Rainier

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. 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).

I don't see why this is a surprise. Moash and Kaladin are the same person. They are two sides of the same coin. That's why Kaladin agreed to help Moash in the first place/ That's also why I'll defend Moash endlessly. Kaladin's mistake was pledging to protect Elhokar, not promising to kill him. Elhokar was a crap character and a worse king, I'm glad he got what was coming to him for his years of misrule. He, more than any other, is the reason why Alethkar fell to the singers. I'm guessing Moash was an anomaly, and that they did need a human to kill Jezrien, probably because the Oathpact was a pact with very clear racial lines. Humans on one side, singers on the other. Honor pledging to protect humans from the singers means that a singer killing Jezrien would have just continued the Oathpact cycle. It remains to be seen how this gets explained, but I'm excited for it. Moash is one of the new Heralds that many expect to be created? I could get behind it. There's your redemption arc everyone: he gets to be tortured for eternity, but he saves humanity doing so.

Thanks! I couldn't help myself, so I'm going to spout on about the following paragraphs. The following are predictions, etc. with all caveats applied. So this is our Navani-Kaladin-Venli group, and the arc I'm calling the Siege of Urithiru. This is where much of the character work is going to be done, and we're going to be torn up over it. Climactic events being the Sibling inhabiting Urithiru as a spren does a fabrial, bonding Navani in the process. Kaladin swearing the Fourth Oath. Venli has nothing so obvious except a full change of sides, or speaking the Second Oath. I'm excited to see her enigma revealed, especially in the flashbacks, so we can better understand just WTF happened to bring about these apocalyptic events. Szeth will seemingly get left behind. I'm expecting him to be Told to Guard Navani by Dalinar, which will keep him involved in her POV and make sure he's where he's needed during the siege. Lift is probably the other main character staying in Urithiru. It might make more sense for her to be with the army, but she's a well-lit character and that means she's getting screen time somewhere, someway. There's Renarin, who is absolutely staying to examine the Tower and will continue to be involved in revealing her secrets. Here's Shallan and Adolin's journey. The stunning culmination has to include both Shallan's Truth and Reconciliation Committee as well as Reviving Maya. I'm very excited for exactly what those mean and how they happen, as it's very clear what has to be addressed, but not very clear how that's coming about. It's where we'll get some significant unknown unknowns becoming known unknowns, which is both thrilling and infuriating. I find myself most looking forward to this arc. Single viewpoint of Dalinar, Jasnah's POV still being withheld until the back 5. Least amount of information going in, least amount of speculation to do. What we learn is going to be the primary setup, the A story, of book 5. We're almost there. I'm still scrawling on the walls compulsively. Five Days Remaining.

Another week, another book to read In this long-awaited story Brandon surely knows the way But when he's asked he will not say One week more

I'd like to think that Dalinar and Ishar meet, and Ishar is surprisingly sane. "Good work you've done here," he says to Dalinar, "but a little sloppy. See, as a Bondsmith you need to bind people in a hierarchy underneath you. Compare to what I've done," he continues, vaguely gesturing at the country that worships him as God-king. "See what you can accomplish if you put your mind to it. If you're going to be a Bondsmith without Honor, at least do it properly."

"I will let others die in my place." I'm with you on this one. The first two oaths were about protecting. Now it's time for Kaladin to worry less about protecting and more about leading. Leadership requires you to send people to their deaths, or at least leadership of a military order during a war. Kaladin in completely unwilling to let people die. I think he needed to be willing to let Adolin die in order to swear his fourth oath, and he couldn't bring himself to do so.

I'm partial to Four Commands, and Four Intents. We also see the Positive/Negative and Internal/External as a way to get another group of four to combine with the Commands we're all speculating about.

I think, now that we've seen two more examples, that we should try to generalize what the Third Ideal is. We know the first is the same. The second is protecting the vulnerable. The third is about protecting your blind spots. Kaladin pledges to protects people he hates from other people. He was not otherwise protecting other people because he hated them. Teft pledges to protect himself from himself. He was not protecting himself because he hated himself. Lopen pledges to protect other people from himself. He was not protecting other people because he hated himself. What is common in all of them is that they each refused to see the need for protection, and so in each case actively hurt those he should have been protecting. Kaladin sought to kill Elhokar. Teft succumbed to his addictions, self-destructing. Lopen mocks others relentlessly, and excuses it by mocking himself. The person they're not protecting is the person the Windrunner hates and is harming. Lopen hates other people. He was, and is, hurt, by the way the world treated him when he had one arm. Now that he's regrown his arm and surpassed everyone that's ever doubted him, he finally realizes that he's been hurting other people, and trying to hurt them, just like Kaladin was trying to hurt Elhokar, and Teft was trying to hurt himself.

I'm very interested in why four, and why sixteen from four. The fascinating feature of 16 is that 2^4, 4^2, and 2^2^2. Considering the numerology of the Cosmere (ahem, 16%, ahem), that's got to be significant. Now we get a depiction of the Shattering on Roshar. A split into four, and each four into four again. 4^2. As seen with Ruin and Preservation, the number 2 describes opposites: +/-, left/right, in/out, yes/no, Good/Evil, Order/Chaos, etc. The alternative to opposites +/- is binary, 0/1, presence/absence Light/Dark. Four, as two pairs of two opposites, can be thought of as the directions on the Cartesian plane. If Preservation and Ruin are opposites, or inverses, in the mathematical sense, we must consider the nature of realmatic orthogonality. In two dimensions, we call it perpendicular instead of orthogonal. Perpendicularity makes sense as a description, as it describes some transversal across the three realms. Something perpendicular, orthogonal, to the axis of the realms. If we have Change/Stasis as two of the pairs, it would make sense for the other two Dawnshards to be perpendicular to the Change/Stasis axis. You can think of this as whatever you like, but Creation and Destruction make some amount of sense. In this I agree wholeheartedly with @Eternal Khol. A -> B C -> C -> D E -> I like these, too. Survive is much better than Stasis. We've seen Unite already, but I will suggest maybe Dissolve or Divide as the inverse. I think the Four Commands, the Four Dawnshards, could either be thought of as two pairs of opposites, or an opposite and binary. This is definitely two pairs of two opposites. The thing is, if there are Four Commands, then it becomes obvious there are Four Intents, and our Sixteen Shards are the sixteen unique combinations of the Four Commands with the Four Intents. Maybe Destroy and Create are Intents, not Commands? I'm not sure what the difference is, but I'm still looking for my four pairs, my 2^4, that will get me sixteen, and this is a huge explanation on where to look.

You are speaking my language. You start the book, you read the book, you finish the book. Then and only then do you go do other things, like sleep, or look up.

It's not just you. I had similar concerns about the off the cuff proposal to ban slavery and got called a slavery apologist for my troubles. Apparently suggestions that maybe Roshar should have different values than Earth, and that Alethkar should not have the same moral compunctions as the US makes you suspect. She's not likely to be assassinated, but she should probably be deposed, and definitely should be viewed with skepticism by anyone not already pledged to her. Here's this brand new monarch, taking over for her brother who tried to get all other monarchs to submit to his uncle, who is seemingly uncaring about any structures in society and hellbent on stubbornly forcing her own vision of how society should work onto the rest of the world. If I'm Gawx, I'm keeping her at arm's reach. If I'm one on the Makabaki Kings, I want to stay away from her unless I'm ready to be conquered by Alethkar. I'll also point out that Sulla purged the political class, which Caesar did not replicate. It was only after his assassination that Marc Antony purged all political rivals (RIP Cicero). Clearly Jasnah is the Sulla analogue, right? The purges have already happened, which means she's the one who ordered them and wanted them to happen. I want to highlight this, because it tracks exactly with what I've been saying. The reason why the USA struggled with slavery is because it was founded on the premise that all men are created equal. Alethkar, and Vorinism, has no such founding ideal. It is completely hierarchical, and I don't doubt that many think slavery is just and natural, just as some people are lighteyed and darkeyed, and some are high dahn and low dahn, some are kings and some are slaves. That's just how life works on Roshar.

Decent chapter, but kinda sad to see Kaladin, even here at the end. Lirin's reaction was...not great. When your first impulse is to gloat how you were right all along, you should probably contain that impulse. That's OK. Lirin has been shown to be less than sensitive, and usually a know-it-all.

Awespren felt right in my gut upon first glance. Just perfect to me, but I can't explain why. The way people look at you in awe? You inspire awe in others? I could see it. Concentrationspren makes more sense, because concentration is what it takes to achieve your potential, at every step of the way. Concentration to find out how to get good, and how to break it up, and concentrating on perfecting each part. Great suggestions.

I was partial to Navani as Truthwatcher, since she's constantly curious and trying to find the underlying reasons behind phenomena. The fundamental truths of the world. This is classic Truthwatcher, and so I think she should be attracting whatever-spren by now, given the epigraphs we've been given. Not things, people. What is she constantly telling herself in here chapters? That she's not the real researcher, she just brings the right people together. What else does she need to unite next? She needs to heal the rift between human and spren, signified by bonding the sibling and persuading it to reinhabit Urithiru, thus Bondsmith. These are basically the two theories pulling me in different directions. I don't want to see her as a Bonsmith, but there are reasons to think it could happen. Given what we've seen from Rlain (I want a spren who wants me), I partial to him, as he tries to unite humans and singers. Truthwatcher is my hoped for order, which is entirely due to her ferocious curiosity. The stuff she's doing should be attracting the right kind of spren. Maybe the exact kind of stuff she's doing is repelling them.

It makes sense to me that Truthwatchers get the logicspren, and not Elsecallers. Just because Jasnah is scholarly doesn't make all Elsecallers scholarly. No, what makes them an Elsecaller is revealed by those nice phrases we've got for each of them. "I will reach my potential," it says for Elsecallers, but for Truthwatchers it is, "I will seek Truth." You can see which one logicspren are associated with. So, for Elsecallers, is there some kind of ambitionspren? Desirespren? Greedspren? I'm drawing a blank, but hopefully someone else can remember a spren mentioned somehwere that fits.

Kalak looks like a woman in his picture. I keep trying to tell myself it's a man, but I can't see anything but a woman trying to look like a man.

He's a character first introduced in OB, in an interlude. He was the Herdazian general who sacrificed that guy to the greatshell? monster thing. If you've been reading the RoW, which I hope you have, since you're posting here, then you'll know there was a plan to smuggle him out of Alethkar, the conclusion of said plan forming the opening of the book.

Yes, but what we were originally told was that it was going to be Eshonai's book, and Eshonai's flashbacks. But her sister got her killed and then stole her limelight, so what can you do?

We know, from what the author has told us, that there will be ten books, and each book will have one primary flashback character. The first three have been Kaladin, Shallan, and Dalinar in that order. We've known the other two were going to be Eshonai and Szeth since at least publication of WoR. Of course Eshonai turns out is really Venli, because despite trying to maintain plausibility that any of them could die, flashbacks to a dead character are hard to pull off. That leaves book 5 as Szeth, tentatively titled Stones Unhallowed. The back 5 flashback characters are also known. They are Lift, Jasnah, Renarin, Taln, and Ash. Order remains to be determined, but I think Jasnah is pencilled in at 10.

In Oathbringer, we're shown how Jasnah's father crafted this kingdom she now rules through conquest and blood. Gavilar was a warlord, Elhokar was a warlod, and now Jasnah is a warlord. Where do you think these slaves Jasnah wants to free came from? They're the people Gavilar conquered. This is the kind of argument that I'm amenable to, because it's based in the work and its world and treats the established premises with respect. What I'm not amenable to is the argument that we ended slavery in our world therefore they need to end slavery in their world. One of the nice things about these books is the strange, foreign, fantastical setting. I'm protective of that, because this is not our world, and their values need not match our values, and that's OK. Their values should be foreign and strange. Scadrial is the Earth analogue in the Cosmere. Let these other worlds have their own room to breathe.

You're putting words in my mouth, again. I never said labor is the most valuable thing a person can provide, I simply said that it is valuable, and in demand. It's also something that everyone can provide, and it's often the only thing the one holding the sword wants from you. It doesn't matter if you can write sonnets if a warlord comes through your town, kills the guards, enslaves the people, and wants workers for the mines. Furthermore, it's asinine to say slavery is bad, and therefore it makes sense that they'd get rid of it. It would make as much sense to say that war is objectively bad, and therefore it makes logical sense for everyone to stop fighting and work together. I believe I called it a cloying morality play. You have not addressed my actual point, which you've missed twice now, that a hierarchical system won't become an egalitarian one overnight, and the Alethi society is one of the strictest hierarchies imaginable. My gripe is that this doesn't feel earned, not yet. Brandon has said that he's spent a lot of time learning and studying about depression, for Kaladin, and DID, for Shallan, because he wanted to do justice to their characters and not simply take the easy and simple way out. I just want him to do the same for slavery in the Alethi society. Make it earned, make it real, and it will work. Make it cheap, make it easy, and, well, cloying morality play is the kindest way to put it.

I'm not sure how you could read my post and this is your only take-away.

So what? He was also rational, ruthless, and self interested, which are the qualities most associated with his name.

I'm hoping we see some real pushback, because it seems like the Alethi version of slavery is closer to the Roman one than what we think of in the antebellum south. And there are plenty of great thinkers throughout the ages who argued that slavery was a good thing, so saying it's objectively a good thing is projecting modernity into fantasy. There's a reason why slavery existed for millennia across all kinds of societies, and that's because labor is valuable, and scarce. If we free all the slaves because Good Queen Jasnah is concerned with their wellbeing, I'll retch from the cloying morality play. There needs to be significant economic reasons in play for this to be earned. Fortunately, it seems like we're at the cusp of an industrial revolution which, much like our own world, will free labor more than any abolitionist ever could. We've even seen this at least once in RoW, where we see that darkeyes are upset at carrying water, calling that parshmen work. Then the lighteyes get upset for having to do darkeyed work. And so on. The work needs to be done, and it will be done by slaves or parshmen until a machine can do it instead. You can free the slaves, but there's no free lunch. Even if you get the fabrials to do it, you're just trading enslaved humans for enslaved spren.

I don't think there's much as difference between Machiavellian and Utilitarian as you seem to think. Both are rational and unemotional, the difference is between selfishness and selflessness. Since I don't think Jasnah is either purely selfish or purely selfless, they're both good frames through which to view her actions and decisions. I'd also say the scene you forgot to mention is the one where she advocated killing the singers to prevent them from being taken over by Odium. That's pretty Machiavellian.