junior

You would need to attach a parachute to the Aclivity Ring in order to safely eject it. Because we know virtually nothing about Aclivity Rings, it's possible that there are technical reasons why that's simply not feasible. Additionally, I suspect that a ring falling to the ground at a speed slow enough for it to survive the landing would make an easy target for the Krell drones. And we know that the Krell do specifically attempt to destroy rings.

M-Bot predates the Defiant fleet crashing on Derelict. Defiant tech is essentially a hodge-podge of stuff that they've been able to piece together using half-understood production facilities, whereas M-Bot is a ship that was designed by a civilization and culture that actually understood how the technology worked. M-Bot likely was a standard vessel for its assigned role (either fighting, or scouting) at the time it was abandoned on Detritus. The Pocos and other fighters that are being constructed by the Apparatus are based on the mishmash of poorly understood technologies that the humans have been able to figure out. As for the Krell, DE established that the alien races in the setting are just flat out not very good at technological innovation (at least where warfare is concerned (though I'd guess that it likely extends to *all* technological advances). It's possible that the aliens have been stuck in technological stasis since the war with humanity began.

Some odds and ends in response to @Govir I'm going to disagree here.

The flaw with the story about Chaser's fate isn't the cowardice, imo. It's how his fellow pilots supposedly reacted to his cowardice. We're told that his fellow pilots shot him down because of his cowardice. We're also told that fighters are *extremely* valuable - enough so that many view it better for a pilot to ride their fighter down instead of ejecting in the hope that the pilot can crash land it in a repairable state. So the official story is that Chaser turned and fled during a battle against enormous odds. And instead of waiting for him to land and dealing with him on the ground, his fellow pilots shot down his extremely valuable fighter because of his apparent cowardice. I'm seeing an apparent contradiction here.

Fascism is an economic system (it's what happens when the government allows business owners to retain title to their companies, but tells the companies how to operate and what to make), so you're right that it's not correct. The word you're looking for is either Totalitarianism, or Authoritarianism. And that, of course, is pretty much a required adjunct of both Fascism and Communism.

He's a genuinely skilled pilot - at the moment the best in the class - who got saddled with an embarrassing and petty call-sign by the protagonist. So he already has reasons to personally dislike her. The incident in chapter 15 - which would have heavily violated his sense of fair play at the exact moment he was expecting to pull off a win - just pushed him over the edge. I may not like the reasons why he did it, but I'm hardly going to knock a teenager for getting frustrated enough with the protagonist to do something like that. Let's be blunt here. The intent of the "game" was to give everyone a chance to show off their skill. Spin didn't have anything riding on the competition - she isn't allowed to eat with the others - except for one thing, namely her overly competitive nature (and while her competitiveness got her into flight school, it's also a flaw). And she beat "Jerkface" by doing something that would have been banned if Cobb had thought that anyone would be competitive enough to do it. So no, I'm not going to blame "Jerkface" for being angry enough to use the first weapon against her that comes to mind.

Also worth noting that some of the Heralds - and quite possibly *all* of them (except, obviously, Talenelat'Elin) - were at the palace the night that Gavilar was assassinated. For instance, during the opening segment in WoR, Jasnah passes two men, and the description of one of them is a dead ringer for Nale.

Anatomy lessons for surgeons. Yes, it's probably unpopular. But it *does* happen because surgeons-in-training need to practice their craft on *something* before they get their first live patient.

I'm skeptical. While I suspect that shardplate is somehow connected with the bond (it's the only thing that makes sense), I also suspect that it's not a physical manifestation of the spren, unlike the shard weapon. Some reasons why not - - Spren shard weapons and surges are supposed to duplicate the honorblades. The only honorblade that we've seen used so far is Szeth's and he never wore shardplate. - Shard weapons don't use stormlight. The only mention of gems that we've seen with regard to shardblades is the one used to bind a shardblade to its wielder. Shardplate, on the other hand, needs stormlight. For instance, stormlight is infused into the armor to regrow it. Damaged armor is constantly described as leaking stormlight. And when Kaladin "borrows" the shardplate helm during the arena duel, it ends up sucking up all of his stormlight. - Each suit of shardplate is a complete set, with its own identity. In TWoK (I think), there's concern over the possibility of the Parshendi feeding stormlight into damaged shardplate pieces left on the battlefield, thus making it take longer to regrow those missing parts on the main shardplate suit. The implication is that the damaged pieces are still connected to the rest of the suit - despite the distance - right up until new parts are grown to replace the missing pieces. But there's no indication that shard weapons are connected to a given suit. My guess is that the shardplate armor is an outward manifestation of a fully completed bond, created using stormlight turned solid by the Radiant. Chances are that when one of the modern characters eventually gets around to creating their armor, we'll see more dramatic capabilities than what we've seen so far (similar to how Syl was able to rapidly change shape when Kaladin fought Szeth, something that a dead spren blade can't do). As for Adolin, I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up forming a bond solely based on the time that he spends with the blade while it's temporarily revived, and completing the stage at which he triggers his order's equivalent of the Windrunner's third oath will be what ends up permanently reviving the dead spren.

That blade screams after he bonds with the Stormfather, and right before he gets rid of it. So it's a dead spren. In fact, right after he uses the blade against Amaram, he notes that he doesn't feel entirely comfortable with it. He thinks it's because it's not his old sword. But the simplest explanation is that he's starting to develop his powers, and is becoming sensitive to the fact that the shardblade is a dead spren. I read that as Dalinar not being obvious that he's summoning his shardblade, which he knows he's going to need because he knows that Amaram will summon his own. Since Kaladin's the PoV character, and Kaladin's focus is on his hated enemy, Amaram, Kaladin manages to completely miss the fact that Dalinar has started to summon his new blade (assisted in the fact that *everyone* in the camps knows that Daliran doesn't have a blade to summon. so they're not watching for it).

That's assuming that his blade stays dead. There have been hints that he's synchronizing with his blade, which would suggest that he might revive the spren that powers it. However, even if he did revive the spren, he's now a murderer. And I suspect that sooner or later the truth about his role in Sadeas's death will come out.

Problem is, it doesn't matter how strong the sides of the trap are. He can turn any inorganic material into steel. So even if you somehow built the trap with diamond walls, he'd simply turn the diamond into steel, and burst out of the trap.

Finished it. Enjoyed it. I was skimming through the earlier books today, and I stumbled across a section in book 3 in which Alcatraz talks about flying using a rocket-propelled penguin. There's even an illustration of Alcatraz with a penguin strapped to his back. Lo and behold, what do we learn about penguins in book 5? Now I'm curious - has Brandon Sanderson been holding that little item in reserve since book 3? I picked up the e-book format of the book, so there was no little scrap of paper to tip me off that I might be missing something on the other side of all of the educational aids stuff. I'm glad I looked past it all anyway!

Has anyone heard anything about a Nook release? I generally go for e-books these days (particularly since the nearby B&N closed at the start of last year), but I dislike buying Amazon e-books because they force you to use 1-click (which requires a credit card on file) to purchase them.

I'd say that Alik's condition was a bit more than "wasn't comfortable". He was wearing so many blankets when Marasi found him that she assumed he wasn't wearing anything more than a loincloth underneath (turns out he was fully dressed). It's also worth noting that one of the terms that the southerners use for the northerners is "Ice Demons". Still, we don't see any southerners freeze to death over the course of the book. So it's hard to tell just how much of the cold they're feeling is due to acclimation, and how much is due to physical differences from the northerners.

I've got a few comments to add - First, Wayne has a strong moral sense. It's true that his personal actions sometimes seem to fly in the face of it. But that's a problem of perception on his part. Where the big picture is concerned, morals and fairness are important to him. Case in point, at the end of SoS he starts financing a young inventor, and it appears that the primary reason that he's doing so is because her father was cheated out of the credit for his inventions. Second, Wayne's damaged. It's not clear how or why. But the "Wax is dead" scene in BoM left me with a very strong impression that Wayne has something dark inside of him. He uses his Wayne persona to help Wax, and that apparently keeps the darkness in check. But I'm left wondering if we've ever really met Wayne. It's possible that his need for fronts is why he has the "trading" problem, and why he was so obsessive about Ranette (note that as soon as Marasi tells him that it's possible for people to get over someone, he gets over Ranette). Hopefully his new relationship with MeLaan will continue, and she can keep him from falling to darkness.

If Rashek's original bands still exist, then a likely location for them is in whatever remains of the palace. And as we learned in SoS, at least part of it is located in the Homelands. Now having said that, I suspect that there's not much point in chasing down Rashek's bands. I think it unlikely that he would have created jewelry that could be used by anyone, particularly given his thoughts on magic. Remember that Rashek tried to wipe out feruchemy. And he had laws in place to prevent ska from getting the ability to burn metals. As a result, I can't see him creating an item that would allow anyone to burn metals, or that would utilize a form of magic (feruchemy) that he was doing his best to destroy.

1.) Presumably Megan hadn't actually been burned yet when she shot herself in Firefight. 2.) The photo that Obliteration sees in Calamity is explicitly stated to be in a room with some odd angles. i.e. the picture provides enough information to provide Obliteration with a target destination. 3.) David is in denial throughout most of the book. Presumably this made it so that the dowser didn't work. Note also the dowser takes so long to give a negative reading that the guy using the dowser decides that an epic must be hiding in one of the nearby buildings and throwing the results off. 4.) Initially, Prof didn't get his powers back. He used the Nighthawk tech to mimic his powers. But once he actively confronted his fears in order to do something selfless, his powers came back. Best guess is that Calamity doesn't completely remove someone's power when he "takes it back". He is instead actively suppressing it within that individual, and the individual can use it again when they remove Calamity's influence (i.e. by confronting their weakness while performing a selfless action).

David's nickname is "Steelslayer". Giving him Steelheart's powerset is pure black comedy - particularly since at the time, Calamity expected David to go nuts after receiving the powers.

What we see in BoM seems to suggest that they're at most only a century or so ahead of the Basin. Their fliers fly high enough that the Northerners aren't even aware that they're up in the air. But they still rely on investiture instead of technology for their heating. Yes, they can use their coins for heating. But using the coins is limiting because it means that if they want to stay warm, then they can't use another coin. I'd expect things like self-heating clothing if their technology level was up to the equivalent of 22nd Century, or even further. And on a meta-level note, Sanderson has already revealed that the next series is to be set in Scadrial's rough equivalent of the modern era. That would be a bit difficult if the South (which will soon be trading with the North) was already centuries ahead of the modern era.

I suspect that you haven't read Sanderson's comments on the Apocalypse Guard series, which can be found on his website. That doesn't sound at all like Megan's parallel world.

It's a tribal society. In a tribal society, your first loyalty is to the tribe. The other tribe members might treat you lousy. But they will back you up and protect you from members of other tribes. The peace is maintained because harrassing members of other tribes will start a very bloody war. Any tribe that can't protect its members will fall apart quickly. Other tribes will pick up on the weakness, and find ways to attack the tribe for resources. And members of the tribe will desert, since the tribe isn't able to protect them.

When Regalia offers David up to Calamity, she says something about David receiving an "appropriate" set of powers. There's a callback to that comment in Calamity, iirc. Presumably Calamity thought that it would be amusing to give David the powers of the epic that David was best known for killing. So it's not an accident that David gets that set of powers. More than likely, his alternate-reality Dad has the same set of powers because of the "nearness" of the reality that Megan is pulling from. His David and his Dad are the two people who are most like each other on the two worlds, and that similarity is magnified by the fact that they share the same set of powers.

I just had a stray thought... In Calamity we learn that two people with the same power hurt each other when they use their powers. We also learn that David has received Steelheart's powers. Now assume, for a moment, that the first book didn't revolve around Steelheart's death. So the big guy is still alive. And then David gets his powers. Which means that if either one uses their powers, the other one feels pain. So... How much of the planet ends up trashed in the inevitable brawl between the two of them?

It's a bit more than that. Both Marvel and DC have their "boyscout" character. He's the guy who is viewed as the moral exemplar for the rest of the setting. For Marvel, it's Captain America. For DC, it's Superman. Any other DC character might be expected to do something petty and/or selfish every now and again. But Superman won't. For that reason, he's the exact opposite of the Epics. As far as Calamity and Regalia - I suspect that the reason why Calamity communicated with Regalia is because he found out about her plan to steal his powers, and decided to pay a bit more attention to her out of curiousity. Instead of moving into her house, he chose to actively converse with her.