vividox

I'll definitely second (eighth? tenth?) Goradel. Very minor character with a huge role.

Sure; but I didn't think it'd be 13 months after the first draft is done. Especially since he's having it reviewed/edited as he's writing it this time around. I guess if that's what Peter is saying, it's gold, but I'm still a bit surprised.

Where did you hear a November 2017 release for Oathbringer? According to State of Sanderson 2015, Oathbringer would be first half 2017, Rithmatist 2 would be second half 2017, Apocalypse Guard would be first half 2018, and The Lost Metal would be second half 2018. According to a recent Reddit post, he's on pace to finish Oathbringer by mid-October this year, so he's certainly not falling behind.

After being seriously disappointed with the graphic novel, I sent Brandon an email and read the prose version. Yeah... that's way better. I don't really have much more to say, other than to reiterate my serious disappointment in the canonical version.

I think that may ultimately be my beef, Kingsdaughter. The only other graphic novel I've read was an A Song of Ice and Fire adaptation. It just reads like a poor translation or a Spark Notes of the original prose. The best I can say about it is it's a "faithful recreation". But the prose is radically superior to me for hundreds of pages of reasons, because that's how the story was created and that's where the world-building and foreshadowing and scenery was originally brought to life. I really want to like this, I love everything Sanderson has touched, but this just feels like flashcards of the original plot to me. I'm so incredibly disappointed by this.

Don't really want to start a new thread on this so I'll just ask in here... Do we have any indication that BS is every going to release these in an official novel format? Clearly some of us don't dig the graphic novel format, and while I like the idea of having both for the people who like that sort of thing, I think it would be a shame if the graphic novel is the only official format this is ever released in.

Just finished. I hate to be a naysayer, but I'm really disappointed by this. Full disclosure, I'm not a fan of graphic novels in the first place, but this really is a terrible format for a Sanderson work. Really hard to follow along at times, especially when it starts jumping around between scenes and introducing new characters. The story itself is intriguing (insofar as I can tell from only getting the first third of it - another draw back of the format), I just really hope this gets released as a (polished/official) novel at some point, because this is extremely underwhelming to me.

Is it possible that Besk was created hundreds of years after Kai was born and was given an artificial memory/personality that satisfied the Concept of a person having lived hundreds years longer than they actually had?

I don't think I can choose one. I would never be content with just being the God-Emperor or a Jedi Master or a Fullborn or any other hero of any other fictional series I love. I'd want to be able to play all those parts. So, maybe my Perfect State is being a billionaire in the year 2450 where I am constantly going on Total Recall -style mental vacations or something? I think that would be it. I'd want to pick up all of those rolls like stories that I could come back to when I wanted to. Almost like having a Star Trek Holodeck with unlimited time and no responsibilities.

Sixteen was an incredibly important number to Leras/Preservation, and we see it over and over again. There would be a lot of redacting if there turned out to be more than 16 base metals

Assuming I'm the only one who has powers: All metals Allomancy except copper, bronze, aluminum, nicrosil, chromium, gold, electrum - which would all be Feruchemy. No spikes. Assuming I'm not the only one who has powers: All metals Allomancy except aluminum, nicrosil, gold, and electrum - which would all be Feruchemy. No spikes.

Ah, yeah, totally overlooked this. That changes things significantly...

Agree with all of this. But a TFE society where Atium is unknown and copper is very rare is intriguing, no?

That's a fair point, but if copper was restricted then you wouldn't have as much of a need for Seeker Inquisitors.

And to clarify, I'm not saying that it doesn't make sense that the Lord Ruler didn't use copper instead of Atium. I'm saying the implications are interesting.

Sure, but no more so than it already was. No one knew what the Pits of Hathsin were except for Kelsier and Straff (House?) Venture.

It's not impossible to monopolize copper at all. You make sale of copper outside of the ministry illegal and send your Inquisitors in to clean up any offenders. Any copper mines become the property of the Final Empire and they jack the prices. Perhaps a black market does arise, but those prices aren't going to be cheap, as there is a death sentence attached to them. Hell, copper in the real world isn't cheap. If you monopolized it, it would be very easy to charge whatever you wanted for it.

I had a brainstorm last night on my drive home from work. I thought it was a mildly interesting thought experiment and worth sharing, so here I am. During the Final Empire, The Lord Ruler used Atium to finance his empire by releasing it in very small quantities for exorbitant prices. As we know from the events of The Well of Ascension and The Hero of Ages, there was another, more crucial, reasoning for Atium to be economically limited - it was Ruin's god metal and the Kandra stockpiled the metal to hide it from Ruin. A few thoughts occurred to me: 1) If Atium is so important, why circulate it at all? Indeed, if a particularly skilled Mistborn can give a Steel Inquisitor a run for its money, why would you allow access to it at all? 2) In a total dictatorship, controlling the economy isn't hard and can be done with pretty much anything that isn't trivially common. Any metal could have been limited and sold at exorbitant prices to financially sustain The Final Empire. 3) In The Final Empire, bronze is seen as a mostly worthless metal, as most Misting crews and individual Mistborn and undetectable* anyway. So this leads me to a question: What would The Final Empire have been like if The Lord Ruler keep Atium completely hidden and monopolized the COPPER market instead? Think of what this would do to strengthen his rule: A) Steel Inquisitors (and the Lord Ruler himself) become exponentially more powerful compared Mistborn or Feruchemists, as they are the only ones with access to Atium. With copper at a premium, all of a sudden noblemen are paying a premium to hide their allomantic activity. Story-wise, this would have opened up all kinds of cool house war tactics and premium stealth assaults. C) This would effectively neutralize skaa thieving crews and skaa allomancy. Any old Seeker could discover skaa allomancy immediately, and skaa Smokers would never be able to try burning copper in the first place due to cost restrictions. D) Atium would be completely stockpiled by the kandra and have the fact that no one even knows it exists as an added layer of protection. Now, there is minor glitch in that copper is a trace element. I have no idea if a trace of copper would be enough to maintain a coppercloud for any period of time, but oblivious skaa Smokers would have no idea what they were doing and it would be an ineffective endeavor. Under this kind of a system, a skaa rebellion really has no chance. Kelsier surviving the Pits could have tipped him off on Atium and that could have been helpful, but underground thieving crews probably wouldn't exist in the first place. Now, of course, the question as to why The Lord Ruler didn't do this is an easy one to answer: he was over-confident and didn't think anything could touch him - even Atium. But the idea of a The Final Empire society governed by copper instead Atium was really intriguing (well, as far as the nobility is concerned, the skaa are basically checkmated) to me, so... yeah. Thread.

Back in the old days, that was called "black boxing". I found this particular application to be humorous.

The whole Sazed thing... I keep coming back to this. I just don't think that a nickname necessarily has to shorten the number of syllables in the name. Take for instance: Ike being a nickname for Dwight. A poorer example, if my name was "Flight" I could go by "Fly" (yeah, I know, they are just words not names, but it would work). So for me, Sazed / Saze are still both one syllable names, Saze is just a more informal / nickname-ish way to say it.

MAR-a-see. I've always said SAYZD, one syllable, but now I'm questioning it. me-LAWN.

NECROBUMP! So, are you guys all saying Sazed with two syllables? I've always just said "SAYZD" or "SAZED": one syllable, exactly how it's spelled (the nickname is Saze, which definitely looks like one syllable, so I just pronounce Sazed like the verbification of Saze). My wife is reading through them and yesterday pronounced it SAH-zed, two very distinct syllables, "SAH" followed by "zed" (like Canadian "z"). That sounds so wrong to my ears after the way I've been saying it in my head all this time.

I feel like a prostitute who was also a Chromium Misting would be quite the deadly assassin...

I would love to see a story about a Nicroburst crew member. Something like... they could pretend to be a non-Misting nobleman/woman (or other position of power) who hires Mistings to protect them, but in fact they are orchestrating the whole thing and acting as the ultimate support crew member.

I started in on a OT re-read a few days ago after finally getting done with reading all the Cosmere books the first time around. This is probably the most fun I've ever had in a re-read ever. So many clues sprinkled around and so many things I didn't pick up the first time through. This is fantastic. Alright, thanks for letting me gush. Back to reading.