digitalbusker

"This character believes something that turns out not to be true" isn't exactly the same thing as an unreliable narrator. If, by "unreliable narrator" you mean "limited by the knowledge and assumptions of the current viewpoint character," then all Cosmere books have unreliable narrators.

I too have a problem with the "witty" characters... but it's not that they're too witty. Dialogue in general has never been the strongest element of a Sanderson book, but the way the books, even from the early ones, reward careful reading and pay off foreshadowing in surprising but logical ways was more than enough to get me through the occasional line that rang as too colloquially American to me, or the occasional joke that fell flat for me.

I think if there's a Metallic Arts-related explanation for Lessie's death, it's got to be that Bloody Tan was a Slider. I'm aware that there are problems with this theory, most glaringly that Wax is familiar with speed bubbles from long experience with Wayne and you'd think he'd notice and/or put it together. (Don't come at me with speed bubble bullet deflection--clearly if a speed bubble was involved it was only up long enough to line up Lessie with the incoming shot and dropped before the bullet made contact.) Even with that flaw, I don't see another reason for Bloody Tan to be stealing bendalloy. Yes, bendalloy's valuable, but Bloody Tan was a psychotic serial killer, not a criminal kingpin. It's possible that he just needed to raise cash to buy embalming supplies, but the fact that the metal is name-dropped specifically as a thing he stole (and early on, when the reader can't be assumed to know that it's expensive) rather than gold or just "money," seems like a strong hint that he was a Slider. I'd be just as happy with a non-supernatural explanation (e.g. Tan spotted the countdown and was able to time his move precisely), but if the explanation is supernatural, it's got to be the bendalloy.

Agreed, but they could certainly get away with a much lighter spacesuit.

I think Feruchemical iron wouldn't be as useful in zero-g as you might think. If momentum were conserved with Feruchemical weight manipulation, then somebody running towards a door and tapping weight just before they hit it would slow down dramatically and gain no net benefit.

Every once in a while the Times goes on a tear about how dumb modern fantasy literature is. My money's on Part N of that ongoing series.

Well that's certainly a way to read that quote.... First off, I don't accept the premise that populations on Sel are more concentrated than you'd expect from their economic and technological levels. Second, in Shadesmar all areas have the same cognitive density. That's why size contracts in empty areas. Just lumping a bunch of people together in a small space doesn't create a pocket of greater density, it creates a larger area of uniform density. Sel has more nations and interest groups than Scadrial, with more members. (I mean, seriously, during the Final Empire era there were, what, twenty Inquisitors at any one time, and half of them were out and about, but the Conventical of Seran is supposed to be significant enough to count as a distinct region in Shadesmar?) Why don't their "interlacing areas of influence" have the same effect? If Scadrial winds up being the Expanse of Broken Sky, it'll be because the only pockets of thinking creatures on the planet are at the poles, I guarantee. I'm getting that. For the record, I don't have a strong position on this, and I don't necessarily disagree with your conclusions, but your proof process carries a whiff of confirmation bias.

Odium as a stand-alone Shard is basically doomed to wind up a bad guy, no matter what he/she starts out like. Odium as one-sixteenth of a whole could well be the necessary dark side that keeps the gestalt moving. And I'm going to reference "The Enemy Within"* now, because of course I am. Good Kirk was ineffective and indecisive and Evil Kirk was increasingly unhinged. Only together were they good at their job. *: The Star Trek episode where a transporter accident splits Captain Kirk into two people: one who embodies his good impulses and one who embodies his dark side.

Sorry, I just figured you only got one. Also: Congratulations! You get your wish. But the Nightwatcher chooses to interpret your request as placing a curse on posters, so you get peeled too! I guess now I ask for my flesh to be restored?

Congratulations! You can now understand any form of language. Now if you could just get the trees to shut up for five minutes so you can get some sleep....

Congratulations! You are now fully devoted to your grand goal: unpowered human flight! I would ask for the ability to convince people with facts.

Does the Purelake have crem in it? I'd assumed from the name and the descriptions of its clarity that there wasn't crem, but perhaps it's just so calm that all the crem settles to the bottom. Does anybody kick up puffs of mud when they walk around? If my hazy memory/hunch is right and the Purelake doesn't contain significant amounts of crem, then I'd guess that the hiding water is part of the mechanism that makes that possible. I'm not sure how. Maybe the Purelake waters go down those holes into a reservoir, and then a valve is switched, causing the crem-laden highstorm water to drain away somewhere else, so there's no crem on the lakebed when the Purelake waters are pumped back out.

That's an interesting thought. So, you're talking about the consciousness (human, human-like, or other) that directed Adonalsium before the Shattering, right? The (all-the-)Shard(s)holder? It makes sense that such a powerful and important mind would have some kind of place in the Cosmerian afterlife. My gut feeling on gods above the Shards, be they Unknown or Beyond, was that it was probably a way to preserve the feeling of an ineffable divinity while still having gods that can be characters. Sort of moving the goalposts on the supernatural. It's a pretty common trick for fantasy authors who don't want to write universes that are implicitly atheist. I'd be fine with that, as long as it obeys Sanderson's First Law, but I like your notion better.

I'm pretty sure you're underestimating the average length of the England/Australia trip by several weeks, and it's probably not fair to compare a shore-hugging trader sailing an unpredictable route and periodically seeking shelter from megastorms to the fastest ships of their day sailing 24/7 along a known route chosen for its advantageous winds and currents. Still, six months is a long time. My first guess is that some of that time could have been shaved if Shallan's ship had completely abandoned their mercantile pursuits and just immediately set off for the next place as soon as they learned of it.

I absolutely don't mind! Maybe I should add a note to that effect to my sig.

Chapter 56, in the middle of a lot of meditations on the Thrill:

Can we add a prompt to account creation that requires you to enter a properly formatted spoiler tag before you can post? I'm not being serious, here, but given that I had to remove "Sorry, I don't know how to tag spoilers," from my personal forum drinking game a while ago, it's clear that more work could be done to spread this wisdom. I'm doing my part with my new signature.

Nobody ever remarks on how one of the "moons" takes up a quarter of the visible sky?

The fact that they don't have highstorms, and thus probably only possess stormlight-infused objects through great effort, could well be why they think it's sacred.

In this Realmatic framework, you'd have to bond with a wiki article.

I think from a practical-storytelling standpoint, there has to be some defense against shardblade injury other than Plate, because otherwise the main cast will be winnowed down to people wearing Plate. And as awesome as a suit of magical power-armor sounds, it does limit the kinds of stories you can be in. The non-Plate defense might be a shardblade of your own, although you've got to be immensely skilled to reliably avoid all contact with an enemy's weapon. It might be technological, like the half-shards or some other fabrial. Or it might be a thought-technology: "I will run like a bunny if I encounter a hostile person with a shardblade." It could even be lazy writing manifesting as luck or "main character shields", but I doubt that. But I can't really see the series going for ten books without people developing other ways to compensate. Maybe holding stormlight will turn out to be some kind of defense--it would make some narrative sense, in that the people it would act to protect are already important to the narrative.

(emphasis mine) Koloss:Kandra::boosts physical:boosts mental Because "respectively." HTH!

You need sixteen keystrokes (not counting the space), but only eight letters. You need ten letters (and twenty keystrokes) to spell Brandon Winn Sanderson.

If you're sure you're only going to buy one, get the eBook. It's got more use cases for longer periods. I know I'm going to buy both, but not at the same time. I'll get the hardcover when it comes out, read that once, and then when I want to reread or need to reference something I'll pick up the ebook. Hopefully I can hold out long enough to get it on sale. Right now my hardcover WoK is at a friend's house because I lent it out, but I've since reread it in eBook form.

Yeah, and we've got lots of references to Ruin speaking to Rashek when he held the power.