Seerow

Oh man now I'm imagining a world where instead of adolin getting super powers, Maya does instead. What do you expect would happen with a spren gaining more from the reverse bond? I am imagining her manifesting fully on the physical realm as she would appear in the cognitive. Could be potentially awesome.

I tend to agree with you. While I do read everything, and am happy to catch the little easter eggs and crossovers, I do have reservations about how central some of these crossovers are becoming. When every single time someone posts asking about reading order, new readers are told to go read Warbreaker before going into Words of Radiance, that feels wrong to me. As far as Hoid is concerned, I just don't like him. I enjoyed him in the role of Wit, but would have liked it just as much in that role if it was an entirely new character. The more he reveals himself to other characters, the less I like him. Similarly, the way 90% of cosmere discussions come back around to talking about how cool and awesome Hoid is... it just rubs me the wrong way. He feels like an overpowered DMPC in an otherwise great D&D campaign. I suspect we are in a minority opinion on him though.

It just occurred to me that in their initial interaction, she was posing specifically as a horneater going to a Wedding. The boots running joke had been going on so long I forgot about the original context.

The defense of "that makes him manlier than any of us" had me rolling. Also Jasnah savagely taking down Amaram to his face was a major comedic highlight for me, doubly so for how unexpected it was.

My mistake. Spoilered

I am unsure. I feel like it would be less taboo than cannibalism. I would guess probably closer to how homosexuality was viewed around 100 years ago. Though I'll probably catch flak for that particular comparison.

This is my thought exactly. I am not sure why there is so much confusion over who the 5 named characters are. It seemed pretty obvious to me that one title was going to each of the 5 Major Characters from the first set of 5 books. We know for sure Captain = Kaladin, Spy = Shallan, Stonewalker = Szeth, and King = Dalinar. We also know those 4 are 4/5 of the main PoV characters from the first 5 books. It only makes sense that the 5th is Eshonai. That's even before finding out the 5th is the Traitor, and the arguments made way back on page 1 that make her fit the blurb. It turning out to be Renarin or Moash or any other character would make very little sense in the context of the greater series.

A man reading is considered a little bit more than odd/eccentric. It is something considered almost taboo by the culture. If it was just an eccintricty thing, then Storm Wardens would not have a problem learning to read/write in women's script. Instead they are basically developing their own separate language from glyphs to be able to read/write without using the alphabet that is considered actually reading/writing. That is a huge amount of hassle that nobody would bother with if it wasn't a very serious taboo. There were other things pointing towards it being a major deal as well. Consider that Dalinar/Sadeas kept Gavilar's final words hidden because they believed they indicated he had to been literate. I believe it was specifically even referred to as a "Shameful secret". This isn't to say I buy into some secret untold history of the world that only women know and collude to hide from the men. But it does feed into men getting less information with less detail than women, further diluting their potential education beyond what even the lack of being able to read would be expected to enforce.

This was never confirmed, but my ongoing theory is that this was Elhokar's protoradiancy manifesting. We already know he's been seeing strange shapes in mirrors, similar to what Shallan saw before (re?)bonding pattern. We also know that a Surgebinder can have issues with Shardplate. Most definitively we have Kaladin getting his stormlight leeched from him into the plate helm he is using as a boxing glove during the Battle Royale, but it seems to me completely reasonable that a surgebinder with no other Stormlight on him might accidentally suck stormlight from the plate they are wearing without being aware they are even doing it. Especially in a life or death situation like being attacked by a Chasmfiend.

Except for the part where the one Honor Spren we know literally says "rules don't matter, only what's right". I find it hard to believe that an honorspren would be that far removed from what actual Honor is supposed to be.

What about the unknown metal that was used on Lessie? That seems to me to be the strongest contender besides Atium, seems strange to leave that out.

He's obviously Wayne in disguise.

I preordered a signed copy that still hasn't shown up. Luckily, I also preordered the ebook version, so got to read that right away. Still wondering why my preorder is running so late though.

The real question is if any of those are compatible with a Kindle. I know Kobo is not, I strongly suspect iBooks is for apple devices only. Are Google Play ebooks able to be placed onto a Kindle? If not I'm stuck waiting until Amazon gets their rust straight. Cause I do not want to read even a novella on my phone or desktop.

Seriously, Adolin has been in and out of how many relationships? Yes he likes Shallan, but he's liked all of the hundreds of girls he's courted. If Shallan breaking up with him caused him to break, it would completely shatter my suspension of disbelief.

Not sure where you get Intelligent and Scholarly. This is what we know about them: Also their second oath, courtesy of Lift: Both are rather in keeping with Adolin's characterization, IMO.

This right here is what I was really looking for in Shallan's flashbacks, and what left me most disappointed when reading WoR for the first time. On rereads I've grown to appreciate what we did get far more, but I really hope that even if we never get another Shallan Flashback chapter, Brandon can at least fill us in a bit more on how Shallan actually developed as a child radiant via WoBs or something. Though something like a spinoff novella would be ideal assuming it is a story worth reading and not something best summed up in a few sentences.

Elhokar stated that he stopped seeing them when Kaladin showed up, which was before Shallan came around.

Haven't hit the upvote quota, but did just find out that downvoting is limited to 2 a day.

A wild thought just occurred to me while reading this thread, but I'm missing an important detail. Do we know how long after the Last Desolation that the Recreance occurred? The Last Desolation was around 4000 years ago, but do we have an estimated date on the Recreance? I ask because one thing we have speculated on in the past is how the Oathpact held for so long with only a single herald, when it seemingly held for a far shorter period of time in between the main desolation cycles. Like 100 years or so between desolations, maybe even just a few decades, rather than thousands of years. Yet somehow now the Oathpact has held for thousands of years. Is it possible that the reason for the Recreance was the Radiants finding out about the shattered Oathpact, and them choosing to sacrifice their spren to reinforce Odium's prison, and holding off the true final desolation as long as possible? It would provide a good motivation to do so, but is subjecting thousands of sapient spren to effectively eternal torment to buy humanity time. The Radiants break their oaths without necessarily being terrible people; the spren have reason to hate all humans, and we get an explanation for why the Oathpact lasted so long (presuming the Recreance occurred somewhere during the time period it would normally take for a new desolation to come).

There's a whole world of difference between getting drunk at a party and getting so drunk you pass out at the table to the point that you are completely unresponsive in an emergency. The vast majority of people don't get to that state when drinking. Of course, I suspect had Dalinar been a more moderate drunk things may have ended worse. Imagine drunk and stumbling Dalinar rushing to Gavilar's aid with no plate. We probably would have lost them both.

I think the "Radiant without Shards" comment makes it pretty unambiguous that Stormfather won't become a blade in any way shape or form.

Even beyond that, I noticed on my reread that Kaladin actually seemed pretty inclined to trust Dalinar early on in the book. It wasn't until Amaram came back and turned out to be close friends with Dalinar that Kaladin started getting really broody about the whole thing. When you look at his attitude in that context, it makes sense. Dalinar was supposed to be different... but then so was Amaram way back when. Amaram turned out to have a very black soul beneath the facade he kept up, and Dalinar being so close with him instantly raised a lot of questions as to whether Dalinar was the same despite all proof to the contrary. I feel like if Amaram hadn't shown up on the Shattered Plains then the story would have progressed in a very different direction.

I am pretty sure the weeping is included in the 500 day year. When talking about the weeping, I remember there being a line that says something like 'the weeping with no highstorm is part of the 1000 day 2-year cycle...". Which strongly implies that the two weepings of the two years (one with a highstorm and one without) are included in the 500 day year, and not something outside of them. On an unrelated note, it is crazy how symmetrical even the calendar for Roshar is. 20 hour days, 5 day weeks, 10 week months, 10 month years, 2 year cycles. I know it's intentional and it has been noted before, but it is really cool.