Subvisual Haze

Good point, the definition of the term unconscious is more contentious than I realized. (This embarrassingly coming from someone who worked in a Neurological ICU for a couple years and could calculate Glasgow Coma Scales off the top of his head. I guess I've always seen unconsciousness as a spectrum of altered consciousness.)

I agree, while there is a compulsive nature to the action, Ash destroying images of herself is based on simple guilt. She failed at her mission and abandoned a friend, and seeing humanity revering her name and image must feel painfully hypocritical for her. I think a lot of the Herald's "insanities" will be of a more mundane manner than Nale's, not necessarily requiring a magical explanation. These are humans who have lived for thousands of years, the overwhelming majority of those years spent in war or actively being tortured. Even once freed from the tortures, they then had to spent 4500 years living in perpetual shame of their "failures". I think this would turn just about anyone into a broken emotional wreck. I think the final chapter with Ash further implies that this is the first time she has lost consciousness in thousands of years? Not sleeping cannot be good for one's thought processes. Sleep is a necessary psychological escape valve for disrupting ruminating negative thoughts.

She doesn't technically have a giant glowing sign over her head saying I AM VIVENNA A CHARACTER FROM WARBREAKER, but it's pretty close

So after 3 years of many comments (from myself included) expressing concerns regarding the risk of death feeling lessened due to Szeth+Jasnah, and like 99% of the community convinced Eshonai obviously survived falling off a cliff because it's a classic death fakeout setup and she has a flashbook later Brandon pulls the classic double death fake-out and offs the character nobody expected. Well played!

I've actually read Oathbringer entirely (from a local bookstore that's going out of business soon). I have absolutely no clue what half these spoiler-free reactions refer to? Then again, I usually want to discuss books with others in a more cerebral manner instead of regurgitating a string of TVTropes lines. WOW CROWING MOMENT OF AWESOME [EMOTICON] I CAN'T EVEN Still though, Journey before destination in my opinion. I've never understood people's obsessive hatred towards even the most minor of "spoilers". If your enjoyment of a book can be completely ruined by one or two sentences, it seriously calls into question what you're actually getting out of the process of reading a book instead of just a plot synopsis. A really good book for me is the kind that I want to reread, even knowing how it will largely play out. In these books especially, there's just so much to unpack about the setting/history/lore/cosmere/magic, so much to enjoy in watching how the characters grow in interacting with one another and how they manage certain situations.

Brandon mentioned that the whole idea behind his Cosmere of interacting storylines was greatly inspired by Asimov's Foundation series. I wouldn't be surprised if a central theme of the Foundation series also didn't apply here Couple that with the idea of individual freewill, quantum mechanic theories suggesting that the universe is not perfectly deterministic, and the suggestion that even the Gods can't perfectly predict the future (Honor saying Cultivation is "better" at this than him, Harmony being surprised by events) and you realize that the further out we move from the point of creation of the Diagram, the more it will begin to fail as a predictive device. Also, prophecy has a literary tradition older than dirt of fulfilling itself in ironic ways. Maybe everything Mr. T thinks he is doing to save the world is actually designed to fail, but fail in such a way as it causes the true heroes to grow/learn/succeed. I theorize that the reason Vorinism and Honor have prohibitions against seeing the future (or writing down what you see in the case of the Truthseers) have less to do with the ability itself, but rather what it leads to. Exactly as with the diagram, believing you have perfect understanding of cause-effect leads to moral decay where any action no matter how wrong can be explained as necessary due to "the ends justify the means". Or, basically see every philosophical argument ever written about the failures of consequentialist based ethics

Unfortunately I think the only remotely nearby Oathgates to where we last saw Jasnah (the Unclaimed Hills) are in Kholinar and the Shattered Plains.

"Nice family you got there Shallan, it'd be a shame if something happened to it..."

Oh that's true, Stormfather also called Dalinar a Son of Honor once before, so that may be a more generic title for a Radiant or honorable person or even just a human. Son/child of Tanavast specifically though seems to be a moniker specific to Kaladin (first in WOK from Stormfather to Kaladin in a chapter named the same and then again in the newest chapter). In fact, I think this is the only time the name "Tanavast" even appears in the Stormlight Archive outside of Hoid offhand mentioning the name to Jasnah at the end of WOR and in the WOR epigraph letter addressed to Hoid. Small sample size sure, but I could definitely see it turning out to be significant.

He's our hero I definitely get the "he's special" vibe from Kaladin. There's a lot to unpack in this chapter, but the whole thing was basically Kaladin being a Big damnation Hero on a level that the other characters can barely approach. Maybe other Radiants are "farther ahead" in their oaths, but the quality of Kaladin's oaths and the degree which he lives them indicate to me at least that he's progressing towards something more than being just another Radiant. We have Stormfather once again referring to Kaladin as the "Son of Tanavast". I believe he has referred to Kaladin as either Son/Child of Tanavast or Son of Honor in every book so far. To the best of my recollection we have no indication that Stormfather addresses anyone else with that title, not even Dalinar. Not sure what exactly it means (a direct genetic descendant of Tanavast?), but it seems like an important title to keep popping up specifically for Kaladin. In addition to that, we have Kaladin challenging Stormfather, a literal representation of a highstorm, to stop the highstorm from blowing and Stormfather actually seems to consider it! At the end of the chapter Stormfather gives Kaladin a storm-ride straight to Urithiru as a sort of apology. This is the same Stormfather who tried to call down a highstorm on the whole Alethi army last book, and never felt the need to apologize to Dalinar afterward. Yet here he seems to be shamed by Kaladin's example of fighting the storm itself to save a few lives. I'm really not sure how you could better demonstrate the Windrunner "I will protect" ideals than what Kaladin was doing in this chapter. He seems to come alive in those moments of crisis when another person needs protecting. If only he could stay on the front lines protecting people from the storms, but unfortunately he's been drawn back into the Urithiru politics clowncar and it's time to run into Amaram yet again.

If we ever encounter a character with unusual hair who introduces herself as "Vivenna" I will know for certain that this character cannot be Vivenna.

A haughty and self-confident lighteyes meets a disrespectful soldier with a huge chip on his shoulder and overwhelming need to sneer at perceived injustice. I don't think they'll hate each other, but I don't see them liking each other either. They're basically the polar opposites on the Honor/Cultivation spectrum (Kal lives in the moment of doing what is right, Jasnah plans for the future salvation of the world), and neither one has very good people skills. I predict respect mixed with yelling.

Kaladin will bond Yixli (who it turns out is pretty okay for a voidspren) and also bonds a cultivationspren just to complete the set. Just following the Rand Al-Thor school of intimate relations

Also we are criminally overdue for more Bridge 4 love. We need Kaladin chapters for that at the very least.

I doubt Kaladin will bow out, because I think Kaladin is going to be the contrarian driving Dalinar insane by raising important moral questions about the Listeners. "Okay I've gathered an army and I'm ready to capture the city, slaughter the Parshmen warriors, and throw rest back into slavery. Go Radiants!" - Amaram probably "Slavery is bad! Parshmen are people too!" - Kaladin =Dalinar driven even more crazy trying to save the world but not do it in a monstrous manner.

Our yellow-spren is named Yixli and is almost certainly a Voidbringer. Actually I realized that I missed an obvious clue in the last Kaladin chapter: Yixli couldn't sense an approaching highstorm, but did predict an approaching Everstorm. Oops! Definitely a voidspren. Voidspren does not necessarily mean irredeemably evil though. All sentient beings seem to have degrees of free will in Sanderson's universe. Remember that Syl alone of all honorspren chose to seek out a Windrunner against the Stormfather's wishes. We also have WOB that other honorspren may intrepret "honor" in more cruel ways. Even among a relatively specific type of spren, there is room for individual variance and choice. The example of the Kandra is also important. Being made of humalurgy, on a creation level they were more of ruin than preservation, yet they chose to live in such a way that they chose to be of preservation. There are clearly some voidspren that exhibit disturbing levels of mental control over their hosts as with Eshonai, but just as not all Listeners are evil I don't think all spren from the other side of the conflict are necessarily evil either. Even hatred (at injustice/slavery for example) can be right in the correct circumstance. There is a time for every purpose under heaven, etc.

Shallan being subordinated into Jasnah's POV chapters is a clever meta-narrative representation of her struggle to escape Jasnah's shadow. I felt so bad for Shallan. Struggled so hard, fought an unmade, was feeling a measure of respect for herself for being an independent adult AND SUDDENLY JASNAH.

We'll get a big revelation, an agonizing cliff hanger and Kaladin will drop out of the narrative until Section 3. Already preparing myself psychologically.

Yeah, it seemed important in the prologue though that Ishar had them all leave their honorblades behind. As if that was tied into the Oathpact somehow.

Oh interesting, maybe this explains why Nale can use his Honorblade but still somehow not be part of the Oathpact. There might be two different modes for the sword: 1) burn your own stormlight, gains access to surges but not much else 2) use Honor as an external power source, gain some crazy Herald powers we haven't had explained to us yet.

Perhaps Taravangian wrote it. One of his first lines with Dalinar in Oathbringer is remembering that even in his youth he did not believe the Desolations to be truly gone. This aligns well with the remark about the book brewing in him since his youth. The main problem being that this writing displays intelligence as well as remorse/empathy, which as of yet are opposing properties in his curse. It could be that the vague magics of Urithiru itself (or some Bondsmith interaction from Dalinar) can slowly degrade curses/boons from the Nightwatcher. Just as Dalinar is slowly recovering his memories, Taravangian may experience a day of both high intelligence and empathy and choose to write a book as a confession on the monstrous things he has done as well as revealing to the world the lies they have been told about Desolations/Heralds/Radiants/Honor.

Since Roshar has more of an Asian-theme I would expect dragons to be viewed more positively than in the Christian world.

fyi Peter states in the Reddit thread that the writing on the map is by Nazh. Just in case anyone was curious why the old Silver Kingdoms had modern names on them such as calling Natanatan the "Shattered Plains (Narak)" when both of those names would be anachronistic. I think the people on the bottom are refuges fleeing the cataclysm on Ashyn. It could certainly be a different group though, Roshar seems to have a lot of waves of settlers/refugees.

is far more introspective and willing to assume personal accountability for his/her actions than Amaram.

While thousands of years ahead of the rest of Roshar technologically, everyone in Urithiru agrees the automatically flushing toilets are more hassle than they're worth and the hand drying fabriels take too much time and don't even dry your hands very well.