The One Who Reads

Fixed

The fastest way to Dalinar's heart is through his stomach honour.

http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/32432-copper-compounding-speculation/You're not the first one to slam your head against this wall I like the idea of the memories being more detailed but I wonder how exactly the shard would get the information? Ruin (or more accurately ruin's Shardholder) wasn't all knowing, he could see pretty much everything aside from things near/made of metal, but he missed the subtleties of Breeze and Kel's relationship when trying to trick Spook. Unless the shard has abilities the shardholder cannot use himself you might be a bit limited on what extra information you can add. It does give me another idea though, what if copper-compounding made a memory more intense? So you turn happiness in your memory into indescribable joy or sadness into misery. Kinda of like seeing the whole world as a Brandon Sanderson book.

[ also There is no need to justify buying brandon's books on this site

spoiler for image size I knew 'silent gatherer' wouldn't be anything good and yet somehow I still wasn't ready for what the wiki would bring up.

I only skimmed through the 'Reid' chapter (will have a more in-depth look later) so I won't comment on any real writing stuff yet, but I am a Brit so I may be able to help with any 'grammatical eccentricities'. The first thing I noticed was colour not color, is this going to be constant throughout or will an American character's chapter use the other spelling? Switching between spelling for your narration could possibly go beyond giving the characters unique voices (which I love incidentally) and just become confusing or give the impression of inconsistency, especially with words that are still pronounced the same. I will be back here after another more detailed reading and if none of the other Sharders have given you any feedback will give you my thoughts on the other stuff as well. Keep writing and stay positive!

But aside from waiting for the next book anything Sanderson is a quick read... On a tangent to relative book lengths (because 17th Shard loves a good tangent) I have almost battled my way through the entire divergent series*. The upside to this is that my friend who lent me the books has promised she will read any book series I lend them after I have finished. Should I deliver Wheel of Time to her volume by volume or in one wheelbarrow? [ *Disclaimer not trying to be a book snob or hate on others choice of book, if offend please message me about boot reparations.

WoR spoilers

This is the only one I don't get, not enough non-meme content to work it out.

Nightblood from warbreaker says:

The strangest thing about that scene to me is Jasnah saying "for the love of god"... and that makes me think I spend a little too much time on 17th shard. Edit: just though what vins reaction to the dark alley would be

Elantris I still hold to the unsatisfying answer that it is because Brandon wasn't as bothered about Warbreaker's history and didn't create his normal super intricate and clever world history expanation. Instead running with a handwavey reason like those discussed above. (that is handwavey by Sanderson standards of course) OR This ends up being a crucial plotpoint in Nightblood and you get added to the list of people who are smarter than me and can predict what Brandon is going to do

Spoilers

Oh I agree with you Oudeis, the lack of apparant growth is odd. Thats why I didn't mention thing like why there hasn't been another 'Scholar' in the post-war year. They are simply good points I agree with The only reasons I can think of are: A lack of intrest in developing new awakening techinquies (Halladren have an overwhelming millitary advantage and got lazy/ Manywar made people more cautious), A lack of breaths for research purposes or that the 5 scholars were for some reason more than just good researchers (divine insperation maybe?). I don't think any of these are compelling (or original) reasons, and if the research is the result of a shard I might be disatisfied depending on how its done, but added together with the fact brandon might not want to have society change might explain it. Elantris spoilers I think he wanted to make warbreaker more about the characters and less about the world. It is his kind of reverse-mistborn. In mistborn we are left questions about crewmembers' histories but get a very good description of the world's history with the logbook and whatnot. Of course Warbreaker 2 ( I think the title is still Nightblood) might come out and have this be a major plot point, in which case you get to be that smart person who to quote sanderson asked a "good question". TL:DR [becasue my posts are always walls of text] Yup it is weird but maybe it just wasn't part of Sanderson's idea for the world so we get a relativly handwavey reason.

Warbreaker- Page number 512 Vasher tells us he sees awakeners including himself as "children" who "don't know what we are doing" and that The way I see it pre-war awakening was the cool new science, there was a demand for research and so researchers had whatever they needed to get the job done, most notably breaths to make awakening more instinctive. The war was according to Vasher the first real use of awakening in war and might have coloured the population against awakening as a whole. Think nuclear and one of the first things that pops into your head is nuclear weapons. Maybe Nalthis had a similar cultural aversion to researching something they blamed for the war? (1 breath lifeless and ichor alchol are mentioned as causes of the war, although vasher isn't convinced) Pre-war I htink a lot of breath would have been passed through the generations, some might have been lost to sudden deaths but anyone with breath who died of chronic illness or old age stands a good chance at passing it on. The many war would have stopped this with everyone creating lifeless left, right and centre. This breath is non-recoverable and even to the time of warbreaker Halladren has kept creating larger lifeless armies. TL:DR Between fear of awakening's potential, less trusting researchers, no 5 person super scholar team and the substantial numbers of breaths locked up in the Godkings, Kalad's phantoms and loss breaths for lifeless soldiers. I think you have a group of researchers who don't trust each other trying to make progress with limited breaths compared to previous innovators.

I thought that it was Elhokar having an unpleasant recollection at Dalinar's 'odd parental instincts'. I hadn't considered that he might still be in pain/discomfort, I have this idea that a long time passes between WoK and WoR because of the imposed breaks in reading them. Off-topic The first thing that popped into my head after seeing this was that clearly Tumblr members and sharders would likely attarct different types of spren in different proportions (I.E more lightweavers over on the tumblr side)... and that probably confirms this idea

Clearly practicality and timelyness aren't big concerns in this, why not just wait? Sure they are immortal but eventually most of them (gold compounders and possibly KR) will simply die of old age. And the others will probably top themselves if you leave them long enough, espically if you have a group of soothers and rioters following them round everywhere stealing everything good in their life...

... the story to my first fantasy world temporarily. Why what did you think that topic title meant? It was becoming impossible to keep all of the drafts from merging together and while I think (and of course I am not biased at all about this) there is a couple of neat ideas in it I am going to put it on hold. So I wrote a chapter and introduction to a different world. I wanted to avoid my previous pitfalls so the story is more political, less descriptive (actually this chapter has virtually none) and you only get one small look at its magic here and the barest explanation. The result was... different. Oh and the word "administrator" is now not a word when I look at it. The Administrator.docx If any of the more experienced writers here (I have never studied writing or trained as a writer in any form) could give it a quick skim and give me some pointers that would be great.

Not Raoden ... Well there goes any hope that the remaining tributes would band together and form a utopian society.

Too soon...

This was my original comment, you will notice a few things about it: 1) I think a group of super archers would be a welcome change from the ever present fantasy super swordsmen. This is of course personal preference. 2) It refers to the Bridge Four squires, who can not Surgebind fully as far as we know. 3) Kaladin's enhanced physical prowess are not in my opinion enough to make him a walking blender against a group of determined opponents, provided they are not bothered with fighting fair. Moving onto the points you raised: 1)Yes I have read WoR, the author is a personal favourite of mine (I'm even a member of his official fansite ) 2)I don't see lashings as something kal would use on the battlefield for two reasons. He is never shown to use lashings on the battlefield with the exception of reverse lashings to pull arrows to a bridge/shield and a one on one duel. And also because the one time he thinks about their application in a fight (the training fight with The Lopen, Rock and Sigzil) he explicitly thinks that stormlight augmentation would be more useful to him because of how unfamiliar he is with his powers. 3) Actually it's almost two books (lets face it nine tenths of WoR is pretty much a book by itself anyway), he only uses surges for fighting in the second fight with Szeth, so no mojo or plain stormlight enhanced Kaladin has all the other fights we see him in: The childhood fight with staffs, saving the new kid in his squad, saving Amaram, the battle at the tower, the shardbearer brawl, the first fight with szeth, the chasmfiend and killing Graves' men. Really we know very little about how Kaladin would use his surges to fight someone else aside from chasing another person with windrunner surges compared to how Stormlight itself helps him. 4) We have absolutaly no idea about the effectiveness of Grandbows vs surges on the ten deaths because info on all three is very sparse. What if the deaths are heavily invested and so highly resistant to surges? If they are not Jasnah and anyone else who can soulcast are going to be a walking blender, I don't think that is exactly what Sanderson has in mind. 5) Sure it didn't kill the Chasmfiend, but three sets of Plate and three Blades (two sets of which were wielded by probably the best shardbearers in the books so far) were only an annoyance for a while, losing the first few legs just made it angry. Chasmfiends are hard to kill, go figure. All of this is of course ignoring that I was talking about Squires (who are not believed to posses surges or blades at the moment) not Knights and that my comment was more of a "wouldn't it be cool if..." rather than "OMG Grandbows so OP!!1! Surges and Blades are for N00bZ, all the 733ts use a grandbow." Maybe this reply is a bit too aggressive, it honestly isn't my attention to offend. But questioning whether I read the book then yourself ignoring evidence in the books to try and argue with an opinion which you mangled from "I would love to see bridge four with bows" to "Kaladin's surges and blade are useless in a fight" rustled my feathers a bit and now it is too long for a re-write in a more moderate tone right now.

I wasn't talking about Lashings just the speed/strength granted by holding stormlight, you know the abilities he has actually used on the battlefield? At the tower he literally jumps completly unsupported into an enemy army and all he has is: His experience/skill as a spearman, the passive augmentation of stormlight, a normal spear and the "stormlight-boom" at the start of the fight. No Blade and no Lashing, only the listener's sense of battlefield honour keeps him alive (they fight him warpair by warpair if I remember correctly) in my opinion.

What if stormlight makes you strong enough to draw one of these bows? They might not be shards in the conventional sense but they would need a Knight or Squire to use them so I would say that makes them "modern" shards. I would really like to see the bridge four squires as an elite magically-enhanced-superweapon-equipped squad of archers. It always frustrates me how in fantasy the "super-soldiers" are always in the middle of the fighting despite archers or other long range attackers being so much better suited to the role. I don't care how fast or strong kal is, if a group of ten people put their heads down and charge him (Jakamav style) he dosen't stand a chance on the battlefield.

I can only a only assume this is aimed at all the non-Brandon fantasy writers (seriously Martin five books and no explaniation of the magic? Grr) but if you are calling the metallic arts a poorly defined magic system well...