kari-no-sugata

I guess if the book had all the details we wanted it would be about twice as long. It would be nice to see characters doing more "ordinary" or "boring, obvious but useful" things or to confirm what they're thinking or planning more but clearly Brandon's style is to focus on the "meat" of the story, to keep the pacing good, to generally keep the tension up and so on. "Slice of life" it is not. There's not been many chapters that feel like "breathers" so far. Chapter 13 feels a bit like one and most of chapter 14 but then the tension is ratcheted up again.

A thought that occurred to me last night: Odium himself is not on Roshar itself but his forces are. So I would say that it's not literally Odium himself influencing the guy but his forces - eg one of the Unmade. So... if we assume that the copy-cat murders are something of Odium, wouldn't it also be possible that the initial murders are influenced by this thing as well? (eg one of the Unmade) Eg, if this thing pushes someone over the edge into being a murderer then that also triggers a copy-cat murder. If so this means that this thing is doing something worse than doubling the murder rate. This is not to suggest that the people influenced are all Odium's little helpers now. Using the Thrill doesn't do that.

I'd say that Pattern's response is much more likely to be to Shallan's last words - “Just… please. Don’t go. Don’t die.” It could also be in response to some "lie" though. Shallan has never liked herself that I can remember. Her sense of self-preservation has always been weak though she also refuses to give up.

Despite the huge length of the books, there's a lot of things that we typically don't see. The chapters generally focus on things happening rather than people just talking and so on. A lot of stuff needs to be inferred. This isn't anything new. With regards to the murder, I never thought it was likely that it would dominate the book. The world's ending. There's much much bigger problems. Sadeas's standing should have taken a major blow prior to his death as well. Basically, the number of people who genuinely care about his death is quite small. The copy-cat murder would have also sown a lot of confusion on all sides. If we suspect that Ialai was trying to prepare for some kind of revenge that would have definitely thrown her. But... the scope of the problem is not reducing! The copy-cat murders are increasing the scope of the problem! What that will mean for Adolin is hard to say but it's quite possibly increasing the stakes for him. ie when his murder of Sadeas does come out it could well make things much worse than they would have been otherwise. So actually, Sadeas's murder could up being much more significant that I had originally expected.

One interesting thought that occurred to me is as follows: Would Shallan be better able to diagnose "Shallan's problems" while as another persona? Since her other persona's don't have Shallan's painful memories, maybe she can objectively analyse herself from them? That would be rather interesting... On a related note, I would now guess that Shallan's "coldness of clarity" mode is related to her ability to create personas. It's like a "null" persona with no history, no emotions and so on.

I enjoyed seeing the gritter side of Urithiru too and it looks like we're going to get more. With regards to Shallan, I would say that she was basically "bulldozing" her way through. She knew that she was unlikely to get things quite right and the only way to learn would be to try - it would have been a bigger face-palm if she had got it right first time. She basically failed but pushed on anyway. These experiences should help her do a better job in future, where she doesn't have to directly rely on her abilities as a Radiant and so on. Somehow, I can imagine Brandon thinking how he's successfully lured you into a false sense of security...

We'll have to see how much foreshadowing was packed into that one word...

I'm increasingly convinced that what Shallan is doing with her personas is a typical ability of Lightweavers. However, she is possibly getting ahead of herself. We also see more similarities with Soul Forging: Overall, I would guess that Soul Forging is more advanced and more powerful than what Shallan is doing... but also much more complex and harder to use. Lightweaving creates complex virtual things. Soulcasting creates simple (?) physical things. If we consider that these things likely involve Identity and Connection then what Shallan's doing almost certainly has a magical component. I'll also note that Pattern is not against Shallan doing this: He's practically encouraging her. The obvious danger is going too deep: I think this is where Shallan's Truths come in. They make it impossible for her to forget certain things (unless she breaks her bond completely). Essentially, they are an anchor. A full Lightweaver who has maxed out their Truths can probably go very deep quite safely. Shallan's possibly in danger of going too deep given the number of Truths she has. Or putting it another way - it's probably good that Shallan is developing these skills but there are risks involved. Brandon has compared Shallan to himself (though I don't think he meant in terms of personality really). And what does he do - create characters and get into their head. btw, I have speculated before that Shallan's ultimate lie is that she is not and never was "Shallan Davar" - that in fact there were identical twins and she is the "other" one. Maybe there was the "good" one who was loved by mother and the "bad" one who wasn't but then the "good" one died in an accident and who we call Shallan did a swap, either out of guilt or opportunity or both. I've not seen any evidence at all of this so far but if there is any truth to this then it would probably come out when Shallan's brothers turn up (if they turn up).

I should have seen this joke earlier: Clearly Navani is going to get on just fine with "what if you need to poop" Shallan On a more serious note on Shallan: this is the same person who faked a suicide attempt in tWoK. The same person who Soulcast a ship while out on the ocean. She also has this quote from WoR: Also:

This might explain Shallan's bit from the OB summary blurb: It doesn't say "dark knowledge" but "dark secrets". I'm pretty happy about this. I'd always had a sneaky feeling that Shallan would get involved with countering things like the Unmade.

I've said a number of times that I don't think Shallan considers herself to be quite sane. She jokes about it but worries about it at the same time. We saw a bit of this in tWoK and more in WoR. So personally I see this more as Shallan coming out and admitting to some of her worries directly rather than glossing over it. The fact that she's coming out and saying it doesn't mean that it's a new worry and doesn't mean that she's getting worse in practice - it just means she's willing to admit she worries about it. Well, you can see it as glass half full or glass half empty but it feels more like "Hi, I'm Shallan and I believe I have mental problems" (Alcoholics Anonymous style).

Personally I think the author is the Sunmaker (currently) but I don't think the line about spices is definitive about the author's gender. After all, the person expects that most of the readers will be female - the author is basically saying to the main readership "don't knock it until you've tried it" (or however you want to phrase it). Since the author self-identifies as a heretic anyway, eating a bit of men's food is really minor.

Pattern wants in on the Adolin bromance:

Wow... Kaladin's chapter was about what I expected. Dalinar's felt like one of Brandon's extra smart chapters followed by one heck of a cliff. Shallan... yikes! Okay, I'm going to take a guess that there's something sinister about these copy-cat deaths. I immediately thought that it could be something related to Odium. I'm not sure why any human force would do such a thing, unless they're really really twisted. It would be interesting to know if it's something that only started happening in Urithiru or started before. Is Urithiru haunted or did something follow them? Hmm, either way what Shallan is investigating might be a lot bigger than it first appears to be and I suspect that it'll take some time and I guess this will be the big external problem for her to solve this book. Meanwhile, I see Pattern has joined the shipping wars I'm very glad that Pattern likes Adolin and that Shallan told Pattern she doesn't want him to leave. I'm not the least surprised by this. That Shallan hates herself (I'd often suspected) or that Shallan really doesn't want to lose Pattern. I was a bit surprised that Shallan worries that she can't even trust her own memories. Yeah, she definitely worries about her own sanity. I wasn't too surprised that Shallan would actually stab herself - she definitely doesn't worry too much about her own personal safety.

Attempting to guess the viewpoints in the next 3 chapters: probably Kaladin, Dalinar flashback and a current Dalinar POV chapter.

Shallan's situation was a lot simpler back then and her chapters were also intended to be more light-hearted (to balance out Dalinar and Kaladin's more serious chapters). But even so: in one of their early meetings Jasnah was quite stern with Shallan and that set off Shallan's fear of confrontation to the extent that she needed some time to compose herself. More significantly was when Jasnah killed the robbers - Shallan was disturbed for several days because of that. And finally, she literally panicked and ran when she saw the Cryptics in her drawings repeatedly. She did genuinely fear for her sanity. It could also be said that she was distraught when her betrayal of Jasnah came out. Most of the things Shallan was doing in tWoK were things she was already relatively used to: drawing and studying. Afterwards, she's mostly doing things she's completely unused to.

That's how I saw it too... though I also think she's being semi-serious. She definitely considers herself to be "broken". I think it's highly likely that she doesn't consider herself to be quite sane but has decided to not let that hold her back from achieving the things she wants to do.

Brandon did say "yes" to this question "Did Amaram ever find out who the Shardbearer that Kaladin killed was?" That doesn't necessarily mean he knows that the dead Shardbearer was "Helaran Davar". Helaran could have been using an alias for example and maybe Amaram hadn't dug deep enough. We'll probably at least find out what the Ghostbloods know and it's possible that Shallan could confront Amaram about what he knows as well. Incidentally, Taravangian also believes that Helaran is dead (presumably through his own information network) and Shallan's father heard that Helaran had died on a battlefield in Alethkar, presumably via the Ghostbloods. edit: doh! Ninja'd!

We'll see what Mraize actually does. While I'm sure he would like to convert Shallan for real he might well keep her brothers from reaching Urithiru until he can be certain of her loyalties. I'm not sure if he realises just how much Shallan dislikes how the Ghostbloods operate. If he can avoid showing the side of the Ghostbloods that Shallan doesn't like and provides her with things that she does want then maybe she could be tempted. This is really fascinating. However, there's already been too many "fake deaths" in this series already.

Shallan has an interesting "in tray": Her next and final Truth: Will Shallan become a full Radiant? Or will it take longer? What could her final Truth be? Will we find out the details of what led to her killing her mother? Will her usage of personas make things better or worse? Art: Shallan is doing lots of drawings on Urithiru but it seems she needs a longer viewpoint to properly capture the building itself. She's sort of analysing the inner patterns and seems to be better than most (maybe all) people at placing herself based on this - if/when there is a crisis then this knowledge may come in handy. She hopes to borrow Kaladin to fly her to a suitable position to image the building though perhaps she could use the Honorblade instead? (LOL) We can probably expect sketches from Vedenar (capital city of Jah Keved) and Alethkar and maybe Azimir. Lightweaving: It's not clear if her rank-up at the end of WoR has had any immediate benefit. There is a hint that she's already doing sound manipulation with her voice for Veil but it's a bit vague. She's trying to create images without relying on drawings but it's not reliable yet - this seems like progress though it's hard to say if this is purely a matter of skill/experience or if the rank-up helped as well. She hasn't attempted Soulcasting again yet - Stick trauma!? (just kidding). I'd be surprised if she doesn't attempt Soulcasting again sometime soon though it's hard to say if she'll actually be using it for anything significant (nothing obvious springs to mind). Will she try to develop any Lightweaving "weapons" or methods to use it in combat in some form? Sword-wielding: Shallan apprenticed to Jasnah in tWoK and Tyn in WoR. Her surprise next apprenticeship is sword-wielding with Adolin. How quickly will she pick it up? She considers herself to be poor at these kinds of activities but "Brightness Radiant" seems better focused and her ability to memorise things may well come in handy. Will this have any practical implications later on? (Seems likely). Will we find out anything about Shardplate? Will Shallan come up with imaginative uses for a Shardblade? Working with Radiants and general knowledge on Radiants: There is some suggestions that she has shared knowledge about Radiants as people are now referring to the Orders quite casually, but we've not seen anything directly. While we did see something interesting with Dalinar, so far we haven't seen any general discussion/analysis about Radiant powers. Hopefully we'll see something with Dalinar and Renarin sooner or later - it would be interesting to see her take the role of "teacher" for Lightweaving with Renarin for example. It's not currently clear just how important it will be to gain background knowledge on the Knights Radiant and major events involving them (eg Recreance) and for now it looks like practical knowledge with trump historical or theoretical knowledge. Knowledge about Voidbringers and Desolations: this was Jasnah's goal for Urithiru but so far no knowledge has been found. How significant will this be? Will there be any benefit from knowing how to read ancient writings? This might end up being Shallan's most important role for the book (based on the blurb) but so far it hasn't kicked off yet. Diplomacy: due to her severe lack of knowledge in general, she hasn't shown much interest in helping out but it's almost certain she will get involved with Taravangian and Jah Keved, which also seems first on the list of countries that will open up a portal to Urithiru. It looks likely that Shallan will at least start doing background research on Azir including learning the language, though I guess it'll be some weeks until it becomes truly relevant. Will Shallan make any significant diplomatic contributions or will she simply be an extra face? I suspect her approach might be very different to Dalinar and maybe she'll achieve something by thinking laterally or otherwise simply by getting up to mischief - eg with Lift (who the Azir are likely keeping secret). The Murders: not something she's thinking about much currently, except to give some extra input to Adolin. She might do some background investigations as Veil in the short term. It seems reasonable that Adolin's involvement will come out at some point in which case it would suddenly become very relevant. Pattern and other spren: Shallan's problems with Pattern run deeper than I had expected coming into OB. Their relationship is currently strained though I think there's signs of progress. However, Pattern is very pessimistic about their relationship. My feeling is that she very much wants to have a good relationship with Pattern but doesn't know how to get over the problems from the past. Will we see her (or Pattern) interact with other spren much? I get the feeling that she and Syl might get along well and seem liable to gang up on Kaladin. Her family: she's had no contact with them for some time. Apparently the Ghostbloods took action but we don't have any confirmed details. The Everstorm will surely not help. Will they even meet in this book? Will the Ghostbloods hold them hostage? Might Shallan have to choose between betraying them and betraying those around her (at Urithiru)? Her men: Gaz and co and her slaves haven't come up yet. Are they going to become significant? Will she arrange anything for them - eg status, training, freedom? Will any of them become Squires? Palona and Sebarial: Palona seems to be "mothering" Shallan, which she seems to have mixed feelings about. It's hard to predict if anything significant will happen with these two in general. Will Shallan's lie about them being related become relevant at all (neither side would have any obvious motivation to reveal it). Maybe once Shallan can get her Soulcasting to work Sebarial will put in some requests? If there's significant goings on between the Highprinces, maybe Shallan will get involved to some degree with that? The Kholins: I suspect we'll see some friction between her and Dalinar, though maybe this'll be minor. Shallan is confirmed to have issues with "authority figures" and Dalinar very much is one - I would not be surprised if Shallan's natural inclination is to lightly oppose Dalinar and they might well clash over religion, diplomacy, Dalinar's authority in general and Adolin (once his involvement in Sadeas's murder comes out). If they do it'll be interesting to see what Navani thinks of this. We'll probably see Shallan and Navani working on more intellectual projects together. Shallan sees Navani as her future mother-in-law (currently) so it'll be interesting to see if they have any mother/daughter like conversations. Still waiting to see Shallan and Renarin have some proper conversations - hard to predict how that will go. Renarin struggles to interact with others and while Shallan is good at this in general she also does need time to warm up to people. Relationship with Adolin is a left out for brevity. Will she meet with Elhokar at all? Will we get any resolution to the odd things he experienced in tWoK? The people at Urithiru: there's already signs of religious strains - will Shallan become involved at all? We'll probably see her interacting with them to some degree as Veil but it's hard to predict how significant this will be. In chapter 8 we saw Shallan thinking about being more "knightly" while out in public and I suspect her Brightness Radiant persona will come into play here. The Ghostbloods: Shallan definitely does not like the Ghostbloods and she was prepared to cut down Mraize at the end of WoR. Her family is effectively being held hostage so she won't be able to ignore them. She did briefly find Mraize to be interesting but she generally finds the lot of them to be creepy/scary. What information will they reveal to her? Will her perception of them change? Will we find out their real objectives? Will Shallan find out about other worlds? What will they require her to do? Personally, I would not be surprised if their relationship is very strained and could well lead to conflict. If Shallan doesn't sever ties with them then she's going to have a very strained relationship with Jasnah when she returns. Jasnah and Wit: will they meet at all? How will Jasnah deal with her grown up apprentice? Will Shallan's views of Jasnah change at all? Will we see Shallan follow-up on her previous conversations with Wit? Amaram: Shallan currently believes that he killed her brother. Amaram is currently disgraced and in hiding (though trying to get to Urithiru it seems). If she comes across him, what will she do...?

This is slightly off-topic but I don't want to start a new thread for it: Can anyone remember any passage in the text (or a WoB) that suggests that Shallan hates or dislikes Shardblades in general? I can't think of any and I checked a few places as well. I think it's just her blade that she has a problem with.

As a general comment about chapter 15, it feels to me that a number of readers are assuming the worst. However, the actual chapter itself ends on this note: So as far as I am concerned, the chapter itself ends on an unambiguously positive note and the chapter by itself was net positive for Shallan and Adolin was a net positive for Shallan. It might become a net negative down the line but obviously that's speculative. Pattern is aware of what Shallan thinks about the blade, since she told him in chapter 8: (it would be interesting to know exactly what Shallan wants to be wrong about... it might be related to my speculation below) Shallan's hatred of the blade is not a new thing. We know in tWoK that she had a Shardblade but she had forgotten about Pattern and she clearly identified the blade as something terrible. We also have this from WoR (from when she killed Tyn with it): However, Shallan is able to use Pattern as a "tool" (eg to carve rock in the chasm scene or to operate the Oathgate). It's using him as a weapon where it causes her real problems. It's an all too stark memory of using that weapon to kill her mother. Shallan had built up a hatred of the blade in all those years since so it's not something that's going to go away quickly. Here's some speculation I'm going to toss out: maybe Shallan's final Truth will actually involve Pattern and Shallan saying something like "I don't hate you Pattern in any shape or form and I want us to be friends". Pattern has been expecting Shallan to kill him eventually since WoR. It was presented as something related to the Recreance in WoR but so far in OB it feels like it's personal. Maybe Pattern knew this all the time and it feels like Pattern believes that he himself is a block on her growth. I'd say that Shallan doesn't want to kill Pattern and actually hates the idea: So I think that Shallan somehow needs to come to terms with "Pattern the friend she likes" and "Pattern the blade she hates". Could Kaladin help? Maybe, though obviously he's not available right now. I think Shallan intends to take a visit to some taverns etc as Veil to talk to people in general about her problems with what she's done in the past. Maybe that'll be enough. Or maybe that'll lead to her asking Kaladin similar questions once he comes back. Not just Kaladin though, she could ask others - it would be interesting to see her ask Dalinar if he has any past regrets about killing people for example. She knows that Adolin is an active soldier so she might ask him too. Though whether Kaladin would be able to provide her with answers that would help her is hard to say - while there are some parallels between their problems, Shallan's is much more personal and much deeper. As far as I can tell, it's specifically Pattern as a weapon that she hates and not weapons in general or Shardblades in general. Also, Kaladin didn't want to become a lighteyed and accepting a Shardblade would mean becoming that. I don't see anything to suggest in the text that Shallan considers Adolin to be a certainty in her life. The opposite if anything - she fears that the relationship could fail. This doesn't necessarily change the rest of your argument of course since Shallan clearly wants to make the relationship work. I strongly disagree with your depiction of how "Radiant" works. It's clearly contradicted by the text: Overall I would say that you're being way too negative about the entire scene.

Here's the previous thread: It's about Brandon's Cosmere characters in general so there is discussion about other series, but the initial post itself is safe to read and the details are behind spoiler blocks.

Meta-analysis is basically to accept that this is fiction and to take the author's perspective. I'm sorry you hate it and I can't say I like it that much myself but it is real, though obviously subjective. I don't like it because (as you say yourself) it can gloss over the characters themselves, but it can help in reducing the complexity of the arguments. Brandon has compared being a professional writer to being a "chef" rather than a "cook" - ie what's the difference between a professional cook and a amateur. There's many things but technique and skill is obviously one but it's also a matter of having an intuitive feeling for what works and what doesn't based on experience and in addition for having methods to analyse problems and fix them (or to study why certain things worked). It's also important to have the right ingredients too of course, but if you don't have the skills then the best ingredients can't shine. In general, an author wants their work to be satisfying to read for their audience. It's up to them to decide what audience they want to target - being a successful professional writer doesn't require one to have a large audience, so this is not an argument that all writers have to target the mass market or anything like that. For the work overall to be satisfying that requires interesting characters, plot, world-build etc and also for problems to be resolved in satisfying ways. Of course, that doesn't require every step along the way to be satisfying and there's always going to be some readers who will be disappointed. As part of this, Brandon also talks about fulfilling "promises to the reader" - the topical example of this would be "Adolin is clearly presented as having deep seated issues with romantic relationships. He wants to solve this problem and as the heir to a Princedom he is obliged to so and to do so soon". It is obvious enough that readers can reasonably except this to be resolved one way or another. It's not a guarantee that it would be resolved or that it would be resolved in a satisfying way but that is a reasonable expectation. Maybe it won't work out with Shallan and instead Adolin will be obliged to marry some convenient minor character out of necessity - but that would probably be less satisfying. Or maybe he'll be disinherited and no longer be obliged to marry any time soon - but that would probably be less satisfying. So to be clear, just because I'm using meta-analysis I'm not saying that there's only one possible solution. It's to say "this solution seems more likely than the others based on fundamental story-writing principals". To be honest, I don't mind being wrong - if my predictions were particularly accurate, the story would be boring. So if the author only uses the "obvious" solutions then that has it's own problems. btw, with regards to "you can't rely on other people to solve your problems for you": I agree, but I don't think this is the argument being made and I don't see people arguing that Shallan will somehow present Adolin with the solution to his problems without him doing anything. I'm not sure how you expect Adolin to resolve this problem entirely by himself because a successful romantic relationship specifically requires two people. If Adolin could somehow gain enlightenment all by himself and his next relationship "just works" then that would invite the obvious question "then why didn't he do that earlier!?" (and could also reduce the girl in question to simply being lucky). Shallan would not be able to help indirectly solve Adolin's problems if Adolin himself is not motivated - it's precisely because he's strongly attracted to her that he could be motivated enough to overcome his problems. But if Shallan was the type to dump Adolin at the first sign of trouble then the relationship would likely also fail. So it requires the right combination of characters, but it's still up to Adolin to do his bit. I didn't mean to imply that Shallan's main "Problem" is a lack of confidence in herself. It's one of her many problems. I would say it's quite an important one though - the less confidence she has in herself the less likely she is to attempt to take action. With regards to what Adolin pushed Shallan to do in chapter 15, it's hard to say how this'll turn out but I disagree that Adolin is making it harder for her (It's too soon to say). Pattern himself says "This is good. This needs to be done". On the positive side, it's forcing Shallan to do something painful and difficult which should help her get used to it with time. On the negative side, Shallan is sort-of cheating her way around the problem in this specific scenario. Whether the positives will outweigh the negatives long term is a rather tricky discussion. I don't remember Dalinar thinking about Navani that often when she's not present (or just before or after she was present). Right now, I can only think of two examples when Shallan was thinking of Adolin outside of such scenarios. But then, we don't see Shallan thinking about her brothers all that frequently either and I don't think there's much doubt that she loves them as family. The point isn't to argue that Shallan is love struck or obsessed with Adolin - more that she at least strongly likes him and also probably loves him to some degree. I think her thoughts of him and her feelings when they're together are plenty good evidence:

Thanks for taking the time to research and write this up. That does match my recollection as well. I would point out that for all characters (both major and minor) the POV scenes focus on their personal story. ie while Adolin is more or less a foil character to Dalinar in tWoK, if we just looked at Adolin's POV chapters he doesn't seem like one. If we look at Shallan's scenes when Adolin isn't around we don't see her thinking about him that frequently from what I remember (from memory, the most significant occasions when we see Shallan thinking about Adolin when he's not around are when she's preparing for meeting with him). The same for Dalinar and Navani. That's my subjective recollection at least. So I feel that what we see in Adolin's scenes is relatively typical of other characters in similar situations. I definitely would like to see an extended scene from Adolin's POV with Shallan though...