galendo

I see where you're coming from, actually. Adolin was my least favorite of the main four in the first book, and Shallan my second-favorite. I think that if I thought that Adolin was the thing dragging down Shallan, I'd probably agree with you. I just happen to believe that Shallan, as a character, has other issues; and that her relationship with Adolin is actually one of the key things holding her character together. I do agree that having Adolin and House Kholin escape any and all consequences for Sadeas' murder was one of the great disappointments of Oathbringer. But if you don't like him being too perfect, I'd think that having him as a crippled Radiant might be preferable than having him as a full Radiant.

More flashbacks. I know flashbacks are kind of a Stormlight thing -- I'm resigned to them by now -- but they're almost always the most boring parts of the books for me. I want to know what happens next, not what happened five or ten years ago. When I started my first reread of WoK (which I began the very day after first finishing WoK), I read the entire thing through in a full sitting -- but the second time, I skipped all the flashbacks. They just...don't add enough, IMHO.

May I ask why? It actually sounds like it could provide some interesting arcs/interactions, depending on how it was handled. The "not quite a Radiant, not quite a normal human" is a story line that Adolin could conceivably walk which no other character is currently suited for.

If you're interested in Cosmere stuff, start reading. Nothing's as good as Stormlight, but the first Mistborn trilogy definitely has its high points even if the second book is rather weak. Elantris and Warbreaker are stand-alone novels if you don't feel up to a trilogy, though Elantris won't teach you much (we only "know" what happened there because Brandon told us -- there isn't really any information in the book itself) and Warbreaker will really only teach you a bit about Nightblood and a couple other Stormlight characters. Arcanum Unbound also has a bunch of background information, though I'd strongly recommend skipping the Scadrial short story if you haven't read Mistborn yet, as it contains major spoilers and wouldn't make much sense by itself anyway. Those six books together contain most of the background material for the stuff that you'll see discussed on these boards. That being said, most of what you'll see quoted are Words of Brandon (WoB) like what Invocation posted above. They contain material that's not necessarily contained in the books, and most of us here are at least passingly familiar with them, if only because we read the WoBs that other people post. But beware: these WoB can contain spoilers for literally any of his works, as they're just questions people asked which he (sometimes) answers. So read with caution. If you were going to read only one of the above stories and were interested in Cosmere knowledge, I'd recommend the Mistborn trilogy. Not only do I think it's the best of the bunch, but the events of that series have some major Cosmere implications, and the spoilers for those books you're likely to come across in WoBs could actually spoil the story. It's also the only one of Brandon's works where you really don't want to know the ending beforehand if you can avoid it.

But the Timbre interactions would have been better with Eshonai, iMHO...well, we can agree to differ, I suppose. Still, remind me what earthly reason Venli had for sheltering Timbre at the risk of her own life? It seems that it would be the equivalent of, I dunno, risking your life to save a rat that was crawling on your sister's corpse. It just doesn't make sense. Eshonai would have had a reason to save Timbre, but I just don't see what motivation Venli had. (Scenes like these are why I feel that Venli was a hot-swap. This seems so much like an Eshonai scene, but unfortunately Venli's there instead.)

To be fair, whether the Oathpact is good or bad rather depends on the time frame involved. If the idea is, as you say, "Let's throw these people under the bus and live on in ignorance," then yeah, that's pretty dumb. But if the idea's more "Let's have these people buy us a decade or two while we get our house in order and prepare for the inevitable war," then it becomes a much more reasonable plan.

My understanding (possible spoilers if you've been avoiding all the book four news) is that there will be a one-year time-skip or thereabouts at the start of book four, which makes any continuation from OB impossible to do directly. You can still hope for a flashback scene, though, if you want.

Sure, but by the time Kaladin had about as much screen time as Venli's had, he was my favorite character. Venli doesn't even make the top ten. Probably not even the top twenty. I sort of agree with this, in that Eshonai uniting the Parsendi would be somewhat like Dalinar uniting the Alethi, but I don't really see how swapping in Venli's going to make that much of a difference. It's still going to be the same "secretly unite a group of ex-parshmen against their Fused overlords" plot that we'd have gotten either way. The only advantage of Venli over Eshonai is that if and when the group that Eshonai sent into the canyons meets up with Venli/Eshonai, they'd probably be distrustful of Venli where they wouldn't have been of Eshonai. That's something, but not enough to justify the swap, IMHO. (Though, again, execution is everything.) Of course, if Brandon takes Venli somewhere that he just couldn't have taken Eshonai -- something like killing Timbre and turning on the Fused only to set herself up as queen lapdog to Odium, then I might reconsider. But I somehow doubt that Venli's story is heading in that direction. From what I can see, Eshonai's story is still alive and well, just without its main star. If anything I think the new Parshendi need to create a new culture. The old culture was a very different beast, based around a very justifiable fear of their gods and a very justifiable desire to discover new forms. But now their gods have returned and handed out like candy the forms that the previous culture strove for so long to find, and I just can't see how the old culture would have survived the new world even if its practitioners had survived. The old culture just doesn't seem relevant anymore. Oh, Thude! Eshonai's general! You know, when you first wrote "Thude! Nailed it.", I thought it a misspelling of "Thud! Nailed it.", as in, "You've hit the nail on the head!". Guess that goes to show how well I remember most of the Parshendi. Not that we necessarily know that he's still living. I mean, probably, since we haven't seen a corpse...but it's a bit hard to argue that a bunch of ill-formed, ill-equipped Parshendi survived the Highstorm/Everstorm combo when a full Shardbearer in a form of power met her death there. Eshonai's death continues to create, if not full plot holes, at least plot instabilities. Yeah, I think we mostly agree, outside some few details. It's not even that I'm worried exactly, it's more that I'm trying to mentally prepare myself for an Oathbringer-quality book when what I really want is another Way of Kings. Oh, yeah, I'm sure they will. They'll just get less screen time than they would otherwise. With how many plots got short shrift in Oathbringer (Sadeas' murder, Szeth's side switch, Teft's Radiancy, etc.), I'm not sure that pulling even more time away from the main cast is a good idea. Especially immediately following a time-skip. Yeah, we've gone over this before. No use rehashing old arguments here. This all seems very likely. It's just that they're (mostly) not characters we already know. True this. Sometimes I think the entire series should have been called The Way of Kings rather than The Stormlight Archive, especially given the pervasive role the eponymous book plays in-world. I actually think it's the "War" part that's the problem. Something like "Rhythm of Remembrance" would be good.

Sure, but comparing Kaladin to Venli is a bit disingenuous. Kaladin is, IMHO, the best character and character arc that Sanderson ever created. Venli falls very much short. Different stroke for different folks, though; I liked Shallan in WoK a lot more than I did in WoR. This is largely true; but I'll note that Dalinar and Kaladin were both acting (albeit mostly indirectly in Kaladin's case) with Sadeas, and that helped make it feel that they were part of the same story and events. Plus, let's face it: Kaladin and company carried WoK. The Kaladin/Bridge Four interaction was strong enough that anything Dalinar was just a bonus. The only WoB I've seen on this was vague. Some people have taken it to mean early in the outlining process for Stormlight; on the other hand, I strongly suspect the swap was early in the outlining process for Oathbringer. Sure, but Venli's just isn't one that I care about. I probably would have cared about Eshonai's if she were still around, but I just don't have the emotional connection to Venli that I did to Eshonai. I mean, I didn't have a massive amount for Eshonai, but I literally wouldn't care if Venli got killed in her first scene in Oathbringer. (I mean, I'd still gripe about it as a wasted plot-line and questionable decision, but only because I really didn't like Venli's scenes in OB. Every single one just felt like it was planned for Eshonai and then Venli was awkwardly fit in instead. Just my opinion, though, and I accept that somehow, for some reason, others feel differently. I just don't see it.) Though if Venli died in her first scene, only for Rlain to take her place, I'd probably be dancing in the streets. So execution is everything. This is almost certainly true, and is a good thing. (Not sure where you're getting ideas about Kalak from; and Listener culture doesn't seem to matter much anymore, not to mention I feel I learned everything I really need to know about it already in WoR; but I agree that for the most part this is solid conjecture and something I'm looking forward to.) Honestly, the above reasons aren't even my main concerns with book four, though they are concerns. I was mostly just replying to StrikerEZ's question about why someone might be concerned specifically about having Venli as the focus character for the book. This is also true. Well, I thought that Well of Ascension was sub-average, that Warbreaker had...issues, and that the Wax and Wayne novels probably should have stopped with the first one, but mostly I've been quite happy with what he's written. Oathbringer was a disappointment, but only because I had such high hopes for a Stormlight book. So yeah, I'm pretty sure that book four will likely maintain Oathbringer levels of quality; it's just that, after WoK and WoR, I can't help wishing for so much more.

I wouldn't say I'm hesitant about the next book per se -- I don't know nearly enough for that -- but there are a few reasons why I could see someone be worried: 1) Venli is a recent main character. Kaladin, Shallan, and Dalinar have all been mains since the first book. Venli got a brief introduction in the second book and only ascended to main status partway through Oathbringer. She definitely hasn't earned a place in my heart yet. 2) Venli is apart from the other main characters. Remember how boring parts of Shallan's story got in WoK? I liked that sequence, and even I got bored with some of the Kasbal stuff. Characters off on their own don't have anyone to play off of. Shallan had Jasnah, thankfully. Venli has...Moash? 3) Venli is a replacement character. If the fact that we're still getting Eshonai's flashbacks rather than Venli's isn't enough of a reminder, remember that Venli wasn't a planned main. Personally, the Eshonai-for-Venli swap grated on me enough during OB (I still think it the worst decision in the book) that I'm not looking forward to reading more of the same. 4) Other than Venli and Rlain, can you even name one living Singer off the top of your head? The only two I can even think of are the mostly-sane Fused lady who made a deal with Moash and the little girl from the band that Kaladin befriended. I have characters whose stories I want to see in book four. The Singers' aren't among them. Well, I'd better stop this list before I get into things that personally bother me but probably don't irk others (like, for instance, that I generally dislike amnesia as a plot device, and the Singers are basically a race of amnesiacs). Or things I wish I were getting instead (personally, at this point I'm way more interested in Rlain's background rather than Eshonai's). But there are plenty of reasons why someone might not be looking forward to book four. To say nothing of the inherent dangers of time-skips.

I think this idea of corrupting lesser spren to cause problems with Radiant Plate is somewhat reasonable, but I just can't imagine a Radiant needing to pick up a bunch of local lesser spren every time they need to form Plate. What if your Windrunner is underground or indoors? Can he not summon Plate? Does a Bondsmith need to do something awesome to attract gloryspren every time he wants his Plate? I find it plausible that the Radiant needs to attract lesser spren the first time he forms Plate, but I just can't see it a requirement every single time. What if all the necessary spren are just...somewhere else? But then, I suppose it would be an issue if Sja-Anat could corrupt spren that were already part of a Knight's Plate, especially if she could do it just by touching the Radiant's armor. We don't really know how long it takes her to corrupt spren, but it can't be all that long. She wasn't active in Alethkar for long and yet she corrupted presumably hundreds or thousands of spren in that time. So the theory seems plausible, just not in the "difficult to summon Plate" sense. If they were worried about it, the Radiants could just summon their Plate before battle, while they were outside Sja-Anat's range.

I'm no Realmatic expert, but this seems unlikely. They're just not the same thing. It seems a bit like saying "I need steady hands to thread a needle, and I need steady hands to perform heart surgery. Therefore if I can instinctively thread any needle, then I must be able to perform heart surgery."

It's quite possible that all Truthwatchers can see the future even though talking about it is taboo. Like, maybe since seeing the future is generally of Odium, the people on Team Honor prefer to be very careful about what they say and do. Especially if there's a chance that they might be wrong. We know that seeing the future is chancy at best, even for Shards. So Truthwatchers can probably only "cry wolf" so many times before, well, before it isn't worthwhile any longer. Even if, some percentage of the time, there actually is a wolf.

@Rushu42: That's how I'm reading it, too. More or less. I think Brandon's saying that the different spren are different mixtures of Honor and Cultivation. For instance, imagine that a highspren is 80% Honor and 20% Cultivation, then maybe a Truthwatcher spren is 80% Cultivation and 20% Honor. They're both alloys, and their properties are similar even though their components are effectively opposites. Functionally they behave the same, even though their mixtures are diametrically opposite. But there are minor differences that an astute scholar might notice, even if from a layperson's perspective they're identical. I think Brandon's also saying that you can't split the spren apart into their individual constituents. He mentions brass, which you could theoretically.melt down and separate out the copper from the zinc. But the spren can't be divided that way. If you were to somehow melt down a highspren, you'd just end up with highspren goo. You couldn't separate it back out into Honor's Investiture and Cultivation's Investiture.

Elantris. I forget how I heard of the book, though it was probably due to the news that he was taking over The Wheel of Time. I remember looking into it and having my choice of Elantris or the Mistborn trilogy. I decided that rather than commit to three books all at once, I'd give the standalone novel a shot first. I thought it was pretty good, so I went on to Mistborn and largely enjoyed it (though I still think that Well of Ascension is probably Sanderson's weakest book). I didn't get into Stormlight until way, way later.

Depends a lot on where, precisely, Vin is in her training. At the very beginning of her training, she has only Soothing and no experience with that, so major advantage to soldier Kaladin, though Vin might well be able to Soothe her way into a draw. By the halfway point in her training, she has at least a working knowledge of all the metals and would wipe the floor with soldier Kaladin Vin, by a long shot. Kaladin really only has Stormlight healing going for him, and that won't last long against the pummeling he'll take from steel and iron alone. Unless he manages to somehow get close enough to spray the ground with Stormlight and trap her with Adhesion, Kaladin doesn't have much chance at all. So now Kaladin can fly, but it still doesn't do much for him. He still needs to get into range, and Vin can still take a pummeling. At this point Kaladin could force a draw just by fleeing the field, but if they fight it out Vin still wins every time. Once Kaladin has his Shardblade, things change a lot. I maintain that he can hover out of Vin's effective attack range and keep tossing Syl at her until Vin gets tired or Kaladin gets lucky. And even if you don't believe that, it seems unlikely that Vin can keep him from closing at speed. Her best bet is the revolving field of metal, but even if she can keep it up indefinitely (which seems unlikely), using multiple lashings Kaladin could cross at speed, taking the odd hit or two and letting the Stormlight heal him. And once they close to close quarters, the advantage is all Kaladin. How do you even kill someone with infinite Stormlight? Mid-WoK Kaladin would probably have a fair chance against Vin with infinite Stormlight, assuming he can do nothing more than breathe it in. Radiant Kaladin simply crushes her.

This isn't quite right (though it's what I thought on my first reading as well; seems an easy mistake to make). The spren on the ship is quite clear that Syl was made by the Stormfather: She came out of the Recreance unaffected because she wasn't bonded at the time. If I understand correctly, she went mostly catatonic after losing her Radiant and managed to sleep through the Recreance and the next several hundred years, before presumably waking up when she got whatever APB warned the spren that another Desolation was fast approaching and it was time to get bonding. As far as the WoB, ask and ye shall receive: I thought this might be it, too; forcing Kaladin to accept lighteyes by making Syl a lighteyes of sorts. The only issue with this is that Kaladin seems already to have accepted lighteyes. He gets along swimmingly with Shallan, Adolin, and Dalinar; has nothing against Jasnah; has more-or-less forgiven Laharl and Roshone; and was pretty shell-shocked when Elhokar bought the farm. He didn't need Syl's status for all this change; it had already happened by the time of the reveal. Unless he does some serious backsliding in the next book, Syl's status in this regard seems unnecessary. Ah, now this is a clever idea. People's perception of honor has changed over time, so perhaps the newer honorspren reflect this newer version of honor while Syl remains true to the older variety. Making use of this does require future Syl/honorspren interaction and conflict, which still doesn't seem to be on the table but suddenly doesn't seem nearly so farfetched as it did before. I like this idea a lot. Good job.

So I've been wondering about Syl's status as Ancient Daughter. According to the book, she's one of only "a handful" of honorspren created by the Stormfather pre-Shattering (that's Honor's shattering, not Adonalsium's), which makes her a sort of lighteyes among the honorspren. She's the only one of those who escaped the Recreance, making her situation downright unique. A fair bit of importance is put on her status. Which leaves me to wonder: why? But the status by itself seems unnecessary from a pure plot perspective. It's a reason for the honorspren to want to lock her up; but if that were the only purpose, just disobeying the Stormfather should be enough for that. Brandon Sanderson is too good a writer, I think, to add such detail needlessly. It's possible that it's just a bit of random flavor/background to flesh Syl out a bit more, but 1) honestly, does she really need more characterization? With or without her background, she's got a pretty identifiable and well-defined character already. It's not like being the honorspren version of royalty is adding anything by itself. There's already plenty of royalty in SA. Also, 2) when was the last time that a character's backstory didn't end up mattering in a Sanderson book? Space in Stormlight books is at a premium. I can't quite imagine he'd go through such effort if Syl's status weren't going to be plot-critical sometime in the future. But burned if I can figure out how. The obvious answer, that Syl and Kaladin's bond is somehow different as a result of her status, but we have a WoB rejecting that idea. The only ideas I've been able to come up with are the following: 1) Syl will interact more with honorspren in the future, where her status will affect their interactions. The counterpoint to this is that, well, we haven't seen much of it so far. In the physical realm, Syl is given the cold shoulder by the other spren because she disobeyed; in the cognitive, she's captured and stuffed in a hold. There isn't really any indication that she's being treated differently than any other truant would be, for better or for worse. And it seems somewhat unlikely that Kaladin and Syl will be traipsing back through Shadesmar a second time. 2) Being created directly by the Stormfather, presumably Syl has more Connection to him than other honorspren would. I could see this mattering in the future, in theory, but it's not quite clear to me how. The only time we've seen Connection mattering that I can recall is when picking up a Shard or fast-learning a language, and neither quite seem to apply unless the Stormfather's going to lose his consciousness while his power remains intact, which seems rather unlikely. Granted, however, I'm not that much of a Cosmere scholar compared to some on these boards, so there could easily be something I'm missing here. 3) Perhaps the honorspren the Stormfather made post-Recreance are fundamentally different than those from before. The Stormfather-Tanavast amalgamation might have been more paranoid/more controlling when he made honorspren marque two. It is perhaps noteworthy that only Syl was willing to defy him to go searching for a bondmate. Still, this would not matter narratively unless Syl were to defy him at some future point while the other honorspren obeyed. Since the other honorspren have started bonding now, this seems less likely. So that's where you all come in. Can anyone think of additional reasons, or of additional reasoning for or against the above ideas? Am I reading too much meaning into a bit of flavorful fluff? What do you think?

Though this is still somewhat nitpicking, I'm not sure that the stanza you cited is evidence that Stormform existed previously. In almost all the other stanzas, there is a firm statement (in the form of the past-tense) that the form existed before. The stanza on stormform is much more speculative and cautionary: Let's compare that to some of the other stanzas: So I would hesitate to claim with certainty that stormform existed previously based on that one stanza. It seems more a warning against what will happen if they take on stormform than it does a record of what happened before. (Note that, as the nightform stanza suggests, the old Parshendi might have known the consequences of stormform without it existing at the time.)

I agree with the gist of your post, but it's worth pointing out that just because Adolin's Plate reacts to the lightning, it doesn't mean that Team Odium had access to Stormform before. We know that Plate resists all sorts of Investiture, and likely it was mostly intended as a general counterpoint to Odium's forces, so the fact that it reacts to the lightning shouldn't be surprising even if Stormform is a brand-new invention.

Well, he certainly couldn't have done it after the old Radiants trapped all the Parshendi in slaveform since he needs them to sing the storm. Could he have done it before that? Perhaps, but it might have been risky to put even more of his power into the Everstorm while both Honor and Cultivation were around to take advantage. Being outnumbered two-to-one seems hard enough already. This is a good point as well. It's possible he needed all the Heralds to break their oaths before he could act.

Well, he certainly couldn't have done it after the old Radiants trapped all the Parshendi in slaveform since he needs them to sing the storm. Could he have done it before that? Perhaps, but it might have been risky to put even more of his power into the Everstorm while both Honor and Cultivation were around to take advantage. Being outnumbered two-to-one seems hard enough already.

My own take is that Odium couldn't have done it before, not while the Heralds held to the Oathpact. There's a line in the WoK prologue: Because nine of the Heralds tried to get around the Oathpact by not returning to Braize, it opened the door for Odium to also get around the Oathpact by sending the Everstorm. That's my take on it, at least.

You know, that's a good point. We know that Honor's spren copied what Honor had done in creating the Honorblades to become Radiant spren. Why shouldn't Odium's spren have copied what Odium did in creating the Unmade? Whether the spren that grant the froms of power are sapient or not we don't really know, but they certainly seem to provide more power than those forms obtained by bonding regular spren. Do we know that Yelig-nar grants all the surges? The Fused only seem to have nine, so it wouldn't seem terribly out-of-place for Yelig-Nar to only grant nine, too. For narrative purposes, though, I'm guessing that someone combat-oriented will get Yelig-nar. Someone seen as obviously dangerous, so that the "upgrade" is clearly The Real Deal. Amaram could have worked in this role; Aesudan not so much. Because once you've killed Amaram-as-Yelig-nar, you need the next person to be even more of an obvious threat. It's not that it couldn't be done with a stealth-type character -- someone like Jasnah would work -- but it's harder to set up a stealth-type character, and I don't think there are any such candidates in the works, other than maybe Ialai Sadeas.

Maybe I'm projecting too much of my own likes and dislikes onto others, but for me the ending of a book/series is generally the most important part. I end up liking books I thought were quite poor while reading that pulled off a solid ending and disliking books that are page-turners but whose endings peter out. I can't ever recall having really liked a series that lacked an ending due to author disinterest or inability (though to be fair the sample size here is something like four or five). The Stormlight Archive is good, but none of the books really stand on their own. They aren't meant to. This is what I normally do, given my druthers. I wouldn't have started The Stormlight Archive if I hadn't seen books one and two at the library and thought, "Didn't this first come out upwards of a decade ago? I remember it sounded interesting at the time. I'll bet it's finished now. Let's give it a shot." At the time I had no idea that it would be a ten-book series and that those two books were the only ones released. Part of me still wishes I'd known better. The idea that someone has to be an early adopter is only true if an author's first work isn't a series of unbounded length. For instance, Brandon's first published novel was Elantris, which was a stand-alone. His second was Mistborn, which was also a stand-alone (the fact that it's also the first in a trilogy doesn't effect its nature as a stand-alone novel). And just to be clear, I don't have a firm dislike for starting incomplete series. It's not my preferred method, but I certainly do it with some frequency. But there's a big difference between a series that isn't completed and one that isn't likely to be completed. Sure, you never know for sure. Maybe your fresh young author gets hit by a truck tomorrow, leaving his trilogy unfinished. That risk, however, is small. If there's enough closure in book 5, that may change my recommendation philosophy, but we'll have to wait and see. It's hard for me to imagine we'll get true closure given that there's only two books to go and books 4 and 5 seem to be pretty closely entwined (not to mention five books to go). But we'll see.