Spreadness

you need to read runelords. I just halfway through the first book, and I'm telling you (as a brandon sanderson fan!) - in terms of magic system and it's implications over the world/settings, I've NEVER read anything close to what I'm reading now. especially the implications/consequences of that magic. thus said, I'm by no means saying that this book is better then the way of kings (its not...) but there are some pretty insane ideas weaved in there. moreover: judging from the fact that the sum of all men was published in 1998, and that farland was sanderson's writing teacher - I can see where sanderson's seed for the allomancy (and especially ferochemy) came from. you guessed it - from farland. there is also one scene with the main antagonist - raj ahten - which blew my mind away, and in a part of that scene he slaps some poor queen and demolish half of her face before sending her crushing through the window, already dead from the runelord's mighty slap (you remember when the runelord first met kelsier...? ).

off topic: I find it very cool that mr.sanderson seems to be inspired by some of the jewish mythology and names ! adonalsium = adonai (hebrew term for god, elohim, literally translated "my lord"). aharietiam = aharit hayamin (the end of days). and the general concept of something big and divine shattered into small pieces but keeping some of it's whole charactaristics - the kabala say that all of mankind souls are shards from the first man's soul, which was shattered...)) I also just remembered sephiroth from final fantasy VII (which was named after the 10 sfirot - 10 planes of existance). first time I noticed this, I kind of laughed at myself for looking for exotic, latin-like names for my own campains & world-building. shouldn't look too far away...

it doesn't make sense, since shallan summoned the shardblade when she was little and unaware - she did it on an instinct. nobody tought her (as far as we know...) about the ten heartbeats thingy. my explenation for the shalan case: pattern was still "numb" in terms of mind. he was almost mindless back then, thus - summoning him as a blade is the same as summoning a dead spren's blade. the problem is with our main man, son son vallano... and since brandon is very thorough in his wolrd building and magic systems, I trust that we don't know enough about the honorblades yet...

I tend to agree with car'a'carn. even though that in the end - what really mattered to me was that szeth did survived eventually. I don't care how dead was he. undoing (as in: completely destroying) this character would have been an immense loss to this saga.

thank you so much, friend edgedancer! I'm not sure i like this one better then the original . It felt both overwhelming and wonderful when szeth was actually dead and completely revived. I guess it's still the same, but brandon wanted to prevent the shardblade from actually severing his soul for future consistency? (maybe dying like that meant to be final...I guess). anyway - I'm so happy he eventually kept szeth. this is one of the most interesting characters in those books and ever. he deserves his own book!

I read deep into the night yesterday, and finished words of radiance at about 3 am. this is sanderson's best creation so far, in my humble opinion. what a splendid book! both SLA books showed an immense progress in his writing, compared to mistborn. I was wondering about something...(spoilers ahead...) at the end of the book, we understand that all of the shardblades are actually sprens. those that are bonded to a someone (creating a radiant, eventually) are alive, while the other shardblades we knew throughout books 1-2 are dead sprean. the 10 heartbeats are what requires to revive them when summoning them in blade form. I figured out that when kaladin summons his blade (syl): if she's around (probably meaning that she's semi materilze in the phisical plane) - it takes an intant, while on other "similar" cases, such as shallan's pattern - the 10 heartbeats were still needed...wondered if i got it right. what intrigued me more was szeth's honorblade. since syl told kal that the honorblade got NO SPREN...how come szeth always needed those 10 heartbeats, ever since we meet him for the first time in the legendary prologue of way of kings? I heard that there is a version of the book with something changed (I got an earlier UK copy...) where can I read of the specific changes? is it regarding the issue I just wrote about?

LOL! yeah, I've noticed...got me back to the times I used to play LAN games (clans...i just thought this ookla is some sort of a clan here ). thanks! will check it out.

thank you, sprenniest one! :-)

thank you! I refuse to refer to myself as a "writer" - that one needs to be earned. I am a man who loves to write stuff . that love was neglected for the sake of other passions I developed throughout the years .now I simply know that I'm in love with creating, whether its by dancing, by photography, or by writing (and the last one tingled lately in a way that couldn't be ignored). I never heard of NaNoWriMo up until a few weeks ago (Brandon was posting about it, and still updates with word count every day ). I figured out it's a big thing in the US! during that time I've been messing around with ideas, world-building and wrote a few scenes just as practice, to a total of about 25K words (but it doesn't counts as long as it's not an actual novel!). hopefully next year . I'm writing in my mother's tongue (hebrew) but do plan to translate when I'll have something tangible and worth-while. how is your NaNoWriMo going?

thanks you! :-)

Hello everybody! my name is shay, 36yo, and I'm from Israel. been in love with fantasy for the past 26 years or so of my life (including playing D&D, game books, tons of rpgs, and growing up reading a lot of fantasy books, such as the dragon lance chronicles/legends, deathgate cycle, riftwar saga, WOT, to name just a few). Lately I've been readin sanderson's books (mistborn trilogy, and now I'm on book 2 of the stormlight archive). having lots of fun! writing is one of the biggest loves of my life, among dancing and photography. I've published a short horror stories book in hebrew (my second favorite genre), though it's been quite a while since I wrote the last of those creepy things . hopefully, I'm on the verge of getting back to writing, diving head first and deep into the art and doing what I was meant to do. watching brandon's interviews (and his youtube clip - "writing of epic proportions") gives me a lot of strength and motivation, and I also learn a lot from his podcast, writing excuses. thanks, brandon! <3 I'm attaching a tribute that I create a while ago, my version of a steel inquisitor (photographed, edited and modeled by myself - don't worry about my eyes, it's steel in great shape ). cheers, s.