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Apologies for the double post, but I just finished An Echo of Things to Come, and dude... This is a great series. I have no doubt now that Islington is going to be able to wrap things up satisfactorily in just one more volume. Yeah, there's a lot going on, but I think it can be done. I also could imagine it going on for ten more books because of everything happening, but this volume satisfied me that the author knows how to deal with a ton of different plotlines and economically resolve them in a satisfying way. I am very impressed with the series.

Anyone reading book 2 yet (An Echo of Things to Come)? I'm about 2/3 of the way through, and I am really liking it a lot. The only thing that worries me is that there are a ton of moving pieces here, and I'm not sure how any of this will be satisfactorily resolved in just one more volume. Hopefully, the author has it all planned out to make it happen as needs to. 

I've been following Preacher, Game of Thrones, Rick and Morty, and People of Earth as of late. Good shows, all.

I prefer physical, but I'll read any format. I read WoR in its entirety on my phone once. I think I read most of White Sand on a desktop screen, from Word, the first time I read it (maybe that was Aether... or both, maybe).

I'm reading The Fires of Heaven for the fifth time (I never read The Week of Time before 2014, but I've since been rather dedicated to making up for lost time), but I've also been squeezing in some comics. I wholeheartedly recommend Seven to Eternity and Night's Dominion. Also, Copra. And Monstress, but y'all should already know that one.

I would say that we know that the answer to #1 is "yes," but the other three are definitely "don't know." I strongly suspect that, yes, Adonalsium had something like a Vessel, and the reason for the Shattering was that (s)he/it died, and things were going crazy.

There probably actually is a connection, even though what @Genesis is saying also sounds fairly accurate. Essentially you have a Cognitive aspect that is trapped in a single form. In the dead Shardblade's case, it seems to be like a loop of eternally experiencing the moment of their Bond being severed, as they were locked into their Bladeform. In the case of Stormform Listeners, you have them locked in a Voidform and distressed over that.

I really don't see Nale getting involved in this particular issue, unless he perceives that Dalinar, as de facto leader of the Knights Radiant, is derelict in his duty by ignoring his son's lawbreaking. This, again, is a reason that exile might make sense for Adolin. If he is punished according to the law, then Nalan will stay out of it completely. 

And, keep in mind, I'm not advocating for Adolin to be removed from the story entirely. The main thrust of my argument is that Adolin has become important to the story, and he needs to stick around somehow. If he's getting in the way of the narrative (and I only think that this might be the case because we all know that he would be dead by now if the original story outline had been followed), then my preference is for him to be exiled and go off to grow as a character "offscreen" so that he can return as a major player--as opposed to just being unceremoniously killed off. 

3 hours ago, Matthew Scanlon said:

I thought he was blurry because of the powers given to him by the sword Nightblood. But I'm sure I am wrong

I initially thought that it probably had something to do with Nightblood. Even though we never see anything like that in Warbreaker, I figured that Lift can just see things that others can't. As I thought about it, though, I came to the same conclusion that others here did--yes, Lift was seeing something that no one else can, but it has nothing to do with Nightblood. Szeth was resurrected by a fabrial. I'm sure that it was one advanced fabrial, compared to others that we've seen, but it's still a pretty basic magical machine stapling his soul back to his body (or however you want to describe that). 

Yeah, there's no lag with Gawx, that we know of, but he didn't get brought back by a magic machine; he got brought back by pure magic. There is some doubt as to whether or not he was actually truly dead, but the actual Regrowth Surge, wielded by a Radiant, probably still works better than a machine cobbled together to harness that Surge.

@Kplynch21 I don't think that chasing down criminals is going to be a priority for Nalan anymore. He already was only going after nascent Surgebinders, but now, who even knows what he's going to be doing? I can't explain myself too much without getting into Edgedancer spoilers, but if you've read it, I assume that you know what I'm talking about.

I understood the implication to be that Arclo just hasn't seen Axies in a long time. That may be the way that you would talk about someone who had died, but it is also the way that you would talk about someone that you used to know but just don't see anymore. 

I got the impression that this was the standard procedure for the Ring, even though it was different than what we've seen in Cryptic and Honorspren behavior.

@maxal That's a good point about the story not coming together without Adolin because of all of the secretiveness on the parts of the other protagonists, but the end of WoR really changed the status quo on that. The reasons for the primary characters to avoid talking to each other are beginning to evaporate, while Adolin now has a major secret of his own (which will be a huge reversal for the until-now very open and honest character).

Sure, Shallan still has the Ghostbloods to keep secret (and we don't know yet that she will, even if it seems likely), but she can now be open about her powers. Dalinar can confidently explain his visions as not being insanity, and with Sadeas gone, it will be easier for him to be blunt and open--which is his actual personality, remember--without worrying about being maneuvered into compromising positions. Kaladin's reticence was in large part based on an irrational worry that the lighteyes would find a way to take away his Radiancy. He is certainly on the road to getting over that. Renarin obviously has a lot going on that he's keeping from others, but he now has a reason to open up a little. Jasnah's conclusions about the Parshendi, previously considered laughable, is mainstream now. Most of the secrets that she uncovered are no longer bizarre notions that no one is interested in listening to. Whatever secrets she chooses to maintain, she going to be a lot more open to freely dispensing her knowledge now that red-eyed monsters are tearing the continent apart and she knows things that might help.

It looks like Adolin has carried us to the point in the overall narrative where he is no longer necessary to keep the story from being all about separate parties who won't talk to each other. And developments in his personal arc mean that he is no longer quite as well suited to that role. Until we read Oathbringer, we won't know exactly what that means, but the possibility remains that he is approaching a place where he will get in the way of the other moving parts in the story. I maintain that, if this is the case, he has become too important to just kill off. Exile is a great way to handle that. It can take him out of the story for a little while, and things can be engineered to allow him to return eventually without the stigma of him getting away with killing a Highprince without any punishment.

I believe that Wyndle is different, but only because Lift is different. Her connection to the Cognitive Realm made his transition much easier. If he had bonded another individual, he'd be the same as other spren.

Well, here's the thing--Adolin probably is going to get away with it for a while. We've all argued back and forth about whether there will be evidence there to point to him, but I think the bottom line is that, while we don't presently know, it isn't at all unlikely that Adolin managed to cover it up well enough to avoid immediate suspicion.

The question is what happens when it gets pinned on someone else. Jasnah hired assassins before. Maybe Ialai will try to pin it on her. Or maybe someone else altogether--say, some random guy from Bridge 4--will be blamed. You could build a plausible case for a former slave to want to murder Sadeas to protect their benefactor. Whatever happens, Ialai will not rest until someone pays, and Adolin won't let someone else take the fall for him, however his family and other allies react.

Sadeas's death is too major to just get swept under the rug. That may be what happens for most of Oathbringer, but regardless, such a situation cannot last. If it comes out that Adolin was the killer--and that seems inevitable--then the Kholins will have no choice but to allow his punishment. Hence, my conviction that Adolin is very likely headed for exile.

Here's a little theory that I came up with over the course of a conversation on the Stormlight board (I'm more sure of the first part than the second).

-Adolin will face exile for murdering Sadeas. Here are my reasons for believing this:

•      According to the original story outline, Adolin should be dead by now. He's evolved into a more important character and will need to be used later, but he may be starting to get in the way of the main characters' arcs.
•      One alternative to exile is that the whole affair is covered up or never comes to light. There are too many characters running around whose personalities get in the way of that for this to work (Dalinar's too honorable, Adolin will feel too guilty, Ialai won't let go of the investigation, etc.).
•      The only other viable alternative to exile is that Adolin dies. I believe that he has become too important to just be killed off in a random battle. Ialai will definitely want to kill Adolin, but the only way to do that in an above-board way is in a duel, and after Adolin's performance in the big WoR duel, no one is going to be willing to do that. She could try assassins, but that isn't the easiest way to put down a Shardbearer.   

-This part is more dubious, but I think it's more fun. Adolin spends his exile as Lift's Squire. It's a reversal of the typical roles of serious, noble knight and goofy, inept--or at least less glorious--squire. It allows Adolin to go down the path of reviving his Blade. Working on the assumption that Squires can themselves eventually become Radiants, this gives Adolin a cool way to come around to being a Radiant. Adolin and Lift would probably interact in very entertaining ways, from hilarious bickering to genuine affection (I think that they would get along but that Lift would annoy Adolin a lot). Adolin would also be a great example to Lift and help her grow into the character who is eventually going to be one of the series leads. I believe that whatever trauma underlies Lift's Peter Pan syndrome, there is also a healthy dosage of distaste for turning into someone like the adults that she's known. Adolin is different.

15 hours ago, VoltCruelerz said:

Yay cover art!

Regarding the present discussion regarding Jasnah's appearance, I don't mind it, but it isn't what I imagined.  As other before have mentioned, I expected her to be more of a groomed elegance than just beautiful.  As I recall though, Vorin garb does tend to show off feminine curves, so it does fit the world.

Cross-posting from what I put on tor:

The Giant:  While this was not at all what I imagined a thunderclast to look like (I imagined obsidian quadrupeds), I figure it’s a pretty safe bet that it is one.  That said, I can’t imagine whatever else it might be, so I’m going to assume that thunderclasts are basically magical rock mechs now.  I’m surprised the main post suggested that a Parshendi was in there.  From Dalinar’s vision, I took it to just be animated rock brought about by a voidspren.  Another interesting tidbit is that the thunderclast is walking away from the wall.  Maybe that’s Rlain helping out?

The Lightning: The presence of red lightning is unsurprising enough given the presence of Voidbringers, but the blue lightning suggests that a Highstorm’s stormwall may be approaching.  Either that, or someone’s doing something funky with their spren.

The Spears and the Wall: The presence of spears clearly indicates a battle, at least of some scale, though we have no idea where.  The Parshendi were all over the world before the Everstorm, so there’s not really any place this couldn’t be happening.  I’m going to guess though that it’s one of the cities the party can teleport to from Urithiru just because defending anywhere else with their present force is basically impossible unless Navani suddenly gets a whole lot better at making fabrials.  We might see her make a new Oathgate by the end of the series, but I seriously doubt she’d be able to in Book 3.

The Glove: It’s Jasnah.  She’s an atheist and enormously pragmatic.  If she’s going into battle, she’s not vain enough to hide her safehand.  What’s more interesting to me here though is that she’s not wearing any armor.  While by no means a fighter in her own right, she still strikes me as the sort of person that would never willingly go into battle without protection.  Honestly, I think Jasnah might be hiding from the thunderclast.

The Sword: Ivory is doing something, but we’ve never seen anyone need to summon their blade when they weren’t getting ready to use it for something sword-like.  She might have had had Ivory out and is simply turning him into a different shape like Syl did at the end of Book 2.  Then again, maybe there are higher powers we don’t know about yet.

The Stairs: Well, this is just weird.  There’s no real…  yeah, I’ve got nothing.  I can only imagine she’s creating them on the fly, but then they’d be mounted to the wall.  These are floating, which is a power she doesn’t have, so maybe she’s halfway in Shadesmar or something?  Alternatively, this could be some new ability we’re not familiar with as mentioned above.

In case you missed my response on tor.com:

Someone commented on the Thunderclast looking different on Reddit and mused that maybe they’re a class of creatures rather than things that always present in the same form, and Peter Ahlstrom said, “This,” so that explains what’s going on there. I’m pretty sure that those stairs are “Shardstairs,” and they’re fading away just as Ivory is going into sword form. They don’t look right for Soulcast stairs.

@maxal Well, this conversation has gone waaaaay beyond where I last left it, but too bad! I'm going back to where I was, anyway.

Here is what you're missing about the Adolin/Lift scenario: he's the squire; she's the knight. Who stands to see the most character growth there? Lift, not Adolin. Edgedancer shows her beginning on the path to maturity, but she isn't there yet. And when I say Adolin would be her squire, maybe he would really be her Squire. We don't know how Radiants' Squires work yet, but they could themselves be potential Radiants, not just semi-powered minions to throw at the Voidbringers. That kind of storyline would be ideal for the much-speculated "Adolin revives his dead Blade" plot.

That's not to say that Adolin wouldn't experience character growth through this too (especially if he ends up being Lift's Squire). The fact is that Adolin is almost certainly facing exile if it comes out that he murdered Sadeas. Ialai will want blood, but Dalinar is still strong enough to prevent it, particularly because I don't think Team Sadeas has anyone left who would be competent to duel Adolin. After that crazy duel in WoR, I don't think that anyone could be convinced to try, even if they ranked high enough.

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that there are not a lot of possibilities (in general terms) for what will happen to Adolin: 1) No one finds out or it is covered up. 2) Ialai or another enemy finds out and is able to have Adolin killed. 3) The truth comes out in a public/semi-public way, and Adolin is exiled (I can't remember the reference, but I am fairly certain that one of the books themselves or a WoB says that the real possibilities for punishing a Shardbearer are killing them in a duel or exile).

I see enormous potential for character growth in Adolin facing the consequences of his crime. Because his story would then become very much a background one--probably told in Interludes--when we checked in on him, it would likely not be to hear about some of his adventures. It would be banter between him and Lift (where they could mention some of those adventures, just so we know that they're happening), which would tell us something about what is going on with her character development, and then it would be Adolin reflecting on his current circumstances and how he is coping with his past.

I think this really is the ideal situation, if the story is indeed at a place where the original outline called for Adolin to be dead, and he can only get tin the way of the overarching plot. If he still has more to do, but can't do it right now, then I don't mind him being reduced to cameos for a volume or two, if he's going to come back in a major way later on. Imagine this for the epilogue of book 5: The battle is temporarily won, and we move across the continent to Adolin and Lift, who have been involved in fights of their own. They have a brief exchange that teases the next arc for us ambiguously, then Adolin goes back to the exercise he was doing. It's the one where he tries to throw his Shardblade and make it hold together long enough to embed itself in the rock. He throws, it sticks and stays there for several seconds. Adolin smiles, and the Blade puffs into mist and immediately reforms in his hand. He throws it again. I'm obviously getting off on a tangent, but a scene like that would be suitably awesome that I wouldn't mind missing Adolin's presence for a little while.

Backtracking a little bit, I think that the exile idea would actually have the possibility of working very well. As has been pointed out, Brandon never had big plans for Adolin, but he has unexpectedly become an important character. The dilemma there is that if he pushes Adolin aside because he needs to keep the greater story on-track, the risk is that his arc will not be done proper justice. At this point, even if Brandon doesn't particularly like Adolin or want to make him at all important to the plot, he is important, and he can't just be killed off or otherwise pushed aside in an unsatisfying way.

So, if his arc is getting in the way of the story moving forward (not that it necessarily is), having him exiled and relegated to an interlude character for two volumes would be a good way to complete the first 5 according to plan but keep him around to bring back and give a satisfying arc to. In fact, he could do wandering hedge knight-style adventures with Lift, and while @maxal would probably hate that more than anything that has ever happened in the history of the universe, I bet that would be immensely popular with a lot of readers. It would also help accomplish things that will need to happen--namely, Adolin going on a journey of redemption and Lift growing up and becoming a full-fledged, responsible knight.

So, someone made a comment on the thread on the Tor article with the cover reveal, and I'm really confused. He said that he finds "Jasnah’s pose problematic, it looks unnatural, like she’s twisting round to show off her body rather than fighting. That’s not Jasnah from the books, that’s Jasnah in male fantasy."

Uh... I don't see it. I see the opposite of that. Like, I could imagine someone telling Michael Whelan, "Hey, you know how women on fantasy covers are only ethereal elf maidens or scantily clad barbarians--do you think that you could do the exact opposite of that for Jasnah?" 

Am I crazy here? Or is that commenter just looking for controversy?

Hoid has indeed been to Taldain, and it happened before Autonomy cut off access to the planet. Beyond that, I don't know anything, but he'll probably show up in White Sand, and then we'll have some idea. The sand is probably a red herring, though, since--as @Calderis points out--Yolish Lightweaving is likely to involve sand.

I got a question answered! I asked with little hope of actually getting an answer because I didn't see the update until some time after it was posted. And I then promptly forgot about Reddit and didn't go back to see if I got an answer until days later. Here it is (tagged for spoilers because it touches on Edgedancer and Mistborn Era 2):

So, I kind of sneaked several questions into one because neither of those Resonances have been confirmed, that I'm aware of. It's not an outright confirmation, but the answer certainly implies that my assumptions are correct (Brandon will often say something when someone's question has assumptions built in that are not necessarily true). Another interesting thing about the answer is that the similarities are not intentional, but the consistency of the way the magic systems work is such that they just worked out that way without any conscious thought going into it.

22 hours ago, Briar King said:

Well here's hoping you like it more then me. I was bored with it which is sad considering how much I loved both Alera and Dresden bk 1s.

I've loved it so far. I imagine that I'll probably finish it tonight sometime. It's just a good adventure story, and I've been engaged throughout, despite having to pickup on how the world works as I go and there being a lot of unexplained stuff. Personally, I love the cats, even though I've seen a lot of people complain about them. I've actually never read Alera, and I only read the first Dresden book. It was several years ago, and I don't remember why, exactly, but it didn't really grab me.

I used my Christmas Amazon gift card up and just got my package today: The Wall of Storms by Ken Liu, all four Seven Forges books by James A. Moore, and The Aeronaut's Windlass by Jim Butcher (I probably don't need to specify that last one's author around these parts).

15 minutes ago, Briar King said:

is Gemell mentioned in Mistborn?

Yeah, I think even by name, but I can't remember exactly. I think he's only mentioned in Kelsier's thoughts, but Kelsier might have mentioned him aloud to Vin when they start training. It's nothing major; he's just the not-quite-sane Mistborn who trained Kelsier (though he was under Ruin's influence, so there is some significance there).