Jofwu

Anybody interested in meeting up for lunch on Saturday/Sunday?

I never really felt that Azure's decision to part ways was a plot hole, because... 1) She thinks they're on a fool's errand. In her opinion, their plan is terrible. And really it was. If Dalinar hadn't opened up a way, they'd have been screwed. If she thinks they're going to travel a few days in the wrong direction only to turn back around... Why would she go with them? 2) They supposedly know where Vasher is... But he's probably not that hard for her to track down. She might already know where he is. So it's not like she needs to go with them to find him. Heck, if she didn't know she could have just asked them. 3) She also probably knows that Vasher and Nightblood have been separated. She outright explains before leaving that the Honorspren have information about the sword. Seems pretty clear to me that she considers Nightblood her primary target. Not surprising. So even if the others DID have a good plan AND were headed straight for Vasher, that's not her top objective at the moment. 4) Lastly, after abandoning Kholinar I think she really wants to stay and help the Honorspren fight the Fused giving chase. Add it all together and I think her decision absolutely is the most logical one for her character.

The use of "Stormblessed" is a bit of a mystery. We know from Kaladin's flashbacks (I think? Definitely TWoK chapter 1) that he was called Stormblessed before the Shattered Plains. On the Shattered Plains the name doesn't come up until he survived the storm. There's no indication that somebody knew who he was from before, so I think we have to conclude that it's just a nickname that he happens to have picked up in two disconnected places. Presumably the nickname isn't unique. Just a general name for someone perceived to be blessed by the storms, Jezerezeh, or something to that effect? But we've never seen it applied to anyone or anything else, so it's hard to be sure. As for whether Tarah would know him by the name, that's a fair question. We don't know that he had the nickname while she was around, so perhaps she just doesn't know him by it. Also possible that (as explained above) it's not an unusual nickname, and thus she wouldn't leap to the conclusion that THIS Stormblessed is Kaladin.

Don't mean to get too sidetracked by this particular theory, but... This was my thought as well. I think it's partly why I initially dismissed it. I think this is easier to explain away than I first expected though. Kaladin's first name probably doesn't get passed around a whole lot, particularly among commoners. He's probably widely referred to as things like "Stormblessed", "the Radiant", or "the Windrunner." In Dalinar's army, many know him as "Captain Kaladin", but I doubt that first name was widely known among commoners within the first month of their arrival in Urithiru. Without any new information, Tarah probably assumes that Kaladin is a soldier in Sadeas' army. No reason for her to think that the slave turned captain turned Radiant in Dalinar's army is Kaladin. Even if she had some hints about it, she probably would consider the idea as ridiculous--it's hard to believe a person you know is the one stories are being told about. We also don't know when she arrived exactly. According to my rough timeline, only 10 days passed between Shallan spotting her and Kaladin leaving for Thaylen City (then Kholinar). If her arrival was recent, it's very possible she just didn't hear enough details and put them all together in time.

That's a theory. We don't know that this is how Nightblood works, or whether Vivenna's sword would work the same way.

Ooooo, thanks for pointing this out @Song. I've heard this mentioned before but didn't give it much attention. This time I dug up the passages. @Overlord Jebus The important bits I see: I'm totally on board with this theory! Not "looking totally normal". More like "looking totally casual". The point is that she's fighting off Voidbringers while the look on her face says, "No big deal. What's next on my to-do list?"

Vivenna's sword is almost certainly far far FAR less powerful than Nightblood. We really don't have any reason to think that it's significant. They are probably similar in design, but Nightblood is WAY more powerful and dangerous than it "should" be. Not to say her sword doesn't matter. It's a cool application of Awakening. It's a new kind of Shardblade with some pros and cons that set it apart from the spren variety. There's probably more to it than we realize. It seems to be sentient. But that doesn't mean it's anything like Nightblood. Vasher suggested that Awakening a sword light Nightblood would require 1000 Breaths. Brandon has said that Nightblood is FAR more Invested than this, however, and that's what makes him notable.

Oh, I see. Interesting. The idea that he wanted to get Szeth as a tool, and didn't realize they'd use him to do something counterproductive that day. Hadn't considered that and still don't agree, but it does fit. Syl didn't really know what Szeth was just by seeing him though, I think. She found that out during their battle. I'm skeptical spren would know what Szeth carried without having seen it. For example, if I'm not mistaken it took Wyndle quite a while to realize Darkness was not just an Honorblade carrier, but also a Herald. Meanwhile, in WoR you had (presumably) Kalak himself walking the halls of the Kholinar palace complaining about Szeth being allowed to carry the Honorblade. Just seems suspicious to me. They know about Szeth, probably have the knowledge and magic to be involved, and I can see several angles for a motive.

Brandon often has a hard time understanding things from our viewpoint. It's certainly not unusual for him to think something is common knowledge when it isn't at all. I think the "this isn't how that works" comment is one of those things. I felt the "Eshonai's soul" theory was pretty credible, with what we had to work with. Heck, even now I'm not sure I fully understand why he seems to think it's so bizarre. The argument he made was that we saw Timbre already in WoR. This makes me think Brandon believes the theory was that Eshonai's soul somehow stuck around in a spren-like state after she died. (thus seeing Timbre beforehand proves it's not her) But the more popular version of the theory as I recall was that her soul was being displaced by the stormspren, well before her death. We knew very little at the time about the nature of the listeners. Why shouldn't we think that they have spren-like souls which could be displaced? Even now I don't think the general concept is as entirely unreasonable as Brandon seems to think, based on what WE know. Not to challenge the FACT that it simply isn't her and that the theory was plainly and simply wrong. I disagree with the notion that Ulim or a voidspren was behind Gavilar's assassination, mainly because of this quote from interlude I-3: I think this statement is pretty difficult to explain if Ulim or Odium's forces in general were responsible for Szeth. I'm still of the opinion that the Heralds were responsible, because the WoR epilogue shows us that they knew about him and a "voice speaking through the rhythms" seems within their capabilities to me. But that's neither here nor there. Maybe I'm misunderstanding where you guys are coming from, particularly Jebus, but I don't see how Eshonai ever could have filled the role Venli now has. I always imagined that Eshonai would somehow throw off stormform and then run off on a mission to seek peace between the humans and singers. Find the rest of the listeners and bond a spren along the way. I just can't think of a plausible explanation for how should would ever be among the singers as Venli is. I guess I just think Odium would have felt she was too dangerous to keep around, and she'd have ended up as a Fused. Or maybe they'd keep her as a prisoner?

The mistake that @The One Who Connects is referring to: Which seems to align with how Brandon has previously described Cohesion in the past, as opposed to Tension. I assume this Surge is what Dalinar used to repair the temple of Talenel in Chapter 59, but that's not actually essential to the point. Peter Ahlstrom I think this has to be an error in the text. Pagerunner Sorry, which do you think is the error? The order of Surges in the Ars Arcanum? Or the Stormfather's statement to Dalinar? Peter Ahlstrom The Stormfather's statement. Peter Ahlstrom I have verified with Brandon that what the Stormfather said here is wrong and will be corrected in the future. source

I think that I disagree with this. Been working through a reread and Shallan's whole situation has been one thing I keep thinking about. First, I think there's a difference between a simple illusion/act and a "persona". Brandon has explained that this whole development of personas is about a means for Shallan to use magic to escape the weight of the truth that she killed her mother, right? A big portion of OB Part 1 is about showing us how that problem developed. We catch up with Shallan very broken after her last truth in WoR, and then begin to see her use the personas to escape from the weight of it. I disagree that she was doing this before. The whole point really is that she needed a way to cope after what happened at the end of WoR. Before this, she simply avoided confronting the truth, and she can't do that the same way. So in Words of Radiance, Shallan isn't manifesting any personas, I think. This isn't Shallan creating a Shallan persona. (same for her confrontation of Tozbek or the mercenaries by the way) It's simply an illusion with a bit of acting. Veil is the same situation. Veil doesn't become a persona until Oathbringer. In Words of Radiance, Veil is simply a disguise that Shallan uses. I dunno how much this distinction matters... It just feels to me like we're going to far in questioning "who is the real Shallan." I think we know the real Shallan, more or less. As much as we can know anybody. Yeah, she still has some secrets in her past. But I don't think we're facing some big conspiracy where the "real Shallan" has been hidden from us all this time. I DO think there is a "Shallan persona", but I don't think it develops until sometime in OB. She gets so deep into Veil and Radiant. Pair that with the simple fact that she's a teenage girl who barely understands herself in the first place and it's easy to she why she would convince herself that "Shallan" is just another persona to tamper with. Basically she just has normal identity issues, compounded by a very broken childhood, and a very unhealthy magical way of dealing with them. Slight tangent... I don't think Shallan's healing means that she needs to "reintegrate" these personas. I don't think Veil or Radiant (or "Shallan") are splinters of some true identity that need to be fitted back together. They each contain pieces of who she really is, but only because she created them that way. They're just false identities that she created to hide from the truth of her past. I think her healing won't be about accepting "I am all of these people". It will be about... well, about what Wit explained in Girl Who Stood up. She doesn't need to draw all of these personas back into herself. She just needs to confront past. The use of personas will disappear when she no longer has need for them.

I've got a list of interesting tidbits from each Stormlight book, and I'd like to start work on adding Oathbringer to the pile. I called this "Things You May Have Missed". The idea is to try and keep track of things that are easy to miss on your first read, particularly for someone who isn't deeply embedded in the fandom. For example, I noticed last night that Lopen seems to have first noticed his spren at the end of chapter 55. See the existing lists for more examples of the kind of thing I'm looking for. I've got a few already in for Oathbringer. It could be things that are simply confusing or hard to notice, but it could also be things that Brandon has added or confirmed via WoB. Notice that I've already got a good list going for Cosmere-related things. Check that before proposing more of those. Don't bother mentioning things like "Azure is Vivenna". I'm primarily looking for things about Oathbringer specifically.

Has this particular quote come up in the conversation so far? I haven't seen it and I think it's a major clue as to what's going on here, even though I can't quite make sense of it. This is Dalinar's flashback where Evi arrives with Adolin and Renarin (ch. 52) So Gavilar had some kind of "plan with the Crownlands" apparently? We know that Gavilar was concerned by how the Sunmaker's children tore his kingdom apart, so it's not surprising that he would be concerned with how Elhokar would play along with his cousins. We also know that he wanted to set up a united Alethkar, not just "10 princedoms with one in charge". Maybe Gavilar had plans to turn the Crownlands into a sort of... District of Columbia kind of situation? Almost like an 11th princedom for the king to directly rule over (though probably different in some ways). Some way to set apart the King from the Kholin Princedom in a more significant way. Perhaps Gavilar simply died before he was able to complete these plans, leaving Elhokar with a giant chunk of land... but one that simply wasn't developed enough to require significant attention. Doesn't feel like a perfect explanation... Elhokar could have devoted time to seeing that plan through instead of meddling with Dalinar's land. Maybe someone else has a better thought? Either way, I think there's something important buried in that quote.

The schedule is up!

Not sure an "a" is necessary there. Imagine he's a king and he said, "Are you king?" --- Edit: Chapter 78 (Tor hardback page 767, very bottom): Missing Oxford comma?

For whatever reason, I figured that it WAS a princedom before the Kholins conquered it. I imagined that with all the trouble provided by Rathalas, Gavilar disbanded it and took it for himself. To bring the number of princedoms back to 10, you'd simply need one of the other old princedoms to be split as Gavilar took over. For example, maybe Sebarial and Bethab each seized power from a single highprince, and divided the land between themselves. There are may some problems with this, but I thought it mostly worked... Until @Willow pointed out Adolin's comment about how Elhokar doesn't own land. Feels like a continuity error. If not, I guess the best explanation is that the land is owned by local lords who simply don't have a highprince.

Something small but interesting that I just noticed. OB chapter 27, Shallan notes that the doorways of the barracks are marked by "archaic Alethi numbers etched unto the stone." Two things: (1) This implies the number glyphs vary (at least somewhat) from one nation/language to the next. (2) The ancient Radiants favored the symbols of (presumably) Alethela. (Maybe because Urithiru was largely a military base? Could do lots of speculating on this...) Edit: Thinking about that a bit more, I was assuming that the modern numbers we know are derived from these archaic ones, but that's not necessarily the case. Another possibility (one that seems more likely to me) is that "archaic Alethi numbers" may refer to some ancient system which has since died off in favor of the modern numerals. Something like Roman numerals for example. So my second point above still stands, but the first isn't necessarily correct (at this point in time).

I don't think they're trying too hard exactly. To me at least that implies Shallan is trying to force something she doesn't really feel. I think one could argue that her feelings are shallow, but I don't think we can say she's forcing them. She IS a ~19 year old girl who's about to get married. It's pretty normal to say cringey mush like this in that situation. Brandon's not trolling. This is real life folks. Real life in all it's cringey glory.

I'm really digging this idea. Would love to see Ishnah fleshed out and pulled into this role. One of Shallan's (many) flaws is how she undervalues the people beneath her, I think. Ishnah is in a place to (1) give Shallan a female shoulder to cry on, (2) take part in Ghostblood shenanigans, (3) teach Shallan about darkeyes, and (4) help Shallan realize how she has neglected her guards (and servants, etc.).

If the entry doesn't have a date, then it's the date of the event. (so look in the right sidebar under the event title)

Ah! Well, quick Google search makes it seem like there may be some ways to convert svg to csh? Svg's are a vector format as well, so that's what I'd expect. Beats having to trace them from scratch maybe? In any case, good luck.

Welcome! What do you mean by this exactly? I'm not an artist. Coppermind has .svg's of them all. Search for the articles of the specific orders, or the Glyphs page.

I disagree. In Stormlight it's definitely not a HUGE theme, but I'd argue that both Dalinar-Navani and Kaladin-Adolin are friendships we've seen develop. It's a big theme among Bridge 4, as you pointed out, and they're a significant part of the story. Kaladin-Moash is a particularly big part of the story. More generally, concerning male-male friendships in Brandon's books... Raoden had Galladon, Lightsong had Llarimar, and Wax has Wayne. That's three very solid examples of male protagonists with a significant friendship on the side. Throw in Kaladin-Moash/Bridge 4 and that means nearly all of Brandon's novels with a male lead give that character a friendship. The only oddity is Mistborn, perhaps.

Good catch!

Tor hardback page 191 (ch. 18) Maybe it's just me, but that second comma seems out of place. --- Another thing that was maybe supposed to be intentional but I'm not sure... Tor hardback page 281 (ch. 27) Feels like that "where" should be followed by a question mark.