kari-no-sugata

The Shallan/Adolin arcs had a number of great scenes but I also felt that there were some stumbles, mainly towards the end. These stumbles felt particularly annoying because they felt quite glaring to me and also easy to fix. I might comment on the other arcs later, but for now I'll just focus on the Shallan/Adolin ones:

Part 1: No particular complaints. On the minor side I'd say it was a shame we never found out why Ialai seemed to trust Shallan enough to tell her some things. Slightly more significantly, it's a shame the book never explicitly clarified exactly why Shallan started going down the path she's on 6 months ago - what caused/triggered this? I'd guess it's because her memories about Testament started to come back strongly enough.

Part 2: Very close to perfect but the whole "Shallan tries to find the spy" thing felt a little too low stakes. It mattered to Shallan but not so much to the reader.

Part 3: All the tension that gets built up in Part 2 goes to waste with the gap here. It's a huge gap too - from chapter 36 to 75. About a quarter of the whole book. Adding 1 or two Adolin/Shallan chapters in Part 3 would have been worth it, I think.

Part 4: In Part 2 we see Adolin worrying about about whether he can succeed at all and takes a big risk when it looks like he's about to fail. That had ramped up the tension nicely but the trial itself feels weak - it feels like a farce and therefore not very threatening. In short, the tension I felt from Adolin in Part 2 somewhat fades away when it would likely have been better to do the opposite. I don't want to try to write the book myself and give specific suggestions but I think there were a number of options to do this. On a minor note, I think it might have been a bit better to make clear that Adolin wanted to do this himself and didn't want to rely so much on others (eg Shallan), since Shallan's lack of involvement with Adolin's situation feels a bit off. On another minor note, it might have been interesting to tie Adolin's strained relationship with his father into his arguments - I felt that while I was reading the book it could have made a good argument if Adolin told the honorspren how he still loves and trusts his father despite how he killed Adolin's mother / his own wife.

On the Shallan side of things, the tension is very much there. Shallan is clearly falling apart and it feels like the chull is about to hit the fan. The scene where Shallan and Adolin are cuddling together and then Shallan suddenly goes Formless is deliciously dark and high tension. While Shallan's plot twists and reveals are fairly rewarding I felt that they were undercut by adding too much new much complexity to sort out. For example, the text never makes it clear when Shallan "killed" Testament - I presume it's just after her mother's death but if so then this should have been stated and I think we should have seen more of Shallan's immediate reaction at the time to make it more real and help tie it into Shallan's overall problems.

I also felt that the overall arc was cut a bit short and just felt rushed in general - the last we see of Shallan, she's probably being confined with Kelek. We never see how exactly that bit got resolved, even if we could guess. Imagine showing Shallan and Kelek stuck in the same room but hearing loud noises coming from the courthouse and them worrying what it means. I think it might have been better to end Part 4 with Shallan starting to tell Adolin about Testament.

Part 5: The little scene with Shallan near the end was very welcome and very tasty but it was really frustrating having to wait so long to get it. Might have been nice to hint earlier on in the arc that some more was coming - eg a little scene from Wit (and perhaps Jasnah) talking to Shallan (and perhaps Adolin) and it ends with Wit asking Shallan to pass on a message to Mraize when she calls him. 

On a minor note, since we know that Shallan and Wit at least have been in contact, I'm sure Shallan would have told Wit about the situation. But we never see Wit tell Jasnah or Dalinar about this. That have helped connect the various arcs together better - there's a bit of a risk that Adolin's success might feel a bit superfluous due to other events.

On an overall note, I was somewhat frustrated at the lack of Shallan herself. While I felt that the personas were written a LOT better this time, I also wanted to read Shallan's perspective more - I don't find Veil and Radiant to be all that interesting. It's rather frustrating overall that we went through two books (or almost three since this started from the very end of WoR) with Shallan being in particularly bad mental shape due to being forced to remember her mother's death. That's half the entire series so far and it feels a bit of a waste of such an interesting character.

43 minutes ago, Bliev said:

That seems to imply (a) multiple truths (so at least level 3, but probably 4) and the ease at which they were spoken.  I definitely agree we need  some  more  WoBs about what was happening in WoK. Brandon noted in his newsletter that this chapter was the hardest to get right bc of continuity, so I'm sure he'll have more to say on it as time goes on. 

I thought she'd probably leveled up when Veil merged, which might be why Kelek was so lucid when she talked to him right after (i.e., the Heralds get more sane when they're around a Radiant who levels up/connects to the spiritual realm). I know smarter folks than I are speculating on this, but I think all of her in book progress so far has been with Pattern, but that her bond with Testament is frozen at where she broke her oaths. The reason that saying the new truths didn't repair her bond with Testament is because of her unique psychology: she had disassociated from Testament so wasn't reforging an old bond, and Intent, as we know, matters a lot. So I think she'll have to intentionally repair the bond to revive her completely.

Lightweavers also help others in their presence be closer to their ideal selves - there might be an influence there. Or maybe Kelek is just feeling more friendly due to recent events.

With regards to Shallan's levels / truths etc, I suspect that for any other Radiant order, having two spren bonds wouldn't do much at all. After all, the particular oaths for each level are roughly the same so I suspect if you had two bonds to the same spren order then if you level up with one you'd level up with both. However, "truths" for Lightweavers are unique to each person. This in turn means you could level up with one spren by telling a truth to one but that wouldn't necessarily level up both spren, particularly in Shallan's case when one of her spren is a deadeye. So it's possible that Shallan (as of the end of RoW) has a level 5 bond with Pattern but a level 3 bond with Testament. I dunno if this makes any practical differences though - for example, is it possible that Shallan could get a compounding effect that other orders couldn't, even with two spren of the same order? Or does a compounding effect work for anyone with two spren bonds from the same order? Or are there no benefits except for two Blades? (Hmm, would two Blades also means two Plates?)

Random side thought: given that we still don't have all of Shallan's childhood info, I suspect it might be plot significant in book 5. For example, maybe the BAM gem is hidden somewhere on the Davar estate? Given that Kelek was there for when BAM was trapped, would he have any good ideas?

I suspect the main reason is that young Shallan's bond to Testament was a lot stronger - at least level 3, possibly level 4. Kaladin and Syl were at level 2 at the time. There may be some other factors as well.

It would be interesting to get some clarification on what was going on during tWoK. Was Shallan talking to Testament there or one of the Cryptics hovering near her when she did her Soulcasting? I'd have to guess now that it was Testament.

Hopefully we get some clarification on this with some WoBs.

It would also be interesting to know if Shallan has gone up a level during RoW or not. Would also nice to get confirmation about whether the scene where young Shallan "kills" Testament happens before or after her mother's death - I presume it's after but the text doesn't make it clear.

Adolin: I talk to my sword too. Funny thing is, she eventually talked back

11 hours ago, Kingsdaughter613 said:

While I wouldn’t be surprised if Shallan does visit Scadrial at some point, I doubt she’ll be able to completely eradicate the GBs. Mostly due to Thaidakar (probably) slated to be important in a series set around a century after SA.

Hi, thanks for the reply.

Aren't you implicitly assuming Thaidakar is Kelsier though? I wrote up my thoughts before reading the discussion here and it didn't seem that obvious to me that Thaidakar is Kelsier - after all, why would Wit say "Deal with your own stupid planet" if that planet is Scadrial? But it's a decent theory.

But yes, I agree with your general thrust that just because Shallan might go to Ghostblood HQ to finish them off it doesn't necessarily mean she'll kill all their members. She'd probably be happy so long as any threats to Roshar and her family are removed. And whatever Thaidakar might actually be I suspect it'll be hard to confirm his death.

Edit: A lot of people seem to want to discuss the Thaidakar is Kelsier theory, but I don't think this is the best thread for it so I'm not going to discuss that further here. It has been suggested that Thaidakar has avatars so perhaps we could see such an avatar in SA5? That could help clarify some things. If not, it might be a long long time before we have any clarification.

I've not posted in ages but I independently wrote up some thoughts on the book for a friend before reading any other spoilers or reviews. I figured it might be interesting for others to read them:

One of my problems with OB is that the book ended with a major character (Shallan) in a very vague state, making it very difficult to imagine how she could behave and come across in future. With RoW we instead end up with the plot in a vague state but I think that’s less of a problem - uncertainty in the plot gives you more to speculate about. But is there too much uncertainty? Maybe I’ll need to re-read a bunch of chapters a few times to really try to get a better sense of the situation.

If I’d vaguely summarise my thoughts on the books so far it would be something like this:
tWoK: highly entertaining and almost flawless - there’s almost nothing I think needs changing/improving.
WoR: extremely entertaining but has a couple of minor flaws.
OB: mostly rather average with a couple of good scenes, multiple major and minor flaws. Left me depressed about the direction of the series.
RoW: entertaining but the flaws I see really annoy me, even if they are relatively small. The flaws here leave me quite frustrated as I don’t think it was that hard to fix them.

So what are the major flaws I see in RoW: the main one is that the Shallan and Adolin arcs felt quite rushed - they needed more time / chapters. Just 6 chapters for 2 characters to get their main plot sequence and resolution is too little. They should have had perhaps 2 chapters in Part 3 to make their situation a bit clearer sooner (there’s no real justification to leave them out of Part 3) and a few more in Part 4 to really hammer home the seriousness of the situation.

While we really feel the depths of the darkness of Shallan’s side, it is somewhat undermined by the fact that her fear of betrayal (of people leaving her) was never really explained clearly. A simple solution for this would have been to make it clear that after young Shallan said those hurtful words to her spren, Testament simply vanished without Shallan understanding why and so Shallan feels that Testament left her because she was “bad” when instead it was due to Nahel bond mechanics. (Side note: present day Shallan should warn the spren not to bond children) We can infer this but we don’t really feel it. In short, it undermines Shallan’s plot arc that we have to guess why she was feeling the way she did in the first place - her central problem in the book is set on shaky ground.

The problems with Adolin’s arc are somewhat different but his situation feels a bit too light. While it’s nice to have more positive viewpoints as a contrast, it would have been better to have Adolin’s situation feel more serious and for him to feel more desperate. Kelek and some of the honorspren felt like ‘cheap’ antagonists. This weakens the payoff. It also feels like a shame that Dalinar never found out what was going on with Adolin.

There’s also a couple of minor flaws: Kaladin’s start in the book was a bit too repetitive and boring - I didn’t even want to read him. The overall ending could have done with a bit more follow-up - you feel a little bit cheated and left hanging. Soulcasting is still underdeveloped or explained. The Stormfather feels a bit too much of a gag character at times - alternating between going “that’s impossible!” to “I can’t do that” or “I can’t help you” a bit too much. In Part 1 Jasnah says she plans to make an announcement to free the slaves but there’s no follow-up, nor any follow-up to the slaves Shallan got in RoW (missed opportunity). At times it feels a bit too much like “The Mental Illness Archive” rather than “The Stormlight Archive”. Zahel vanishes after Part 1.

I don’t want to repeat it too much but I think a flaw that I started to see in OB has been carried over - characters rarely think about other characters unless they have an overlapping character arc. But that’s not how real people see things. To give a simple example, Shallan is now Dalinar’s daughter-in-law and sort-of Navani’s daughter-in-law but they never really give any thought about her. It just doesn’t feel natural. On a related note, chapter 12 was great but needed more.

That above complaints out of the way, there’s a lot to celebrate: Adolin finally gets a proper in-depth stand-alone character arc - a big story where it centers on him and not his relationship with others. While it didn’t quite feel right that Shallan wasn’t helping him more, the more she helped him the more that would have undermined his character. Essentially we needed to see that both were capable in their own way, even if Adolin needed some luck. I hope to see Shallan and Adolin become a real power couple in future. It also appears that my dream of seeing Shallan and Adolin traipse around the Cosmere having fun is going to happen.

The development between Adolin and Maya was very nice - Maya has a real “stand up and cheer” moment. It was obviously going to have some payoff and while it was predictable it was the good kind of predictable. Like when you get exactly the best possible presents that you could have hoped for at Christmas. Adolin wasn’t explicitly trying to revive Maya really, he just wanted to treat her well. Every time another spren disparaged his efforts it just made you want to see him succeed even more. But we didn’t get just that, we got some crucial information - that the spren who “died” in the Recreance were not victims. This could be taken as lacking in realism but them becoming deadeyes wasn’t what they expected though and had never been seen before, so perhaps that’s why they never warned anyone.

So where does Adolin go from here? While he doesn’t seem like a perfect fit for the Edgedancers, he’s certainly not bad. It’s not like there’s only one type of Edgedancer - while some were pure healers, others did fight. We’ve not seen that many fighters just yet. I don’t see any fundamental barriers to him becoming an Edgedancer. That being said, I did start to wonder - might we see Adolin bond spren from two different orders? Basically, he revevies Maya completely but before that happens he also bonds with another spren.

Who could that be? How about Notum? I mean, the guy totally stood up for Adolin in the trial and helped put a completely different dimension on the whole situation. Can you imagine Notum wanting to bond someone else? Not really. You can also imagine Notum wanting to help someone who might figure out a way to help revive his father. Adolin might not be the most conventional Windrunner but let’s not forget that both Shallan and Dalinar have seen him as a potential Windrunner - that could be considered foreshadowing. In addition, perhaps the energy gained from bonding one spren would help Adolin “jump start” Maya’s revival. After all, the power-up energy for Windrunners is special. Another possibility of course is that Maya will be fully revived by Dalinar but I feel it would be better for Adolin to achieve it on his own merit.

It will also be interesting to see where the relationship between Adolin and Dalinar goes from here. I can imagine the Stormfather being rather amazed at the possibility that the deadeye spren could be revived. That would also make a huge difference to the war if 100s or 1000s of dead spren could rejoin the battle. You would expect Dalinar in turn to be delighted - Adolin over delivered. I’d also hope that Adolin will gain some confidence from this. Maybe Dalinar will finally see that the best thing for Adolin is to let him be himself.

On to Shallan: We got a lot of developments that I hoped to see and some that I never expected. I had hoped for a bit more progress though. Still that “time to soar” line at the end is very promising - after effectively 2 whole books of Shallan being somewhat morose and inwards looking, it would be nice to see the kick-ass Shallan return and take center stage in her narrative. I didn’t pay to see two supporting acts (Veil and Radiant), I paid to see Shallan and we got precious little good quality Shallan time. This was very frustrating and the last thing I wanted. Hopefully we can get a decent amount in book 5 and finally have a truly epic scene from her to make up for all this.

Her final state is a bit unclear. Did she level up or not? It would feel kinda weird if she didn’t after admitting such a major thing about herself. I’m not sure why it would take (say) integrating Radiant for her to level up unless that comes with some even further backstory for her to admit to. (Talking of her backstory, it seems likely to involve the Ghostbloods somehow). That being said, it doesn’t matter much for this book since it’s not like she needed to do anything after admitting to the truth regarding Testament. Hopefully we can see some new Lightweaver powers in book 5 as there was nothing new in book 4 at all. It would also be nice to get a better idea of how Lightweavers level up normally since Shallan is such a special case.

One curious development about Shallan is that she will be able to use two Shardblades. But since she is not combat specialised that’s not very useful to her at all. That being said, if you’re going to “dual wield”, using a sword+shield combo is going to be much more useful than two swords, generally. I could also imagine this being particularly useful for Shallan - having much improved defence when she’s not especially experienced in combat would be very useful for her. I suspect the real benefit for Shallan is having a double-strength Nahel bond.

I’m not sure if Shallan has finally gotten the message that it’s okay to love herself. I guess she has but again it’s unclear. It has been her most central issue in the general sense - ie ignoring any specific traumas in her past. I can imagine that Shallan could feel like she has to leave Adolin if she has gotten into the state where she is terrified about others leaving her and I might have even speculated on this. Shallan has a lot of imagination and hates conflict (between people she cares about) and I could see her seeking out a place where she doesn’t have to be so afraid. However, it’s not clear how Shallan got in such a state in the first place. Perhaps she started relying upon Veil and Radiant too much when she wanted to hide so instead of dealing with issues properly she hid and the pain/fear started building up. After all, the more that Shallan hides away the more that Formless develops.

It’s also nice to finally get some progress on the Ghostbloods. It’s way overdue. I was very happy to see Shallan stick it to Mraize at the end. I was also amused to see Shallan telling Mraize to vacate Urithiru or else and the “of course you realise this means war” aspect since these are things I had thought about and speculated on before. Essentially, as soon as Shallan did tell Adolin about the Ghostbloods she would have to take this approach. It’s a shame we didn’t get a scene of Shallan saying this and asking Adolin for help. Shallan’s plot for book 5 seems pretty much set - find the gem with the Unmade and release it while beating the Ghostbloods to it. I’m not sure if Adolin will be a tag-along or doing something else. I wonder who Shallan will use that knife on?

It looks like there’s no real reason for Ialai to have trusted Shallan at the start. It’s still unclear why that happened, which is a bit annoying. It also looks like her little notebook wasn’t especially plot relevant and more about seeding the future possibility that Shallan will be going to other planets. I’d like to see Shallan go to Nalthis and be like “A language that is art? Challenge accepted” - would also be a nice place to go for a “honeymoon” with Adolin. Longer term might we see Shallan going to the Ghostbloods homeworld to finish them off for good? Seems quite likely at this stage, though obviously something for the 2nd half of the series.

On a minor note, I wonder if we’ll see any more contact between Shallan and Sja-anat. I doubt Shallan will be unhappy that the Ghostbloods didn’t get a spren. Will Shallan tell Sja-anat about her plans?

Kaladin was a lot better overall, apart from the first couple of chapters in Part 1. Essentially, until Dalinar removed him from combat I could barely stand to even read his chapters. From then on he was a lot more interesting. In a way, his arc felt closer to tWoK - dark and oppressive, but with real progress and a sense of movement, though with some obvious stumbles and mistakes along the way, with a final epic ending. However, the whole SFX extravaganza when Kaladin powers-up and how everyone seems to worship him feels a bit overdone. It’s wearing a bit thin for me - I suspect this is something that will work well for some but not for others.

To me, Kaladin is sort of the “classic” or “traditional” hero in the sense that his parts are more action orientated and more about him climbing up from the bottom. I very much felt this in tWoK. This is not to belittle him at all. What was great about Kaladin in tWoK was how well this character type was done - better than anything I’ve ever seen, by a mile. I also liked how his flaws were almost his undoing in WoR - very much like a classical Greek hero. However, his character/plot didn’t work as well in OB and I really couldn't stand him at the start of Part 1 of RoW but after again being knocked down to the bottom he rises again. And it was great and rather classic in many ways.

I like that it’s clear that Kaladin still has a lot of mental healing left to do. It also makes sense for him to need a sort of veterans association and forum to discuss their traumas. Szeth is perhaps the person who needs something like that the most, except it looks like he’s going to be going on his little quest with Kaladin. Maybe discussing his traumas with Kaladin will help Szeth, and perhaps Kaladin too. I’m not expecting Kaladin to reach 5th level in book 5, particularly since his Chosen One status seems to have been undercut.

Navani was a lot more interesting overall and despite some of my fears it worked out quite well. It was interesting to see all sorts of little nods to real science. That being said, it took a long time for her story to really get going and earlier on she felt more like a “fly on the wall”. I’m not that happy with her becoming the second Bondsmith (seems a bit too convenient for Dalinar) but it’s not the end of the world. Was nice to finally have Urithiru fully up and running at last and to have all that background detail.

Navani’s relationship with Raboniel was interesting. She’s sort-of the Fused equivalent of Jasnah in that she’s very smart, focused, a realist, willing to use underhand methods etc. I’m not suggesting that Navani saw Raboniel that way, just that’s the sort of person she seems to be. Navani finally got some validation and respect but she had to go through a lot of failure to get there. Raboniel initially comes across as straight from the “mad scientist” trope but I was glad she wasn’t developed that way and she felt very real and relatable in the end. Very dangerous still though.

I’ve struggled to like Dalinar since tWoK. He really depends far too much on using force of personality to get his way and gets little pushback. In tWoK he had Adolin to slap some sense into him and give him pushback but since then he’s largely been charging ahead and making mistakes and then complaining about it. It’s not like I found Dalinar annoying overall here and he does seem to be getting better and has belatedly realised he wasn’t as good a father as he thought he was but he does come across as rather entitled when he complains about not understanding his powers and then not doing all that much about it.

Lift didn’t get much in the way of development or page time. In the original plan she was going to go on the Shadesmar trip. I can understand why this wasn’t done in the end - she is definitely too young and unpredictable for a diplomatic trip. Still, I would have liked to see her and Shallan bouncing off each other - something I’ve been waiting for for a long time. Well, given that she now has a grudge against Mraize and Shallan is openly gunning for Mraize, she’d likely volunteer to go with Shallan in book 5 if it means there’s a chance she can get some revenge.

Jasnah got some development, though I wasn’t surprised by any of it. This isn’t to say that her chapters weren’t interesting or involving. However, I don’t think there was much pay-off for her chapters - they’re more like isolated incidents rather than some kind of character arc. Her relationship with Wit made a lot of sense to me but I was surprised that she wasn’t more paranoid about his intentions. I also wonder if we’ll see any obvious changes in Wit going forwards given what happened in the end.

Venli was interesting but she felt a bit disconnected to the main plots. Her personal arc only slightly overlapped with the other characters - it felt like more could have been done here. With the way she ended I’m not sure how much presence she’ll have in book 5 either. Maybe she’ll have much more of a presence in the back 5 books though. That being said, I liked her flashbacks with Eshonai - felt very nostalgic somehow.

Szeth had a muted role. He’s certainly dialling the crazy up to 10 (Ishar is 11). It doesn’t seem that surprising that he’s in such a bad place mentally. I don’t expect him to survive Book 5 but what will happen to Nightblood?

Overall thoughts: RoW definitely worked for me better than OB, at least so far. One of the “problems” I had with OB is that I wasn’t that satisfied overall and as I tried re-reading the book more to try to make sense of it my feeling of satisfaction got worse rather than better. So perhaps my evaluation will change over time with RoW too, but I’m not sure how much I’ll be thinking about it. After OB I felt rather burned so stopped thinking about the series much. While RoW has allayed most of my fears, I still don’t feel that excited about the series. The spark has gone, as it were.

That being said, I nearly cried more than once during RoW and my feelings were definitely running strong at certain points. The book definitely conveyed strong emotions and feelings. Unfortunately, one of them was a strong sense of “so near but yet so far” - Shallan and Adolin’s arcs in Part 4 could have been truly awesome with just a bit more work and it feels really obvious that they were rushed and came up short.

WoR also had flaws but they were more subtle. In terms of pure entertainment I think I would have enjoyed RoW about as much as tWoK if just the bigger flaws had been fixed. So overall, I can’t really say that the series is getting better.
 

I have a lot of problems with OB. I have re-read it, some bits more than others, but while I've been able to feel better about some problems I keep noticing new problems. I'm actually so frustrated that I've decided that it's best that I ignore the book and these forums for a while. I need to move on.

As others have said, it could be prohibitively expensive in terms of Stormlight to create a lethal dose of gamma rays with Illumination. So it's probably not the most effective tool, even if the characters could use it, which is unlikely.

More conventional uses of light would probably be far more effective, eg:

• Sensory overload: simply make a very bright light and blind your opponents
• Sensory deprivation: Lightweave a dark box around the opponent's head, making it impossible for them to see and hear. (Not sure how practical this would be but it doesn't seem to advanced).
• Sensory confusion: create mirror images, displaced images etc

If you want WMD style then:

• Currently, it seems most likely that the Shattered Plains was caused by Radiants (or even a single Radiant). Probably by making the ground vibrate to a very strong sound wave, or similar.
• If it is possible to create lens effects or mirror effects then it would be practical to focus the rays of the sun. The focal length and direction would probably need to be adjusted on the fly for this to really work though.
• Lasers. Would such a thing be possible purely with the Surge by itself, or maybe with a handy gem? Or would more be needed?

I wouldn't be surprised if the Shattered Plains was caused by the Surge of Illumination. There's hints that Honor was doing things to keep the Radiants safe. For example, maybe he was limiting the maximum amount of Stormlight they could use. With Honor now being dead, those limits have now been removed it seems, making the Radiants much more dangerous. If we imagine a single person using the Surge of "Illumination" to create wave-forms in the ground (sound is just vibrating air after all) during a highstorm then perhaps destruction on the scale of the Shattered Plains would be possible. This is just a theory. I'm not suggesting that all Radiants would be able to do this - reaching the 5th Ideal seems to be special in various ways, so it's possible that only a 5th Ideal Radiant would be dangerous on this level. 

As far as I know, it’s the cracks in the soul that’s a requirement for a Nahel bond and how you get them does not matter too much. Then there’s attracting a spren on top of that.

8 hours ago, Willow said:

Yes, I liked this in book 1, and I thought it was a shame this disappeared a bit in Oathbringer, where I think her sudden disinterest in learning scared even herself. I was glad to see the spren drawings near the end of the book.

Shallan came up with quite a lot of improvements with Lightweaving over the course of OB, but it was a shame that a lot of them were simply presented as-is. The only times where we saw her actually working on improvements were her disguises (practising Veil, including voice) and the trick to get her illusions fed by gems instead of herself or Pattern.

8 hours ago, Willow said:

I'm very curious to see why you would say this, as I think a lot of the evidence points to the fact that Shallan is actually quite religiously conservative (I find the different religious stances held by the main cast a very interesting part of the story), especially compared to most Alethi, who are much more hands-off in their worship.

Vedens (and thus Shallan) seem to enforce the gender divide much more, and Shallan mentions long periods of praying and memorizing religous texts. In the beginning of WoR, Jasnah's atheist musings made her nervous enough that she started praying, and in OB (at least in part 1) she holds very strictly to the feminine side of Vorinism (no swords, and she thought it was weird Alethi 'drag their women out on the battlefield and to murder scenes').

I found these differences very fascinating, and while I am not really religious, I am very curious to find out how her opinions on Vorinism  have changed after the events of the past few books, and staying in a different country with people who seem to practice a different form of the same religion.

We see Shallan thinking about religion a fair bit but her feelings did not come across as being particularly intense. It feels like something she turned to for comfort, particularly after killing her father. She makes cultural comparisons and similar in her head but almost never speaks about it and she never tries to push her religion onto anyone and is accepting of those with different opinions and traditions, even if they sometimes make her nervous. I don't get the sense that daily rituals are ingrained into her, for example.

8 hours ago, Willow said:

I think it's very refreshing to see a main female character who wants to be part of things, but who finds a different way to do this, rather than doing this by learning to fight, I was a bit disappointed to see Brightness Radiant, actually.

I think it's quite reasonable for Shallan to learn some combat skills given her situation. Nothing much actually came out of it though.

This is somewhat going back to my impression of Shallan from tWoK but I think it's still fairly relevant:

• Shallan clearly has both a "creative" side and a "logical" side. Certainly her creative side is stronger but she can do plenty of logical type work, even including accounting. She's an artist first, a scientist second. The reason why I raise this is that often characters are shown to be one or the other when such things are emphasised - having both sides emphasised in a single character was something I liked. (This is not to say that other characters are binary - Jasnah clearly has a creative/artistic side to her as well).
• Shallan is self-taught to a significant degree and also wants to learn more. I thought it was a bit of a shame that we didn't see more of Shallan teaching herself in her flashbacks but we did see her doing all sorts of problem-solving. I also particularly liked the scenes in WoR where we see Shallan experiment with her powers. People who are taught by rote are generally quite poor at such activities.
• All things great and small - Shallan can find something interesting about just about anything and everyone. She draws anything and everyone.
• She's a religious moderate. We very rarely see these in fantasy. I'm a lifelong atheist but this side of her was also interesting.
• She's active and willing to take risks, though somewhat crash-tastic. Shallan is often juggling several problems at once and will often make a mess of at least one problem. Life is rarely boring with Shallan - she's certainly living in interesting times.

In terms of skills, Shallan is the most broad-based though the one thing she stands out in (drawing) is generally not considered to be especially useful. Her Radiant powers are the most open-ended as well - make stuff (Soulcasting) and visualise stuff (Lightweaving). In terms of emotion and personality she shows the most variety as well.

She's one of the three main characters in the first 5 books. I wonder what her main achievement will be.

Given how everyone else just magically accepted him so far, I have a somewhat sinking feeling that this whole issue will just be glossed over.

I'd be slightly curious as to whether it'll become public that Taravangian had been the one behind Szeth's killing spree or not. I'd guess that Dalinar will, as usual, simply gloss over this and Taravangian himself would be unlikely to volunteer the information. I wonder if the plot will gloss over this or not.

6 hours ago, taliefer said:

all in all, Brandon Sanderson has easily earned any benefit of the doubt required and continues to be my favorite author. i'll be curious to see if people are still so glowing about this book once the shine of it being new wears off, or if it really is just me in regarding it as the weakest of the books so far.

You might want to see this thread:

42 minutes ago, SLNC said:

sigh

I never said, that Adolin is incapable of introspection, @kari-no-sugata, but that everything just seems to miraculously go well for him, which makes his introspection more whiny, than it should be.

Umm, I'm not sure why you think I'm responding to you. That list of quotes and thoughts is something that I'd wanted to post for some time so I used the opportunity of this new thread to post it. I looked back through your posts here but I can't see anything there that particularly connects them to my post.

You make some good points. I think Adolin would consider what happened at Kholinar to be a major failure but it wasn't highlighted much in the text.

We do see Adolin doing a fair amount of introspection. However, this mostly happens in Part 4 and I think it's rather drowned out by Dalinar, Kaladin and Shallan's big bouts of heavy introspection. So by contrast he comes across as stronger and more stable. I think if we'd seen more of this in Parts 1-3 it would have made Adolin's character arc stronger, I think.

Chapter 83:

Quote

We’re entering an era of gods, Adolin thought.

Quote

The monster ripped apart the guard tower, then with a casual flip tossed a boulder the size of a horse toward them. Adolin gaped, feeling powerless as the rock inexorably hurtled toward him and the troops.

Chapter 89:

Quote

“I’m dead,” Adolin whispered. “We’re dead, and this is Damnation.”

Quote

Adolin stumbled back, horrified, and nearly slipped into the bead ocean. He kept his balance, barely, and found himself face-to-face with the woman with scratches for eyes. She stared at him, completely emotionless, as if waiting for him to try to summon his Shardblade so she could scream again.

Damnation. No matter what Azure said, he was certainly in Damnation.

Quote

Adolin felt useless.

All his life, he had understood. He’d taken easily to dueling. People naturally seemed to like him. Even in his darkest moment—standing on the battlefield and watching Sadeas’s armies retreat, abandoning him and his father—he’d understood what was happening to him.

Not today. Today he was just a confused little boy standing in Damnation.

Today, Adolin Kholin was nothing

Quote

Storms, he thought. Elhokar . . . Elhokar is dead.

Little Gav had been taken, and Dalinar was planning to abdicate. Third in line was . . . Adolin himself.

King.

So here we see Adolin confronted with the first time the realisation that he really could become king, and soon. Also, I was wondering if he was trying to cope with his stress by being helpful to others and pushing aside his emotions? Ie it's not that he was coping with the stress by itself due to being strong but was (somewhat deliberately) using a coping mechanism - keep busy, like we see in Part 1 when he was thinking about how he had killed Sadeas.

Chapter 93:

Quote

Adolin thought again of the jolt he’d felt when ramming his dagger through Sadeas’s eye and into his brain. Satisfaction and shame. Strip away Adolin’s nobility, and what was left? A duelist when a world needed generals? A hothead who couldn’t even take an insult?

A murderer?

Quote

He knew so little, and felt so overwhelmed. So insignificant.

Quote

“I’m being childish, aren’t I?” Adolin asked. “So, forces moving in the world now make me look insignificant. That’s no different from a child growing up and realizing his little life isn’t the center of the universe. Right?”

Problem was, his little life had been the center of the universe, growing up. Welcome to being the son of Dalinar storming Blackthorn. He hurled the sphere into the sea, where it skittered against its fellows.

Quote

The world is the same as it’s always been, Adolin thought. These things we’re finding—monsters and Radiants—aren’t new. They were only hidden. The world has always been like this, even if I didn’t know it.

And Adolin . . . he was still himself. He had all the same things to be proud of, didn’t he? Same strengths? Same accomplishments?

Same flaws too.

Adolin's "Welcome to being the son of Dalinar storming Blackthorn" line is definitely sarcastic. We do start to see him become used to the situation but only in the sense that he realises how ignorant he had been.

Chapter 101:

Quote

King. Was Adolin a king? Surely his father would decide not to continue with the abdication, now that Elhokar had passed.

Quote

More, he felt his own growing worry that he might actually have to take the throne. He’d grown up knowing it could happen, but he’d also grown up wishing—desperately—that it never would. In his quiet moments, he’d assumed this hesitance was because a king couldn’t apply himself to things like dueling and . . . well . . . enjoying life.

What if it went deeper? What if he’d always known inconsistency lurked within him? He couldn’t keep pretending he was the man his father wanted him to be.

Quote

Such a foreign idea. Sometimes you took up a duty that wasn’t yours, but abandoning one? Just . . . giving it to someone else?

Until his conversation with Azura, Adolin had never even considered abandoning his duty (to be king if necessary) but didn't like the idea either.

Chapter 108:

Quote

Adolin breathed in again. With her head pressed to his chest, the air moving in and out of his lungs was audible, and his voice was different. More resonant. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, maybe. In any case, I think I know what it’s like to feel like you’re lying to the world. So maybe if you figure out what to do, you could tell me?”

Adolin hoping for some help from Shallan.

Chapter 117:

Quote

Adolin gasped at the sharp spike of pain, doubling over, feeling blood on his hands. The Fused seemed almost bored as he yanked the lance out, the tip glistening red with Adolin’s blood, then dropped the weapon. The creature landed and instead unsheathed a wicked-looking sword. He advanced, slapped away Adolin’s weak attempt at a parry, and raised the sword to strike.

Someone leaped onto the Fused from behind.

Adolin was completely outclassed here and was literally saved by his sword. He even told the others to abandon him, due to being wounded.

14 minutes ago, Varenus said:

I think that disgust is perhaps too harsh a term, but I do feel some level of frustration with how Shallan's character was handled in OB. In WoR I would have placed her character above Dalinar's to be honest and her story arc in WoR was very well written imo. Now in OB however, I can't quite enjoy her story as much because I felt her character was cheapened by the whole multiple personality thing. And let me be totally clear, I don't mean this to be taken as a statement on mental health problems, just that I don't think it made her character as gripping as it was in WoR. Take the two scenes in OB where Shallan goes undercover to steal food and the one where she sneaks into the revelers. Now compare them with the two scenes in WoR where Shallan finds Taln and the one where she infiltrates Amaram's secret room. The difference is that in WoR the focus is on the act of espionage and the illusions are the means in which the goal is achieved.  In OB I feel that the opposite is true, the focus is on the illusions and the undercover missions are the excuse to use them. Which leads to all the tension of these moments in OB draining away because Shallan's PoV can change on a dime due to her ability to completely change her personality. Like when she changes her personality to mimic the old lady she stole food from. That being said, I still enjoyed parts of Shallan's story in OB(especially the parts with Hoid), but I don't see why the multiple personality thing had to happen. I am interested to how the rest of  her story plays out though.

Also, I wish the whole love triangle thing would have resolved by the end of part 2. I don't care how it ended, but I think it carried on for far, far too long. 

TD;RL: I expected a super spy but got Cusicesh. 

This is starting to drift a bit off-topic but it seems to me that Part 3 was overly designed around Shallan's failure (with the street urchin) and Kaladin's failure. I don't see why they had to spend so many days doing all this preparation. Particularly Shallan - did she really have to use such roundabout methods? Why not just infiltrate more directly? (Well, she almost did with Swiftspren but why even start down this route in the first place?) It's overly complicated. When Shallan does finally sneak in to reach the Oathgate it doesn't feel like an achievement. It feels too much like the real reason for all this is to setup her failure which then leads to Wit stepping in to help. It's a lovely scene but the complete arc feels overly engineered. And conveniently timed to match the Fused attacking and Kaladin bringing in the Wall Guard. It's the old London bus joke - you wait forever then three turn up at once.

Maybe not so much Cusicesh but "Robin Hood, Shallan in trousers"

27 minutes ago, Dreamstorm said:

Per the above, can you let me know where these are?  Sorry for making everyone point out passages!  I'm very curious as to Shallan's timeline. Kind of relevant to the other (pretty gross IMO) thread about hating Shallan, I actually find myself much more interested in her post-OB.  Yes, much of that interest comes from "negative" things she does (the split personalities, her jarring ending), but it did serve to make me more invested in trying to trace her emotional/mental journey and understanding (the best I can) what she is going through.  E.g., I'm much more intrigued with her WoK viewpoints now than in my prior read of the book, as before I saw it more as worldbuilding as much as Shallan-building, but I've changed my mind on that.

Chapter 20 "The coldness of clarity":

Quote

Shallan shivered, eyes wide at the sudden slaughter below. Then she turned and walked to Tvlakv’s wagons. This sudden chill was familiar to her. The coldness of clarity. She knew what she had to do. She didn’t know if it would work, but she saw the solution – like lines in a drawing, coming together to transform random scribbles into a full picture.

Chapter 70 "From a nightmare". Kaladin's POV so not verified but I suspect this is her "coldness of clarity":

Quote

At the next intersection, Shallan turned the opposite way from the one he had picked. Kaladin cursed, pounding to a stop and running after her.

‘This is no time,’ he said, puffing, ‘to argue about—’

‘Shut it,’ she said. ‘Follow.’

Chapter 73 "A thousand scurrying creatures":

Quote

Shallan felt cold as she stepped into the hallway. That coldness . . . was that panic? Overwhelming panic, so sharp and strong it washed away everything else.

This had been coming. She’d known this had been coming. They tried to hide, they tried to flee. Of course that wouldn’t work.

It hadn’t worked with Mother either.

Later in same chapter:

Quote

Shallan forced herself to her feet. Coldness. Yes, she recognized that coldness inside of her now. She’d felt it before, on the day when she’d lost her mother.

So, once when she killed her mother, once when she killed her father, once with the deserters and possibly once when attacked by the chasmfiend (she led it back to the corpses as a distraction).

I think she would have gone into "coldness of clarity" mode at the end of WoR with Mraize except by then she had become strong enough not to immediately go into an extreme panic mode.

27 minutes ago, Dreamstorm said:

I am, obviously, pretty firm in my opinion about what happened at the end of OB, and so I see this as just supporting it - I've seen him write better/more satisfying endings, so I don't think he wanted us on board.  Even Vin and Elend, who had the "cheesiest" romance I've read in Brandon's books so far, didn't have this level of cheesiness (without you I fade, the over-the-top "I'm happy" moment, not to mention the looking into eyes, holding hand, seeing the "real" her moment.)  I think these moments are pretty objectively cheesy.  The fact that I, as a non-writer who could never, ever write at the level he does, can think of minor tweaks which would sell Shallan's ending in OB better in order to counteract this cheesiness (and, honestly, the fact this cheesiness was included at all), and knowing that Brandon worked a lot on the end of Shallan's romantic arc (he says so him self in the reddit post), makes me think we're not supposed to be on board with it.  I'm obviously biased, though 

To be honest, I'm still quite on the fence about what Brandon wanted readers to feel at the end of OB.

It could be said that Shallan's whole life is one of being screwed over by events. Forced to kill her mother. Forced to kill her father. Just when she had a brief bit of hope, Jasnah is "killed", leaving Shallan as the only one left to try to accomplish Jasnah's goals (or so she thought at the time). This also left Shallan literally washed up on shore. She spends the rest of the book practically killing herself to solve the problems and her reward is to be forced to progress as a Lightweaver, pretty much against her will. This leaves her in massive mental pain but events force her to overuse her personas and even directly confront an Unmade. Kaladin and Jasnah basically return with the worst timing and Shallan is more mentally torn than before. Her problems in Parts 2-3 were pretty much self-inflicted though and at least for only the 3rd time ever she had someone simply help her out (the other 2 being Helaran in her flashbacks and Wit in her flashbacks). At the end she is required to do a massive amount of Lightweaving that constantly causes her pain (damaging her soul) and leaves her personas messing her up more than ever.

(This is not to say that other characters aren't screwed over by events. I'm not trying to say Shallan has it worst either but I do think it's so bad that such distinctions don't matter)

So maybe Adolin helping Shallan at the end is a bit of payback for all this...? If so, I don't think it felt particularly believable and it's easy to be cynical about Shallan's situation at the end.

I think it's likely that Brandon wanted to show that Shallan had made some progress but still had a ways to go but I think there's some basic problems: he overdid the "crazy" (it's hammed in far too much that Shallan keeps getting worse) and the solution at the end is too quick, too arbitrary and too vague. And yes, too cheesy.

On a somewhat related note, I didn't like the ending to Warbreaker much either. Felt too much like Vivi was simply tossing aside all her character development to run off with her boyfriend.

27 minutes ago, Dreamstorm said:

I would love to get a WoB with someone expressing this point of view... (not sold on Shallan's ending.)  I also think beta readers can be a biased group (not even about this arc in particular.)  I think they are chosen because they are super fans (correct me if I'm wrong!), so I wonder if they are biased to accept what they are shown due to a little bit of hero worship.  I see the beta readers as more for continuity errors and pointing out where realmatic items don't hang throughout the books (because they know the cosmere so well), but I could be very wrong about the process.  We do know he worked on the romantic arc a lot, and that some of that work was based on beta feedback seeing Shallan and Veil as too separate (beta readers thought there were four people in the triangle instead of three.)  I see this as supporting that these personas are all part of the real Shallan, and that the avoidance/pushing down of any persona's feelings does not lead to a complete decision.

I can't really comment on the quality of the beta-reading (or gamma) since I have no idea what the before/after was and what actual points were raised. I don't know what the beta readers really felt about Shallan's ending and whether anything was changed or not - my impression is that there were no real changes to the ending for her part, at least from the beta-readers.

When I met Brandon on Tuesday I did tell him that the Adolin staring into her eyes thing and this helping Shallan didn't work for me - that it was too big a leap of faith compared to the limited foreshadowing in Part 4.

27 minutes ago, Dreamstorm said:

I had forgotten she was in the Devotary of Purity!!  I'm a little sad we haven't had Vorinism, and Callings and Devotaries, fleshed out a bit more.  I'm hoping since we're set up for a major conflict with the Vorin Church we may see more of this, but given so many potential plotlines bubbling around, I'm doubtful it will have too much emphasis.

In WoR, there was this hint that Shallan was thinking of changing her Devotary. I had wondered if she would try to visit some religious place in Jah Keved (in the capital at least) after the Oathgate there opened. But, nope. Nothing. She gave no indication about caring about her homeland or what Taravangian had done either.

I feel pretty sad that this thread exists at all but it doesn't surprise me as I've seen many posters struggling with Shallan. These are some of my personal thoughts why this can happen:

• Shallan is consistently quite negative about herself - characters who feel that they are justified or doing the right thing are generally appreciated more (whether they're right or wrong) than those who often worry about what they're doing.
• Shallan has taken many dubious actions (stealing from Jasnah, killing her father, killing her mother).
• Shallan is clearly an unreliable narrator. This isn't played for humour either (with a few exceptions).
• Shallan's character does not obvious fit any typical archetype for a protagonist, particularly in a fantasy setting. (ie there's a sense of "what is she even doing here?")
• A number of her actions and abilities are not clearly defined or explained. This can break the suspension of disbelief, particularly if the character isn't liked, leading to claims of a "Mary Sue" character.
• The characters who are more liked in the series are rarely positive about her. I think this is particularly obvious in WoR where Kaladin takes a strongly negative view of her for most of the book. Kaladin is probably the most popular character so his negative endorsement of Shallan doesn't help Shallan's popularity at all.
• Shallan doesn't really get any "wow" scenes (stand up and cheer scenes) or if she does they're overshadowed or undermined by other characters or events. In book 1, her arc ended on a somewhat negative tone, in book 2 it was distinctly negative (her last POV scene with Pattern) plus other things and while book 3 felt like it should be a positive ending for her I don't think it really worked for many readers.

Incidentally, about Shallan's style of humour, Brandon has this to say:

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/188-general-reddit-2015/#e4908

Quote

This is an interesting topic, and though I saw this early, I wanted to wait to post anything because I prefer to let discussions like this happen without author intervention, at least not immediately.

I do I like talking about topics like this, though. Humor is such a curiously subjective thing. There are people who just don't get Pratchett, whom I find the funniest thing ever. Conversely, I don't generally like stand up comedians, and actively dislike some of the comedies that people on reddit love. There are people who tell me that my Mat scenes in WoT are the funniest they've read in the series; there are others who consider them absolute duds.

Humor is more subjective than what we find heroic, tragic, or even beautiful. It also depends a great deal on audience buy-in and mood. This makes comedy one of the trickiest things to do in a book, because some people are just going to hate what you do. My approach has generally been a kind of shotgun blast--I try to include multiple different kinds of humor, stylized to the individual character. That way, if you don't find the humor itself funny, you at least learn what the character finds funny--and learn something about them.

In Stormlight, my personal favorite is the bridge crew humor, as it is distinctly character driven. Syl's humor is a different flavor, based on innocence mixed with sarcasm. Wit is another style entirely, though I usually only let him really go when he meets someone he dislikes strongly. I have to be careful, as he's one of the few characters I allow to stray into the vulgar, and letting him go too far risks letting such things overshadow the rest of the book.

Shallan's humor is based upon regency "women sit in a circle and trade witty comments" humor, of which Jane Austen was a master. Much of what the OP said in his post is correct--Shallan's fault is that she over-extends. She uses the humor as a coping mechanism, and to her, it doesn't matter if it's actually funny so long as she's stretching toward something more lighthearted than her terrible past. She tries very hard to prove herself. And she fails. Often.

However, her type of "wit" is to exemplify what Vorin lighteyed women consider to be amusing or diverting. And there are people who genuinely find that kind of thing to be a blast--though Shallan isn't exactly the best at it yet. (She's not terrible either, mind you. If you don't smile at some of the things she says, it's likely this isn't your type of humor, which is just fine. Hopefully, there will be other things in the books that make you smile.)

Though, that said, I'd love to read passages from other fantasy novels that people on reddit find to be actually laugh-out-loud funny. I know which ones I personally like, but it would be useful for me to see what you're liking. Feel free to PM them to me or to post them here.

30 minutes ago, PhineasGage said:

So I love this idea but I think it isn't quite there yet. I was under the impression that electrum gave you the ability to look at yourself in the future if I understood correctly. Not that it matters per se - presumably because Shallan is accessing the future options another way. Bit of a problem is she is seeing the future (it is of Odium on Roshar after all) even if she is doing so unconsciously.

Just to be clear, I was considering the underlying mechanism behind burning electrum. We do see local variations on common Cosmere themes.

30 minutes ago, PhineasGage said:

I had always assumed that what Shallan was doing was "illuminating" the ideal person possible to each of the deserters. Perhaps she is actually illuminating a possibly future for them if they make the "right" choices to get there? She potentially is "seeing" a long way past a few seconds then. I actually thought this was what Renarin does when he heals Adolin (and Adolin sees a vision of himself perfected). We now know Renarin can see the future - but perhaps Shallan's vision of it is so much less obvious that it doesn't count as a problem?

Or we need to watch her for Odium corruption....

Honor made his visions due to his fears of the future so I don't think we should take anything that in any way hints about possible future directions as being uniquely tied to Odium, especially since we know what burning Atium does. Wit specifically warns Shallan about anyone who claims to be able see the future and includes himself, but I very much doubt Wit sees himself as being tainted by Odium - just that seeing the future itself is dangerous.

I wouldn't regard seeing a possible alternative self or possible future self for a single person in isolation as being able to see the future. More like, seeing someone's "hidden potential". So yes, more like seeing a perfected version of yourself.

30 minutes ago, PhineasGage said:

Regarding Emperor's Soul:

  Hide contents

I still think what she does with the deserters is more like Shai working through a soul stamp. She made them change for a moment but she then has to do other things over and over again to make it "stick" and even then, when she stops interacting with them, it seems many of them leave her service. Only a handful are left I think ? Shai specifically says that the emperor may not need stamping in the future once he has managed to learn and change enough on his own to make it permanent. I think this is what Shallan does though it is much less conscious. I agree that the pictures are somewhat different and may represent a different idea that can still be accessed either via illumination or transformation.

Hmm. I think the drawings themselves are just Shallan using Illumination. However, maybe if the person she gives it to accepts it then maybe that allows them to "transform" themselves, somehow? As in, it's almost like a contract? Ooh! Here's an idea: we know that paintings from Nathis (like those presented to the Court of the Gods) can have effects on people if they're Invested. So, what about a painting of a specific person, something that captures a tiny bit of their soul? For the person in question, maybe a special painting of them can have an effect even if they're not specifically Invested? (Well, we do know that the people on Roshar are particularly healthy due to all the Investiture sloshing around from the highstorms)

Related crazy thought... for when Shallan turned the deserters originally, perhaps that somehow relates to the squire bond? As in, by connecting with them (due to her illusions) maybe a very weak bond of sorts forms temporarily, and that connection can allow Shallan's feelings or desires to seep through somehow? So if she couldn't connect with them by understanding their perspective then she wouldn't have been able to "transform" them? The distinction between the Surges starts to become funny once we consider odd effects like this. I hope Brandon doesn't get too coy about explaining this scene.

30 minutes ago, PhineasGage said:

I agree. I think the coldness moments are straightforwrd dissociations. They are "normal" in periods of stress. I also agree that both Shallan and Adolin wear masks, but I think Shallan's is kept on longer than Adolin's. We see her lie repeatedly to him and still play the same role, even after he has essentially dropped his mask. Given that Jasnah would have included her family in her search for Urithiru, it seems odd to me that Shallan would do so little to get their assistance in this matter - but she goes out of her way to avoid asking them for help. The closest she gets is asking Navani (which fails) but she never seems to broach the actual subject of her "quest" to Adolin, let alone anyone else in the Kholin household. I get that she was worried about revealing her skills as a surgebinder, but I'm not sure that being open with them would have caused her any trouble?

I think you're rather overstating things about Shallan lying to Adolin etc but such things are very subjective. I would say that in both cases they are more open with each other in OB.

Regarding Shallan and Navani, she does try. She tells Adolin that she's tried multiple times and has been repeatedly ignored. Adolin even offers to try to help Shallan with Navani.

Shallan does test the waters with a major aspect of her quest with Adolin (that the parshmen are the voidbringers) and judges from his reaction that the only way she'll get anywhere is if she can first convince Navani based on Jasnah's notes.

30 minutes ago, PhineasGage said:

Um, is he saying what I think he's saying? Am I back to whining about the end or not? 

A large part of the reason why Brandon uses beta/gamma readers is to verify that his intentions carry through... but if we compare such a thing to (say) sampling potential voters about their specific voting intentions there are huge scopes for error based on the sample set size, the sample set composition, the way the questions are worded etc. And even then there can be outliers.

I don't think Brandon would be offended or anything like that if you ever got a chance to explain to him that "such and such didn't work for me". I've seen him talk a number of times about how he felt he got some things wrong.

30 minutes ago, PhineasGage said:

Yeah this is really interesting. To me he seems to be pointing to the idea almost that "opposites attract" - not in a specific sense, but I kind get the idea that he wants spren to specifically be interested in things that they don't instinctively get. Does that make sense? I'm an atheist and find religion faith fascinating because I just don;t get it - and I kind of feel he's aiming at that here? Wait, does that make me a spren? Mind. Blown.

I'm a lifelong atheist but I enjoy reading about Shallan as a religious moderate and also the general discussions on religion in the books. I was actually disappointed there wasn't more religious related commentary from Shallan - given everything that was going on I would have expected more. It could have played into her arc in interesting ways but it seemed to be forgotten.

30 minutes ago, PhineasGage said:

So if Highspren are intrinsically interested in the law, are they essentially chaos spren?

I dunno if all the spren will be like this but we shall see. I did briefly wonder if the mist-like spren on the honorspren ship might be highspren but I quickly decided it was unlikely. I don't know if highspren would be "chaos" - that feels like too pure an opposite. Maybe confusionspren? heh.

This is not a typo but something I felt might be unintentional. In chapter 83 "Crimson to break", Adolin kills a number of Alethi soldiers, eg:

Quote

In the passion and beauty of dueling, he sometimes forgot how terrible a weapon Shardblades were. Here, as he rampaged among the faltering line, it was all too obvious. He killed eight men in a moment, and completely destroyed the defensive line.

(I'm not going to list all the instances as it's not necessarily, but there are multiple ones)

However, in chapter 120 "The Spear that would not Break", we have this:

Quote

He’d spent years fighting Parshendi. He didn’t think he’d actually killed another Alethi since . . . well, he couldn’t remember.

Sadeas. Don’t forget Sadeas.

I can understand him forgetting about events from before fighting the Parshendi because that's been many years. However, it seems rather out of character for Adolin to have forgotten events from a few weeks ago (chapter 83), particularly given how clear it was made that Adolin was thinking about the fact that he was killing people during chapter 83.

It is clear that immediately after the battle in Kholinar that Adolin is doing his "grieve later" thing so maybe he was suppressing the memory of him killing the soldiers as well... but it still felt a bit off for me when I re-read chapter 83 last night. So I thought it might be worth reporting, just in case.

Some new WoBs:

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/175-oathbringer-houston-signing/#e8418

@PhineasGage I know Brandon is a big fan of Terry Pratchett, but I don't think he'd literally use headology with a character like Shallan, though he might well use similar concepts - Shallan does use "social engineering" type techniques. Incidentally, Moist von Lipwig reminds me somewhat of Shallan - they have a number of differences but they also have a number of similarities. They're sort of in the same area, an area that is very lightly populated by protagonists in fantasy.

However, your idea did get me thinking. Brandon has said before that what Shallan did with the deserters is something we've seen before yet something surprising:

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/61-firefight-seattle-ubooks-signing/#e1298

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/62-firefight-seattle-public-library-signing/#e3068

Gavinor is not the only one who gets forgotten. It's pretty much universal that all the characters are only focused on the moment at hand - we generally only see their active thoughts for what they're working on. Unfortunately, that means we get very little "passive" (or background) thoughts. That's relatively normal for fiction but I think Brandon took it a bit too far as we get almost zero interaction or thoughts on any characters who do not have some kind of shared arc or development.

Anyway, moving on...

I wonder who will take care of Gavinor. I doubt Dalinar and Navani will be able to do so officially as Dalinar is supposed to have divested himself of Alethkar. I doubt anyone will want Gavinor to be raised by outsiders, so it'll have to be up to the known Kholins (except Dalinar) to help. The only other high ranking Kholin couple is Adolin and Shallan, though I'm not sure how that would work legally (it could imply that Adolin is next in line to the throne, which he doesn't want). Perhaps Jasnah will legally adopt Gavinor but Adolin and Shallan will take care of Gavinor?

Will be curious to see what happens there...

Regarding the 1st Ideal, different Orders definitely interpret it in different ways:

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/35-arcanum-unbounded-hoboken-signing/#e4163