Sol Invictus

No, not really. I'm used to it now.

"We must be

I severely strained (but not actually broke), both my ankles, each on a different occasion, and, even after all these years, getting to my feet can be discomforting.

Just finished The Scarab Path (Book 5 of Shadows of the Apt, written by Adrian Tchaikovsky). It was a damnation fun read. Next, I'm going to dive back into The Stormlight Archive with Words of Radiance.

It's Latin for "the Unconquered Sun". Sol Invictus was a Roman sun-god (obviously).

But then thirty

Are you afraid of clowns?

Are you left-handed, or right-handed?

What's your favorite color?

Nope, but I intend to! I'm a comic book nerd, and the Avengers Movieverse has been one giant set of Glorious Awesomeness.

Like it says.

Maybe it was just an attempt to explore the outermost limit of BioChroma. The Manywar gave them the excuse to make a weapon, but, maybe they ultimately made that choice simply in the name of research...?

I just got done reading Salute the Dark, but that not as impressive a feat as you might think: It was a "mere" 300+ pages long. So, tomorrow, or maybe the day after, I'll plunge into the significantly longer Book 5, The Scarab Path. Once I'm done with Book 5, I shall go read Words of Radiance.

Shadows of the Apt, a ten-book series by Adrian Tchaikovsky, is awesome. Plus, the entire series is done by now; plus, Mr. Tchaikovsky put up on his website, for free download, various canonical short stories in this series' setting. I've read the first three books, and, for most of today I'll be reading Book 4. A word of warning though: This s--t is weird. Not goofy-weird, but still---weird. This series is steampunk meets high fantasy meets insect-totems meets military fantasy meets 1930s pulps. And, yes, it's all internally consistent. It's great stuff , which I am REALLY enjoying.

I'm fascinated by how both simultaneously human and alien Shadows of the Apt really is. It's such a very bizarre concept, and yet, the pacing is fast, the action is intense, everything fits into the rather foreign, alien framework of the setting, and, above all else, Mr. Tchaikovsky follows the old writing adage, "Show, don't tell, the setting".

Ah, but Nightblood is a soul-eating sociopath, whereas Shardblades are nature-spirits given physicality. There's a (pardon the pun) world of difference, between the two types of weapon.

I finished reading The Way of Kings (which was a massive undertaking), so, to spice things up a bit I'm going to read Books 4 and 5 of Shadows of the Apt, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. This series is very alien in feel, but is still comprehensible and entertaining.

...which of course raises questions about this "Evil" and if it/he/she/them had any influence on the shades of the Forests of Hell. Perhaps the Evil is a distorted memory of Odium?

My interpretation of the Threnody situation is that, somehow, a "blockage" between life and death occurred on-planet. A lot of souls DO get through to whatever genuine afterlife awaits sinners and saints in the Cosmere but some...get stuck. Maybe that's why Shades are so reactionary---they want so badly to finish their journey, but they can't...especially when some jerk puts up the spiritual equivalent of a floodlight on them, by breaking the Simple Rules. Shades aren't evil, they're maybe just driven to madness by their inability to move on.

Wasn't Jaddeth a minor rock-god, before Shu-Dereth and such gave him a boost in the eyes of his worshippers?

Could Vasher turn a dead chasmfiend into a Lifeless? And what would be the effects on chasmfiend-related spren?

Spren strike me as being animistic spirits. Most animist religions in the real world posit everything has an associated spirit-being---spren, anyone? Furthermore, they seem so deeply encoded in Roshar's magic system that regular, normal people can either generate them (?) or attract them. They're so commonplace, in fact, that most people basically ignore them.

I'm not so sure. Vasher left Nalthis for the guilt-free existence of inhaling Stormlight over constantly devouring large chunks of people's soul, but he's an ardent---a slave-priest, basically. Nobody does that on a whim, and Nalthis has a very different opinion on divinity. In my opinion, part of the reason Vasher left Nalthis is something horrible happened to Vivenna, and being an ardent is his way of punishing himself. Deep depression does not exactly lend itself well to heroics. My desire is to see Vasher stick with BioChromatic Breath, for the simple reason nobody on Roshar is prepared for such a thing. It adds a seriously exotic vibe to an already evocative setting and allows Mr. Sanderson more opportunities to flesh out Nalthian magic. However... ...he probably does have some extent of Surgebinding. If there's one thing Vasher excels at it is doing the "right" thing, no matter the cost to himself. That has got to attract some sort of spren...

And that is annoying.

I think each Shardworld in the Greater Roshar each has a single Shard, but, being in the very same solar system, magical "overlap" is natural and unavoidable. Now that I'm reading TheWay of Kings (yay, me!), it appears Surgebinding depends, for the most part, on behavior. With the exception of the Honorblades, Surgebinders earn their magic by exemplifying a specific Radiant Order's virtues---a thing in my mind that speaks of honor, dedication and willpower. Ashyn on the other hand, is in the Greater Roshar system and its magic system involves diseases temporarily giving you magic. Cultivation? "Cultivating" doesn't necessarily have a positive connotation you know.