Calyx

This seems pretty inevitable, given that Jasnah is in the same area of Roshar that both Vasher and Nightblood now are.

I would love to see Lightsong meet literally anyone - but especially the more serious characters, ie Jasnah, Kaladin, Elend.

I hope we see Vivenna return.

Wow, really going out on a limb there.

I'm looking forward to computers that are based on feruchemy.

I would imagine Vasher would - he has all the experience, access to a ton of breaths, and is super wily. If not him, then a mistborn... and Vin is the best, even if Elend it technically stronger. Mistborn would have the advantage over Radiants because of their mobility and their longer range options for causing harm.

I personally like Elend, and I find his development as a king to be a pretty great arc over the series. He starts out very idealistic, but experiences make him far more pragmatic, while still being a mostly decent person. I also find Tindwyl's lessons highly amusing. I'm not really a fan of him becoming an uber-mistborn, but keep in mind that even though he has a lot of allomantic power, Vin can almost certainly still kick his chull in any type of actual fight. He may be more powerful, but she is far, far more skilled.

To the discussion about Autonomy and her intent - I think its possible that she is just a huge hypocrite. For her actions on scadrial to make sense to me, I think her primary purpose in interfering is to ensure that no other planet (or shard) can interfere with the autonomy (and her autonomous control) of her own people. She clearly maintains fairly tight control over her domains, even blocking travel to and from Taldain. This desire for control - for her own autonomy - is why her 'faceless immortal' decides that the planet will be destroyed. Scadrial is advancing too quickly and may pose a threat to her domain, so it must be removed. Harmony is powerful, being two shards, and may pose a threat. His ability to do so must be curtailed. In what is presumed to be her letter to Hoid (see Stormlight Archives), she flat out says that she admires Odium's initiative. Basically, I think she cares about her own autonomy and not that of others, and is willing to aggressively pursue actions that will preserve her autonomy at the expense of the autonomy of others.

I've always assumed that Wax's bubble was just him gently pushing in all directions, probably proportional to the momentum of any given object nearby. With experience, I don't doubt that other coinshots could do this as well. However, bullets have a lot of momentum - small mass, but very high velocity - and so I would think deflecting them would actually be fairly difficult. Here, Wax should have a pretty large advantage over a normal coinshot - his ability to alter his own mass would give him much greater control over his bubble. The fact remains that we don't ever see another coinshot in era 2 that is remotely close to Wax's talent or experience, which makes separating his abilities quite difficult. That being said, I think that his resonance is that his bubble is far more effective than those of others, which seems likely because both of his abilities should play a role in creating it.

I would suggest the Gentlemen Bastards series by Scott Lynch. In particular, the first book "The Lies of Locke Lamora" is fantastic, a really fun amalgamation of a conman/heist movie with fantasy. Be warned, however, that the wait for book 4 has been depressing.

I just finished the series, starting with A New Spring, and enjoyed it. However, that book is full of Aes Sedai names and I think I probably would have gotten a lot more out of it had I read it somewhere in the middle. Moiraine and Suian are two of my favorite characters, though, and part of that might be because I read A New Spring first.

As someone who started A New Spring in December and just finished A Memory of Light, I would say definitely read them. The series as a whole is fantastic, and though there are characters that grate at certain points (i.e. Mat at the beginning or Nynaeve through the middle) the overall read was highly enjoyable. There are some fantastic characters, and the rather vast buildup does have a suitable payoff in the end.

For some reason, I had always thought that the Ghostbloods were somehow related to Autonomy. Mraize has sand from Taldain and an Aviar from First of the Sun; I think both of these planets are controlled by Autonomy, and we know that Autonomy does not allow travel to/from Taldain - and this ban is apparently effective enough to prevent Khriss from returning. Iyatil, Mraize's babsk, seems to be a southern scadrian from silverlight - so the concerns of the Ghostbloods are clearly larger than simply Roshar. None of this proves anything, but to me it suggests a connection to Autonomy, who we have seen from Mistborn era 2 is very likely willing to interfere with other worlds - possibly to keep them from advancing and becoming a threat to her own. I imagine Autonomy is thrilled about the current conflict on Roshar, and would very much like it to continue. How could Mraize have gotten sand from Taldain and an Aviar without being part of Autonomy's organization? (its true that Hoid apparently can visit Autonomy's worlds, but... well, Hoid)

I don't agree with the ideal that scientists and engineers need to be introverts - I know many who are quite extroverted. In fact, among my colleagues, I doubt the percentage of introverts is significantly higher than the average over the entire population (I'm a chemist). I don't think any of the traits Navani displays are incompatible; she can be a forceful person, an awesome queen, and an engineer all at the same time. In the real world, we have people in positions of authority that come from a science/engineering background - look at the Pope, or Angela Merkel.

As I recall, Vindication is the name of a really cool gun made by Ranette. She named it after Vin.

That was my understanding as well - in the kitchen scene, it could be interpreted as her being weak, not feeling superior to Kaladin. I also got the impression that after her father died, the people taking care of her had really strong opinions about associating with darkeyes. This doesn't excuse Laral, but it does somewhat confuse the issue. And I think she can be blamed even less for not apologizing for Roshone. He also almost certainly abused her until she took control of the situation, and I doubt she really learned the truth of the Roshone/Lirin conflict. The main mark against her here is that she was present when Roshone sent Tien to war, so she knows for sure that Roshone did something genuinely horrible and undeserved. But again, that was Roshone and not Laral. The best thing is usually to forgive with suspicion, and I think Laral does deserve that. There are numerous potentially mitigating circumstances that we just don't know enough about to truly judge her - and she only did one truly bad thing to Kaladin personally (kitchen scene), the rest was Roshone.

That isn't a character flaw, in fact I would argue that it is a key piece of the Christian doctrine that Sanderson is writing from. This is why characters like Dalinar or Szeth, who have committed atrocities but are sincerely repentant, can be redeemed but people like Amaram, who feel guilty but not sorry, can't be. I think Laral can get there, especially if she is playing the role I suspect in protecting villagers - including Kaladin's new brother. At the moment, though, it isn't clear she feels anything - I just don't think we see enough of her to know.

Haha yes, any of those would have been great. I think she responded the way she did because from her point of view this shard bearer appeared and started challenging her authority. But I can understand why you aren't going to forgive her - that scene was handled poorly by pretty much everyone except the guard who told Roshone that it would be better just to forget the punch ever happened. That guy handled things super well.

To be fair, what was she supposed to say - "you have a shardblade, you are so cool!" ? Kal came and found Laral at an extremely stressful moment, he is pushing around Roshone (both in the sense of making demands and also literally; also, at this point it seems like Laral is in control), and basically his first words to her undermine the immense effort it must have taken to survive after her father died and she became essentially a prisoner in her own house. I don't know if Laral is a good person or not, and she certainly wasn't nice to Kal there. But its a difficult moment, and I think things could grow back given the right environment. It seemed like Laral was trying to protect people in the town, and doing a pretty decent job of it - that is a point in her favor, and something that certainly would make Kaladin take notice. That being said, surely there must be many, many women that Kaladin doesn't already know that would be better for him.

Absolutely, I agree! I think Adolin really would like realShallan, and does - he just doesn't realize that some parts of her he has seen belong to realShallan, because she hasn't even told him realShallan exists. I think Adolin would like realShallan, even more than he likes whatever combination of personaShallan / Radiant / realShallan that he currently defines as 'Shallan' - and that is the only way their relationship is going to be healthy or even survive. Shallan has a lot of truth to share in the next book, hopefully with Pattern, Jasnah, Adolin, and - especially - herself. One thing I admire about Adolin's role in their relationship is that he doesn't go in and try to fix things. Shallan needs to fix herself.

I believe there is a moment in one of Taravangian's viewpoints (before Jasnah returns) where he reflects that the diagram won't need to kill her. Also, from a moral standpoint, Jasnah is a far, far better person than Taravangian.

This lack of scholarship in Oathbringer bothered me quite a bit as well, and is one of the main difficulties I have with the realShallan / personaShallan distinction. One of the best arguments against Shallan's relationship with Adolin is in love with personaShallan and not realShallan. The crux of this position is that Adolin has never met realShallan, and my disagreement here is why I am unconvinced that Adolin and Shallan's relationship is a negative (and, by extension, she will end up with Kaladin). Though people (@SLNC probably most effectively) have argued plausibly that Adolin has never met realShallan, I believe the passion for scholarship is something that belongs to realShallan. This is something that she displayed throughout Words of Radiance, but is infrequent in Oathbringer. There are times while reading that Shallan displays attributes from more than one of her personalities, and this seems indicative of either realShallan or approaching realShallan. Adolin clearly interacts with and likes personaShallan and Radiant, and I believe he has seen glimpses of realShallan as well. The only reason he doesn't treat Veil as Shallan is that her appearance changes significantly - but he still clearly likes Veil, just isn't intimate with her.

In "Adolin is better than both of them" I meant in terms of his mental state, though I didn't specify that and my comment is easy to interpret in other ways. I think all three of them are actually good people, but you are right that this is something that can't be effectively quantified.

I think the "Shalladin Manifesto" title fits this very well, and I admire the work put into it (seriously, it looks like a lot of work - great job!) But as a person who cares about Shallan quite a bit more than I do Kaladin - and favors her relationship with Adolin, who is clearly better than both of them - I don't find it convincing. When I read many of the quotes, I arrive at the opposite interpretation. One specific objection I have is to the argument that neither we nor Adolin has seen realShallan - I think realShallan is occasionally present. Think of times where what seems to be personaShallan acts decisively with confidence, or is very scholarly (i.e. at the zoo, or on the shattered plains, both times she kind of leaves Adolin behind). This is realShallan, and Adolin has caught glimpses of her. Some constructive criticism - I think you should have a brief key at the beginning defining terms, i.e. personaShallan and realShallan.

You are probably right, but I really like the Rysn idea - not least of all because I enjoy Rysn's character.