Rainier

17 hours ago, logicless.bt said:

Endowment writes (to Honor?)

To Hoid, with high certainty.

Thanks!

@Argent any chance that this thread gets updated?

3 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

I don't like the magic system. Too many soft interactions. The first mistborn, the first stormlight books, they had very definite powers and interactions. Magic was harder. Now magic is softer, because there's so many things that are just "this uses connection and is totally possible, trust us on that". By sanderson's law, the softer the magic, the less you can solve problems with it; sanderson has a softer magic, but still the whole plot relies on it.

I think this is why the surge of power from swearing an oath bothers me. If it's every time, and it happens so often in critical moments, it just becomes a get-out-of-jail free card for the author. 

I don't know what I expect, but I would guess that more oaths would be said in quiet contemplation, in off moments, unexpected by the person himself who is swearing it. Instead, it's become, again and again and again, a free pass.

It worked fantastically in WoK. It worked OK in Oathbringer. It didn't work at all in the sample chapters. That entire fight could have been skipped. I can understand why Kaladin would only vocalize and internalize the need to protect when faced with someone who needs protection, when faced with the choice to return to captivity because it is the right thing to do, rather than flee with the men to whom he owes loyalty, and who in turn are loyal to him. That was powerful.

Getting jumped by a wild pokemon and then admitting you're scared of yourself just isn't the same, at all.

I'm also not a big fan of the jump-cuts between chapters. Too pithy, too turbulent. I'd prefer a scene to unfold in sequence, rise and fall and conclude, before moving on to something else. If Sanderson were publishing like Dickens, I could forgive. He's publishing giant door-stoppers, I don't need cheap cliffhangers every other chapter.

Yesterday I would have said Kaladin, or Dalinar.

Today, I read the chapters, and Szeth refers to himself as Szeth-son-Honor.

It's staying in the family. It's Szeth.

Thanks for putting together the timeline, it's quite useful.

Riina's presence in this backwater planet makes perfect sense to me, in the same way that you hear of billionaires making bunker compounds in New Zealand. It's someone with wealth and power looking for a safe place to hide out when SHTF. Riina is pretty clearly selfish, she doesn't seem to have much in the way of large goals, she just wants to keep living in relative peace away from the realmatic threats that abound on larger shardworlds. Hence, why she's so upset with the dragon, and why she leaves when Hoid's curse is broken.

All she wanted to do was retire to the proverbial countryside in peace.

4 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Vanli should have been the focus instead of Navani? or No flashbacks?

Considering my other comment, that it should really be just Kaladin and Dalinar, then yes, no flashbacks would be better. These flashbacks did not serve any purpose and didn't move the story forward. They didn't add any mystery or build any tension. They were completely irrelevant to the events happening in the present.

The Kaladin backstory was pretty well done. The Shallan backstory less so. Dalinar was great, but came too early. I have lowered my expectations for Szeth, which is sad, because I had such high hopes for him and his flashbacks. 

Navani stole the show from Venli, who should have been our primary POV in Urithiru, if we are to respect the ten-books-for-ten-orders theme. I think a similar thing happened with Adolin, who became a much larger character than he otherwise would be, and it takes away from the focus.

The book was kind of a mess.

Too little focus on any one story means none of them were well-served.

The 'backstory character' got completely shafted and the whole book would have been better if it were skipped completely.

Jasnah's POVs were also useless, and it would have been better to skip them and keep Jasnah as mysterious as possible for the back 5. Especially the scenes with Ruthar, which were among the worst I've read in any of Sanderson's novels. Some have complained about her relationship with Hoid, as if Hoid has been chaste since he was 50 years old, but I think the real problem is showing too much of what should be mysterious characters.

The entire plot at Urithiru was poorly executed, and while there was an attempt to make it seem urgent, it ended up feeling contrived. The stakes just never seemed real to me.

Kaladin's arc should be more than simply rehashing what he did in book 1. The first time he contemplated suicide and chose life it was powerful. The tenth time it was boring, and cheapens everything.

Teft got done dirty. I'm OK with him dying, I'm OK with Moash killing him, I'm not OK with him being helpless the entire book just to die in order to make Kaladin go super saiyan like he's Goku on Namek. 

Now, for the real unpopular ones:

The entire series would be much, much better if it had simply focused on Kaladin and Dalinar, instead of trying to shoehorn 10 'main' characters into it. 

Each book has been worse than the one that came before. The Way of Kings is still the best book he's ever written, but the more he expands the series, the worse it gets. Obviously, this isn't unique to Sanderson, bad books don't get sequels and all, but it doesn't leave me hopeful for book 5.

On 1/31/2021 at 5:07 PM, Kingsdaughter613 said:

No one quite writes like he did.

Homer, maybe. Perhaps they're both overrated.

On 1/31/2021 at 5:07 PM, Kingsdaughter613 said:

THIS is how you write sympathetic villains people! And how you give them redemptive elements without redemption. After all, Maitimo went to his fiery grave with the Silmaril clutched to his chest.

And Gollum died the same way. Moash is Gollum, and my heart tells me he has a part yet to play. Redemption? Who cares? Will he matter? I hope so. Tolkein came out and promised us Gollum would play some part in the future, and he fulfilled that promise.

I see people compare, and ask themselves, who they would prefer to live, at the end of Fellowship, Boromir or Gollum? Boromir, of course! His betrayal doesn't come until the start of Two Towers, and his death is noble and valiant despite his failings. And yet...Gollum, the miserable betrayer becomes more important to the outcome than Boromir, by his guiding and, at the end, he is the only one to challenge Frodo when the latter claims the Ring.

Brandon hasn't made us quite those same promises, but Moash is much more than a throwaway. He is bound up in the fate of Kaladin, if not all the Radiants. The hook to his story is obviously this new affliction, blindness.

On 1/2/2021 at 5:13 AM, Seloun said:

Longer answer: I think the moment one decides someone is beyond redeeming, one decides that person is no longer worth considering as person (i.e., they are no longer worthy of being allowed to make choices). There are a couple of ways to arrive at this conclusion; the first and probably more basic argument is the sunk costs: no matter what the person may have done in the past, it doesn't negate the potential good they can do in the future.

It took me a while to find this.

Quote

‘No, and I don’t want to,’ said Frodo. ‘I can’t understand you. Do you mean to say that you, and the Elves, have let him live on after all those horrible deeds? Now at any rate he is as bad as an Orc, and just an enemy. He deserves death.’

‘Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends. I have not much hope that Gollum can be cured before he dies, but there is a chance of it. And he is bound up with the fate of the Ring. My heart tells me that he has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end; and when that comes, the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many – yours not least.

Just as Frodo is paralleled, and stalked by, Gollum, so too is Kaladin paralleled, and stalked by, Moash. Just because he deserves death doesn't mean he's going to get it, and he is bound up with the fate of the Radiants. There is a part for him left to play, but so many are so sick of him that they can't see and don't want to look.

I thought the chain was what we saw in OB at the shop. I assumed the fused simply pillaged that shop and took the chain, which Raboniel then inventoried and studied.

None of the sequels have managed to capture the spirit of the original book. Something about it has yet to be duplicated or improved upon.

The best scene is still the one where Syl realizes what kind of spren she is, followed closely by Navani burning a giant glyph.

Well, neither Ati nor Leras were killed by Nightblood. Whatever oomph was in Rayse's body was likely consumed, in part, by Nightblood. Still, 1% of the body of a god is still pretty significant.

Isn't the godmetal supposed to be the body of a god? Shouldn't that body have some Raysium somewhere? Or is it poetically the body of a god and specifically the condensed power of a god that makes the godmetal?

I just made another post touching on these lines, but I agree with that this contest seems foreshadowed to end in neither a win nor a loss, releasing Odium from the system. This twist is going to come smack dab in the middle of the book, either the end of parts 2 or 3 if I had to guess. That way we'll get two parts of our main characters trying desperately to fix their mistake, grappling with the consequences, and raising the stakes and setting the stage for the back half of the series.

5 hours ago, Uvara said:

What I wonder however, we still do not exactly know what ties Odium to the Rosharan system before the contract, do we?

My understanding is that what ties Odium to the system is a pact Rayse (Odium) made with Tanavast (Honor). Since Dalinar is acknowledged by Rayse (Odium) as acting on behalf of Honor, the agreement we saw is a modification of whatever deal is holding Odium there.

If all of book 5 is just the ten days, I will be massively disappointed. Think about these novels: they are each a trilogy of smaller books. This will be the same for book 5. Usually it's parts 1 and 2 as one book, parts 3 and 4 as another, and part 5 as a shorter concluding novel to the 'trilogy.' Brandon doesn't take a whole book to answer all the questions from the previous book, he answers them relatively early then introduces new, more interesting questions to ask by the end of the book.

For RoW, it was strange, but part 1 was basically the ending of the first book in the trilogy. Parts 2 and 3 were book 2, culminating in the fall of Urithiru. Parts 4 and 5 were book 3, with the conclusion of this particular trilogy. Whatever your expectations for the next book, I think it would be illuminating to think in this framework. We're going to have more questions to answer by the end of book 5 that we don't yet know to ask. We might even get some answers to questions we don't yet know to ask.

Ten days is enough for the opening novel of a trilogy, it isn't enough for a trilogy unto itself. I think we'll see parts 1 and 2 as the lead up to the contest, the ten days themselves. Part 3 will have the contest itself, the revelation of whatever twist we'll see, and the characters start to react to what just happened. This is the end of the Answering Questions section of the book. Parts 4 and 5 will be leading towards the ultimate conclusion of the front half of the series, which I don't think is the contest itself. I think we'll get some perspective early in book 5 that resets our sights higher.

3 hours ago, feruchemicalrockband said:

I just thought his "Honor is not dead" thing was a quote from Kaladin

Yup, you're thinking of the "Honor is dead, but I'll see what I can do" from WoR duel scene.

She can't go anywhere else, she's stuck in Urithiru for the rest of her life, because that's where the Sibling is.

In all honesty, she needs to figure out a way to get the spren to agree to be confined in fabrials in order to placate the Sibling. I'm thinking something to do with oaths: "I swear to offer you this fire, which you love, if you stay in this gemstone for a year. I swear to release you at the end of the year." Then the spren goes into the gem, willingly, with an oath from the person who will free them. Or, ditch the smaller spren altogether, and only make deals with spren intelligent enough to enter into a deal in the first place.

I think she wants Odium out of the system, and is trying to get him freed. That's what will happen at the end of 5: Odium freed, revealed to be Cultivation's plan.

As to why she would want Odium freed, that's surprising. I was thinking the other day about how the nine remaining shardic Vessels form a natural oligarchy of the Cosmere. That no matter what you think is happening in your life, you're being ruled by the Vessels that hold the shards. I can't get the idea out of my head that there will always be these rulers of the Cosmere until they are too shattered and small to wield that kind of power again. Turn the 16 shards into 65,356 Slivers (that's 2^16) and see what happens. Then instead of each Shard getting a planet all to themselves, the largest splinters, and the Vessels that hold them, are more like Returned or Mistborn or Radiants than they are like gods. They could be great generals or kings, but never again gods.

This is certainly more egalitarian, and considering that Taravangain thinks the Cosmere is horribly mismanaged, that means that the people who are in charge should be indicted. The Vessels have done a crap job. Maybe this is Cultivation's plan to get fresh blood into the Vessels, to spur the Shards from their stagnation, to refresh the Vessels to spur them into making the Cosmere better instead of simply slavishly following the Intent of their Shard.

20 minutes ago, NysemePtem said:

2) why is he pretending to be Rayse

This one is easy. Information is power. The longer it takes for the other Vessels and relevant people in the Cosmere to find out what happened, the longer it takes for them to react. Especially Hoid, who knew Rayse and was counting on dealing with him.

2 minutes ago, robardin said:

going to get a whole lot more devious and cunning with Taravangian piloting the ship.

From the Part 2 Epigraphs:

Quote

My instincts say that the power of Odium is not being controlled well. The Vessel will be adapted to the power’s will. And after this long, if Odium is still seeking to destroy, then it is because of the power.

Of course, I admit this is a small quibble. A difference of semantics more than anything.

In truth, it would be a combination of a Vessel’s craftiness and the power’s Intent that we should fear most.

Yes, these are the events that we should fear the most.

I'm still in shock at the ramifications.

First of all, The Diagram was ultimately part of Cultivation's plan to murder Rayse with Nightblood, then have Taravangian in place to take up the Shard.

Second, Taravangian may have read all of Hoid's memories, which should have caught him up nicely with the state of the Cosmere, and more importantly the history of the Cosmere and the Shattering.

Third, he is on a collision course with Dalinar in just ten days time

6 hours ago, Subvisual Haze said:

I'm glad we placed the most dangerous shard into the hands of an utterly amoral genius.  What could possibly go wrong.

Cultivation had a significant impact on the person he became after he visited her. She wanted it in the hands of someone she had sculpted, instead of anyone she had not. And the sly dragon has gotten her way thus far. The only question now, what the heck is her way? Why maneuver Dalinar and Taravangian into place right as the final clash between Odium and what's-left-of-Honor?

What is she planning on happening in ten days?

Urithiru, to Oh Shenandoah

Quote

Urithiru, I long to see you
Awake you mighty mountain!
Urithiru, I long to see you
Awake your slumbering soul,
Fill your tower with light.

Urithiru, I long to hear you,
Awake you mighty mountain!
Urithiru, I long to hear you
Awake, within my soul,
Fill your tower with light.

These thousand years you've laid in slumber,
Away, you sleeping Sibling!
These thousand years you've laid in slumber,
Away, unbonded soul,
Left your tower no light.

Urithiru, I long to see you
Awake, you mighty mountain!
Urithiru, I long to see you,
Awake and bond a soul,
Fill your tower with light.

Urithiru, I long to see you
Fill your tower with light.

This one really bothered me.

Quote

The Aethi traditionally use a ten-note scale...it wasn't the only scale in use around the world. There were dozens. The Thaylens, for example, preferred a twelve-note scale. A strange number...

Dozens two sentences before calling twelve a strange number. Should be scores (pairs of tens) or hundreds, to keep it Honorable.

Hoid isn't missing information except the one clue that something was wrong with Rayse. Now he has the other clue that something is wrong, and he's missing some breaths. I wonder how many he had, exactly, and therefore how many he's missing.

As we see from the example from Warbreaker, losing your Breath loses some memories, especially the most recent memories. Who knows what Hoid is doing, exactly, to store the memories of his life in Breath, but I would guess that all his memories are only in his Breath, and they are created and stored there. How else could it be, given what we saw at the end?

10 hours ago, Seloun said:

Odium specifically says "I can’t see your mind, but I can see these, can’t I?" referring to the 'external storage' memories, so I think he absolutely can see what's contained within.

This is the big deal, and the way Brandon gets to simply bypass the knowledge gap Taravangian has compared to the other Vessels. Now he knows what Hoid knows. Everything that Hoid knows, and all of his memories, at least since he first acquired the Breath. I think Taravangian used the loophole that the Vessel is separate from the Power. Hoid is the Vessel of all of the various forms of Investiture he's collected or infused himself with, just as each other Vessel holds the power of a Shard. The difference is one of scale, not kind. People holding Power.

On 10/12/2020 at 9:35 PM, HipsterStick said:

Kelsier was a thief, but he was motivated far more by a desire to ‘stick it to the man’ than by a desire to  acquire wealth.

Who is 'the man' in this circumstance? Who else could it be but the 16 shards?

30 minutes ago, Firespir said:

Navani and Shallan are also possible candidates for this, the first with her "not a scholar" nonsense

I still maintain that she's right, she's not a scholar, she's a Project Manager, or in other words, someone who unites, and brings people together. Bondsmith oath, right there in front of us.

I'm also partial to Rushu as a Truthwatcher, since she seems to be getting more scenes, but Truthwatcher is definitely the order most relevant to understanding the deeper workings of the Cosmere.

On 11/12/2020 at 3:42 AM, IcaroRibeiro said:

After reading Dawnshard, I thought on a Nikli interlude 

On 11/12/2020 at 3:42 AM, IcaroRibeiro said:

After reading Dawnshard, I thought on a Nikli interlude 

To the point of this topic, however, count me among those guessing Sleepless POV. It's long overdue, and we already got a taste of it in Dawnshard. Just a taste, but I think we'll get an interlude from the perspective of one of the Sleepless accompanying Rysn to learn to imitate humans. Frankly, I expect her to very much play the Babsk role, and it would amuse me to have the Sleepless POV mirror the Rysn POVs from book 1.

I think this will happen, and the foreshadowing I like the most is every time Navani tells herself that she's not a real researcher, she just brings people together so they can do the real work.

BRINGS PEOPLE TOGETHER

Yeah, Bondsmith Navani revives and bonds the Sibling, and also convinces the ancient spren to resume its place as the spren inhabiting the fabrial called Urithiru. It's that last piece that I'm interested in seeing, since clearly the Sibling doesn't want anything to do with humanity right now.

6 hours ago, Harrycrapper said:

but I think it would be more narratively fulfilling to have Navani fix the tower through fabrial science over a Nahel bond

That's also a possibility: she convinces the spren to enter the fabrial, but doesn't bond it, so no second Bondsmith. Or, perhaps, Navani convinces the spren to inhabit the tower, but someone else bonds it (Rlain is looking to Unite some peoples, too, and he's also looking for a spren that wants to bond him).