Aminar

It's not extreme when they're both in their late 20's. But 17 and 22 is a huge age gap due to how much change there is in brain state between those ages. (Mind you, I think they're more than 5 years apart our time, but Shallan is technically in her later teen's, but I don't remember how different Rosharan years are.)

It would be a pretty extreme age gap. I think even the one between Adolin and her is pretty extreme(although less so because of the general societal time period), tacking another decade or so on there would be creepy.

If we see this, which we very well could, it'll be in a later book. That kind of effort is something you can't just give the hero early on (or even in the middle of) a story. Otherwise we'll constantly be talking about ways to weaponize storms for the heroes. (Plus it'd be too soon after the enemy did the same.) I would think the end of book 4 would be a good place to do something like this(except that it would probably be windrunners killing the everstorm via pressure systems so that it can't help the enemy anymore.) Do that at the end of book 4 and book 5 brings the war to a head.

I am so glad my brothers and wife like the same books I do.

The Kholins are messed up but stubborn. Dalinar's well and truly broken(and used to be an awful person). Renarin has huge issues. Jasnah has made comments that suggest she was abused. Leadership breaks people. Responsibility breaks people. Power breaks people. Find strong people in those situations and you'll find people with the right cracks in their soul for a spren to fill. Add that up with the WoB and you get a good explanation.

Which will have built up your expectations in the right way. Every time you realize your assumptions were wrong it'll build up your level of surprise with what's happening. A lot like how a good movie trailer shows you the emotions you will feel, but misleads you about what's happening in the movie. Expectations are a hard thing to build but defying them makes a story feel clever. (Of course if you guess everything right it feels kind of deflating. So hope you're wrong.)

Eh. Gemlung sounds silly. So does Gembrain. Heart is a powerful word that fits best in these situations. Although I suppose a gemheart could be used with modifications of adhesion to aid circulatory pressure...

I think they're separate and used as an extra energy source for supernaturalish things(like when stuff is too big to make sense.)

I think it's an excellent set of teasers. Anything your finding spoiled will probably be very different from what you expect. (Unless you've read it in which case I'd guess it's more you have the context of the situations so they seem obvious.)

Or nobody dissecting a parshman found the gemheart. Maybe they're small or worthless or hard to see. Maybe they leak stormlight so badly they're worthless when not contained in a body or the knowledge was lost. But the way Parshendi work suggests a gemheart. Also remember that the one thing even regular dullform parshmen care for is not touching the bodies. That can build a social taboo up real quick if its the only thing that makes your docile workforce freak out. (And it suggests they have something, like gemhearts, to hide.)

Dead shards are the most likely answer. Along with other tricks. But I doubt they'll have their own version or anything close. Remember, humans have "won" all the desolations so far as we understand them. And at one point they only had 10 guys with surges and shardblades.

Agreed. It makes sense. We know spren can be trapped in gems and we don't know any other way to imbibe a spren, only to bond with one. But the listeners don't seem to have spren constantly floating around. And they don't seem to have used Nahel Spren yet.

The shardblades are copies of the honorblades which were made by honor to fight Thunderclasts. Better?

They won't get voidblades. The shardblades were made to fight specific things. Like Thunderclasts. They're a reaction. I do think the voidbringers will have a new advantage though. They can use dead shards which is not something they had in previous desolations(probably).

He left pretty quick. Odds are he'll tell them in part 2.

Nah. That was gravity. He only really used Adhesion to stick stuff to bridges.

Heh yeah. I saw my copy today. The bookstore is closing so I wanted to make sure it was coming in. It's there. They won't sell it. So much pain walking out of that store.

Sounds like Shallan is a female Rand Al-Thor. Same hair color even. Wouldn't that be hilarious?

The ones flinging red lightning around last book? I could be wrong.

Well. His surges are pressure and gravity. Pressure could mess with the wind in interesting ways. As could gravity. But I suspect he created a pressure bubble beyond the capacity of the highstorm to overcome. Edit. I am wrongish. It's adhesion(I remember it being air pressure for some reason. A Suction effect.) But I stand by the idea. He stuck the wind to a spot in the air.

So... Shallan's next arc appears to be stepping out from Jasnah's reappearing shadow.

See... This bothers me. Because Shallan's dad wears Minkfur clothing. And if they're just mink that's fine. My great grandpa had a mink farm when I was a kid. But the mink mentioned in the tunnels of Urithiru is almost certainly a cat. And if Rosharans wear cat fur... I just don't want to picture a catfur robe anymore. I need to know this is wrong.

If you say so. (Although the real first thing will be solving the new epigraph puzzle and we all know it.)

No kidding. Like... Isn't that the first thing to do after the book hits?

I agree except that she's not too high functioning for PTSD. PTSD is weird(in that its not what people expect, like most mental illness). People with it cycle through functioning and not at seemingly random. Some people with it never really don't function, they just end up terrified at random points. But like you said she doesn't have memory loss. Just repression. Just memories she doesn't want that she refuses to have. More than that, the whole alternate personality thing is just wrong. Movies make it way more dramatic than it is. It's mostly just timeskips where a person doesn't remember what happened and they're less inhibited. None of this adding a new name to change my behavior mind game stuff Shallan is playing with herself.