Iarwainiel I

Is it just me, or does the costume in this picture look like Shardplate? Maybe someone on the production is a Sanderfan? On a side note, some of the photos show that this costume has wings - wouldn't that be a cool addition to a KR's armor if they didn't have a Surge that granted them flight in some way?

It's oddly satisfying to see that I'm not the only one who didn't take to Warbreaker at first. I went to far as to sell my (hardback first-issue but not signed) copy at Half Price Books - thought I'd never want to read it again. But then (Stormlight Archives spoiler) and I had to go buy a (budget paperback) copy and reread it. Wow, was I surprised - it was waaaay better the 2nd time through. Like others here, I initially felt that the female characters in WB were weak and/or annoying. But on re-read, that didn't stand out so much - I saw how Brandon wove them into the bigger plot, and why he needed them to be the way they were. Their parts actually seemed shorter to me the 2nd time round. (Also, gotta say that these 2 sisters were nowhere near as annoying to me as all of the ladies in WoT were. I confess that I literally wanted Edge-weenie, Nigh-knave, and the rest to die; it gave me great pleasure to mispronounce their names, LOL!) So now I wish I had my hardback copy of WB back again (sigh).

W.O.W. No words, except "Enjoy it!!!"

Yes! That was an amazing passage - IIRC he called the pub "the Temple of the Common Man." Brilliant!

Re: writing screenplays -- Brandon is (to my understanding) working with J Michael Straczynski on his "Dark One" TV pilot, and JMS is a very accomplished writer/producer for TV. He literally wrote every script for more than 4 years for "Babylon 5" - while not perfect, it's still seen as one of the best genre shows ever, especially re: character development. So the potential that Brandon might get insights on the "how" from JMS, added to his own awesomeness and the spectacular story of Mistborn, makes me more confident that he'll avoid pitfalls that others (like Rowling) have fallen into.

No one could write it better, obvs. But selfishly I have mixed feelings - I'm already doubtful that I'll still be alive for SA #10, and adding in screensplays makes that prospect even more bleak. Most of all I want Brandon to be happy with whatever happens, so it's all good.

@Harrycrapper thx for using the spoiler tags - I'm resisting the temptation to look (hates teh spoilerz, me does). I actually have a guess re: the Singer god of spren, but I'm keeping it under wraps for now - we might not even find out till the "back 5" books. November canNOT come soon enough!!

So glad I checked out this thread 'cos these are I've been thinking the same things. The Singer wind god must be the Stormfather. I also thought that their stone god must be the Sibling, since that's who should be powering Urithuru, IIRC; and that's why I think we'll meet the Sibling in SA5 (Szeth's book) because the Stone Shamans are involved somehow. But their god of spren - - I'm not sure it is the Nightwatcher. Always another secret in the Cosmere!

Welcome to the Shard @Negative_Null ! Your OP reminds me of Belkar from "The Order of the Stick" (an online comic). There used to be a thread for it here on the forums, but it seems to have vanished. OOTS isn't the most family-friendly, so maybe that was it? & as such I won't post a link here - you can find it easy enough by googleing.

I think you're fine to start with TWoK & now WoR. You'll probably get just as much fun seeing characters in other Cosmere books and recognizing them from Stormlight Archives as we got doing the reverse. Overall, the sequence you suggested above looks solid: ... except IMO don't read "Mistborn: Secret History" until after finishing "The Bands of Mourning" (Mistborn Era 2 book 3). Otherwiase (as @aneonfoxtribute said above), you are cheating yourself out of a huge yelling-dropping-the-book-on-the-floor moment. Also, that follows Brandon's publication order and he has said he did it that way for a reason. Just my opinion, but I'm glad I read TBoM first before M:SH. (Gotta love all these title acronyms, LOL!) Happy reading!!

I added emphasis on "right after you finish Mistborn Era 2" - that is, after The Bands of Mourning. I would also add "and after finishing Words of Radiance. Wasing the hating of the spoilers!

Yup - your thoughts parallel mine @Karger.

I love that this thread is allowing both! though there are already several threads about "lem-ing" books. (Verb: to "lem" = To stop reading a book because it's so bad you can't continue; definition courtesy of the Sword & Laser book club.) There have been a couple times when I've put down a Sanderson book and had to take a moment to process my emotions - several in each volume of Stormlight Archives, but the most extreme time was the last 2 paragraphs of The Bands of Mourning. It was all I could do to not throw my hardback book across the room! Thankfully I was home alone, because I was literally screaming and running around in (small) circles. That was epic. The works of C.S. Lewis are so dense (packs a lot into so few words) that I sometimes have to put his books down & just ponder the implications of what was said/meant. Being a Christian, I had to put down his Perelandra dozens of times, re: Mind.Blown; however, that related to doctrine so prolly my reactions were pretty rare. My strongest memory of needing to put a book down is from the first time I read The Lord of the Rings. In the chapter "The Battle of the Pelennor Fields," this is the passage: "upon the foremost ship a great standard broke, and the wind displayed it as she turned towards the Harlond." ... When I read the next 5 words, I just put down the book & cried for hours. It is literally the most moving thing I have ever read in a work of fiction - nothing will ever top it, in my heart. I have read that chapter probably a hundred times, and it gets to me Every.Single.Time. I hope it always does.

The reaction when the first Kandra is revealed on Roshar - considering how characters have reacted in the Wax & Wayne books, on a world where Kandra are a known thing, I expect that anyone on Roshar will be pretty stunned. Any of our main characters on Roshar going to Aimia and actually getting ashore - what they will find, and what the story will be that they are permitted to land How the Unmade were un-made Rock becoming the Horneater king for real (Could he make Shallan an honorary Horneater princess? That would be too funny, since she pretended to be one in WoR!) Venli interacting with Rlain, and/or with the Listener group that's with her mother Dalinar vs. Ishar - i.e., a true Bondsmith facing off against the crazy or corrupted Herald of their KR order Taln (in his right mind) and Shalash talking about what's happeneing in general Showing us what's so special about Feverstone Keep ... and so many more!! Great thread OP! I love how it's allowing ideas from multiple Cosmere worlds to intersect!

@Emerald_Mage - That's the same way I became a Sander-fan: I saw his first Mistborn book on an endcap at the library, checked it out, and never looked back! Welcome to the Shard!

I specifically asked Brandon this question with reference to Roshar at a WoR signing, and he said that Roshar is a globe or sphere. I was a bit disappointed because I had this theory that - even if all the other Cosmere worlds were normal (spheroid) planets - that Roshar might be a plane, and that it may have been created that way specifically so that the big-battle-for-Adonalsium could be fought there. But, as usual, I was wrong. This thread makes me glad, knowing that I'm not the only one who's thinking of these things.

Half Price Books hasn't been mentioned (https://www.hpb.com/) - they're discounted but not free & not all that cheap either. My boss told me about a company called Half, for business books, but I see that they're part of eBay now.

If you dry out the bread before using it to make french toast, the inside of each slice turns into something like egg custard ... and now I want some!!

Fantastic thread @Dreamer! I just reread TES this month! Thx to @Pathfinder for posting the (long but great!) WoB above. IMO the very end of the quote seems most relevant here: Brandon Sanderson: "Now, at least in her perspective, what she did was create a fake soul and put it in him. What I haven’t answered is did she just take the soul that was lingering on the body and fill in the gaps? Or did she legitimately craft a new soul? That I’ll leave to the cosmere philosophers to talk about." To me, it sounds like Shai doesn't really know what she did, so her description of it isn't necessarily accurate - she's like an unreliable narrator, unintentionally, just because she's judging based only on the outcome, not the "how" of what happened. And many times in the book Shai says that what she's doing "has never been done before," so as far as we know there are no in-world precedents for us (or her) to go by. In light of those points, what @PrinceGenocide posted above sounds plausible to me: that Shai made a path that allowed Ashraven's soul to (sort of) find its way back to his mind & body, reuniting him in the 3 Realms. As far as why Hoid set Shai up - I'm sure he intended for her to heal the emperor, and I also think he wanted that Moon Sceptre. Late in the book, Shai muses about how her people used to worship images they'd carved from stones that fell from the sky - were those meteors (?) somehow related to the Splintering of Dominion & Devotion, and have some kind of weird Investiture? (IDK if that's ever been posted before - pls excuse me if it has been debunked, etc.) So glad TES is fresh in my mind!

Enjoy reading!

By "Mistborn," do you mean all 6 novels? If not - if you only meant the first 1 or 3 Mistborn books - that my recommendation would be to continue with the delightful Wax & Wayne series (Mistborn 4-6). BTW I sincerely recommend that you do NOT read the Mistborn: Secret History novella until after you read The Bands of Mourning - - that was e.p.i.c., & I'd love for you to have the same amazed reaction that we all did. Then again, if you want to read Stormlight Archives #4 when it's released, you'll need to get through 3300 pages before November 17th - it goes fast but it is quite a bit. So it just depends on your reading speed & how you'll get the most enjoyment out ot the books. There are no bad choices!! Happy reading!

Does it look like the glyph characters are glowing/on fire? Matching the spren hovering around Taln? Maybe these portraits tell us more about Vorin beliefs regarding the Heralds than providing information about the Heralds themselves? As the Heralds slink back out of their hiding places, it could be interesting to watch how that dissonance/mismatch impacts their relationships with the humans (Vorin or not) on Roshar.

At this point, it would have to be Urithuru for me - - somewhere that I could help the "good guys" win.