dionysus

I like this theory. For one, seeing as Elhokar actually sees what is likely his bond spren and Dalinar does not, the implication is that Elhokar is farther along than Dalinar in becoming a surgebinder. Kaladin sees Syl long before he starts manifesting serious powers (though it is likely his amazing martial prowess partly came from Syl even back before he was made a slave.) Long shot but it might also explain Dalinar's super human strength. Is there an order of KRs that might grant others increased strength and toughness? Thinking about this I find it doubtful though because Dalinar's shardplate should prevent others from empowering him.

Sounds like we agree with each other Windrunner. I was just pointing out that a seasonal based calendar for the Shin wouldn't have the same seasons as the rest of Roshar. Also, this is unlikely but it is possible that the Weeping does not correlate to 1 revolution of Roshar around the sun. Roshar with the exception of Shinovar is really very alien to Earth. So we should be very careful when we apply Earth-based truths to Roshar, especially when it comes to climate, nature, etc. I am not saying we can't use our Earth knowledge to speculate, just that we should be aware of our premise and that it could prove to be untrue. In particular climate does not seem to be based on natural phenomenon at all, but instead based upon the various properties of highstorms. The lifecycle and food chain is also very different. For example, decay plays no role as there is no soil.

Except seasons don't work the same on Roshar. "His forehead dripped with sweat from the Eastern summer humidity, and it stung as it seeped into his wound. Hopefully, they'd have some weeks of spring rain soon. Weather and seasons were unpredictable. You never knew how long they would go on, though typically each would last a few weeks." "Fortunately, seasons generally lasted only a few weeks. Unpredictability. That was the way of the world." So spring can immediately follow summer and a season is only a few weeks, so maybe 20-40 days with no way to know the exact length. From this I conclude that where there are highstorms it is impossible to build a calendar off of seasons. Now the Shin are interesting, because they have earth-like plant life. I would guess they have to have normal seasons to have such plant life, or at least normal in that spring -> summer-> fall-> winter. As a gardener I can tell you out of season weather is death to food crops, so they must not have the crazy temperature swings implied in the rest of Roshar. My point is that without the weeping and without the same seasonal craziness that the rest of Highstorm Roshar has, the Shin calendar could be completely different.

As far as I can tell new years are marked by The Weeping. Do we know if this is a fixed period of time between Weepings? "Five years ago Kaladin hated the Weeping. It marked the end of an old year and the coming of a new one..."

Unless you are a prodigy or reading savant, you are not reading but you are scanning. You say you read every word? I am a really fast reader and scanner because I played a lot of old school text based MUDs in the early days of the internet. and I don't think I could even scan The Way of Kings in 2.5 hours because scanning generates a lot of brain fatigue. Not only are you reading fast, but you are prioritizing what you read very quickly. Glad to see a lot of people posting in this thread have similar opinions on why Sanderson is so great compared to other authors. Not surprising though since it is a Sanderson fan forum, heh. As much as I criticize Wheel of Time, the first books were where I fell in love with the fantasy genre. Before that I had really only read Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (I really need to reread this, I think I read it when I was in junior high and most of it was probably over my head), and the Belgariad. I am excited to finally see WoT conclude, and Brandon has done an excellent job rejuvenating my enjoyment of the series. Still, there are so many open plot lines I don't know how he resolves them all. Personally, I hope he resolves most of them off screen and focuses on Matt and Rand. At this point I couldn't care less about the White Tower, Perrin, or the Seanchan (except where it relates to Matt).

I wouldn't discount Kaladin's revulsion of shardblades as meaningless. I know he rationalizes his revulsion as a product of all the death he sees shardblades cause, but it could be more than that.

My best guess as to why Szeth is truthless comes from the following passage: "He had heard that the Voidbringers could hold it (Stormlight) in perfectly. But, then, did they even exist? His punishment declared that they didn't. His honor demanded that they did." My conclusion is that Szeth has seen a Voidbringer and tried to expose the Voidbringer. This led to him being punished. Possible implication being that there are Voidbringers associated with the leadership of Shinovar. Another possible interpretation is that Szeth used a shardblade to attack a Voidbringer. We know taking up a weapon makes one in the lowest of classes in Shinovar, could taking up a shardblade lead to being Truthless and no one believed his justification for doing so.

Definitely agree with your critique Inkthinker. I am worried I won't have many future writers to enjoy if ASOIAF, Malazan, and the worst parts of WoT are the future of fantasy. You explained it well. I am worried about Sanderson as well. Jordan did not have the lack of character or plot interaction problem in his early books either, but eventually the scale of the story he wanted to tell and the number of characters overwhelmed the novels. There are so many plot lines that could have been abandoned and make the books ultimately better because they would be more focused: General WoT spoilers follow. The optimist in me recognizes that Sanderson salvaged that series. And he has quite righty culled a bunch of extraneous plot lines from the books he has controlled. (I am sure Jordan recognized the problem as well at the end.) This bodes well for Stormlight. Sanderson also credits WoT as having taught him how to do an epic. Book 1 to me felt like the right number of viewpoint characters not counting interludes which Brandan has stated are to allow him a break from the epicness of the story: Shallan, Dalinar, Adolin, and Kaladin. You add even 2 more viewpoint characters and I think you sacrifice well defined story arcs. We know not all viewpoint characters have been revealed (Navani is confirmed), so this will pose a challenge to Brandon in later books. Personally, I would hope that in his future books he sticks with 4 or 5 viewpoint characters and allows other main characters who had viewpoints in the past be strong supporting characters or be interlude viewpoints. He can always bring them back in later books as viewpoints. Not everyone has to be doing something epic at the same time. Yes, I would be disappointed if Kaladin was dropped for a book or two, but I have seen what WoT turned into, and that is worse.

"And Honor? Honor is dead, splintered apart. We see remnants of him in a forgotten magic system (windrunning, soulcasting, and possibly Memory) and ancient powerful artifacts (shards). We see his Nahel bond present with Syl, and we see his last words echoing through time to Dalinar. " I find it interesting to contemplate what the splintering of Honor means. My default assumption is that Honor's intent is still active in Roshar, it is just not guided by intelligence. So people still have a predisposition to act Honorably, especially if they are of a race created by the shard Honor, the magic systems still function well, culture's will tend to be Honorable (it just may be outweighed by Odium/Cultivation), etc. Basically, assuming a intact and held Cultivation, Odium and Cultivation have no more power in the world than Honor, they will just be more effective at achieving their individual intents because they are intelligent.

In this post when I say Honor/Honorable/etc with a capital letter I am implying alignment with the Honor shard's intent. When I use honor/honorable/etc I mean the nebulous definition of that term in the English language. I do not think these are exactly equivalents, and thus the difference. Szeth is a favorite character of these boards, and I have seen it proposed that ultimately Szeth is a Honorable character. He is just in a system that has a perverted version of honor. I have an alternate proposal. Despite Szeth's conscience, Szeth is merely religious. More importantly, Szeth's religion, at least the little we know of it, is on the average disHonorable (and dishonorable.) I use the qualification "on the average" and "at least the little we know of it" because Brandon does not write black and white cultures, characters, etc. Everything is nuanced, for example TLR. First I am going to try to prove my proposal, and then I am going to speculate on what insight this brings us. My proposal proceeds from the following premises: 1) The Way of Kings and KR Oaths (that we know so far) capture what Honor's intent is. Most important is journey before destination. The end's never justify the means according to Honor. Then comes protect the weak (KR oath), leaders are to serve the people (The Way of Kings), don't get drunk and party during war, and all the unrevealed stuff. 2) Bindings and oaths are the tools Honor uses, but they are not in and of themselves the intent of Honor. What I mean by this is a person can enter into an oath or be bound to an idea/character that is against Honor's intent as defined in 1. Taking an oath to wake up a 6AM does not bring one closer to Honor, taking an oath to protect the weak does. Now the argument: Shin religion and culture is disHonorable from what little we know of it. The main evidence is the treatment of Szeth and the lack of morality required of Szeth as part of his punishment. We don't know what Szeth did, so I am not going to try to say what Szeth deserved. My point is that the fact that the punishment of Truthless even exists is disHonorable. It makes a slave of Szeth. It rules out any possibility of redemption. Most importantly though it states that for Szeth to retain even a shred of honor he must act according to the whims of others no matter what they ask him to do. On top of that it gives him the most destructive weapon available on Roshar to be used without moral compass. Not only does it punish Szeth, there is a high liklihood that Szeth's punishment will lead to suffering and death to innocent victims. This seems like a clear violation of the two main Honorable principles revealed so far, end's not justifying means and protecting the weak. The outcome of Szeth's punishment is like the modern day equivalent of holding a lottery and the prize is a nuclear bomb and letting anyone be elible for a ticket! Szeth has an honorable conscience, but is not Honorable. Assassination. Check. Wanton slaughter of innocents. Check. Remaining in slavery by choice. Check. It is Szeth's devotion to his religion, specifically his fear of becoming nothing upon death, that keeps him going. What makes it sad is that Szeth and his religion use the language of honor to justify dishonor. Szeth's surgebinding does not imply a close connectioin to Honor. Brandon confirmed that Szeth's power was different from Kaladin in some way, and we know that one Shard's magic system can be hijacked from Mistborn. Now the implications, some of these have almost no evidence: 1) Kind of obvious, but Szeth's redemption to Honor can only come by rejecting his Truthless state, and probably the foundations of his religion. This would probably be very tramatic and lead to a broken mental state for a period of time. 2) The Shin, from what we know at this moment, were probably not a culture strongly tied to the shard Honor. Key word is strongly tied. I believe everything on Roshar has some tie to the shard's currently present on Roshar. 3) Magic wise, I think it is likely at the end of the series that Szeth ends up with power set different from Kaladin and windrunning. 4) Whoever had power of Szeth and made him Truthless, is going to be one of the bad guys of the series. I can't get over the fact that on top of everything they do to Szeth, they also give him a shardblade. That isn't a punishment for Szeth, that is a way to sow chaos on the innocent.

The reason in my mind that Highstorms are tied to Honor is that they bring stormlight, which as far as book one goes has a strong connection to Honor. Mainly in that we know the KR used stormlight and Kaladin uses stormlight. Other people are more Cosmere knowledgable than I, but I believe so far in Brandon's books all sources of magic power have been tied to a shard. Other properties of the HIghstorms do seem tied to cultivation, particularly the fertilizer water.

If we take Dalinar's visions as chronological, the KR existed long before Nohadon. I believe the first vision people are basically in the early Bronze Age in terms of technology, and the KR's exist in that vision. Nohadon's vision is after that one I believe, and he is looking out on a destroyed city and more technology is in evidence. At work so can't check my recollection, so please correct me if I am wrong My thought is that Alakavish could have been a KR himself. Some of the divine attributes associated with the ten orders don't appear to be outright moral like the Windrunners with Protecting/Leading. Looking at Kaladin, it seems he gains magical power the more he embraces a protection and leadership role, embodied by oaths. Now look at learned/giving, brave/obedient, wise/careful, resolute/builder, dependable/resourceful, etc. I can easily imagine a power hungry and immoral person still embodying these qualities. They would just also have unrelated redeeming qualities as well. Hence Nohadon saying that not all spren are as discerning as Honor spren. Heck, you can even imagine a character who protects and leads but is still a bad person.

Seems reasonable to me. Honor and Odium wouldn't even have power if the Tranquiline Halls referred to the time when Adonalsium was still whole. We don't know what happend on the original world, so there may have been a time that that world was still inhabited and in strife after the shattering. I find it more likely though that the shattering was an apocalyptic event in and of itself, and thus the battle for the Tranquiline Halls refers to some event after the shattering on a different world. I am glad you brought this to my attention. It is good to see at least 2 cultures that appear to be heavily influenced by Cultivation.

Unfortunately, at the earliest the 2nd book isn't coming till late 2013. I curse you WoT. Delaying a masterful series to finish a lesser one. Not to mention I have never seen a book from a well known author in an epic series that wasn't delayed at least 6 months. We might be waiting till Fall 2014. I largely agree with you Abba Zaba. Here are the things that are unproven at this point that we should watch for in the subsequent books 1. All lighteyes are descendants from shardbearers. This one seems very likely. 2. Darkeyes do not experience the Thrill. 3. The shards are different now, or alternatively not the same as the KR shards. There is some evidence of this, glowing shardplate, KR were not only light eyed, they were pale eyed, almost white. 4. The capitalization of the Thrill indicates a magic system, not just cultural importance to the Alethi. I think there is good evidence of this, since Dalinar gains energy and fights better when he succombs to the Thrill. However, it is not out of the question that it is just normal blood lust and that the Alethi culture just loves blood lust, after all there is real world precedent for that cultural phenomenon. Without a doubt though, the Alethi are corrupted from what they were during the times of the Radiants and the Heralds. I believe it has to do with Odium and the Thrill, but that is unproven. A random though. During the Recreance flashback it is mentioned that the KRs were fighting "devils", but the Recreance did not happen during a Desolation. There is also a second army, waiting for the desharded Radiants to return. The Radiants are walking toward them away from Feverstone Keep. I speculate that the "devils" were just other humans, and the Radiants had become involved in politics and wars between nations. Realizing the error of their ways, and perhaps that their own shards were now corrupted and generated a lust for power and battle, they gave them up. What I really want to know is what happened to the Radiants and that 2nd army associated with the Radiants. I have a feeling their descendants have a role to play. I am rambling here but the Almighty in this vision, referring to the soldiers picking up the abandoned shards, says, "They were the first, and the last." What the heck does that mean!

I am going to stray a little from just high Fantasy and talk about fantasy in general. Responses will be long as I actually typed them up a while ago for another forum. First, to give you an idea on what I don't like so you can judge if our tastes align. Malazan Book of the Fallen - Not enough characterization. have read 4 or so. A Song of Ice and Fire - I hate this series because, much like WoT, it is going to influence a whole generation of authors, and I hate the lack of characterization. Couldn't stomach more than 1.5 books Anything by Robin Hobb - How she creates such unlikeable characters I don't know. Have read that assassin series and the Forest Mage series. Stuff I read but only consider good: Brent Weeks - Good. Patrick Rothfuss - at times he is brilliant, but at other times he is boring and slow, very bipolar. Same happens with how I feel about Kvothe, hate or love at different points in his books. Though that I am sure is intentional and is a result of writing a flawed character. Sanderson writes flawed characters too, but I am able to accept their flaws without feeling annoyance. I guess it is the fact that Kvothe never seems to learn anything. So far he has been a static character throughout books 1 and 2. Tad Williams - Very good, only reason he doesn't get a long writeup is laziness. WoT - No matter how good the first few and the Sanderson books are, I can't forgive the fact that there are at least 5 books that are terrible. lan Campbell - The Deepgate Codex Campbell explores what happens when the good gods (are they good?) abandon humanity and sentence all of us to hell. After a revolt in Heaven, the gates are shut to the dead and angels and gods are cast out to fend for themselves on earth. Thousands of years later, the story follows 2 angels, an assassin with an acute conscience, and a few other supporting characters as they struggle to do the right thing in a dark, industrial, and wholy unique world that Campbell creates. For example, Deepgate is a city over an abyss, supported by huge black iron chains over the hungry hoarder of souls and god of chains, Ulcis. Characterization is excellent (Dill and Rachel are truly touching), and Campbell manages to be thematic without overburdening the reader with preaching, preferring to let the setting and characters deliver his message. Major themes include humanities right to salvation, justice or complete lack of it, and compassion. A must read for the Fantasy enthusiast. Update now that the series is finished. Sadly, the last book is not nearly as good as the first. This is a trilogy where the strongest entry is the first. This is because Dill and Rachel get lost as he adds new characters and new plots. Louis McMaster Bujold - She has won the Hugo award 4 times My favorite works from her are the Chalion books. Hallowed Hunt and The Curse of Chalion being in my top 5 books bar none, and Paladin of Souls is good too but I am biased towards male leads. Bujold does the heroic character arc better than anyone, no hyperbole. These books are not high fantasy though. The main character doesn't save the world, he saves his friends and in the process overcomes himself. Bujold is one of the few fantasy (and sci-fi) writers who gets romance right as well. I don't recommend the Sharing Knife series as that is more a married romance story with a save the world plot thrown on top. Here is what I wrote a while ago about Curse of Chalion. For Cazaril, life has been a bitch. Betrayal and slavery have defined his life before the time period covered by the book, and Cazaril just wants to find a cushy job with some old friends and live a life of peace. But his wishes are not to be granted by the gods who have singled out Cazaril for a special destiny. Sounds pretty generic so far. The plot may not be the most original thing in the world, but let's be serious, most fantasy plots are generic. The reader follows Cazaril as he struggles to protect his royal pupil from enemies from Cazaril's past and a curse laid upon the royal family by the very gods themselves. Lois does not shy away from weighty subject matter either. She depicts Caz's personal struggle against the pitiless gods and the demon's of his past. Through this struggle Lois explores familiar themes such as predetermination vs. free will, duty, the hold of the past, sacrifice, and humanity's relationship with the metaphysical. But weighty subject matter is only so much crap without engagement between the book and reader. Bujold accomplishes this through excellent characterization. Only a heart of stone would not develop a empathetic relationship with the main character and the engaging supporting cast. It is ultimately this empathy with Cazaril, in the midst of his struggles, that allows Lois to explore her themes and bring them home to the reader. Jim Butcher - Codex Alera I'll say upfront that the later books fall apart under their own weight, pretty much the exact problem I have with the Wheel of Time. The first books are good when the world is fresh, the character list is small, and you are able to feel empathy for the characters without being overwhelmed. Tavi is a great character, and the books that give him enough space to do his thing are great. Basically 1 and 2. While Tavi is always the main character, his greatness isn't able to come through in later books. Later books have too many characters, too many plot lines, and nothing can be resolved. Though more is resolved than in books 4-10 in WoT.

Going off memory but I believe Adolin says he has experienced the Thrill, and Sadeas mentions it outloud to Dalinar. At work so I can't find the quotes. I believe Dalinar also muses that all Alethi feel the Thrill in battle, but it is seldom talked about. My own personal theory is that only shardholders or lighteyes who feel the Thrill, and it has something to do with Odium's corruption of the shards which corrupts the sDNA of the shardholder and their descendants, lighteyes. Several unproven suppositions in this theory though. Edit: And to whether capitalization is intentional, I would say that is a definite yes. There are over 30 "Thrill" and less that 15 "thrill." This is a very intentional capitalization. A few mentions of the Thrill in capital letters I find interesting: Kindle version, location 3751: "The Thrill of contest began to rise within him. It wasn't nearly as keen as the Thrill of battle, but it was a worthy substitute....." -from the climbing contest Dalinar has with Elhokar 6193: " pain evaporating as the battle Thrill surged through him. He needed a weapon!" - Interesting because Dalinar feels the Thrill in his vision of the past, as he acts through another persons body. 7964: Sadeas outloud to Dalinar "'And the Thrill, Dalinar. Do you still feel the Thrill?' Men didn't often speak of the Thrill, the joy and lust for battle. It was a private thing." Lookey here, my memory was correct. 8648: Adolin point of view. "Dalinar said, 'In combat, do you feel the Thrill?' Adolin started. He knew immediately what his father meant, but he was shocked to hear the words. This wasn't often discussed. 'I...Well, of course. Who doesn't?'" All in all, my kindle found 42 matches to "thrill." Weeding out the lower case uses, and combining the results that occur in the same passages, there are about 10 different instances where the Thrill is discussed in the book. 2 of these instances have several mentions spanning several pages. Most notably the final battle, in which it is mentioned over 10 times and over a large chunck of pages. I've been meaning to do some wild speculation on the Thrill on these boards. I believe it is a magic system and it is tied to Odium. Most notably in the final battle, Dalinar strength is fading and he loses the Thrill becaus he has compassion for those he is killing. But to survive, he realizes that he must fully embrace the Thrill, when he does he has a surge of new energy to continue the fight.

I was struggling between Lightsong and Kelsier, but then I remembered that wherever Kaladin goes Syl is also there so I settled on Kaladin. Kaladin is pretty awesome by himself, but when you throw in Syl....

I agree with your second post. And I see your point about other orders of KR maybe needing oaths to direct their abilities in good directions. At this point we basically know nothing about the other orders other than what is revealed in Dalinar's visions, and it is one of the things I really want to learn more about in book 2. Didn't Dalinar see the same 2 orders, windrunners and ???, in both the Recreance flashback and the one where he is a dad and fights along side them?

Do you have an explanation then on why Kaladin goes nova when he speaks the second ideal of the KR? To me that indicates that the power of a surgebinder is tied to actions and oaths, not that the oaths were meant to reign in the power of surgebinders.

Perhaps the act of giving up their blades intentionally caused them to change in some way, making them exist in perpetuity and not just tied to the life of the original wielder. As you say, we only have evidence that a small fraction of KRs gave up their blades intentionally. I do believe that we do not understand the full power of blades and plate currently. We have a bunch of untrained barbarians using them for their most obvious purposes, killing things. We know that: -Originally KRs plate glowed and had symbols on them, this does not happen today -There was no transfer of knowledge from KRs to the people who picked up the discarded blades and plate -Fabrials can do a whole lot of things way different than just strength, melee protection, and slicing through souls -Syl does not like Dalinar's blade, though it seems likely her previous bondee used a shardblade. (Different than Dalinar's perhpas, we know there are several types.) I imagine these shard plates and blades have more uses than what we have seen.

Do we have any evidence that there were parshmen in between previous desolations, or maybe more specifically parshmen who were a willing workforce? The only evidence I can recall is what Jasnah says, and I consider her to be unreliable in this as she is working with very limited information.

That was the first Sanderson forum I visited. There were so many links and references to 17th Shard I decided to migrate here. So I think many of them are aware of the wider cosmere.

Good point. I agree that honor doesn't have to be good, though this point I think can only be resolved by Sanderson defining to us what exactly he means by honor. That was somewhat a throwaway line in my post. My main point is could perhaps Shinovar be an Honor-free zone or area of reduced Honor influence. - Culture seems to share a lot of values that align with Cultivation - No stormlight (since no highstorms) which people oftem assume to be a component of Honor's magic system Do the Horneaters (Rock's people) also revere stone? My memory is telling me they do but I can't remember a specific reference and I could be just making stuff up. So far we know the Parshmen place some importance on stone and so do the Shin. Knowing Sanderson, that means stone is important in the magic system.

Is Shinovar somehow Honorless with a capital H? Seems clear that Shinovar is a very cultivation focused society, with farmers being the rich and powerful. By Honorless I don't mean they are bad people, just that Honor has no influence there. It also doesn't jive with me that Shen thinks he is being honorable by being an assassin not permitted to make any moral judgement on his actions, just blind obedience. Sounds like the opposite of honor, or a perversion.

Personally I think it is Honor and Hoid's story of the Wandersail explains how a broken shard can reign. The followers of a dead king following thousands year old rules that are atrocities in the modern age. The reasons behind the rules all lost to time.