StrikerEZ

You're welcome man! It was a pretty good read, and I'm excited to see where you go with this.

Firstly, a small semantics thing. There is no such thing as ambient Investiture. All Investiture was assigned to a Shard at the Shattering of Adonalsium. Secondly, we know that the insane amount of Investiture spread across Roshar due to the highstorms is able to be used at least a little bit by humans without magic, so why would plants need magic? Plus, all the humans are Connected to Honor and Cultivation, even if they have no magical abilities.

I haven't been on here in a long time. I'm actually reading the Wheel of Time for the first time and I'm on book three right now. It's actually really really good so far. I don't know why I was so scared to start reading it.

That's a pretty good point. But the book also mentions at some point that the Fused have told people to watch out for specific types of spren (presumably radiantspren) and will kill/hurt them when they're found. Honestly, it could go either way.

Eh, not quite. If that were the case, why would people put their spheres outside during a storm?

The crackpot theory I like is that someone (maybe Hoid) hid Taln's honorblade inside the palace (cut up wall, put blade in, patch over with new wall) and the Fused are after that. I think it's more likely either the Cryptic Elhokar was supposed to bond, or some leftover dark spheres Gavilar had hidden away, or maybe both.

I know everyone has already given their take on this, but I'm going to as well. 1. I can definitely see that. The man writes A LOT. For someone who is not used to really long books like that, it's a daunting task to read a 1000+ page book, hell, it's hard to read a 500 page book if you're not used to it. The problem with this though is that they haven't worked up to being able to read longer works. If they've been reading 200-400 page books, of course something like Mistborn will seem really long to them (and don't even get me started on WoK). If I had someone tell me the books were too long for them, I would agree. I would then tell them to start reading longer books, then give Sanderson a try again. 2. I...I really don't agree with this at all. Brandon does tell instead of show sometimes (a certain exposition in OB comes to mind), but I think he's definitely one of the best authors out there when it comes to showing instead of telling. I don't know how someone could think any of his books are more telling overall than showing. 3. Not gonna lie, Brandon's books are pretty weird sometimes. But that's kind of the whole point of fantasy. To escape to a new, weird world. A world where the normal rules of reality don't apply. Aren't they tired of tons of LotR ripoffs by now? If they're looking for more Middle Earth, elves and dwarves books, then just read the originals again. 4. ...... 5. I actually have a personal anecdote about this. I tried to get a friend of mine to read Mistborn, but she couldn't get into it and this was (basically) her complaint with it. How she phrased it was that the magic made no sense, and she had to constantly flip to the back in order to remember what any of the metals did, which broke the flow of the story. She also said there was too much stuff about the world given to the reader in such a short amount of time that it makes it hard to grasp the world. I had her critiquing my writing, and this was the exact same complaint she gave about my own writing. How I feel about this is that the types of books she tends to read (largely YA or softer fantasy) don't have as much of a learning curve, compared to Brandon's books (and, since Brandon is my biggest inspiration for writing, my books as well), in order to start understanding the world. That's just part of the fantasy genre though. We read fantasy to explore a new world that we don't understand. No one really understands the world in a fantasy book at the start; that's not the point. The whole point is to discover, explore, and immerse ourselves in this new, interesting world. Once you get past the learning curve, I don't think his books are that complex, really. There's a lot too them, sure, but it's relatively easy to understand. You can predict what will happen fairly easily. It's hard to do that in most other authors' books, where the plot bends to their will instead of the plot flowing naturally. 6. .....why? How? 7. I will agree, their are some characters (*coughZanecough*) that are written very poorly. But I don't think the occasional mishap with a character detracts from how good the rest of his characters are. I can understand not personally liking a character, or not liking what happens to them, or not liking certain actions they take because you find them idiotic. But I feel all of his characters follow who they are, even if I can't relate to them or disagree with them. Despite all of this analysis, I will admit some people will just not like his books. People are allowed to not like things that I like, and vice versa. As long as everyone can agree that we are entitled to like different things without getting hated for it, then we're all good.

I think the first fantasy book I read was either Eragon or Narnia. I discovered Brandon after discovering Steelheart and Rithmatist separately, then discovered his fantasy books.

Spoilers for either WoR/Edgedancer: When you have a dream about reading Stormlight 4, but the story doesn't sound like actual Stormlight and you just roll with it because it could just be an interlude.

I probably would've made this topic myself ages ago if I'd thought of it. Sixth of the Dusk is definitely my favorite Cosmere short story ever. Emperor's soil gets pretty close, but I still think SotD is waaaay better (it always bothers me that @Chaos hates SotD (you can ignore that tag if you want)). Something about the bond between Aviar and human is so cool to me. And the world is just so interesting, and the story had me hooked the entire time. I'm rambling a bit right now, but needless to say, SotD is my favorite short story.

Steris. Found her really boring in AoL (who didn't) and I loved her by the start of BoM. Marsh. I never really liked him, even while reading the books, but after Ive thought about him as a character he's become one of my favorites. I reread the prologue to HoA and dang, it's soooo good. Renarin and Jasnah. Until OB, they were just kinda there. I won't go into specifics, but I am much more intrigued by the both of them now.

Grr, I can't find it, but there's a WoB out there that says the Oathpact was only between Honor and the Heralds (@Calderis help), and all it does is basically cause the Desolation cycle because the Heralds were holding the Fused on Braize.

I've been watching videos of Carolina Crown's show this year, and it's looking awesome. I'm so excited to see it live! If anyone else is a DCI fan, PM me.

Honestly though. The Singers (NOT Parshendi) have it so rough. What I really want to see happen is a large portion of the Singer population turn against Odium and the humans and Singers band together to beat Odium. Probably not until like book 10 though.

@The Feruchemist This is really, really good! I'm actually super intrigued about where this story could go. There are a couple pieces of advice I have, but these are more my opinions so don't take it too hard if it goes against how you want to tell the story. In the prologue, maybe you could do more show than tell. Like, the story of Galaphos and Balinox is really cool, but maybe leave most of it out in the prologue, leaving the rest of the dialogue, and give little tidbits of that story in the rest of the book. How you do this is up to you. You could develop religions that have versions of this story interwoven in them, fairy tales about this story, etc. You could even put some of. The exposition of their story more into their dialogue. In addition, try to not be so exposition-y as you explain the hero Galaphos had chosen. The second thing is just a formatting thing. Try indenting the paragraphs because it gets hard to keep track of them sometimes. The third thing is maybe try making Balinox seem less evil. Make his action of cursing the bride more of a natural response because of the new laws of magic-because the hero avoided shadow magic, it was only inevitable that it would retaliate. Finally, I just had an idea. What would you think of having the roles of Galaphos and Balinox switched? Like, Galaphos was the one who was getting too much power, and Balinox was the one trying to keep up. Now that they're trapped, Galaphos feels really guilty about it. Or, maybe, through doing the hero thing he's trying to free himself. All this is just an idea, but I think it'd be pretty interesting. Overall, I think this has some serious potential. Either tag me in here next time you post something or keep me updated in a PM.

Brandon has always said he imagines SA as two 5-book arcs of one series, so makes sense to leave some time in between the arcs. To me, at least.

You're not alone, man. Jasnah's flashbacks aren't the ones I'm most excited for (that would be Eshonai's because I'm excited to see the contrast between past Eshonai and present Venli), but last I heard they were either scheduled for book 8 or 10. https://wob.coppermind.net/events/181/#e3757 (Sorry, I can't seem to copy it) This one is a couple years old, but I think it's still pretty accurate.

@thegatorgirl00 Wow, firstly, I'm sorry that you're legally blind. My dad is almost there, and it's a struggle to see him deal with it. Anyway, I really liked Rysn's interludes, but I hadn't even thought about how it would be to read them as someone struggling with physical disabilities. I think it would be very cool to ask Brandon about this. Maybe you could talk to him in reddit or Twitter about it?

@rparam This is actually a pretty complicated topic. We don't know for sure if Odium was the god of the first humans from Ashyn who came to Roshar. It could be that the humans came to Roshar, then, at a later point, Odium followed them. The Singers could've assumed that the humans came with Odium instead, and called them voidbringers. Naming the humans voidbringers probably happened as the humans became tired of simply having Shin Kak Nish and began to conquer the rest of Roshar (this event is called the First Desolation, but was before the cycle of Desolations as we know it now, with the Heralds having to go to Braize and all that). At some point, Honor and Cultivation abandoned the Singers for the humans, which caused them to go to Odium (it could be the other way, but I don't see why the Singers would've gone to Odium first). A large group of Singers were granted powers by Odium and became Cognitive Shadows; these were called the Fused. At some point in there, the Heralds and Honor made the Oathpact, binding the Fused to Braize until one of the Heralds broke under torture, starting the next Desplation. At some point in this cycle, the humans began to refer to the Singers/Fused/whatever else was on team Odium as the voidbringers.

@Watchcry Personally, I think he used the voidbinding form of Illumination in some way. Besides that, I have no real clue. We'll probably find out more specifics in the next book, since Renarin's true nature is out now.