ILuvHats

I think Shallan cares for Adolin more than you're saying, but I agree their relationship isn't as stable as people think. Adolin is committed, and is willing to sacrifice for Shallan. However, even though Shallan seems very lovey-dovey with Adolin at the end of OB, this is the honeymoon phase of their relationship. Once this phase ends we'll start to see flaws in their relationship start arising I hope. And though Shallan has started opening up somewhat to Adolin, she is still suppressing a lot, as you stated. Going forward, I'm not sure whether I want their relationship to succeed or not. Adolin is good for Shallan, but whether Shallan is good for Adolin remains to be seen. Also, I don't think we've seen a failed relationship before in the cosmere, which does make me hope for a falling out between them. At the very least, I expect that their relationship in Rhythm of War will be shaky at some points, what with Adolin's revelations about his father and Shallan's continuing to keep secrets and deal with her personas. If Brandon did make their relationship rock-solid, I would be really disappointed.

Thanks, but it wasn't my idea. I'm just the messenger. Here's the thread I got it from.

I just read a fantasy book called The Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter that’s inspired by African culture. It was completely and utterly amazing. I’m not kidding, it’s so good I’m pretty sure it’s in my top 10 fantasy books. It’s not too long either; I was able to knock it out during a weekend of fevered reading. Definitely check it out if you get the chance.

Looks like nobody's mentioned the possible Tarah sighting in OB yet, so I will since it's pretty relevant. There was a thread a while ago where somebody (I can't remember their username) pointed out something interesting during one of Shallan's POVs. It was when Ishnah first started teaching Vathah, Gaz, Red, all of them, and Shallan was disguised as Veil. When Shallan was showing off her ability to memorize everyone's appearance in the room, there is one person she makes a mistake with. A woman she thought was Thaylen was actually Alethi, but was wearing a Thaylen dress. And if you go back to Kaladin's flashback with Tarah, he mentions that she is partial to wearing Thaylen dresses. Furthermore, this woman is described as flirting with men, but not as if she were seriously interested. Instead, she looked as if she were "waiting for someone" if I remember the quote correctly. And it's reasonable to think that if Tarah is in Urithiru, she's heard of Kaladin, and might be hoping to stumble on him sometime. I think the Tarah sighting in OB makes it pretty likely she and Kaladin will go through an arc together, possibly romantic. Whether they’ll actually end up together... (shrug). However, I consider this ship much more likely than any other. I’ll try to go through each of the others and explain why I think they're less likely. - I’m not a fan of Jasnah and Kaladin, but even if you are, you have to agree it’s entirely hypothetical at this point considering they’ve barely interacted at all. - Laral didn’t sound particularly interested in Kaladin when the met again. In fact, when he tried to apologize for where she ended up, she put him in his place. To me, it sounds like she’s definitely moved beyond their childhood “romance” if you could call it that. Besides, she’s married. - I don’t see any reason for why Lyn and Kaladin should end up together beside the fact that they’re both Windtunners. And it’d be cliche if the did get romantically involved. I agree with the people who think she could end up with somebody else in Bridge 4, just not Kaladin. - I think people have also put forward Venli, Rysn, and even Syl. Venli doesn't even like humans in general, so... yeah. Not likely. Rysn is even more hypothetical than Kaladin since they aren't even aware of each other's existence. And Syl. People have already gone into why that is very, very, very unlikely, and also kind of unethical considering spren rely on their bondmate in a crucial way, to remain in the physical realm. So while Kaladin and Tarah haven't seen each other in a long time, I think they're the most likely match-up outside of new characters that are introduced. Somebody voiced a concern earlier in the thread that she would seem to much like a gold digger for their relationship to work. But the fact that both of them had feelings for each other when they broke their relationship makes this a much lower hurdle, and I think Brandon is fully capable of pulling their relationship off if he wants to.

You want ridiculous?! I'll give you ridiculous! (quoting myself from a previous post)

I will be there... in spirit.

It's funny, I somehow immediately latched onto this theory my first time through the series. In fact, the moment I saw Viren talk to the bird, I was like "I see what's going on here." It's pretty uncommon that I notice stuff like this. For example, when I watched Detective Pikachu, I caught none of the plot twists, even though some of them were pretty obvious.

@mtthgn already mentioned this a few months ago, but I'm going to bring it up again because if this theory is wrong, I'll eat my feet.

Agreed. I wasn’t too attached to her in OB, but she has a lot of potential and I want to see where Brandon takes her. I will say I do like the idea of a major character death at the end of RoW. The last 3 books have had rather happy endings. Yeah, I realize the arrival of the Everstorm at the end of WoR is hardly happy, but in each book our heroes proved victorious in the final battle, and there was a decent bit of catharsis. If your going to switch it up, there’s no time better than the book right before the last one in an arc. The stakes will be drastically raised heading towards the end, and it’s easier to get away with an ending where the protagonists don’t turn out on top, since almost nobody whose made it this far through the series would stop right before book 5. Since Rhythm of War will have staggered endings to arcs, we could have positive endings to arcs in part 4 early part 5, then end in tragedy in the final arc.

A bit on the late side, to be sure, but I've always meant to post this story. The unfortunate tale of my first book signing. Last year was my first year in college, and my thought process was "Wow, I'm totally independent now! I can do anything I want, go anywhere I want." And what better way to celebrate my newfound liberty than by attending my first book signing? Of course, being the hopelessly disorganized person I am, I spent all of 5 minutes planning how to get to the event using public transportation. "It's a two hour drive. I've got a 3 hour window to get there and a GPS. What's the problem?" How wrong I was . First thing that went wrong; my lab right before the signing, which normally ended 30 minutes early, instead ended late. Then I waited 30 minutes for a train since I didn't realize the time estimates Apple maps gives you for getting to a destination don't account for how long you have to wait for trains/buses to arrive. Then I missed my second train by two minutes. The train hadn't even left yet, but for some reason they had this weird policy where they stopped letting people board 10 minutes before departure. After switching to a different train and finally arriving at the town where the book signing was, I had another epiphany. That bus schedule I'd glanced at online? Yeah, turns out it was wrong, and there weren't any more buses running today. So, I ran 2-3 miles to get to the signing, and arrived 45 minutes late, just in time to catch the last 5 minutes of open questions with Brandon. But the troubles didn't stop there. Oh no. After the book signing was over, I walked back to the train station. And guess what. The last train had left. I probably could have made it if I'd run to the train station, but silly me, I forgot to check the train schedule after leaving the signing! So I was stranded. With a dead phone battery. I ended up wandering about for a few hours looking for somewhere to get out of the cold. Eventually I found a bar that was open and got some dinner. Then when that closed at 2 am, I wandered around until I found a Menards. So, I went in there, curled up in the corner of a changing stall, and prayed nobody would throw me out for loitering. Come around 5:45 am, I trudged back to the train station and got on the first train of the day. Then I fell asleep. When I woke up, turns out the train had gone all the way to my stop in Chicago and turned around. I was back in the same town I had been trying to leave for 12 hours. By the time I finally made it back to my dorm room, it was 12 pm the day after the book signing. The only positive of this whole experience was that I was stuck with nothing to do except read a new Sanderson book. And that's the story of how I finished Skyward 14 hours after I got it, before I even got back from the signing.

There wasn't any magic before the disaster. It was the origin of magic, on this planet at least . Edit: Don't worry, I'm not gonna go all space opera. The story will be mostly limited to this one continent. Suffice to say, magic always existed in the universe, but the catastrophe is when it first came to this world.

Ooh, I like this magic system. Especially this bit. So you can decrease the properties of Group 1 solids, but you can only do so by transforming an already infused Group 2 material, and it takes a lot of Lyfe to perform the transformation. Muy interesante. Adds a lot of nuance to the system. Some questions I have: What happens if you overuse Lyfe and run out? Are there an ill effects? I'm guessing there are, but you didn't explicitly mention any. It sounds like humans have a smaller store of Lyfe than the ancient races. Is it also true that humans have more Lyfe than most animals, and animals have more Lyfe than most plants? Or are they all on a similar level? Is the consumption of Lyfe proportional to physical exertion the same as calories, or is it consumed at a more constant rate? Is the capability of using Flux purely dependent on the max capacity of Lyfe an individual can store? Basically, I want to know if all humans are hypothetically capable of Flux, and the only reason that most humans can't use Flux is that they can't store enough Lyfe. Or is there another variable effecting whether someone can access the magic system (e.g. a gene). Is the amount of Lyfe someone can store genetic, or is it determined randomly or through some other method? I'm guessing an infuser is only capable of defusing inanimate matter falling into one of the two categories, and can't defuse lifeforms. Can an infuser defuse any infused object no matter who infused it, or can they only defuse objects they infused themselves? What does increasing the visibility of something that's already opaque look like? Does it simply absorb more wavelengths of light and become darker, eventually turning black? I'm guessing when you say crystals, you mean the crystalline gemstones people ordinarily think of, not just any crystalline material (like salts). Uh, I guess this isn't a question. More like a statement seeking confirmation? End of questions One last thing. This is a small, nitpicky nomenclature issue, but it would be more accurate to call group 2 fluids instead of liquids since fluids includes both liquids and gases. But yeah, awesome magic system! You're definitely better at naming stuff than me. I have a tendency to flesh out everything about magic systems except the names. I'll just go "oh yeah, that thing does this to this other thing and you can do this action which I have no word for!" So good job on that front .

That’s true. I guess it depends how big the inn was and how many people worked there. One more thing, I think you could be a bit more descriptive when Jerrin wakes to the fire. It felt a little dry, and it wouldn’t take a lot to make the scene feel more visceral by describing (for example, the acrid smoke searing his nostrils and throat, the unbearable heat as he approached the door to the room on fire. Especially because it’s fire which has strong sensory details associated with it. All small changes though. You really did a good job, much better than I could have.

I didn't really have time to post my thoughts after the first time through, but now I do have time. I really enjoyed how quick paced it was, but IMO there needs to be a bit more meat in there. The character's personalities feel very fleshed out, but their connections to their environment and there lives feels a little lacking. An example is when Jerrin looks at the burning bodies, the only one he mentions by name is Meria. It feels a little weird that he doesn't give any thought to any of the others burning. From his opening perspective, I was under the perception that although he liked Meria, their relationship wasn't any closer than you'd expect between an innkeeper and one of his employees. So you could just run through some more names, maybe short descriptions before Jerrin dies, that way it doesn't feel like the inn was so full of faceless people. I'd say more, but now I have to go again. Curses.

The new trailer for Witcher is starting to make me doubt my decision to pick WoT. I haven't read any of the books yet (though I plan on reading at least the first one before the 1st season). But damnation, the new trailer is soooo much better than the one that came out during the summer. It's actually making me hyped.

Yeah, there was a thread maybe 6 months ago about someone who was trying to find every League of Legend champion who sounded like they were inspired by a cosmere character. There were a lot, more than half a dozen. This kind of coincidence comes up more often than you’d think.

Yes, don't they just. I'm in Illinois. And it looks like the release party is at Orem, Utah. Here's a link to the location, time, etc. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/starsight-book-release-event-tickets-73348398033?utm-medium=discovery&utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&aff=escb&utm-source=cp&utm-term=listing&fbclid=IwAR1fRZ8PFhDoYtoxFyBODLL5ahOjHY8-DgAhiwSGEZISim9pKlh9oSLR0nw You lucky son of a gun. That's gotta cut down on expenses. If I were able to go, I'd be spending so much (in relative terms). On top of paying for a ticket and a hotel, I'd have to rent a car as well if I don't want to use the Amtrak and turn it into a 70 hour roundtrip.

Every time I listen to Elton John's "Tiny Dancer," it always sounds like "Hold me closer, Tony Danza." I like to imagine that the two led a secret romance, and the studio forced Elton John to change the title of the song.

When you're seriously considering driving a 40 hour roundtrip to go to the release party for Starsight, but then realize its not doable since you'd have to skip a midterm in order to go.

Storm it. I’m always torn over good theories, because I’m afraid that some parts of them might come true in the books, and I’ll have been spoiled. The fact that I feel that way goes to show how great this theory is. Its obviously impossible to say how much of it is accurate (especially because this theory is mostly speculative), but there are so many seeds that I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of the ideas prove to be true. And you’re new to the shard too! Fantastic job.

Where do you live?! It has to be close to the equator, right?

I propose that if you live in the northern hemisphere, Christmas should stay the same date, but if you live south of the equator, Christmas should be in June. Because a hot, sweaty Christmas is about the most depressing thing I can think of.

Ah, I see you are a man of culture as well.

@TypeIVBioChromaticEntity As far as I'm aware, all 9 point defenses are based around the same triangle. Here's an image of the Easton defense and one of the triangles used to construct 9-points for comparison. Edit: My mistake. Any non-obtuse triangle works. Since the exact angles don’t matter, its not necessary to look for the exact triangle that leads to the configuration seen in the book.

From google translate: "Attention - the signing of Brandon Sanderson will be on October 26 at 4 pm at our bookshop in Řeznická (this day even 70% of the participants of our survey wanted it). Brandon promises to sign until the end of the queue. Isaac Stewart, his artist and art director, will also sign the picture books with BS."