Subvisual Haze

The shadowy person in the audience may have been intentionally leading Shallan to spren, but was not itself the spren. It reminded me of the kind of tricks Kelsier or Ruin (when pretending to be Preservation's mistghost) played in Secret History.

I freely admit that Ash is stretch, but the inclusion of the portraits of Heralds in the novel seems important. Now that the Everstorm has appeared, the hiding Heralds should presumably start to show their faces more - although I suspect many of them are crazy and/or rather useless at this point to the war effort. We know a back-5 book is planned to have Ash as a focus character, so at some point she will need to insert herself into the main narrative, even if subtlety at first. Ash was the former patron of Shallan's order, and even more is presumably a master at lightweaving and disguising herself, so we would need to look for subtle "tells" that any new character might be her. Ishnah nonchalantly appearing at the scene of the 3rd copycat crime seems a bit too convenient. The way she artfully deflects suspicion from herself by implying that Shallan must have a thing for stabbing Horneaters (distracting Shallan by putting her on the defensive) again implies that Ishnah is more than she appears. Ash as an identity is a stretch, but Ishnah does seem to be up to something. She might be involved in the crimes herself, investigating them, or possible spying on Shallan for one of the other secret societies.

It's a parable about knowledge and discovery, at least for Shallan. In our youth we assume all knowledge and experience to be positive, but in time we discover the truth is a painful thing to embrace because it reveals uncomfortable facts about the world and ourselves.

I did too, especially when shortly thereafter she sees illusionary forms of herself running around her. It reminded me of Kaladin being surrounded by the windspren before they scattered during his fight with Szeth. Possibly related to the huge amount of stormlight she was utilizing to preform her illusion?

It occurs to me that Amaram dropping in on Urithuru means Taln is likely in the city as well. When we last saw them they were sharing a wagon ride on the Shattered Plains. I wonder how Taln will react to being inside the haunted castle.

He murdered soldiers under his own command for personal gain and committed treason by attempting to steal a priceless military resource for his own use. Dalinar being so willing to acknowledge Amaram as a peer after doing his song and dance to Kaladin about justice feels like a big step backward for his character. Poor Kaladin, I'm so happy you're not there to have to deal with this.

Kandra are infiltrators, but they take some time (hours often) to assume a form. Whatever Shallan saw, it seems capable of shapeshifting on the fly and conjuring up the illusion of an outfit.

I think in the past the Knights Radiant (Elsecallers especially) and Heralds were strong enough to evict an UnMade from squatting on the Cognitive Realm side of Urithuru. Sounds like a good section conclusion battle. Jasnah reappears at a critical moment and opens a portal to Shadesmar so our heroes can force the UnMade to move somewhere else and stop haunting their Radiant Fort.

Ah good Dalinar's back to playing the ineffective politician with the Alethi Highprince clownsquad. Until he distances himself from his old position as Alethi Highprince of War, the non-Alethi rulers of the world continue to have no reason to trust him. Good on Adolin though for not making friends with that monster.

I agree, when she's not paying attention she starts to draw things from the Cognitive Realm. The un-patterned line drawing probably relates to an Unmade or Voidspren opposing the Lightweavers. Shallan creates art. Her opposite copies (murders).

Could be, maybe.

Which one of those 3 is Nightblood from? Not from Honor and Cultivation...must be from Odium!!!!!

This briefly mentioned character caught my eye in the reading. Ishnah was previously present in the bar scene with Shallan, but didn't say anything and the only notable thing she did was appear very interested when Shallan drew the Ghostblood symbol. Now she suddenly appears at a crime scene expressing interest in Shallan. Something about this character screams "more important than she seems". For one, I think it might be important that she never names the Ghostbloods as who she wants to join. That's certainly the logical conclusion based on what she's seen, but if she is "someone important", she might have actually been asking about the Radiants. Also, I might just have the beautiful book insert-art on my mind, but the description of her eyebrows/lips/straight hair made me wonder...Ash?

She might just suffer from an off-putting personality? It seems like she's trying to get to close to others, but everyone feel weirded out by her. She might just be bad with people. Her calling her spren "Spark", is appropriate, if not very inventive. Apparently spark is the essence associated with the Dustbringers.

I think the radiant spren may just have a blind spot in general where they assume anything they don't recognize is a Voidspren. From Shallan's chapter today: Notice how Pattern jumps from admitting he doesn't know what the weird "spren" is (I think a kandra is a good possibility here), to assuming that it comes from Odium. Pattern and Syl might be suffering from an Us versus Them mentality.

Didn't Mr. T make up his own language when writing the diagram for efficiency and then include a primer on how to translate it? I wouldn't nit-pick too closely over the wording, with it already being a translation.

#2 is clearly Evi aka THE NIGHTWATCHER

Thanks Not to keep beating a dead horse, but I'm honestly a little shocked how many posters on this board seem to cast moral judgements spren-types and parshmen, so here's a quote from Brandon that I think reinforces the point: If an honorspren could be cruel, then it stands to reason that a voidspren need not interpret itself as purely evil (not that the yellow-spren is necessarily even a voidspren).

This is going to be a book about PREJUDICE. Judge the poor spren by its actions, not by the label that is hastily slapped on it.

Nope, Syl says Listeners can't become Surgebinders, which I think will be an important distinction. As Jasnah notes in WOR, being a Knight Radiant was about more than just being a surgebinder, it was an entire way of life and ethos. I do think it is possible for a higher spren to choose to bond with a Listener, knowing however that the bond will not yield powerful magic like a human-spren nahel bond. I actually predict that this is how Eshonai's story will play out. The first Listener Knight Radiant, even if not a surgebinder.

Did anyone else notice that the same conversation that Syl identifies that yellow-spren as a Voidspren she also messes up the spren's gender? From Chapter 17: This is despite the Spren already being described as having a "shrill voice" in the previous Kaladin chapter. In the following chapter we have Sah directly referring to the yellow spren as a "she": So the yellow spren had a high pitched voice originally and appears as a female to both the Parshmen and Kaladin, yet Syl still thought it was male? I don't trust Syl's conclusion that this is definitely a voidspren if she couldn't even identify its gender properly. I think she jumped to conclusions about a strange higher spren that she couldn't identify. I don't think it's a voidspren. Exactly what it is, I'm not sure though. Probably not a KR spren, or I'd be very disappointed in Syl. Perhaps a very old Adonalsium spren? But not one of the same "power level" as Stormfather? That would explain the spren's interest in the Parshmen, along with its joke about being "a tad older than one month". It appearing as a woman with Shin-like eyes is even more confusing though. We know the Shin worship the "stone" of Roshar, so perhaps she's an old Adonalsium spren personifying the land itself. Who she is acting as a messenger for though is another question entirely. Nightwatcher?

Malata is middle aged and had very short boyish hair...

6) She is Hoid in disguise, likes to give know-it-all smiles to people just to irritate them. Honestly, I think she's just cocky/self-confident. Or maybe a crazy murderer! Much like real life it is difficult to judge a person solely based on their smile.

I am starting to enjoy the crackpot Evi theories. What if Evi was a Herald? Or Vivenna? Or isn't dead? Or was the avatar of Cultivation? Or wrote Oathbringer? Or is the champion of Odium? Or came from Nalthis? Or sunny side of Taldain? The total amount of information we know about Evi could fit in one sentence, but the poor lady is already being shoehorned into every possible theoretical role in the cosmere.

She could be an actual Dustbringer. As Nohadon noted in Dalinar's flashback, "not all spren are as discerning as Honorspren". The more Cultivation based spren orders (the bottom half of the Radiant diagram) seem to select their Knights based more on purely intellectual traits rather than moral ones. Jasnah is a brilliant scholar and Shallan is a fantastic artist, and while neither is morally corrupt they also haven't exactly been paragons of any particular moral virtue either. The Divine attributes associated with the dustbringer order are Bravery and Obedience. Both seem compatible with an assassin.