Llarimar

I have wondered about this before - obviously we don't know a lot about Hoid's motives or why he does half the things the does, but taking on a random apprentice in Roshar seems especially bizarre and out of place to me. I wonder if the Hoid-Sigzil backstory will have any relevance moving forward, or if it was just a way to inject Hoid further into the background fabric of the Cosmere. Maybe the Worldsingers will somehow be important in future books, or will have significance in Shadesmar and in other worlds. If that's the case, I can easily see Sigzil popping up in another series as a Worldhopper, and maybe teaming up with Hoid at some point. That would be really interesting, because as far as we know so far Hoid kind of works alone and most of the other important people in the Cosmere don't seem to like him very much.

Yeah, I definitely agree that it'll be cool to watch Dalinar unite the Radiants and gather the nations - if he had died at the end of Oathbringer, it would have set back the plot because someone like Jasnah or Navani would have to take over for him. And it will interesting to have a character whose story arc is mostly resolved, instead of characters like Shallan with all their emotional baggage and inner turmoil. I can see that Dalinar will be important moving forward, although I still think it would have been fitting for him to die at the end of the book, mainly because I was kind of disappointed by the finale of Oathbringer and thought his death would have been a perfect punctuation mark to end the story. Also, I totally forgot about Eshonai's death - it really shocked me when she died, especially since I read somewhere that Brandon had planned for her to be one of the flashback characters in the next books. Also Elhokar died, although he's kind of easy to forget about.

I know what you mean and Shallan definitely annoys me sometimes - my problem with her is that her character development has hardly any momentum. Sometimes it will seem like she's progressing and changing and then she just reverts back again, if not worsens. You keep thinking she'll come to terms with herself and get over the whole Veil thing, but instead by the end of Oathbringer her identity crisis has basically progressed to full-on split-personality disorder. That being said, I always look forward to Shallan's chapters when reading Stormlight because I often find them to be the most interesting in the book - there's a lot of mystery, subterfuge and mild psychological horror, whereas the Dalinar and Kaladin chapters are much more straightforward and predictable.

I've been thinking about the ending of Oathbringer, and was wondering if anyone else thought that Dalinar should have died. I noticed recently that there haven't been very many major character deaths in Stormlight so far, and with Oathbringer being a bit darker than the previous books I really thought there would be a higher body count. Plus I think that killing Dalinar off at the end of Oathbringer would have made a lot of sense for his story arc. Let me explain. After Kaladin's flashback book, Way of Kings, there was still plenty of character development for him and characters like Tarah we hadn't even met yet. The same is true for Shallan after Words of Radiance. But Dalinar's story arc really felt completed to me after Oathbringer - I can't imagine him going in very many new directions after this. After Oathbringer, Dalinar has come to terms with his past, his wife has forgiven him, he's conquered the Thrill, and he's unlocked his true potential as a Bondsmith. It would have been perfect, I thought, for him to die at the end of the story in a heroic and dramatic way, perhaps sacrificing himself to open Honor's Perpendicularity or something like that. Do you guys think Dalinar should have died at the end of Oathbringer? And if not, what plot threads and character development do you see for him going forward?

I just finished all of Brandon's published Cosmere works! Can't wait to share my theories and thoughts here.