Kingsdaughter613

Hatred + Cultivation... Darwinian Evolution? Survival of the fittest...

The power itself acknowledges T as perfect. All indications are that they are in perfect tune. We’ve only ever seen T emotional OR dispassionate due to C’s boon/curse. Now he is both passionate and brilliant. Which is utterly terrifying...

I hid it. The other person mentioned something from a later moment and I got confused over which part events took place in. Thanks for pointing it out!

Odium’s, from what his eyes indicate.

Maybe? They were the Faithful; you can tell from the sails. This was when the Faithful controlled Numenor. You may be right about the name; Atalante may refer to the fall itself. It’s been awhile since I read it. I disagree though. The Faithful are shown as pure heroes in the Silm story, and as pure villains in the other. So which is true? Somewhere in the middle. (Got to love those fools who think Tolkien can’t go dark. Some of the stuff he does is GoT level dark - he just uses fancier language, lol!) I think a lot depends on how much Kell knows and how directly he’s involved in what’s going on (not nearly as much as he’d like, obviously.) We also need to see more GBs who are not Mraize. We really just don’t know enough. We STILL don’t know what they want!

It’s something like matter and antimatter destroying each other, I think. https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10302-antimatter-and-matter-combine-in-chemical-reaction/ Also, we seem to have found a way to combine those... which may mean you can meld investiture and anti-investiture.

I’m not sure ‘enemy’ is the right word here... What do all three become? War + Passion + Science? This... sounds dangerous...

Yeah, especially if you’ve seen him in the other books. Though Kell did get the jump on him once (not that that ended well for the Survivor but...) Actually, the two people we’ve seen trick Hoid are now antagonists of this series. Ooof. No, there’s no reading order I know of. I usually do it as follows: Events in the square, then read those events in SH. End of TFE; read about the Well. WoA with regular interludes regarding what’s going on in the Well. Read events at the Well in any order. Read end of WoA; read SH until it overlaps HoA. Read events in HoA, then read the overlap in the SH. Read the con/theft all the way through. After Elend sees Leras, read the Ascension in SH. Continue HoA and read overlap in SH. Read second Ascension in any order. Read until the final fight ends in HoA, then overlap with SH. Go back to HoA for Ascension 3, then back to SH for the finale. Finish HoA; read SH epilogue. It works pretty well.

Mercy: Life is so hard... Everyone will be better off dead! (Goes off to euthanize the Cosmere...)

You know what really helps the pacing? Reading it with SH interludes at the appropriate points (this is how I read the series now). So, I think there is a disconnect between characters and reality here. In WoA (which had a LOT of the same issues) the characters ended the book knowing they’d messed up and were in trouble. In this one WE know they’re in trouble but THEY don’t. Which may mean that book 5 goes even worse than HoA did for the heroes at first, as they have no real information on what’s actually going on.

There’s also: create a situation where Dalinar unwittingly breaks the bargain (such as by choosing a champion and putting him/her where one of Dalinar’s allies will unwittingly attack) Nothing says the champion has to be Rosharan - or can’t have access to other planets investiture. Going by Wit’s story... telling the champion to ensure a draw. Picking someone Dalinar won’t fight. Noting the technicality of a contest and choosing something that is not a fight. Picking a Spren as Champion.

Or she willingly surrenders her power.

Spook, possibly. Not that his parents were great. If you consider Kell to be Vin’s real dad then he has outlived her by several centuries. (Kell is 100% Vin’s dad. Blood does not make family. Vin only had one actual parent in her life; I do not count her egg and sperm donors as parents.) MeLaan’s ‘parents’ are around, if you consider the earlier Kandra gens parents. Marasi has both parents, I believe. Allik may have parents. Susebron may have both parents still; we know the GK just retires after the new one is born. We don’t know if Lightsong or Blushweaver’s parents are around. Lopen might have two. Cord did; we don’t know Rock’s fate yet. Szeth did until this book; it seems Neturo is dead now. Some of the Elantrian kids had two parents. And there were Kiin’s kids. Also his step-kids, if you count him as the father (which I totally do). There’s also Ais’ daughter. TLDR; side characters are more likely to have living parents, as are the children of main characters.

Hardly powerless, especially when newly Ascended.

It reminds me a little of WoA, where the good guys win their empire. But at the last minute Vin releases... something. But Elend gains superpowers and they DID win. And you don’t really find out what Ruin is or what they’ve done until book 3. It always felt narratively odd in WoA, too. But if you read WoA and HoA back to back it feels a lot more fluid. I actually tend to read the end of WoA as an extended prologue to HoA. I think part five in this book may end up acting more like an extended prologue to KoW and be better on reread with the full front five. It ended by upping the stakes on multiple fronts, but in a way we won’t really feel until book 5. Both sides can perma-kill now, and have access to bombs. The GBs are declaring war on Shallan and co. and are heavily implied to be run by a character we KNOW she isn’t ready to deal with (and will be around for awhile yet). We discovered during this book that Odium wasn’t as powerful as we thought, only for someone more dangerous to take it up - and the characters have NO. IDEA. And Cultivation, whom we’ve assumed to be an ally, is now in league with the enemy. And the heroes don’t know that either. This stuff falls flat here because we don’t see the effect. But it is going to be a big deal in book five, at which point these setup moments will be showing their effect.

Ati wasn’t fighting Ruin having been completely subsumed by it. Rayse’s situation is actually more analogous to Kell as Preservation. The power and the vessel were not functioning well together and the former wanted to escape the latter. But everyone, including us, assumed it was the former case and not the latter. We were wrong... but now we ARE dealing with a Shard in tune with its Vessel. And it’s a new Vessel - which means T is still basically himself and mostly free to act.

The way the threat is phrased sounds more like direct involvement, even if the methods are indirect. The way Mraize then describes Thaidakar, it sounds like he doesn’t really get involved in the nitty gritty details of what goes on on Roshar. Shallan is already fighting a god. She’s not going to be concerned about someone who can’t even be bothered to personally direct his subordinates. The more I think about this, the less likely it seems that Mraize was talking about Thaidakar at all.

If he’s not going to show up, then it doesn’t matter how powerful he is. Shallan isn’t going to have to deal with him, making the threat non-sensical. Also, as a writer, that’s EXACTLY the kind of misdirect I’d do. Have a character make a (wrong) assumption, but have the other characters react to that assumption in a way that seemingly confirms it. This way I can surprise them later. I wouldn’t be surprised if we do meet Iyatil’s master in book 5 - and it isn’t Thaidakar (who is still stuck, it seems). Although I also suspect we’ll meet his ‘Avatar’.

Does it make any sense to threaten someone as follows: “You’re going to have to deal with my master’s master, who thinks we’re so irrelevant that he can’t even be bothered to visit the planet!” It really doesn’t make sense. It seems far more likely that Mraize is talking about someone else and Shallan mistakenly assumes he’s talking about Thaidakar.

That’s what I wanted to do: show you that these scenes can be viewed differently. You’re right in some ways: Adolin’s arc isn’t about him. It’s about Maya. When you care for a child with those disabilities your growth becomes deeply tied to theirs. Maya’s growth is Adolin’s growth, if that makes any sense. It’s not about him; it’s about her. Admittedly, it’s very hard to explain or understand without experiencing it. It’s both the most heartbreaking and the most awesome thing in the world.

You can be a lower ranked apprentice of a high ranked master. Or Mraize was exaggerating. Or Shallan was assuming; Mraize doesn’t mention Thaidakar until she does. In fact, considering what he says next, I think that’s fairly likely. You don’t threaten someone with a person who can’t even be bothered to visit you in person. In fact, the way Mraize speaks, it almost sounds like they’ve never met in person. I doubt Kell would appreciate his team being spoken for by anyone who’s not him though. And he REALLY wouldn’t like being spoken for.

Have you ever tried telling an idiot neurologist that your daughter recognizes you and reacts to you, while they insist that you’re wrong? It took three years, when she started smiling again, that they finally admitted she could recognize me. The way Adolin acts with Maya vs. everyone else is basically my life with my girl.

This. I had the weird thought that O could pick someone like Mraize, tell Dalinar, then arrange for Shallan (or other) to run into Mraize BEFORE she finds out. She attacks him... and Dalinar’s Oath is void.

We don’t actually know the GBs structure. We know Iyatil is fairly high ranked and Mraize answers to her. That doesn’t actually tell us Mraize’s rank; he could be something like an apprentice journeyman. Scadrial knows. Kalak has not been to Scadrial. We don’t know how much he actually knows. It would only take Kell one year to become the GB leader...

I think it’s because we already knew/guessed a lot of what was revealed. And Adolin does have an arc. It resonates very well if you are a parent of a cognitively delayed child who just wants the world to see her for who she is, not what they expect her to be. I can’t even begin to say how grateful I am to Brandon for writing those scenes. Adolin doesn’t have the arc you want. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have an arc, nor that it’s an unrelatable one.