Morsk

I've never read Belgariad, but in WoT I think the real message is about characters who are jerks like Cadsuane and the Sea Folk, or just plain cruel like most of Seanchen culture, or Alanna forcibly bonding Rand, and so on. I always thought it was a bit creepy how cozy WoT gets with wanton cruelty by supposedly good characters, and the ending finally gives us a reason: the Dark One's evil is normal, it's in everyone, and part of what makes us human. It's nice when someone, temporarily, chooses to be a little good. But being too good too often is just unnatural. Apparently. I'm not saying I like this. (I think it fits the series, and helps explain a lot of how senselessly cruel characters are to each other. But just as an idea, I think it's awful.) But I'm asking if this is really the same message as Belgariad, or if you're focusing on the "choice" part, and not other details of it.

Rithmatist looks great. The Wild Chalkling art at the end of the Prologue reminds me of zerglings! Maybe it's just because I saw Brandon call it "chalkboard Starcraft" in some interview somewhere and I can't get the comparison out of my head.

I agree, and I think the key thing with Odium's Intent is that it's very hard for other Shards' Intents to counter. Hatred is much easier to spread than undo, and it can corrupt almost anything, giving Odium freedom to attack who he wants, how he wants. The Shard under attack has to stick to its Intent in fighting back, but Odium's Intent isn't limiting him at all.

I agree that we don't know enough yet. Brandon did say "You’ll probably see a bunch of Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism too if you look for it." here. But the idea of the 10 essences doesn't feel Kabbalistic at all to me. So I think Brandon was mostly using the imagery of the Tree of Life to inspire the diagram, rather than the spiritual meaning of it. A big difference is that the Kabbalistic Tree of Life is supposed to represent a path between God and the world, and it has some asymmetrical elements. The little we know about the WoK diagram is that it has 2 central elements, not a path with a beginning and an end. (I think once it's called the Double Eye of the Almighty, and it's associated with his creation of animals and plants?) And it has more symmetry than the Tree of Life.

A lack of Shadesmar in space could be exactly what makes it so useful for travel, if the lack of anything interesting in space corresponds to very short distances between "interesting" places. Or at least, shorter than interstellar distances! I can imagine some path or veil that has to be crossed, corresponding to the very limited cognitive presence of the space between worlds, but whatever that path is and whatever its difficulty, it sure beats space travel without FTL.

I feel the same way, and about everything you wrote; I just don't want to quote the whole thing. But I think the Elantris Chapter 62-2 Annotation reveals a case of divine intervention by something beyond the Shards. So I try to include that in my explanations of what Adonalsium was, although it's not necessary. Even given that there's some type of deity beyond the Shards, Adonalsium doesn't have to be related to it. It could be a high-tech artifact created by an ancient civilization, with advanced knowledge of Realmatics. "Power of creation" makes me want to associate it with that deity beyond the Shards though. That doesn't feel like the right name for a high-tech magic artifact. Even a terraforming device, I don't think would get called "the power of creation", unless people were being really poetic.

I have a hard time analogizing Adonalsium to the God of the Abrahamic religions. The Shards are way too weak to be 1/16th of something that created all space and time. Their inability to access the afterlife also makes them feel less than godlike. I do think there's a God in the cosmere, but that Adonalsium is just a tool it created for a task, then chose to leave around after the task was done. So it's called "the power of creation" because it was used for some creative task, not because it's all the power the creator God had available. Ruin and Odium can be part of creation, because artists and designers make judgements about what to avoid or get rid of as part of the creative process. Anything that could be involved in creation, I think might show up as a Shard. Brandon is an artist himself, so he's an expert! But I don't expect to see strictly religious shards like Holiness. Maybe something like Diligence, if that's not already a part of Honor or Devotion.

I've seen RPGs (Nobilis, old White Wolf games) where things exist in multiple worlds at the same time, and there are different rule sets for interacting with them in each world. To me it seems like a common enough idea in fantasy, and the reason not to have too many of these "realms" is that it would become too confusing for the reader (or player) to follow. 3 is interesting, because it invites us to think of different ways things can be hidden or subtle, instead of lumping everything non-physical together. But more than 3 or 4, and I think the distinctions would become tedious rather than interesting.

At 10,000 Breaths I couldn't say no to Awakening. The increased appreciation of art is almost as good as being able to fly, as far as fun goes. But then it comes with immortality, and being able to animate things too!

I also feel that it's related to the geography-based magic. Perhaps the land itself is "blinding" in Shadesmar, the way metal is to gods on Scadrial. Or if not quite on the level of "blinding", at least the geography is setting up a lot of interference, and making it hard to distinguish the features one needs to navigate Shadesmar. Brandon seemed to suggest that going to Shadesmar on Sel was actually dangerous though, not just confusing.

Maybe this is why Honor and Cultivation went to the planet together. Honor may have realized that his principle is a bit lacking as a guide in anything outside of war. I mean, look at Dalinar's "realization" at the end of the book: people should be treated like children and denied all civil liberties, until they've been brainwashed to accept his culture. Granted he's in a war camp, and the Alethi are really bad at discipline, and Odium is coming. It's not so bad an idea, given all those special circumstances. But as a way of running an entire planet, it can really use a balancing principle!

Thanks for linking this. Some time ago I got a vague idea of what "honor" used to mean from Wikipedia's entry, but it's not one of WP's better articles and I've wanted to see a better description for some time now. It looks like this series is still ongoing, because he's mostly said critical things about honor so far, but the introduction made it sound like he was going to end up praising it in the end, once criticism was gotten out of the way. That hasn't happened yet. I actually think very poorly of honor, and am glad men have mostly escaped from it. I think it's a parallel to the oppressive aspects of female gender roles, and feminists' desire to escape from those. Men enjoyed a head start on purging our gender role of oppressive elements, and I'm grateful for this, and I want to go further and see the female gender role purged of oppressive elements too. The past scares me. Honor was so oppressive, for so long. The real question to me is what "Honor" means in the Stormlight Archive. Honor (the deity) said he missed the past, but what he really missed was the people united in war. Honor is saying he missed the Desolations, and that he thought they made people better. Try telling that to one of the survivors of the Desolations, or the victims, or their families, and Honor would have a lot of apologizing to do for his bad moral sense, his making light of atrocity. Will SA ever address this conflict? Maybe it will try to turn Honor into something new and better instead of just equating it with "good".

I think it's a creator deity beyond the Shards. Brandon mentions Raoden benefiting from divine intervention once, in the Elantris Chapter 62-2 Annotation. At the time I wondered if Brandon was being non-canonical about it, and setting the cosmere up as agnostic towards any "true" deities beyond the Shards, with the choice left to the reader. But Shai seems very cosmere-aware, and mentions this Unknown God. And towards the end, Gaotona describes her artistic accomplishment in many ways, the last being "Awesome, yet unseen." I think that's a hint that Shai also benefited from divine intervention. And Hemalurgy, with the blood.

I think it's the geography-based magic. On some level the land itself is alive with power, and this is either blinding and makes it hard to navigate Shadesmar, or it's dangerous and requires special precautions.

I feel the same way. I think calling it capital Thrill is part of Vorin gender roles, and we don't see Kaladin doing it for the same reason that many Vorin women are content to wear a glove instead of an elaborate sleeve. They identify as Vorin, and would be horrified at someone speaking of the future, or a man reading. But they mostly stop at the level of those taboos, and little rituals like burning prayers. They don't have the full dedication to Vorin culture that the Lighteyes do.

Store memories of spoilers when rereading books, or watching reruns.

I don't know of any real examples with poisons, but it's definitely possible to make drugs that block other drugs from working. It's a concern with many prescription medications, that they won't work correctly if you're on other drugs. Not everything stays in the body forever. You just need a poison with a shorter half-life than the antidote, and it would be safe. I think the technojumbo comes in with how quickly Kasbal died. A poison that fast-acting wouldn't be safe to use with the jam antidote. Jasnah did say he was desperate and used extra, but it seems a bit of a stretch.

One thing about Shallan calling herself a murderer is that she's spent a lot of time studying philosophy, about the ethical consequences of killing people. And Jasnah even gave her part of a definition when Shallan accused her of murder, saying murder is a legal concept not a moral one. So Shallan calling herself "murderer" could be the result of a hair-splitting definition. Maybe what she did was against Veden law, but something most of us wouldn't consider immoral.

I was a Robert Jordan fan first, but the .. um, pacing of the middle WoT books turned me off from fantasy entirely. Now that the series is almost over, I'm able to enjoy the books on rereads. But reading them the first time through was so incredibly frustrating.

Shallan takes a Memory of Jasnah near the end, holding only a single dim garnet that she took from her hospital room. Shortly after, Jasnah says Shallan was a fool to enter Shadesmar with only a single dim sphere. Neither of them mention the sphere going out. So I don't think the memories require Stormlight. I like the idea that it's her parallel to riding the storm like Kaladin does in his dream. I used to think it might be her parallel to his not needing to breathe, but that requires Stormlight and hers doesn't.

I thought Shallan was seeing Voidbringers! Kasbal had told her this theology, about how the Almighty's goodness was balanced against the Voidbringers' evil, but that humans had a "dual nature" and could create good or evil without giving rise to its opposite. So I thought that Shallan's deceit towards Jasnah was adding evil to the universe, and these Voidbringers were hovering around her, ready to reach into her heart and pull a new Voidbringer out. I didn't like it, because it felt too juvenile a morality to me. There'd be no hard questions, if you could just peek into the spirit world and check on whether some action was creating Voidbringers or not. No Voidbringers, no evil! So I thought it was silly, but I thought Kasbal had foreshadowed it and was ready to accept it. I'm glad I was wrong.

I had an idea like that, but I don't like it so much anymore. But I thought that maybe all sacrifice is magic on Roshar, similar to how all art has a tiny bit of magic on Nalthis. And that the ridiculous Vorin gender restrictions play into this, and those who truly follow them have chance at being blessed or gifted in exchange. I thought the Thrill might be part of the same system, and that if we had more female PoVs we'd see the Vorin women have a lot of mental gifts. The Old Magic would be the same thing, only much more dramatic and explicit. But I went back to seeing the memories as part of Surgebinding, not as a surge themselves, but as a free perk related to the method of infusing. Kaladin's inhaling focus comes with the perk of letting him hold his breath for a very long time. Shallan's I figure comes with the memories. edit: Oh. I suppose Shallan's mother could have asked the Nightwatcher for a gifted child, and the Nightwatcher had her die in childbirth as the sacrifice, or gave her a curse she hated so much that she killed herself as soon as the pregnancy was finished.

I also thought Adonai, and that the -ium ending suggests an artifact or substance rather than a person, so it's a bit of a paradox.

Oh, this is interesting. I had the same idea in May but didn't know anyone else had come up with it too; this is from way back in January! It's nice to see more people thinking about it. I also like the idea that the Nightwatcher's curses are always cognitive. A side-effect is that it explains how so many people can seek the Old Magic in secret, and keep the shame to themselves. It's possible though that the cause and effect are reversed; the Nightwatcher favors subtle curses because she knows she'll get a bad reputation, and fewer visits, the more blatant the curses are.

I thought it was oceans that covered everything except the poles? Or is it a mixture of both?