Subvisual Haze

Agree completely! With enemies that refuse to stay dead by conventional means, Nightblood is this world's version of Balefire. Hopefully Szeth does a better job keeping Nightblood safe than our heroes did with Jezrien's Honorblade (kept it safe for almost one whole book!). Even if Szeth focuses on just destroying higher level targets like the Fuzed and stoneclast spren he could have an incredible impact on Odium's war making capabilities.

Thank you for all your hard work in compiling this theory! I had many of these thoughts bouncing around my own head and I agree pretty much 100% with your final presentation The great remaining question is why did The Sibling withdraw in the first place? Did humanity injure it somehow? Did Honor command it to stop binding men and powering the tower when he was going through his raving "surgebinders will destroy the world" final days? A related question: are the oathgates a sub-system of Urithiru itself? The giant guardian spren at the Thaylen Oathgate state they were essentially commanded to remain inactive. Was this order from Honor? Or The Sibling itself when it went to sleep? Is this a command that Dalinar can override now that he has Ascended?

I love it! Thus began the great Kharbranth hitching hootenanny. Old Odium hadn't been so outfoxed by humanity since the last soul-wagering fiddling contest.

After Bridge 4 collectively went "Duhhh, maybe the truth is in the middle" and decided to abandon the people of Thaylen City with the armies of Odium almost on their front door, maybe the 4th Ideal is a focusing ideal like the Skybreakers had in their 3rd Ideal. Perhaps the Windrunner Chooses one person/group/status of people to protect as their first priority so they aren't constantly devolving into inaction because they want to protect both sides in any conflict. If you try to protect everyone your rigid neutrality severely inhibits your ability to protect anyone.

You know, I'm going to blame this on too much stuff happening too fast from too many POVs, but my mind had almost completely forgotten about this. The Order focused on Protecting the vulnerable literally abandoned a desperate, natural disaster ravaged city with the invading armies of Satan nearly at the front gates. Because of an unverified rumor regarding the inhabitants of an area of land 10,000 years prior. Bridge 4 are the worst protectors ever. I really hope this doesn't just get swept under the rug, and Kaladin gives them hell for being complete failures at protecting those who needed them. In fact, this just makes me realize that despite all the interesting Bridge 4 POV chapters we got...have the other members of Bridge 4 actually displayed much independent initiative towards protecting people? Kaladin of course is totally driven by his need to protect others, but the other members of bridge 4? They mostly just seem to do their jobs as Kaladin directs them. They make good bodyguards, but I'm not really getting why they're advancing beyond squire level and attracting spren of their own.

It sort of makes sense if you view it as a mass disarmament. The dangerous powers of the surges were a risk, but an acceptable risk as long as the greater threat of Desolations loomed. However, if the Radiants actually believed the Heralds' lies about the final desolation having occurred and succeeded (unintentionally) in locking all Singers into a slave form they might have truly believed the greatest remaining threat to Roshar was themselves and choose to disarm for the good of the planet. Toss in the death of Honor (leaving the Radiants without a final check preventing KRs from going rogue) and a mini-catastrophic incident at the Shattered Plains and the picture takes form of Radiants terrified of themselves. The biggest flaw with this theory though: I still don't understand why the Stormfather/spren think this will happen again. Odium is clearly back and an immediate danger to the world.

If Rayse was being truthful and the actual identity of his shard is "Passion", then it may be a very positive thing for the remains of Honor to be combined with broken pieces of Passion. Passion is hardly an inherently harmful thing, Rayse has just interpreted the intent of his shard in a hateful manner as Odium. Odium even made the point to Dalinar in his (comically ineffective) "I'm not the bad guy" speech: Honor untempered by emotion is a pretty scary thing. It's rules for their own sake, letter of the law overruling the intent of the law. Passion and Honor combined could be a well balanced intent though. UNITY!

I don't think it was humanly possible for Brandon to make it more obvious she was Vivenna without writing "THIS IS VIVENNA" in the margins. She talks about knowing a princess who abandoned their royal duties, she has hair that changes colors in Shadesmar, she knows Vasher's Kata, she is specifically looking for Vasher, she is searching for a sword that leaks black smoke.

The Skybreakers were likely a much more functional and moral order before Honor started circling the drain. When Honor was still an active participant in affairs of humanity, he would have offered a higher/divine set of legal principles that would take precedence over the imperfect laws of men. Unfortunately the highest authority the Skybreakers now have is Nale, who by his own admission is not right in the head. I think we kind of see this reflected in the Urithiru gem archive: the Skybreakers and the Windrunners become increasingly bitter opponents around the same time that Honor is beginning to "change". The Windrunner moral principles of protection can continue to function without Honor to guide them, but following "the law" as an abstract concept is very dependent on leadership. I think Nale becoming a Skybreaker himself was also a mistake. The Skybreakers were modeled on Nale's powers and reputation, Nale taking the 5th Oath to "become the law" when he already was regarded as such by humanity due to his status as a Herald may have done strange things to his thought processes.

I read this as a moral commandment against letting your own or other's claims of future-visions guide your actions. Even the gods of the cosmere can see the future only as through a glass darkly, and can be surprised by the strange twists of fate. Visions of the future are probability based guesses at best and should not be extensively relied upon to dictate your actions. This isn't even taking into account that the person claiming visions of the future might be lying to others about what they saw. Glimpsing the future naturally leads to changing your current decisions based on perceived future consequences. Doing the morally right thing gets ignored and actions such as Ritualistically killing children and other innocent civilians in your hospitals becomes A-OK because THE FUTURE.

It's hard to say for certain, currently Ashyn is being left purposefully vague for us to speculate about Everything beyond: the planet was largely destroyed, more humans used to live there, and the shards manifested there to some degree are guesswork at this point. I'm especially interested in the possibility of Honor or the Heralds originally being from Ashyn. Questions to Brandon in this regard give him a lot of wiggle room since "Roshar" can refer to both the planet and the solar system on the whole.

The Highprinces are all just aristocrats in exile at this point. They have no direct control of their territory or people. Even their armies exist due to the continued grace of soulcasters.

Yeah, Odium felt like a miss to me. It's hard to feel overly threatened by a guy who bails out of a Skype-chat when Lift unexpectedly appears and later does the cliche "NO THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE!" when the hero does the dramatic thing at the end. Appearing at the head of his armies in the final battle ultimately made him feel more mundane to me. I find villains much more threatening when they're an ominous terrifying force of nature with inscrutable thoughts. Odium feels more Lex Luthor at this point than Sauron.

The biggest problem is that Kaladin doesn't have a full character arc in this story. He is presented with a problem (how can I protect the good people on both sides of this conflict?), he experiences a rising action punctuated by personal failures to resolve this problem, and then the book ends... Did Kaladin actually grow as a character in this book? I don't think so. Mind you, "growth" doesn't need to be as dramatic as swearing the next ideal of a Windrunner, but some sort of growth would have been nice. Ultimately the Kaladin we had at the end of Oathbringer is pretty much the same Kaladin we had at the end of Part One. In fact we barely have any internal development in Kaladin's chapters. I was struck at many points by how little dialogue Syl has in this book. Syl and Kaladin debating the nature of right and wrong, and both growing as people (Syl intellectually, Kal morally/emotionally) was one of my favorite aspects of the first 2 books. Those talks between them are almost entirely absent from Oathbringer! The little dialogue we do get from Syl is largely exposition about her past. That felt like a pretty big letdown for me.

I agree with the Taln followed Ash to stay by her side theory. Taln was the Samwise Gamgee of the Herald Fellowship. He joined as the least important one, but turned out to be the most heroic in the end.

Dalinar is a fantastic spiritual leader for assembling the KR Coalition, but the Alethi are desperately in need of a political leader to get their houses in order. Dalinar repeatedly backs away from the role of despot, and despite talking about treating the High Princes like children never really does anything to force them into line. I have high hopes that Jasnah will be the Enlightened Despot that the Alethi need.

There's no reason the house should continue exist as a political power. This is the second time they've directly betrayed House Kholin. Hopefully Jasnah will show more pragmatism than Dalinar did regarding allowing an obviously hostile house to take up residence in their midst. At best their armies should be dissolved and allowed to apply for service to other houses. At worst the whole of House Sadeas should be evicted from Urithiru. The Azish are totally justified in not trusting the Urithuru alliance and the Alethi armed forces as the Alethi still don't have their internal affairs in order.

Rock is clearly concealing something about his background and the number of brothers that he lost to Sadeas. It wouldn't surprise me that Rock is now the head of his clan post conflict with Sadeas.

Yes, that is what I was alluding to. Maya is an Edgedancer spren (the sword looks like vines when it is being summoned, sort of like Wyndle). Edgedancers were the healers and listeners of the Radiant orders, which Adolin fits well.

Didn't Renarin at one point think there might be a pattern in the order of the gems? I'm curious if that goes anywhere.

Even Kaladin's thoughts about Shallan reminding him of Tien felt a little flat. After their talk in the chasms last book, I never got the impression of any sort of strong emotional connection between Kaladin and Shallan. They seemed to banter with one another more out of habit than anything. When Kaladin had his episode of depression this book Shallan offered very little emotional support to him, it was Syl giving him hugs, and charmingly Adolin offering endless support (helping Kaladin after the battle, carrying his pack for him in Shadesmar, asking him questions in Shadesmar just to force Kaladin to interact with others and not withdraw, complimenting him at points, and teasing him about his face in a way that made it 100% clear he was joking with you). We expected Shallan to the be the "prize" competed for in this love triangle, but really the true gem in the triangle was Adolin. That guy was pure emotional support to everyone around him. Based on his skills as amazingly supportive friend and boyfriend, Adolin should make an excellent Edgedancer.

The "we" likely refers to the fact that Odium had inside help from a traitor when he killed Honor. I read "you" as indicating Honor (both in mind and in power) was not as dead/shattered as Odium originally thought. This coincides with Dalinar manifesting unexpected powers of Honor as well as receiving visions and thoughts from Honor beyond just those left with Stormfather. I think the final dream vision from older Nohadon (which was too interactive to "just" be a recording, while somehow being secretive enough to manage not to be interrupted by Odium), as well as the whispered instructions ("It's the next step") point to a hidden cognitive remnant of Honor/Tanavast/Nohadon, which is still trying to guide Dalinar. It reminded me a lot of the instructions that were whispered to Vin in key moments and were conveyed to Spook in dream visions. The repeating divine command of "UNITE THEM" also reminded me a lot of "SURVIVE!"

Current Swearers of the 5th Ideal: Nale, Judge Dredd I AM THE LAW

I think they're corrupted versions of the Radiant spren. The reason they have 9 members instead of 10 though is due to the Bondsmith spren being so unique and variant.

It was a very enjoyable book, but probably the weakest out of the Stormlight Archive so far to me. Despite being parts of a larger series, both Way of Kings and Words of Radiance felt very self-contained with satisfying conclusions. Oathbringer though felt much more like a "middle book", setting up a lot more plot elements and character arcs than it paid off. Kaladin felt purposely sidelined in the book, which makes sense if you want to maintain some sort of parity between the 3 Main Protagonists as Kaladin had already stolen the spotlight in the first 2 books. The only problem being that the story suffers without Kaladin and Bridge 4. Kaladin is the most human character, he interacts with normal people and struggles with depression and feelings of inadequacy like all too many people do in their day to lives. In contrast Dalinar is a prince who spends the huge majority of his time interacting with monarchs and Gods and Shallan for some reason has regressed into a Hollywood portrayal of Multiple Personality Disorder and debating which male character to pine over. I love Kaladin, and love Bridge 4, but both feel purposely shoved to the side in this book. Do Kaladin and Bridge 4 spend maybe a quarter of the book in the same location as each other? Instead Kaladin gets sent off on an interesting solo mission in the first section (which unfortunately didn't have much of a payoff beyond shoveling even more misery and tragedy onto Kaladin), and then gets relegated to a supporting role in Shallan's weird side mission. Even with Syl we get a little bit of her backstory, and she's a very kind and supporting person to Kaladin...but there's no growth. Kaladin+Syl just didn't have an arc in this book. There was a conflict, but no resolution yet. It felt very "middle book" in that regard. The book also felt a little too bogged down by side POV characters at various points. I have great hopes that Brandon can keep all these characters juggled, but I've seen a lot of other major fantasy series really struggle to maintain narrative thrust when so many characters require regular updates. I think I read that the original plan for the Interludes was to limit POV expansion, but now we see a lot of previous Interlude POVs escaping containment and just becoming normal POVs.