Varenus

And facilitate forms of power. What the exact details of that are though, I have no clue. I agree with @PhineasGage's original assessment though, the knights seem to have the edge in raw magical power per person. Unless Odium and the Fused are hiding something big, In don't see how the old radiants, with all their numbers, experience, hearalds, and storming Honor ever had an issue handeling the Fused. Sorry for derailing.

The Sadeas and Adolin thing reminds me of Perrin and the White Cloaks from WoT, which I hated every moment of. For those who don't know:(WoT spoilers) I hope that the issue gets resolved in a way that makes sense and in a timely manner.

And those are all good points. I'm not trying to say that she has accomplished nothing. What I think is that those rally don't matter to her as much as Kaladin's victories matter to him. Yay, she spooked of the unmade. She was feeling good about herself, then Jasnah shows up and it all goes down the drain. And that last point sounds like more of a headache than a victory to me.

Let me just say, I liked the book. I agree that Oathbringer was an amazing book, I am just the nit picky type. I hadn't considered your take on the killing of the street urchin. I like it, but Shallan already has the burden of killing both her parents on her shoulders. I don't think that it was necessary, but hey I also don't think the multiple personalities were necessary from the beginning. As for the winning thing, you are correct that I was talking about how Kaladin had saved the day in both WoK and WoR. As for Shallan, The only real victories I see for her are in WoR. Jasnah grudgingly accepts Shallan back after her ruse falls apart in WoK(where she nearly dies after being poisoned by someone she trusted), and then Shallan has to confront her past in WoR. What I am saying is that if you include the horrors of her past, Shallan needs a win more than Kaladin does at the moment.

I concur. Moreover, Shallan didn't need another failure, unlike Kaladin, she was already in enough trouble from the end of WoR. I also found the whole part with the Oathgate kind of "meh" considering the amount of work that was put into it. At least we got a good sense of what Kholinar is/was like.

I concur. Moreover, Shallan didn't need another failure, unlike Kaladin, she was already in enough trouble from the end of WoR. I also found the whole part with the Oathgate kind of "meh" considering the amount of work that was put into it. At least we got a good sense of what Kholinar is/was like.

I think that disgust is perhaps too harsh a term, but I do feel some level of frustration with how Shallan's character was handled in OB. In WoR I would have placed her character above Dalinar's to be honest and her story arc in WoR was very well written imo. Now in OB however, I can't quite enjoy her story as much because I felt her character was cheapened by the whole multiple personality thing. And let me be totally clear, I don't mean this to be taken as a statement on mental health problems, just that I don't think it made her character as gripping as it was in WoR. Take the two scenes in OB where Shallan goes undercover to steal food and the one where she sneaks into the revelers. Now compare them with the two scenes in WoR where Shallan finds Taln and the one where she infiltrates Amaram's secret room. The difference is that in WoR the focus is on the act of espionage and the illusions are the means in which the goal is achieved. In OB I feel that the opposite is true, the focus is on the illusions and the undercover missions are the excuse to use them. Which leads to all the tension of these moments in OB draining away because Shallan's PoV can change on a dime due to her ability to completely change her personality. Like when she changes her personality to mimic the old lady she stole food from. That being said, I still enjoyed parts of Shallan's story in OB(especially the parts with Hoid), but I don't see why the multiple personality thing had to happen. I am interested to how the rest of her story plays out though. Also, I wish the whole love triangle thing would have resolved by the end of part 2. I don't care how it ended, but I think it carried on for far, far too long. TL;DR: I expected a super spy but got Cusicesh.

Good thing he wasn't flying then! He was falling......with STYLE fashion!

The fatal flaw in both these theories is that neither stonewards or edgedancers can fly. What's the point of getting powers if you can't fly?

Ground breaking research into Shin grammar has discovered the truth behind the nimi! Nimi is an acronym for: notoriously intimidating monstrous inquisitor. Surely Nightblood would destroy such a creature on sight!

Darn. Why couldn't you make this easy by putting Odium on the list? I guess it depends on what you mean by "character". I see it two ways: 1) Character as in the personality and actions of the person in question. i.e how we would talk about someone's character irl. 2) Character as in how they fit into the over all Stormlight narrative. In the first case I would have to say Amaram. Roshone, Sadeas, and Elhokar have all done, caused, or allowed extremely awful things to happen, but none of them have explicitly worked for an organization(The Sons of Honor) that wanted to bring about a desolation(potentially ending the world) to restore power to the Vorin church. As if starting a desolation wouldn't have been bad enough, empowering the Vorin church afterwords would probably not have been such a great development given Roshar's history with the church. Then, to make things even worse, he straight up joins the darkside! Becoming, in my book(pun intened), the biggest piece of crem to have ever blown in a storm wind. At least Mr.T had the intention of saving the world before he became Odium's pawn. In the second case I would have to say Shallan. Say what you want about how horrible Amaram, Mr.T, Sadeas, ect, are; but at least they have a clear purpose and work within the narrative in ways that seem appropriate given their motivations. Shallan on the other hand just feels ... off to me even considering that she is supposed to be unstable. Shallan does have an excellent story in WoR(one of my favorites actually) and a decent story in WoK, but her story in OB was just a complete mess to read and an absolute headache to understand. Then, by the end of the book, none of her issues are resolved! I guess you can count the love triangle as resolved, but given the severity of her other character issues it felt really weak. All of those words wasted on the stupid triangle could have gone into Lopen chapters for all it was worth. I guess the same argument could be used for Kaladin's arc in OB, but he got two MASSIVE wins in WoK and WoR and plenty of character development. It was time for his character to lose for once, unfortunate though it may be. Shallan, however, pretty much won by default in WoK, and then she speaks her next truth at the end of WoR and all her character development from the past two books is rendered completely moot and nothing changes by the end of OB! Don't get me wrong, I feel that struggle is an important part of any character, but important parts of the story happen from Shallan's PoV and they just don't feel as real as those from other character's PoV. Some of Shallan's most interesting moments throughout all three books for me have been when she is investigating some suspicious activity, infiltrating some group of people, or using the training Jasnah gave her to dig up some sort of ground breaking revelation. And all these things happen to some extent in OB, but they are completely dominated by her storming alert egos! Which leads to her inner monologue feeling fake and interactions with others (especially Pattern) falling short of what I expected from WoR. Over all, it just didn't seem to work the way it was intended to, imo. But hey, maybe it's all part of Mr. Sanderson's master plan.

Nightblood would never let itself be combined with a nimi! Whatever a nimi is, it could be evil!

It's a ghost ship

The last thing these books need is Seanchan.

@eltari Oh, I see what you are saying about the Fused now. When I saw the word overpowered, I immediately assumed we were talking about raw magical strength. But you are correct, from a larger, tactical point of view the Fused do have a large edge. The Fused's numbers, level of skill, ability to reincarnate, and Odium's apparent affinity for planning do give his side the edge thus far. If I remember correctly one of the Fused states to Venli that their greatest warriors have yet to "wake up", so i'm not so sure that its a matter of hosts, but rather that there are more Fused still on Braize. Also, the hosts have to be willing participants and the regular parshpeople did not seem too keen on fighting just yet. That's why they need Venli to spread propaganda. As for Dalianr, it is implied that he can do it at will, but that he gets tired after words. So there are some limits.

Really? I got the opposite impression. They seem like total chumps compared to radiants of the third ideal. In my opinion they are more comparable to squires or radiants of the first/second ideal. In terms of surges they are almost completely outmatched, only having access to one at a time and surges that are apparently weaker. The only thing they have going for them is their apparently infinite voidlight. Even then, Dalinar can now summon stormlight at will so.... Anyway here are some relevant epigraphs: So it seems that the Fused are indeed connected to Odium, but they can also draw voidlight from this unmade.

Voidbinding!

Apparently not. According to the Stormfather: Page 408 of the hardcover.

Can't the Fused just return to the Everstorm now, instead of heading back to damnation when they die? So even if they sent the Heralds back, they would still have to deal with the Fused that have already arrived, right? I really don't see how killing the Heralds would solve their current predicament beyond stopping more Fused from making the jump from Braize to Roshar.

(Emphasis added) I would also like to mention that mixing surges is also a thing apparently, which would also account for some of the more dubious applications of surgebinding. Shallan mentions during the battle of Thaylenah that she is giving her illusions some substance by mixing the surges of illusion and transformation. Then we see Jasnah combine her surge of transportation with transformation to cause a soulcasting "virus". So, Soulcasting + illusions = Phantom Warriors Soulcasting + Transportation = Soulcasting "Virus" Anyone got any others? I can't remember any other specific applications, but... maybe... Reverse Lashing + Surge of Destruction = Black Hole?

Shallan and Yalb.....Oh wait.....That ship sank.

Looks like there is merit to the "Eshoni is the author of Oathbringer" theory after all! Honestly though, I still lean toward Dalinar as the author. Also, Is Ulim saying he is a Redemption Spren or that it escaped Redemption Spren? If he is Redemption Spren, I don't see the redemption part of its character. It seems more like Retribution Spren or something by the way it talks.

Great post! The Midnight Mother's attempt to break Shallan and Pattern's bond lends itself to your "connection severing" idea. Before the the Oathbringer chapters were released I assumed this was from Taln's perspective. However, given the fact (like you said) that there are nine Unmade and the description of Odium's Champion in Oathbringer, I put forward the possibility that this deathrattle is in reference to Odium's champion. The Midnight Mother Idea is also very interesting, especially considering its symmetry with Taln, but I didn't get the impression that the Midnight Mother was one of the Unmade that could speak or even think like a person(though, of course, we know that some could). As an aside, there is something I do not quite understand. How were the Stormform Parshendi able to summon lightning and something as powerful as the Everstorm with no Voidlight(presumably)?

I think it is referring to her sister's ambition.