Radiant Returned

In SH the reason Kelsier is unable to fully take on Preservation's power is because he has such close ties to Ruin. While I understand Ruin has been manipulating Kelsier his entire life, a lot of Kelsier's "accomplishments" ended up helping Ruin, and Kelsier's personality is more closely similar to the Intent of Ruin than Preservation, the actual POWER that saves Kelsier's cognitive self and keeps him alive is the power of Preservation. So now that he was in the cognitive realm wouldn't he be more closely tied to Preservation? Maybe I'm missing something or undervaluing how big a connection Ruin and Kelsier have. If anyone has a better explanation I'd love to hear it. 

The people of Era 1 Mistborn are not very Cosmere aware at all. They don't know about other worlds or gods, they don't even know who Ruin is until WoA and Preservation until I think HoA. So I don't think there would be any hints in there about other Shards, no one on the world knows enough for that to happen. 

Era 2 Mistborn however...

18 hours ago, Amaror said:

Personally I would say no, despite being a huge Sanderson fan. The price is just too high for the amount of content that is offered here. I do recommend reading the prose version though, it's really really good. 

How did you get the prose version? I know you're supposed to email the site and ask pretty please but I've done that twice over the last couple years and never got a response. Is it a matter of persistence or just luck?

14 hours ago, Naurock said:

Lol, true story bud. I quit reading GoT cuz of the 6 year wait for the newest book. I'm kinda new to the Cosmere and have only read SA books and Warbreaker. Working on Elantris now.

I love SA, but Mistborn is just as good in my opinion (at least the first 3, the newest 3 aren't quite as epic but I still enjoyed them a lot). I'm re-reading Warbreaker right now, re-read Elantris earlier this year, would highly recommend you reading Mistborn after that. 

If you're just a fan of SA, I wouldn't worry too much about him finishing this series barring a tragic accident/illness. But him finishing the Cosmere completely has me a little worried. Right now he's averaging about a Cosmere novel per year since 2006, of varying word counts (most are in the 200Ks, Mistborn Era 2 are 100Ks, SA are all deep in 300K), so at that pace he might be able to finish the whole thing by the time he's in his 70s. But those numbers might be misleading because in the future he won't a) be finishing off another author's series but also b ) probably won't be able to churn out 200K word novels every single year like he did in 2006-09, because now he's a lot more famous and has side projects and therefore less time to write. 

Regardless, it's not really anything to worry about right now. All of this is way down the line, all the current book series he's working on will almost certainly be finished, it just might take the first cycle of SA another decade at most. 

There's a WoB where he RAFO'd a question about the early settlers of Elantris because he said that that history is very important to future books and will be explained in time. So rest assured that there IS an answer, but probably not one we have enough clues at this point to figure out. 

Yeah they're called Perpendicularities, ways that Worldhoppers cross between realms and worlds. In Scadrial you have the Well of Ascension, which is really Preservation's Shardpool, on Sel that pool is the Shardpool of either Devotion or Dominion, and on Roshar it's not confirmed whether the Horneater pool is a shard pool, but I definitely think it is since Rock says Hoid came out of there. Which means it's probably the Shardpool of either Cultivation or Honor. 

I actually didn't catch the SoS pool mention, that's awesome, I'll have to go re-read that now lol. 

One is from Sel, one is Scadrial, and one is from Taldain. Grump is definitely the only one I can tell who it is without already knowing. 

His outline was for him to publish a new one every year and a half/two years, but so far it's obviously been 4 years for each book. And the break between the two SA series will probably be at least 5-7 years for the intermittent Mistborn series and other series. So after 2017 has Oathbreaker, probably be 2025 before Book #5 is published, and from there might be as late as 2030-2032 before he starts working on the second series. So at 5 books, 4 years each, I could see it being 2050 or so before it's all done. 

And for people who enjoy the entire Cosmere collection, there's still the final Mistborn series and possibly Dragonsteel books. So, theoretically, the whole sequence could take until 2060 to finish. At which point Sanderson would be 85 years old :/

The price was definitely very steep for the enjoyment I got out of the book (I live in Texas, paid about $27 for it, so almost as much as a hardcover novel). It was interesting even though I am not at all a fan of graphic novels. Really, it kinda depends on where you are as far as how much a fan you are of Sanderson. I have authors that have written stories I loved, but then they wrote other ones I disliked so I was okay with not buying them. To me, Sanderson is one of a handful of authors I will buy anything they write because I'm invested in the author and his work and want the full collection. 

If you're in that group as far as Sanderson works go, I'd buy it, because it does (and will in future installments) have interesting Cosmere bits here and there. But if you just enjoy Sanderson's works individually and want to know if this independent story is worth the cost, I would say no. 

I love the romance in Elantris, it's probably the most directly correlating to the actual plot romance story Sanderson has written. I don't know what other Sanderson books you've read since you said this is the first time you've read Elantris, but Mistborn and Warbreaker both also have great and interesting romance stories, though they differ in many ways from Raoden-Sarene. 

I feel your anticipation, I can barely wait for Oathbreaker. I also really want The Lost Metal and the Elantris sequel to be out soon. 

That being said, in the last 12 months we've gotten 2 Mistborn novels, a 10th anniversary edition of Elantris, and a graphic novel of White Sand. Waiting for books by guys like George Martin and Patrick Rothfuss make waiting for a Sanderson novel a cake walk. 

Leras was already dead by the time Vin ascended. He and the power of Preservation are not necessarily the same thing, and in this case, Leras has been dead for a while, Preservation the power has still lingered with his personality. 

16 hours ago, Delightful said:

Edit: Looks like B&N don't exist in Australia. Wonderful. I've emailed them :/

I might be wrong, but I would assume that any book bought from the U.S. that has to be shipped as far from Australia is probably going to be pretty expensive. 

The cost for the leather bound Elantris was definitely worth it in my opinion. I know it's confirmed that he'll do these editions for at least Mistborn (keeping with 10th year editions will be in 2016, 2017, and 2018) and Warbreaker (in 2019), and he said at some point he'll decide whether to do Stormlight Archive (the 10th anniversary for WoK would be 2020). 

Personally, I hope he does it for all of his books and Elantris sold so well that I think he will. This has essentially become my annual Christmas present for myself. I wonder if he'll move any of them up considering there won't be any Cosmere related books in their 10th Anniversaries in 2022 or 2023.

Sanderson's last comments on The Lost Metal said 2018, whether it's early, mid, or late 2018 I'm sure depends on how quickly he's writing these other books so there's not really a way to guess. But almost certainly not in 2017. 

On 7/6/2016 at 11:47 AM, Asasasyn in White said:

Thanks for replying and helping me finding this out.

But I just find out, that there is one metal that Harmony doesn't know and has Hemalurgic properities.

He is probably weaker, I don't know it for sure. 

You're referring to the "Trell" metal? As someone has said, the Era 2 Mistborn series has explained a lot of this or at least given hints. I don't want to give spoilers for any of those series, I don't think I'm allowed to here? But Shadows of Silence indicates that while there is a force (probably/possibly a Shard) with agents on Scadrial who is trying to influence events there, that force is not currently residing on Scadrial, only Harmony is. Harmony is the only Shard who's power is Invested in Scadrial.

I think in the piercing scenario, you certainly wouldn't regrow the diamond, no one is that convinced it's part of their body. The hole for the piercing would probably not heal because you see yourself as having that piercing, but the actual jewelry you would have to replace. 

I love the Era 2 Mistborn books, though maybe slightly less than Era 1. I think that's because they're less "Epic", but they're still amazing books. My personal opinions of each of them: /

Alloy of Law: Fun short story. It's very stand alone and it isn't on par necessarily with any of Sanderson's previous novels but it's still pretty interesting. It introduces you the world and fans of Mistborn like me who had all the pent up questions of what the world would turn into get interesting and awesome answers. 

Shadows of Silence: Weirdly, while scanning through the comments it seems like people aren't huge fans of this one but I LOVED this book. Marasi became a much better character, as did Steris, and Wax became a great protagonist while Wayne is always the essence of awesomeness. The ending blew my mind, I think my heart literally broke in half, which has happened only a handful of times in Sanderson's works. 

Bands of Mourning: Actually didn't enjoy this "quite" as much as SoS. I really need to re-read it, some parts of it that had major Cosmere and world implications blew over my head at the time and I didn't like the 360 the series took all of a sudden. 

Secret History: Fantastic. Only eBook I've ever bought, and it was more than worth it. 

Go to a Barnes&Noble. I went to my local store and they had one shipped in within a few days.

24 minutes ago, DSC01 said:

All I can add is that, on April 11th, I asked Peter Ahlstrom (via Twitter) about whether White Sand has a canonical place in the chronology yet, and he said, "Not yet, but I suspect it's after Elantris." Personally, I thought that White Sand must have happened a considerable amount of time before Elantris, but clearly I'm wrong about that. 

This is the most valid thing I've seen posted on this subject so far. No one is doubting that Elantris was the first chronologically before White Sand was published, it's just a bit more blurry now because Sanderson and his team haven't definitively stated either way. To me, it makes the most sense that White Sand was before Elantris because of the Khriss/Ars Arcanum factor, but according to Peter that's not the way they're leaning. 

So I'm going off the assumption that the current chronological order is: 
1. Elantris
2. White Sand
3. Mistborn Era 1
  etc. 

At least until further clarification. 

14 hours ago, The Young Bard said:

No, Elantris and Dragonsteel are the first two chronologically. The in-world explanation for the Elantris Ars Arcanum is that it was written retrospectively, well after the actual events of Elantris.

Is there a WoB confirming this anywhere?

Just finished White Sand Volume 1 and I'm trying to figure out where chronologically it fits. On the Coppermind (Chronology page, under Speculation) it states that White Sand takes place sometime after Elantris, since Elantris and Dragonsteel are supposed to be the first two series in the timeline. 

This doesn't make sense to me. We know that Khriss is a native of Taldain so I'm speculating that during WS she is not ultra-cosmere aware and worldhopping yet. But we also know that she write the Ars Arcana, and there was one in Elantris, along with a map from Nazh. So she had to be cosmere-aware during that novel? 

Count me as another person who had never read a Graphic Novel/Comic Book before this one, and it's definitely not my thing. What made it even more frustrating is I can tell that if this was in a novel setting with Sanderson's full attention and editing process etc, it would be epic. The characters are cool, the world and magic is insanely unique and intriguing, but I couldn't get into it at all because of the odd pacing and style. I really wish he would write this as a novel and sell it like he has all his other projects, but guessing that that's never gonna happen now that they're becoming graphic novels.

I'll probably keep buying them because, heck, it's Sanderson, and I want all the Cosmere tidbits, but spending almost the same amount of money on this as I did on Words of Radiance when it came out is mind-blowingly frustrating. 

Edit: I have NOT read the prose version, maybe I would have enjoyed this more if I had. 

I have three different Barnes and Nobles promising to call me when they stock White Sand. Reeeaaaalllly hoping it's today. 

I didn't really start discovering the Cosmere until several books after Elantris. So since then, I've gone along with everyone that the pool in the Arelon mountains that Elantrians use to escape their suffering is a Shardpool for either Devotion or Dominion. BUT, I just finished re-reading, complete with annotations from Sanderson's site, and he had this to say (granted, the annotations are from 2006)

Annotation for Chapter 61-1

"I'm honestly not sure what the pool is or how exactly it fits into the theory of this magic system. It was added as a plotting device, as mentioned earlier, and therefore was never tied directly to the cosmology or theoretics of the world. When I do a sequel for this book, I think I'll try and find a way to tie it in. For now, however, it's kind of a loose thread."

Now, is there definitely a possibility that Sanderson developed more and has now decided it is a Shardpool? Yes, especially because in Hoid's bonus scene (wasn't in my mass pub edition, only in my new leather bound) he jumps through and theoretically transports like it's been shown Shardpool's can be used for. But I find it interesting that that's not 100% certain, or if it is that it wasn't intentional by Sanderson at the time of writing it. Which also means the voice that talks to Raoden COULD be kinda the remains of one of the Shards, but not necessarily because that wasn't Sanderson's original intent. Any ideas?