Mulk

RIP Mr. Campbell.

he had to commission some prayers and make some donations.

lol. Fair enough, Govir. I just imagine he probably shakes his head sometimes at the leaps we make on this forum.

I'm not saying there's not reason. I'm saying the leap to say every new thing in the book is an offworld reference is a little much is all. *shrugs*

and all new items/stories/animals are offworld references. amirite?

The whole man/woman dynamic in this series is really frustrating to me in general. I started reading before the fourth book came out and I've read all of them aside from the last three at least 10 times - the last three it's more like 4-5 times each. Others have said mostly what I end up thinking about her, though I think Nynaeve and one or two others are more my favorite females when you boil it all down.

I think most of us would agree with you in a perfect world, but as the original went, it wasn't possible to tell Szeth had given himself up until he failed not only to block but to even try to block Sylblade. Like, Kaladin's thrust was just an attempt to take the offensive and make Szeth react to him. There's no point or reason to feel bad as he's 1) been trying to kill you; 2) been trying to kill your chosen leader; 3) succeeded in killing some of your friends not to mention a whole slew of world leaders; and 4) babbled insanely while doing it all. There is no reason for Kaladin to expect him to quit fighting entirely and no reason for him to feel anything aside from relief when the end of the fight comes.

From Adolin's viewpoint there is no reason Shallan shouldn't know about the beef between Kaladin and Amaram - he may even be trying to protect Shallan from an unjust grudge, as her anger at Amaram is misplaced as he didn't kill Helaran. For all he is trying to hide his killing of Sadeas, Adolin is a very honest man who believes truthfulness is the way forward so I find the whole reaction to Adolin revealing this to be kinda weird. This is who Adolin is, in all things except the Sadeas incident. Actually, I think we should call it that from here on out. "The Sadeas Incident." For the rest, Shallan is disturbed and becoming more so. I see no peace in her with who she needs to be. She seems to be having the crisis of self in this book that Kaladin was having in the last one. Or at least the Lightweaver/Cryptic-involved equivalent. I think her path is more dangerous to herself though. It's like she's on the edge of breaking her mind. Dalinar...man. I would NOT have wanted to line up against that guy in anything. And I think it's fitting that his realizations and progression comes in an abrupt jump. Part of his past is he has killed his own men under the influence of the Thrill, but I'm afraid it's going to get much worse before it gets better.

Given Kaladin's experiments in WOR, Adhesion does seem to me to work like glue. Like, he stuck a rock to a wall and it wouldn't move until the stormlight ran out, that sort of thing. I think if he infused someone's clothes there would be some play to it, but if he infused their skin they'd be stuck till the light runs out.

You assume a lot of things that need not be or are not true. You assume that around the horizontal four faces will all be level to the sun/moon and further that differences in relief will have no effect on climate or temp. You assume the moon(s) if any are the same size and distance as our moon. You assume the cubic shape is a perfect cube with no curvature at all. I have one, as a matter of fact. It's a former sphere that, for Reasons (tm) crunched into a cube, but not a perfect one as the sides still have a bit of arch to them, but there are definite corners and sides. It's balanced (if you were to represent it on the plane with its sun) close to one of the corners so the path of the sun does have some north to south wiggle to it and it's also not a perfectly centered orbit. It's also a world with some fairly severe relief and a lot of mountains and cliffs resulting from the fracturing and crumpling of the world so there are all kinds of climate zones/areas. Gravity in this place doesn't work quite like it does as we are used to - again, there are Reasons(tm), but the effect is fthere is a sort of invisible line through the planet that functions as the gravitational center. The tide problem...I dealt with that by creating a sort of cascading waterfall effect from face to another, though their tides aren't as pronounced as ours. Lunar navigation is possible If you're going to go on the assumption that this world somehow exists in a universe space like ours - that is, the exact same laws of nature/physics/whatever, there's probably a lot of granular detail to go into. For myself, I wanted something completely out of the ordinary, and I do have reasons that make sense in the worldspace itself, but would not play out that way in our world because things don't work exactly the same way for a variety of reasons from the relative strength of the rocks in question to the power of gravity itself and on and on. Have some fun with it - make rules that make sense internally but don't feel bound to make every physical law precisely what ours are.

From Szeth's standpoint it changes nothing at all. From Kaladin's standpoint...well, apparently Brandon thought the fact that Kaladin still killed him after establishing to Szeth's satisfaction that he was not in fact Truthless and therefore not bound to murder or obey didn't sit too well in light of Kaladin's new standing. I dunno, it's clear something about it seemed off to him or he wouldn't have done it. As a reader I don't see how go ahead and killing a guy who has tried to kill you, tried to kill the man you are sworn to protect and succeeded in killing some of your friends is a problem - in Kaladin's place you'd have to trust 100% in Szeth's words that he is no longer a threat. I don't know that anyone could in that situation. So I'm fine with the original ending, which is safely ensconced in my hardcover copy and I've no desire to have in my possession a copy with the altered ending.

I'd imagine that winds at or near the Origin have something to do with the slow down, and I would also imagine that clashing with a highstorm while at sea would also slow it down. Like, I imagine the highstorms and the Everstorm as a kind of very large and very fast moving hurricane. Thus, they pack a far greater punch than a normal hurricane, but would still be subject to being affected by opposing winds and all that. Given we know pretty much zero about what lies offshore of the continent, opposing wind patterns or jetstreams would interdict and/or aid the storms depending on direction and time of year seem to me to be the most likely natural explanation. Other explanations would include the relative effects an Everstorm and a highstorm have on each other (you have to figure they cross each other in the oceans as well as on land after all), whether or not the Stormfather (or some specific voidspren for the Everstorm) have to interact with the storms to recharge them or if they power up if you will by crossing through the Origin (if it really is Honor's shardpool as has been theorized in one or two places, that would help explain how they regain so much force after leaving Shinovar where it's basically just a windy rainstorm) or some other similar feature for the Everstorm.

A fellow pun AND WoT fan. Excellent...

I've read Edgedancer. "The sword likes you" is a line that belongs on Roshar just like the fact Syl likes and trusts Dalinar - in my mind they were both spren. Kaladin says the shardblades are dead spren, Syl says they live a little again, and that's all I took it to be. Now, having read Warbreaker it was immediately clear (to me anyway) that Nightblood was the same sword that Szeth winds up with. But I don't think you need that information to enjoy the book or to not think something is off. Same thing with Vasher/Zahel. There's a lot of cultures we haven't seen yet on Roshar, I assumed he was from one of them. You see, for the innocent reader nothing about Nightblood is out of place in a world where the very forces of nature can become sentient. Where semi-intelligent or unintelligent cognitive realm bits show up for rot and anger and wind and the...I forget the name for the ones that showed up when inebriated. The whole realm is just bursting at the seams with life and power. A sword is just one more bit of that, without the pieces I know now. And with the pieces I know how, I don't see how someone who isn't aware of those bits is supposed to conclude this doesn't fit. It'd be more of a stretch to say something like that can't happen than that it could in such a world. In effect you're putting a box on the creator of the work saying you can't do that, when the creator says yeah I can, watch this.The rules are all going to make sense in the end to the Cosmere-aware, and be unnecessary frippery to those who are not. And if Brandon decides he wants to do more with it and show off the greater universe through Nightblood? Cool. But I think he'll do it in a way that won't require you to know Warbreaker to understand. I'm just in a roll with it phase, you know? I like bouncing around theories too (for example, here's a harebrained one I haven't posted yet - Iyatil and Mraize and the Ghostbloods are linked up with the IRE in some fashion to work on acquiring the power of Honor or Cultivation or Odium to further their own ends which is why they say they will make use of the Desolation or the coming conflict or whatever) but in the end I tend to assume most new stuff is just Rosharan stuff we haven't seen on screen yet and that's exactly what I expect of any non-cosmere aware readers.

For a reader who is unaware of the cosmere (as I was when I first read of the talking sword - I read Warbreaker like three months ago), you just take it as a strange spren/sword you haven't run across yet. Like a spren who died and was resurrected or somehow survived the whole stuck in bladeform thing. I know, cause I was there. *shrugs* I mean seriously. There are sentient spren and apparently quite a lot of them. It's not much of a stretch to think something odd happened to one.

My best guess is that if groups of stormforms show up to a large meeting of newly released parshmen it might spook all or part of them off from joining up as a force for war. It might even frighten them into joining the humans You want them together in one place, agreeing to take on the humans for all they did to the parshmen and taking the storm to transform in bulk. Way more damage that way, even if they aren't scared of the void transformations edit: heh, Salkara was thinking on similar lines and posted right before me.

Judging characterization on one chapter at a time is honestly not a great practice. Unless you're dealing with a book without chapters there is no way to accurately judge a character in such a short snippet - you're never going to see a character's full range in one chapter, let alone a series of single chapters that hop viewpoints in this way. Given how the first two books in the series worked out and how well Brandon writes in general, I'm willing to say it'll be fine when put into its full context. Right now we're trying to judge the quality of a piece of art by looking at one corner of the frame.

he always came across to me as a good guy who is very grumpy and easily annoyed. He's also not someone who bears the burdens of fame well, with which I can sympathize. Being famous has drawbacks I never want to experience for myself, given that in order to rest and relax I have to have space and silence. I just think he'd relieve some pressure if he provided some form of updates instead of continually not saying anything about it. He learned a lesson from missing his guess on Wise Man's Fear, but it's the wrong lesson. He learned never to guess instead of to give regular and honest updates. I recall well when Brandon had to adjust expectations not only on the last book of Wheel of Time (when he turned it into three instead of one) but then said he needed more time for the last. I'd be perfectly cool with that if he just says every 3-6 months "look, this is where it's at, this is how long I think it might take, but I'll check back in a few months to say how it's going." IT doesn't even take that long to write such a thing. Sigh

It would be awesome.

Nale has no spren, nor any longer a connection to Honor as far as we know. The point is well-taken otherwise (I agree with the post almost entirely), but that is worth pointing out. If he had a spren, it would possibly have tried to deflect him from this course.

That's my thought as well. It fits that what is evil or wrong or at least in opposition is not always so in appearance or attitude. The frightening thing about Lucifer from the Bible is that he can appear as an angel of light if he wishes. This is, in the Middle Earth mythos, how Sauron got both the Elves and the Men of Numenor to welcome him. Humans have a hard time attributing false motive to those we consider comely or beautiful, so often times those who intend harm need only put on a good face to fool people. It may be part of how this voidspren is allaying any fears of the parshmen she is leading and directing - doing so in a comely and mostly non-threatening form.

I've three right now but none of them are interested in TP. I don't know why. So I leave it as is for now.

I was thinking Ishar or Jezrien myself. Jezrien as he was considered the lead or king Herald, right? Ishar because of how much he knows, and how that may have driven him mad. In any case, I'm with the Beard, I'd love to see a scene of Nale going in to deal with this.

I completely agree. But a couple of others amongst all of the other hundreds or thousands who go there...well, it's not hard at all to see how one or two might slip through. I'm not saying it's likely. It just occurred to me as a possibility.

It's not off to assume they were there. I agree, the birds were there. However, randomly hopping into First and grabbing a bird and escaping...I find that far fetched even for a presumed badass like Mraize. He would want to look around more, explore more. Unless he had connections there, there is no way he survives his first trip to Patji outisde of the possibility that all he did was hop in, grab a bird and hop out. Patji kills the people who know it often enough after all. We'll wait and see. I just think people see random new thing associated with a worldhopper and immediately jump to offworld stuff because they want everything to be fraught with behind the scenes meaning. I think the bird is just that - a bird. And one chosen to enhance Mraize's particular reputation at this point of time, but in the end it's just a bird. As in all other things, I'm fine to be proven wrong and it will be cool if I am. I imagine Brandon and Peter are having a laugh at how we hop on every detail though...AGAIN.