Zedseayou

I 100% thought Jasnah was dead. I just went back to close-read and my conclusions are that the fake-out is very strong. It seems people are focusing on 2 reasons for thinking she is not dead: we know she can use Stormlight to heal and the missing body. The lines are: It seems obvious in hindsight, but I felt no real reason to question Shallan's thought here. She's just been locked in her cabin for a while and there is time for the men to have removed the body. Not all of them needed to be banging on her door and she then waits for Pattern to look around; it's been at least a minute or two. Additionally, we don't know that Jasnah can move fully to Shadesmar, unless we made some guess from "Transportation" in the Ars Arcanum. The unreleased chapter even shows her being surprised when it happens. Re: Stormlight, I don't think we really know that Stormlight can heal this much yet, and Shallan certainly doesn't. The biggest feats of Kaladin healing from WoK that I recall are surviving the storm and on saying the second oath at the Tower. Neither is directly comparable to the level of injury + loss of consciousness with a knife to the heart, plus Jasnah is apparently very good at faking because she is seen "staring sightlessly". Again in the unreleased chapter, Jasnah is surprised and must reassure herself that she can heal through it. On topic, obviously this probably puts me on team Gavilar is dead. in addition to the points made before (he wasn't invested and couldn't become a shadow) I think it just isn't narratively necessary. Gavilar's actions are the setup for the Archive; I don't think he should remain material through the ensuring events.

This seems hard, given what Zahel said about the Fused relying on Odium's Investiture to stay alive. They'd need some kind of replacement, unless the Fused are fine with ending their immortality and giving the land to the singers.

I do think that the exposition is likely to be plot relevant, but this section seems much more likely: Of course Nightblood is around, but it's entirely possible they can figure out something that kills Fused without killing literally everything like Nightblood. What I find difficult with the part you're talking about re: Maya and the Sibling: to me at least, is that this doesn't tell us much about how you kill a spren. The key thing is that we don't understand deadeyes, as you noted; what exactly is missing? So far we just know that investiture comes alive if you leave it. My sole hypothesis is something to do with Intent, which Zahel also mentions. If you shape Investiture into a Type I, perhaps its sentience is tied to its Intent? This could make some sense: Truespren can lose their sentience if they shift their Intent to be focused on the oaths, and then that is lost Seons might have an intent of being attached to a master, and if that person became inaccessible because of the partial Shaod, their Intent is not fulfilled? Returned have an Intent to achieve whatever Endowment returned them for? No idea about the Sibling, though. Its Intent is presumably something to do with the tower but that would reverse the chain of events I previously had (something happens to Sibling -> tower breaks)

I am generally in agreement that Ishnah makes the most sense as the killer of Ialai/GB spy. I am not so convinced that she is Iyatil, despite the chapter 13 Mraize mention. I don't see Ishnah being Iyatil as critical to the idea of Ishnah being the spy, nor does it feel narratively important/necessary. In particular, the payoff seems low; most of the interesting aspect of the twist is Shallan discovering a traitor/spy in her squires rather than who that spy is. It's not so much more enticing to have the secret identity of the hidden spy character be... a different character with a previously minor role who we don't know much about. Unveiling a mystery to discover another mystery. My sole nit/question is this: Unless you don't mean Radiant squires, the timeline is off here, right? Nominally, Ishnah saw Shallan use the GB symbol, and then approaches her in the tower (servant disguise) pretty soon after. Vathah doesn't manifest any Radiance until Kholinar, after the entire training sequence. Of course, Mraize knows Shallan is a Radiant at this point, but would they know that people close to her could become Radiants too? Perhaps just based on analogy from the Windrunners...

I've been rereading myself and found this thread, so I thought I'd drop in with some thoughts I had on rereading! This is my first careful reread and I've been catching so many things that I hadn't really noticed before. I think I'm doing the right chapters here... 74. Striding the Storm. In the cubby on the chasm wall, Kaladin's POV: I hadn't noticed this before and didn't find much on a cursory look. This is not how the Stormfather is usually described (as a sky-spanning face). Is this something else? It almost feels like it could be Fleet (from Wit's story when Kaladin is in prison) but striding and running don't match up exactly. What is this thing? I-13. A Part to Play It's been shown a few times in Eshonai's POV that Venli defaults to "the songs" when questioned on where she is discovering things about the stormspren and stormform. I read this as implication that Odium sent this information to Venli somehow. This surprises me because IIRC from Oathbringer Venli seems fairly confused by everything that is happening; also how much ability would Odium have to influence things before the Everstorm actually came? I-14. Taravangian Referring to Shallan: What exactly are they talking about here? My first reaction was that they are talking about Surgebinding given the context, but they don't actually seem to know that Shallan or Jasnah had bonded spren. This would also imply that they thought Helaran was a Surgebinder - unlikely since he used regular shards. Perhaps they are talking about secret society stuff instead? I totally missed that Taravangian was also apparently present at the Kholinar feast! Feels like just about everyone and their mother was there that night. That is, unless this was done by spanreed or something (don't think Gavilar would do that, though). Piques my interest since I don't think we'd seen that from any of the prologue chapters and because it presents a fascinating contrast between Dalinar and Taravangian in their approach to the conflict. 76. The Hidden Blade I finally picked up for myself that Dalinar is not holding Taln's Honorblade here, especially based on later reactions. This is still crazy to me though - how could Bordin not realise the blade had been swapped? Where did this blade come from? 77. Trust I really like how Shallan compliments Gaz for getting her a copy of Words of Radiance and how he reacts. Details like that make me more understanding of Gaz's redemption arc; on the first read I was so caught up in Kaladin's POV it was hard to see Gaz differently (and similarly hard to empathize with Elhokar, honestly). 80. To Fight the Rain When Elhokar comes to Kaladin for advice, he says: This is an amazing little bit of foreshadowing. Despite the Oathbringer epilogue I had always kinda assumed that Elhokar was about to bond an honorspren, probably just because that's what the bridgemen had been doing. But it was actually a Cryptic, and this little section that I previously thought was just about paranoia is actually incredibly similar to Shallan's sketching of the symbolheads in Kharbranth, before she accepts Pattern. I understand Elhokar a lot more this time around, though I am now curious what truths or history he has that would attract a Cryptic. I'm not too sure why they'd shy away when Kaladin was around though - because of Syl? 84. The One Who Saves Even knowing it was coming I was amazed by just how much Kaladin goes through before he can manage the Third Ideal and Syl comes back. Messed up leg, the guards attacks, Moash's brutality...end of the race, indeed. 86. Patterns of Light I gotta say, I'm not a fan of the revised Kaladin/Szeth scene. "For reasons he could not have articulated" feels especially thrown in and is basically required to avoid a rewrite of the entire sequence, where Kaladin is very clearly trying to kill Szeth. Not to mention that I'm not sure how compatible it is with the entire losing Syl/Elhokar sequence, since Syl doesn't seem to care that he wants to kill Szeth. I do perhaps agree that it aligns better with Elhokar since they establish that Szeth was "following orders" rather than being well-intentioned and trying, but in that case why can't Kaladin just kill him? 88. The Man Who Owned The Winds A couple things from close reading: Is this hint from Mraize the first that we hear of the present-day Skybreakers? Shallan barely acknowledges this, which does make it harder to keep track Mraize also uses the word babsk, which is an interesting choice since I don't think we've gotten any Thaylen hints about him before. This almost feels like a particularly direct precursor to Shallan splitting personalities - he directly asks for it. There are hints about it throughout the book, of course, but "Let Veil come to us" is a major shift in how Shallan thinks about the persona. "Mother calling Shallan one of them" - does this mean Surgebinders? Why would she know about, let alone hate surgebinders and what exactly would Shallan have done already to manifest that? The Lightweaver progression must be very different than the Windrunner one, or perhaps Shallan is just unique. 89. The Four What's the plague in the Purelake? Has that been mentioned before? Dalinar also mentions having drawn in Stormlight before, but I couldn't figure out where in the Narak battle this actually happens. There doesn't seem to be a smoking gun - perhaps just the way he fights Szeth is particularly graceful or fast? I wish Renarin talked more. They seem to just not explore what he can do very much until the reveal at the end of Oathbringer comes through; it feels a little sitcom-like where this prong of the plot is totally dependent on people just not talking to each other. He reveals he's a Truthwatcher but none of them ask about this experience discovering that, or anything that might give them a hint about how Glys is supposed to look/what powers he's supposed to have? Epilogue: Art and Expectation I like that Wit gets the epilogues. It always makes them intriguing. Is there something Invested or otherwise special about the Ryshadium that surprised him? I realise that we don't really get to hear what Jasnah was up to the whole time in Shadesmar. She made quite a disturbance, was able to talk to the highspren among other things. Perhaps she was biding her time in there to put the assassins off the trail, but given the time sensitivity there must have been other things she wanted to do in there... Wit and Jasnah have quite a rapport. She must know that he is pretty atypical but doesn't seem to push very hard. I wish we got more of the conversation back to the warcamps!

Hey all, I'm just getting to grips with the coppermind and would like to help edit. I was looking through the plot summaries for the books and realised that lots of them are very brief. Would it be against copyright/too spoilery to expand the summaries to have a good deal more detail? I'm comparing to the imdb synopses, for example.