casts suspicion on Kholin, but a random Kholin ally then being murdered by the same person (apparently) defuses that suspicion.

This is true, and I myself find that suspicious, but Honor explicitly says that Cultivation is able to tell the future to some extent (indeed, he says that she does it better than he does, implying that he also can, a little bit). I think that Odium is just particularly good at it, and the popular belief that seeing the future is therefore evil evolved from that fact. There could very well be Radiants with some future sight.

Maybe I'm thinking of the wrong secret society, then. Maybe the Diagramists? Who was Moash with? Anyway, I don't think anyone but Adolin and Renarin have any idea who actually killed Sadeas. The most likely motivation for this murder right now is to shift suspicion away from the Kholin people in general.

@yulerule Yeah, it's all speculation, but there isn't nothing. There have been clues for a while that something odd is going on with Renarin, and WoB strongly implies that it could be something pretty major. It's not like we're just pulling this out of the air. Besides, that's kind of what one one does on the Shard--speculate wildly (maybe not everyone, but a whole lot of us sure do). We're all aware that everything we come up with could be knocked flat by one sentence from an actual book. It's just fun.

I think that depends on exactly how they work as keys. I don't think it said explicitly, but I got the impression that a living Shardblade was necessary because the spren can adjust its shape to become a key. In that case, no it wouldn't. If, on the other hand, it has more to do with Investiture than being a literal key, then I could see an Honorblade possibly working.

I don't think Renarin is the one who committed the second murder at the moment, but I do think that he is a suspect. There is something odd going on with him, and the possibility that he is being manipulated by Odium remains. Indeed, he may be bonding a Voidspren. I am quite certain that he knows that Adolin killed Sadeas, and it isn't unreasonable to suspect that he could have committed the second murder to throw people off Adolin's trail. Sadeas makes sense as a political killing, but when you throw in a second victim--a random person from Sebarial's princedom-then it makes it look like a serial killer. The notion that frail little Renarin couldn't handle it seems very unlikely. Yes, he says that he doesn't know how to use his powers, but even if this is so, he should be able to unconsciously activate something. Perhaps he found the experience draining, and this is why we find him bundled up against a cold much greater than anyone else is feeling? Anyway, that is what I see pointing to Renarin, but I don't necessarily think it was him. Ialai also doesn't make sense as a suspect to me because I don't see how making it seem like there is someone randomly killing people would be a good way to get revenge for her husband's death. All of the Sadeas men suspected Kholin right away. Why would Ialai step in and diffuse that suspicion? The Ghostbloods make the most sense to me. They don't have to know that Adolin killed Sadeas to have the motivation to draw suspicion away from Kholin. They want Dalinar to lead Alethkar, and Sadeas being murdered threatens his power. Randomly killing an ally of Kholin who has no particular significance in the exact same way that Sadeas was killed shifts the suspicion away from Kholin very neatly.

Well, we know that she definitely will, since she's one of the flashback characters in 6-10, but I wouldn't be surprised if she remains an Interlude character for the first five. It does sound like they'll be interacting with Gawx soon, though, so they ought to at least hear about her.

That is dependent on two factors, though: 1) Does what the Nightwatcher did to Dalinar's memory qualify as an injury? and... 2) Knowing that Stormlight Healing is dependent on one's Cognitive self-image, how would Dalinar come to view himself as someone with those memories?

Obviously, we don't know very much about the Nightwatcher yet, but we do have an example of the Nightwatcher's magic interacting with Radiant powers in Lift. Even in her case, we don't know a whole lot, but we do know that she is able to turn food into Stormlight. Assuming that she began on the path to Radiancy after visiting the Nightwatcher, it may well be that something about what was granted her was modified by her becoming a Radiant. After all, it seems unlikely that the ability to turn food into Stormlight would be given to someone who can't do anything with Stormlight. There are, of course, many caveats here. If the Nightwatcher is to Cultivation as the Stormfather is to Honor, it could be that the Nightwatcher just knew that Lift would become a Radiant. Also, I don't think we know for a fact that she visited the Nightwatcher before beginning to bond Wyndle. It is also possible that this was supposed to be her curse--that she would lose a lot of the nutrition she took in when she converted it to Investiture that she could do nothing with (a real curse for an orpahned street kid). The possibility does still remain that whatever she was granted by the Nightwatcher interacted with her Radiant powers--just as all powers interact with each other in the Cosmere--to give her this ability. If it is the case that gaining Radiant powers can affect a Nightwatcher boon/curse, then I think it possible, if not probable, that Dalinar will regain some memory of his wife, even if he doesn't get it all back. As an aside, it wouldn't surprise me if Dalinar asked to become a better person, and wiping his memories of his wife, along the trauma surrounding her death and/or other events, is how the Nightwatcher achieved that.

@Ammanas So, a little over 6 years ago, I had been in a reading rut for some time. This had always happened to me, where I'd read a lot for a while, then not be able to find any books to hold my interest, and I would just not read for months or years at a time. Then I started hearing about Game of Thrones, and I was intrigued by the concept. I began reading ASoIaF around the same time that GoT started to air, and I realized, Oh, I like fantasy. I should stop trying to force myself to read "literature" and the classics and just look for fantasy books to read. I haven't been in a rut since. Now, I don't actually much like GRRM these days, having refined exactly what kind of fantasy I enjoy a bit more. Before casting something of a wide net in an attempt to find the books that would really appeal to me, I just read whatever GRRM books I could easily find, and that included Dreamsongs. What I'm saying is, I remember that I read Dreamsongs, but that's about it. I wish I could tell you which stories were my favorites, but...

I guess it depends how we're counting the books. GRRM edits the Wild Cards series, but his actual writing input is often minimal. If we're going to count those, then he's number 1 for me, with 27 books (21 Wild Cards books, ASoIaF, and Dreamsongs). Then we've got the Brandon dillemma: how do we count the novellas and short stories? I read most of them separately as they came out, but if you consider everything in Arcanum Unbounded to be one book (after all, I did consider Dreamsongs to be a single book in GRRM's case), then I'm at 20 for Brandon. If they're all separate pieces, well, I'd have to count, but I think he might take the number 1 spot from GRRM. After that, I'm not sure. I suppose Robert Jordan, but whether you count the last 3 as RJ or BS books affects the total (either 15 or 12). I've read 12 Robin Hobb books, but did I read more individual Pern books than that? I don't know. I think I only read 9 of those, but I could be wrong, and I may be forgetting about about non-Pern McCaffrey books that I read when I was young. I've probably read 11 or 12 C.S. Lewis books, too, but again, I don't really know. It hardly seems fair to count The Screwtape Letters as equal to much longer single works.

It's kind of true that it was originally going to be a trilogy but only for the initial pitch. By the time Jordan wrote The Eye of the World, it was definitely not a trilogy anymore because the original outline called for book 1 of the trilogy to cover all events through The Dragon Reborn. So, yeah, the idea was for a trilogy, but by the time any work was actually done, it was always going to be longer than 3 books.

I don't think it's too easy. Not summoning his Shardblade is just stupid at this point. He has no other means to identify himself or prove anything other than that he is a dangerous escaped slave (who, by the way, is carrying enough gems to almost certainly be a major thief). I'm not saying that the next scene is going to be Kaladin immediately being all like, "Check out my sweet sword, bro!" But if he doesn't summon his Blade in pretty short order, it's going be pointless wheel-spinning, which is a major criticism of practically all epic fantasy series.

Yeah, in-universe Oathbringer is almost definitely written during the gap between the two arcs. It has the feel of something written after momentous events but before everything is resolved (particularly because it seems that there are still lots of people who think the truth about what is going on is heretical, and I imagine that this will be more or less resolved by the time the series ends)

Nothing in particular. It's just an impression that I get. There's certainly nothing explicit in what we have seen so far:

I have not read all 7 pages of comments,so apologies if I am repeating an already stated theory, but I am getting a strong impression from the in-universe Oathbringer that Dalinar is dead at the time of its writing. I think that it is a biographical account of his last years, as he unites the nations against the threat of the Desolation. I suspect Jasnah to be the author, but if she is not, it is almost certainly not Dalinar. Poetically naming the book Oathbringer to refer both to the man and the sword he carried for many years is not something that I would expect of Dalinar. It is not a certainty, but it is seems much more likely that a book so named would be about a great man after his death than about someone still living. If he doesn't die at the end of this volume, I expect that he will by the end of the first five.

Nothing much happens in book 10, so I'm not surprised that you gave up there, but it picks up again in Knife of Dreams, and then Brandon took over for 13-14, so...

Not to quibble about semantics, @Briar King, but WoT is definitely high fantasy, in that it takes place in a secondary world distinct from ours (as opposed to low fantasy, in which magic and/or fantasy creatures come into the real world). People have argued a little about what high fantasy actually is over the years, but that was what it meant when Lloyd Alexander came up with the terminology. How are you definitely the term? As to the OP, I love WoT. I've read it four times and am working on a fifth (on LoC, but I keep getting interrupted when other books that I've been waiting for come out). Some people can't stand it, and it's hard to predict who will fall into that that category, even when they love series with major fandom overlap, like you. But I think that it's 100% worth it. Even if you don't end up being a huge fan, the influence of the series cannot be understated.

I can't figure out how to link to the pledge page. It just keeps embedding the video. Anyway, go to Kickstarter and search Dissolutionverse.

I randomly came across this on Reddit, and it seems like something Sharders could get behind. I don't know the author or anything; it's just something that strikes me as being very interesting, and I think that we should contribute, according to our individual ability. I went ahead and pledged $35.

Thomas Covenant is definitely not for everyone. The main character is incredibly unlikable. That was the whole point, but the fact remains that he is terrible enough to make it hard to read the series. Also, the author loves using words like "fecund" and "eldritch," and it can get annoying, especially with a lot of the characters spouting off in pseudo-archaic language all the time. The Dagger and the Coin is definitely good, and so is Lightbringer, so I second those recommendations. R. Scott Bakker's Second Apocalypse is another one that isn't for everyone, with an intensely brutal fantasy world, but The Prince of Nothing (first trilogy) and The Aspect-Emperor (second series--four books instead of three) are both complete now. I believe that two more books are possibly forthcoming, but I don't think that there's been much news (and whatever happens, it would be a sequel series, anyway). I'm not a big Jim Butcher fan, but I love The Aeronaut's Windlass (which, I've found, a lot of big Butcher fans did not enjoy, so...). I also just read Arabella of Mars by David D. Levine. I really enjoyed that, and there is a sequel that I have yet to read. It's kind of sci-fi but in the old school, Burroughs-esque way, where humans can survive just fine with no spacesuits on Mars--along with the local intelligent species, of course--so it's more like fantasy.

https://youtu.be/49figpiRcRU

I was a big fan. Looking forward to season 2. Also, Disney really needs to make a young Princess Leia movie with 11 as Leia because she really looks the part.