TheTuninator

This might be my all-time favorite Cosmere book, but if it isn't, it's certainly up there. I'm a sucker for more character-focused, smaller-scale stuff, and this hit the sweet spot. It's certainly by far his best romance, and it was very cool to see Brandon stretching some authorial muscles that he doesn't usually use as much. I can see why he talked this one up a bit more than the others in advance, and why the Dragonsteel crew liked it so much. The mental image of Painter's friends seeing him kissing his "sister" is sooo funny. That must have been a tough one for Painter and Yumi to explain to everyone!

It's possible, but the end of TLM strongly suggests that Discord will be a thing throughout Era 3, not just at the end.

My guess is that Sazed will be Discord for most of Era 3, reflecting the "Cold War" conflict storyline, but will flip back to Harmony at the end, in a cosmere-level narrative dovetailing with the resolution of the conflict between the Basin and the Malwish. Seems like that would work out well.

It's worth keeping in mind that while Sazed may not be able to do much directly (so far), having an active Shard holder in your corner is still a pretty big deal. Anyways, since the more narratively interesting result is "they are more or less evenly matched", I suspect that's what the answer would be.

It sounds like part of Sazed's issue right now is that he is actually favoring the Preservation side over the Ruin side. Looking forward to learning more about that. It may be that more fully embracing Ruin as well will give him more freedom to act in the long run.

She certainly could be somebody else, but given that she looks like Shai, acts at least somewhat like Shai, has a similar name to Shai (after transforming), and has the exact same skillset as Shai, it would be kinda weird from a meta perspective if she wasn't Shai.

IMO the reason she is unsure of using the Essence Mark on herself here is that the one she uses here is very possibly going to be permanent, whereas the ones we see her use in Emperor's Soul are all temporary.

Kelsier does specifically interpret it as Sazed lying to him, though.

Quite a Cosmere thrill ride that was! Seems like trying to stop Harmony from becoming Discord may be one of the main beats of Era 3. And wow, how cool was that Sailor Moon transformation into an Elantrian? This whole book is red meat for Cosmere theorists.

If the Cosmere Bat-Signal ever does go up, besides Sazed, Valor certainly seems by far the most obvious candidate based off her seemingly positive relationship with Hoid, her willingness to consider direct action against Odium, and the relatively positive connotation of her shard, but the fact that we know literally nothing about her world or circumstances is a problem here. Ultimately, I wouldn't be that surprised if nobody besides Sazed ends up pitching in on the side of the good guys in Stormlight Arc 2. I'd be more convinced that Valor might show up if we got a novel featuring her world at some point. To borrow an example from Magic the Gathering, I view the idea of Honor vs Valor as similar to Azorius vs Boros in that setting. i.e. Honor is much more focused on structure and precedent, while Valor is much more immediate and individualistic, placing more of an emphasis on action with less or no regard for consequences. There are some similarities in that the names of both Shards provide broadly positive connotations, and in that honorable individuals are quite often valorous (and vice versa), but I do think there are a lot of differences to work with if you dig into it.

Could be - but I think this as well founders on the rocks of the fact that we, as the readers, actually know something Hoid does not in this scene, which is that Odium has changed hands. (Somebody else made this observation in a different thread, I think, and it's a good point). Regardless of whichever elaborate backups he might have, it's undeniable that he's walking into this encounter misinformed, since there is no way for him to know that Odium has changed hands & his narration further indicates that he believes he is about to speak with Rayse. He is unequivocally on the back foot in at least that one regard. We can postulate that he's got some elaborate multi-dimensional chess gambit, but if he was fundamentally unprepared for Taravangian at the wheel, it becomes much harder for me to believe that he's still nonetheless completely in control of the situation, especially when there's not a clear narrative purpose for this scene if it's "Hoid runs rings around everyone again for the 10th time" vs. "Hoid gets cut down to size by the new villain to show how dangerous he is".

That's fair! I think he certainly will have some fail-safes re: tampering with his memories, and I fully expect him to be one of the first people to twig to the fact that something is different with Odium, but I expect it will take quite some time. Taravangian-Odium seems set up to be a pretty monster Part-ending reveal to our protagonists in Book 5.

My fundamental issue with this explanation is that the scene is a third-person limited narrator. Wit isn't telling the audience "I felt true terror", which would certainly be subject to the vagaries of a unreliable narrator. The narrator is telling the audience about Wit, and telling them a raw, emotional reaction by Wit. An unreliable narrator would manifest itself in ways such as Wit making incorrect judgements about himself, or about other people, but this statement isn't portraying a coherent thought process on Wit's part - it's conveying sheer, naked emotion, in this case terror. The meta-textual analysis supports this too. If the scene is of Taravangian-Odium besting Wit, there is a clear narrative purpose: it conveys how much more dangerous Taravangian is than Rayse as Odium by having Taravangian best the savviest, most invulnerable character in the entire series. If the scene is of Wit setting up Taravangian-Odium to destroy some memories, what's the point? Wit just lost this one, folks.

I wasn't really bothered by it because everything Veil was exists within Shallan. Veil arose from Shallan trying to play a part. If you look at it from the Cosmere theological perspective, I'd imagine that Veil, Shallan, and Radiant are almost certainly all the same entity from a Spiritual perspective. There's no need to mourn because the thoughts and "cognition" which make up Veil were always there within Shallan and Shallan is still alive.

Eh, I just don't buy it. I think people may be so used to Wit/Hoid as this unconquerable trickster demigod that they have difficulty accepting the idea that someone may have stolen a march on him for once, but personally I think that was the entire point of this scene - to drive home how scary Taravangian-as-Odium is by having him best Hoid, the guy who has come out on top against Odium for thousands of years. As other posters have also said, there's just no way to rationalize away "true terror" from a third-person limited narrator as somehow part of the plan. Wit didn't know that Odium had changed, and the rest flows logically from there. Unreliable narrators can lie about a lot to the audience, but they can't lie about gut emotional reactions - only a first-person narrator who's speaking directly to the audience can do that. Remember, he said it went exactly like he expected it to after Odium wiped his memory of the part which didn't go as expected in order to try again.

If so, than why the terror? It doesn't quite add up.

The third-person limited narrator states that Hoid felt genuine terror prior to Odium sucking out his memories. That's not something subject to the whims of an unreliable narrator; it'd have to be a first-person narrator to lie to the audience. I think Taravangian genuinely played Hoid here, which serves to indicate how much more dangerous he may be as Odium, as he succeeded in besting Hoid on his first try while the old Odium failed for thousands of years.

Adolin bonding Maya by the end of the series, or at the very least figuring out how to fully heal Deadeyes together with her, seems virtually inevitable after this book. I'm excited for it!

I agree! I think the immediate reaction is "oh man, Cultivation screwed up" because we've ridden around in T's head and we understand how scary he is, but she made him who he is. She's the Shard who took down Rayse where so many others had failed before her, through subterfuge, not head-on conflict. Sure, she tells Taravangian she wants him to use Odium "with honor", but this is a lady who's both demonstrated ample cunning AND is a literal deity. This might get played entirely straight with her being in over her head, but I'm not so sure. The simple fact that she was the one to take down the guy who'd gone through four other Shards like a buzzsaw makes me very hesitant to underestimate her.

This raises an interesting point, though, which is that she does know he was amoral to a certain extent, because she deliberately granted him a power which would vacillate him between extremely intelligent but absolutely amoral and deeply compassionate but deeply stupid. I'm very intrigued as to the extent to which Cultivation is actually in the driver's seat here. There's a very plausible case to be made that she's simply underestimated Taravangian, but as the person who finally took down Rayse-as-Odium via some intricate planning, there's a plausible case to be made that she is both far more capable and perhaps far less benign than initially assumed. I'm looking forward to finding out which is true!

From another perspective, however, that soldier swore an oath to follow orders & his honor depends on carrying it out. After all, they even call it a "dishonorable discharge" when you get drummed out! As the series has increasingly been exploring, "honor" is an internal concept in many ways and doesn't necessarily at all implicitly suggest a kind of moral good. I'd tend to agree that Honor already inhabits enough of this space that a separate Duty shard wouldn't have enough of its own turf to thrive.

I personally am of the camp that Cultivation is likely playing a much subtler game here and is still in control. All we have to go on for her possibly making a bad bet on Taravangian is that she told him she wants him to use his shard "with honor", but not only is that very vague, that scene is from Taravangian's perspective. It's entirely possible that she might be deceiving or otherwise manipulating him even in that instant. This lady just fed into a woodchipper the guy who tore through four other Shards after some very intricate planning, and while we might all be scared of Taravangian, much of what made him scary came from Cultivation in the first place. It's possible that she let her own power get away from her in taking down Rayse, but on the other hand - maybe not!

I buy it. Great theory. Given the lifespan-extending qualities of Breath, I really do believe that Vivenna will continue to play a role in the happenings of the Cosmere alongside Vasher. If she does appear in WoR, the female ardent seems the most likely candidate. Vasher trusting her to teach swordsmanship and her knowing Vasher's location could have been written utterly without any conspiratorial intent, but one can't help but wonder.

I'm really enjoying the mental image of Mistborn and Surgebinders hot-dropping on Braize under Hoid's command.

I'd be a lighteyes, and I find the idea of fantasy power armor really appealing, so I'm very tempted by Roshar. That said, Roshar seems like a pretty awful place to live between the endless world-spanning hurricanes and the regularly scheduled apocalypses. I'm pretty torn between AoL Scadrial, as the infrastructure is there, the power system is awesome, the 1800s-esque setting is compelling, and that minor detail of a benevolent god, and post-Warbreaker Nalthis on account of the quality-of-life benefits offered by Breaths, the nice city, and the benevolent god-king. If we had a better idea of "21st-century" Scadrial I'd probably jump that way.