Yados

I've mentioned this in the past, but I'm definitely suspicious of Renarin. However, because we've seen so little of him, those reasons are mostly thematic. Compared to characters like Kaladin and Dalinar, Renarin seems to go against theme (much like Shallan). For one, in a book where the two main, heroic characters give up Shards, it's worth noting that the only three who gain Shards by the end are Amaram, Sadeas, and Renarin. This is not good company for Renarin to maintain, narratively. Many of the themes in Stormlight also revolve around taking up responsibility and sacrificing for others to be worthy of power. There's a whole magic system where people have to make vows to protect in order to use power. Conversely, Renarin is just handed his power from his father with the expectation that it will fix his problems. That's no good. We've also had the lingering notion through Syl that Shards are "bad." If there was going to be a focus that depicted the change that Shards might have on an individual, Renarin would be a good candidate. Maybe having just the plate makes someone lust for the blade? Maybe that's something that changed Sadeas? How would we know? We've never got too close a look at someone with just one before or even someone who has only recently obtained Shards. Maybe it changes a person. We don't know at this point. BS has written many characters who, having little to no power, come into great power. It's almost always been a positive change for them. However, he even stated in the footnotes for Hero of Ages that, were Mistborn longer, he would have toyed with making Spook a villain. Stormlight is plenty long. Maybe Renarin is the opposite character. The person who gains power after having none for so long and, instead of becoming the responsible leader, finds he has a taste for it. We don't know enough right now, but the set up is all there.

I usually like UK covers better. This is not one of those times.

We still don't know that Shallan's Soulcasting is related to the KR like Jasnah's (presumably) is. Lightweaving seems linked to the KR, which requires a character journey Shallan hasn't really been on. Maybe she gets one power from Cultivation and one from Honor.

I could get used to it. Is it an in-world book or has that concept been dropped? It was unclear in the article. "Stones Unhallowed" is a pretty cool title for book 3, though. I hope it sticks. Jasnah is book 4, right? What with all the disclaimers, I'm prepared for Dalinar to bite it in book 4, only for his flashbacks serve as a epilogue in book 5.

Daniel Abraham is great. His The Dagger and the Coin series is one of my current favorite epic fantasies running. There are two out and the third one comes out in May. He's fast, too. The first book came out less than two years ago and he's had several other series running concurrently. First book is called The Dragon's Path and is very good. The world is semi-medieval, but it's one where humans and the other sentient races were all created by Dragons, who are now dead/gone/sleeping (i forget). There's a lot of character and politics and war and, more uniquely, medieval banking. Which, as it turns out, is very important.

you can also buy the uk omnibus for about $20 on amazon if you find a good seller. that's what I did and it came this evening.

There's no order except within series. Elantis Warbreaker The Final Empire Well of Ascension Hero of Ages Alloy of Law Way of Kings The Emperor's Soul Read any grouping in any order.

I doubt that will happen because if Kaladin did that it would be a dick move. A really big one. Not only did Laral not owe him anything, but she had no agency whatsoever in how things went down in Hearthstone. That was a bad end for Laral that she did nothing to earn. I'd say what you describe would be "slut-shaming" but then Laral was more-or-less not-on-page almost assuredly raped. So double the dickishness to Kaladin if he does that.

Re: The Unnamed Herald PoV- Technically, we've had a Gaz PoV. If you blinked, you might have missed it, but it's there and, unlike the brief Teft PoV when Kaladin survived the storm, there was no story architecture that demanded it. Take that for what you will, but I take it as fodder for my "Gaz is Jezrien" insistence.

There's a growing Tumblr fandom if you look hard enough. This place is mostly for turbo-nerds who want to talk magic shop and cosmere theories. If I had to guess, I'd say that part of this is is because a sizable portion of Mr. Sanderson's readership comes from his finishing of Wheel of Time, the author of which was *very* against fan fic, the basis of most fandoms. But that's probably only a part of it. As is the best response to these sorts of things, if it doesn't exist you should make some! I know there's some little initiative to write cosmere fanfic on tumblr. Join in! Or at least encourage it.

I think the closest thing you're going to see to that is the TPB format books with the E-Book cover. They're up to Lord of Chaos now.

Was that mentioned overtly? I don't recall it. It must not have been very effective. Probably no small miracle that Vin wasn't pregnant by the end. ... what would have happened if she had been carrying a child when she took up Preservation? Would the child have just dropped out of her uterus as she ascended to the spiritual realm or would it have sort of tagged along? We still don't know what happens to the physical body.

I'm between books right now. I tried Cold Magic for the sixteenth time because my gf loves it, but couldn't get past the prose. Then I tried Dragon Prince by Melanie Rawn and, while the prose was fine, the characters (and the narrative's treatment of the characters) just irked me thoroughly. Why is everyone so in awe of the main character? He hasn't done anything. I think I'm going to try Shades of Milk and Honey since I bought it the other day and got Mary Robinette Kowal to sign it (though I accidentally made an chull of myself in the process) since that seems relatively unlike either. Man, I hate not having a book. This has gone on too long. And now Memory of Light is going to come out and I won't be able to read it because I finished Wheel of Time too long ago to remember it all, but too recently to justify a whole reread. Maybe I'll try doing Storm and Towers and hope it comes back to me. Bah.

Dunno. I asked BS about it in the Q&A thread and he was all "who doesn't like magic fish?" And Blunt made it through all of Elantris, meaning that in that case the black dude died last.

Could be. We have very little to extrapolate from. We're still in the training garden when it comes to magic on Roshar. It seems to be way more complicated than anything on Scadrial so it makes sense that we're only seeing a piece of it now before we eventually pull back and see the whole. But as it is, a lot of what you're saying is baseless. Possible. Interesting sounding. Logical. Could be neat. But baseless. We just don't know enough. If there are only ten magic systems (each with overlapping abilities) that are just accessed three ways, this magic system is actually less complicated than Mistborn's... which doesn't feel right. Also: this theory does nothing to explain the magic fish. I'm pretty sure any unified theory of magic on Roshar needs to explain what's up with those magic fish.

Yeah, Mostly Harmless ended on a huge downer because, like Conan Doyle before him, Adams had grown to loathe his characters and wanted to wash his hands of them. And Another Thing is a continuation, but as I've never read it, I have no idea how it deals with the downer ending. I believe it comes from Adams' notes for a continuation shortly before its death. The ironic thing, though, is that Adams went back and forth about whether the notes in question were for a new Hitchhiker's book or for a Dirk Gently book. According to the Salmon of Doubt, he had decided on Gently. At least I believe that was what happened. It's possible I could be merging two separate stories about Adams. I don't if anyone has read the Dirk Gently books here, but they're quite good.

Well it's not really about set up. The event was abrupt. That was the point. It's about how it's handled with regards to that character. The thing happens to Molly and then she's gone. *That's* what annoyed me. It makes it seem cheap because we only get Harry's side/feelings on something that effects Molly (and by extension, the Carpenters) much more. And, true, it is Harry's story, but similar sorts of things have been handled very differently in past books. When Murphy got kicked off the force or demoted for helping Harry, it was a part of her own story. We saw how it affected her in those books as well as how it affected Harry (and those feeling Harry had were less guilt and more a growing ability to let others make sacrifices... which made it seem less exploitative). We even got an epilogue for Thomas' stuff in Small Favor after all those bad things happened to him. Here we just get the event, Harry's stoic mainpain, and then the book ends. Not my favorite handling of this sort of character change. Though it is sort of similar to what happened with Molly's dad.

I don't know. While I'm interested in the implications, the execution really bothered me. We didn't get enough of Molly in the book and especially in the events leading up to that climax. Thus, to me, it came off as just something bad happening to Harry by proxy when really this, of all things, *should* really be about Molly. Maybe that's a failure of the 1st person narrative, but it really read like a Women in Refrigerators moment to me.

I think it was the comment about how they killed Gavilar in a desperate bid to keep their gods from returning, which had since failed.

But the Heralds are already running around, aren't they? Or did you mean the Thunderclasts?

I think I also heard tell of him sending out the original Mistborn and/or Final Empire. Fun fact about White Sand: If you convert it into an epub, it self-titles "Dragonsteel". I have no idea what that's about.

Yeah, but he was killed by Ruin and Luthad never showed up.

Oh wait. I didn't put this together after reading the review, but are there no Dragons? I thought this was the one with Dragons. Did the review just give hem a wide berth?

Yes to your first question. "A" is a word. So are "the" and "rotunda" and "rectangle" and "America". "The rectangle" counts as two words. To your other questions, I have no idea. It probably depends on the publisher. I know that manuscripts are all submitted in Courier, a font where each character takes up the exact same amount of space. This way, agents/editors can guesstimate rather accurately the word count from the page count/character count. I don't know the specific number though.

Yeah, I saw them in NYC when ToM was released. They seemed like an affable bunch. Tough crowd though. Wheel of Time fans are about as close as I've seen to arrogant, whiny comic book fans as I've seen in the book scene.