derrickthewhite

Sorry, I was referring to character motivation, not to what was possible or not. Folks generally don't normally burn their spikes, as far as I'm aware.

That makes sense! Thanks a ton!

but those are both hemalurgic metals that won't be burned under any circumstances. The metals he stores age in ARE something he burns, and while he could turn burning them off, wouldn't that kill him? I though duralluminum depletes any metal that you are currently burning at the same time as it. But Rashek has to compound his age metal mines at all times, doesn't he?

I'm wondering if Rashek could burn Duraluminum without killing himself. He dies pretty quickly when his age metal minds are removed, and duraluminum burns off all of your reserves. So would using duraluminum kill him by burning off all of his age, or would he survive some way? Thanks?

I'm going to argue that odium is number one, not harmony. harmony has the most 'raw power', but odium is far older, and has far more tricks up his sleeve. He has more experience in shard to shard combat, is capable of destroying shards (which ruin didn't seem to know how to do). Its hinted he may have been involved in whatever happened to aldonosium. In a fight between the two, my money is on odium. Also, if we have four splintered shards, aren't their 11 living shard bearers? because harmony has two?

I ran across brandon via writing excuses ! (I'm a fan of howard taylor). Additionally, I live in provo, which means brandon fans are everywhere. I think I borrowed Elantris from a roommate, but I know of a number of places I can get his books. Notably NOT the public library. the provo library has five or more copies of most of his books and most the books are on hold at any given time.

For what its worth, the mentioned list gives compounders their own names, and any twinborn with a solid compounding ability is probably going to be known just as a 'gold compounder' or a 'steel compounder'. And in many cases they are in a category of their own as to power. Some compounding isn't as impressive though: An iron compounder is probably less useful than a skimmer.

Mistborn starts slower than a lot of brandon's other books, including some of the cosmere stuff, like warbreaker or elantris. Just keep in mind that a lot of the fun in this series is in the twists -- which don't show up until late in the book for obvious reasons. Yes, there are a lot of twists. No you will not see them coming. If you avoid spoilers on anything, avoid them on this series. Its really good. trust us on this one.

I did not come up with the terms. I used the terminology of the objection I was responding to: namely, that David being an epic cheapens a core theme of the series. I wondered if David somehow ended up with epic powers and simply didn't notice because of his current interaction with his weakness almost as soon as I put the book down. Gaining powers when you shouldn't is a repeating theme in brandon's work. I'm not sure I'm commiting to the theory yet, but I think its a strong one. The gifting is a pretty strong counterargument though. At this point I support it mostly for story reasons rather than in-universe evidence.

I'm not really sure that the message is there. The reckoners use epic powers. They filter them through gifters and technology, but they rely heavily on them. They took down steel heart only by actually using their epic directly rather than having him function as a gifter. Lines like "sometimes you have to help the heroes along" are about how the layman can influence things through the 'important people'.