Yados

I tried an inter-library loan about two years ago. ... did not work. I got an frank email a year later from the library loan people to that affect, I believe. Long after I'd forgotten about the request.

Honestly, that's a working theory. The used bookstore actually exists a few years in the future, offering used versions of books not out yet. In SoHo everyone either dresses in high-fashion (read: weird) or like its the mid-90s so there's really no way to tell that I'm actually browsing for books in the year 2016.

Sounds like you should do just fine. What's your favorite of the Cosmere books you've read?

Just found Cold Days by Jim Butcher at the same magical used bookstore where I got Alloy of Law in Paperback four months before it was officially published. I bought Cold Days used for seven dollars... before its official release. So that's what I'll be doing for the next few days. Crazy, magical used bookstore.

Wow, yeah that does sound like it will need a significant rewrite now that Stormlight exists. A (non-spoiler) question for people who have read it: Is this review a fair estimation? For a 300,000 word book, the information seems sparse, especially around the second half. The world and specific politics of the situation are barely touched on. There's more to it, yeah?

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I see how that works now. I was missing the final step. Well that's a year's worth of confusion put to bed. But then that does help hypothetical Lutha, who could burn his super gold allomantically in a pinch to Super Heal himself for a short amount of time and survive the brief solar holocaust.

I have honestly no idea how compounding actually works. Because in Final Empire, Vin agifies TLR by ripping his atium metal minds, that he was using to compound age, from his arms. But from the explanation we got of compounding in Alloy of Law, it sounds like when a compounder stores an attribute in a metal, it creates a brand new allomantic metal that they can burn for a positive yield of that attribute. But, presumably, they burn for that attribute by ingesting their metal. Because it's allomancy. Vin tries to burn Sazed's metalmind by ingesting and she can *feel* if not use the power. But then if that's true... ripping the bracers off TLR shouldn't have done anything but disrupt the cycle by which he was making more enchanced atium. He would have been staying young by burning the feruchemically enchanced atium in his stomach, not on his arms. So if this hypothetical Lutha was using compounding to survive a solar hollocaust, he would mostly only need to protect the metal in his stomach... which he would do by not dying and also possibly by bringing down his body temperature. ... unless you burn your metalminds when they're outside your body. And they... dissolve or something? Wayne made a comment about Miles constantly needing more gold to fuel his compounding. Do the metalminds just burn outside your body? Wouldn't that too obvious for TLR to use for 1000 years without anyone remarking on it? Or describing it during the fight scenes?

Well that's just not fair.

True, but Miles couldn't compound investiture or burn pewter or compound weight to punch through the crust of Scadrial or store bodyheat or put up a time bubble. Lutha, hypothetically, could do all of these things.

I knew about that Elantris bit. It doesn't *necessarily* mean there's a power beyond the Shards. It could mean that we don't know wholly how Splintered shards like Devotion or Dominion work or if there's still some aspect of them that can direct the main world or use of their powers. Certainly the terminology used in the annotation isn't any more confirmation of an Abrhamic god than it is a proto-explanation of the Shards. I mean, these annotations were written well before Hero of Ages was published, yeah? Did readers even know about things like Adonalsium or Devotion? From that perspective, an intelligence behind the magic wouldn't have terminology to fit it beyond "providence". It could mean Shardic intervention much like Preservation snapping mistings and working Atium into the 16.

Well, if there's an abrahamic god in the cosmere, it's kind of irrelevant, isn't it? I mean, maybe this is my atheism (which is really more of a shrugging agnosticism than a shining principle) talking, but it seems if there's a god and it's working indirectly through a bunch or physical and metaphysical forces in a way that people don't notice... and there doesn't seem to be a cost to them not noticing... it might as well not be there. You could just call it physics and it would be the same general idea. Conversely, we have the Shards, which do directly impact the Shardworlds, but never seem very worthy of worship once we, the reader, see them for what they are. Most that we've seen are evil, impotent, or dead. Belief in the Shards themselves does nothing beyond providing in-world characters with the knowledge that these Shards may be able to impact the in-world events. Even Sazed's spiritual revelation in HoA read to me like a more utilitarian justification of religion that transcended its actual validity. What swayed Sazed toward believing was that people who believed in their religions tended to be happier? It rang a little false for me, subsequent events aside. I'm aware of Sanderson's religion, but the Cosmere books themselves have always read to me as something less spiritually concrete than anything an organized religion would put out as doctrine. The Cosmere: "God is dead, so let's all be secular humanists in a world that happens to also contain the supernatural to varying degrees of effectiveness and intent"

I think that Tin-Eyes might be the snobbiest of snobs. They'd either enjoy very light beers that appear to others to be bland or simple (but with flavors which the tin-eye alone could taste), or very complex beers with too many flavors for the average drinker. But then, those same attributes would be the ones that would lead a Tin-Eye to favor wine. Thugs may well prefer a higher alcohol content when they're dragging pewter, but they could also be the mistings who have to keep the most control over themselves. A drunk thug would be pretty hard to deal with without thugs of your own. Thus, they're more likely to be the bouncer than the patron. A Thug on a bender probably leaves his pewter in his pocket until he wants to clear up a hangover. Likewise, Soothers would more likely be employed by taverns to diffuse tense situations and get the public back to drinking. Fights are bad for business. Rioters would probably be dangerous drunks as the drunker they got, they more they'd try to make everyone else drunk as well by rioting everyone's passions/desire/humor. A rioter never drinks alone, even when he/she does.

Well if the Lord Ruler could re-grow his head, I think a similar kind of Ferumancer could survive a solar holocaust with gold compounding, possibly mixed with investiture compounding. Luthad might have been mightily pissed off, though. If he existed/exists. If not, he probably didn't have to do anything to survive that event and didn't feel anything.

Well, if Kelsier's Survivorism gambit was enough to let his spirit stick around, would the Steel Ministry, a much more prevalent religion, be enough to let Rashek stick around? Unknown specifics of being a splinter aside, he would have had similar means and purpose as Kelsier for remaining as a ghost.

All of this Lord Ruler mythos that we'd never have a good reason to be told now that the world has been remade makes me think it's going to be Rashek and not Kelsier who gets their soul spiked into a new body at some point during the next two trilogies.

I *believe* that this has been asked before and it got a big ol' RAFO.

I've posited that before, though Hoid seems to hold the idea of putting a man back together emotion by emotion in disdain when he speaks to Dalinar in WoK. Most likely, Hoid's intent towards the shards of Adonalsium-- keeping them seperate to reforging them-- coupled with what effect such a reforging would have on the 10 Shardworlds, life on which seems to have largely resulted from the Shatteringm, will be what classifies him as the Cosmere's ultimate hero or villain.

Don't forget that he stole the Moon Scepter. Hoid basically rules Sel's moon.

Shorter, but still about 300k words.

I just called mine Shard. Btw, anyone know who was posting all the Cosmere/WoT nicknamed pokes on pokecheck? I used their Scrafty, Kaladin, to solo the E4. They're gone now. Rashek is a pretty baller name for a pokemon, though. I'll have to use that one. Sounds like an Ursaring or something. Maybe that shiny Haxorus at the end of BW2.

There's a ball? I'm missing something.

Was it the same Parshendi PoV from Toronto or a new scene?

Anything cool get asked at this?

That's weird. Maybe it was an unintended side effect of Survivorism-- that Kelsier still existed as a concept in the minds of others let his soul hang on in the cognitive realm?

Well that sure explains a few things about Parshmen.