king of nowhere

The coppermind wiki states that burning atium+duraluminium allow an allomancer to see the ultimate effect of his actions. That made me wonder, atium is supposed to show other people's actions, whiule your actions are shown by electrum. So what does duraluminiumed electrum do? Maybe you see the ultimate consequences of those actions on you, but ignore the context of what they did to the rest of the world? the wiki don't say anything about it

yeah, but what's in those pits and lakes when there is not a highstorm? how does the water from those holes flow back to the surface? there is no physical explanation. maybe one shardpool is in the purelake, and another is in the origin of the storms. who knows about the third.

soulcasting is not so vastly powerful. While I agree it is definitely a very powerful magic, it is sharply limited by what gems can handle, and gems only grow so big. there's no way you can soulcast the whole atmosphere, or even a significant part of it. I was just dreaming of soulcasting carbon dioxide to oil to have clean energy forever, but won't have the necessary scale. I'm prety sure there's no way jasnah can walk into a storm and soulcast it. soulcasting the rocks as they fly towards her however would be a possibility. with skill aand plenty of stormlight (as correctly pointed out, gems recharge only once during the storm) she could maybe soulcast every single raindrop that come close to hitting her, walking into a highstomr and remaining absolutely dry during all the process. that would be really badass!

As a chemist, I often wondered exactly how pure allomantic/feruchemical need to be, and how power drop scales with impurity. But I always assumed 99% should be fine, or fine enough. Getting something really pure is more difficult than it seems. I'm not even certain preindustrial technology can get you metals over 99% purity. Just for start, there are so many impurities in metals they used at the time, and they didn't even knew what they were or how to treat them. in those old times, steel was different in any part of the world because of different impurities. damascus steel owed its properties to some impurities there, and once the mine that made the iron with that specific impurity run out, they didn't knew how to replicate it. Steel from finland was resistent to corrosion because the ores contained nickel, and they used it for centuries, but they had no idea what it was, as nickel was formally discovered only in 1751. Basically, I think even a 95% purity would have been very difficult to get at the time (although I'm not so sure of that, cause metals are not my area of expertise, and neither is preindustrial technology). And if it is true that 1% more or less carbon in steel makes a noticeable difference, it also happens that in most metals 1% impurity is noticeable only with accurate analysis. So maybe the required purity is different for every metal and every impurity? say that allomantic steel must have carbon accurate within 1%, but can contain up to 3% other metals without losing much? Would make sense if allmomantic power was related to the cognitive form of the metal: if the metal "sees itself" as steel, then it works. so an impurity that will change its properties a lot will alter its cognitive form, while an impurity that changes little and is unnoticeable without modern technology don't change the cognitive identity of the metal and can be better tolerated. BY the way, in our current world there's at least one metal easy to get: copper in any electric device is over 99.9% pure. would be nice to store some memory in electronic circuits that are themselves storing informatic memory. Double memory storage!

That's another good point. one who knows sanderson's book will know that he's not going to solve problems by cheap expedients, and that whenever something feels like a deus ex machina, it is actually totally justified by something that will be revealed later.

metal purity is not a problem. you can order some pure one and have it custom made. it's not expensive to order some pure iron or copper or such.

I agree that both were deus ex machina. It's a bit difficult to avoid that when dealing with actual gods. THe end of mistborn 3 was wery well done anyway. even if I wasn't expecting it, and it solves a problem that seemed impossible, it works because of the larger picture. We were progressively discovering the wereabouts of ruin and preservation and all the stuff they did, so when sazed takes the shards, all the pieces snap together and I said "so that was preservation's plan all along!". I find the end of the 1 slightly unsatisfactory, cause there was no foreshadowing or anything there. on the other hand, c'mon, if brandon had wanted to avoid it, he could have wrote vin tearing away the bracelets by hand, or something. there were plenty of ways it could have been resolved. So her drawing on the mists is not a deus ex machina solving a plot, but foreshadowing of future books, and it is used to solve a plot point that could have been solved otherwise. And if brandond hadn't had vin draw the mists then, when could that scene have happened? there's no way I can see to foreshadow the mist thing in any other way without introducing more problems. Namely, i would expect vin to figure out about the earring if her drawing on the mist happened in a less exceptional circumstance. So, that scene was still the best way to write the trilogy. as for the ending of 2 being a diabolus ex machina, it actually is the introduction of a new plotline, and it was foreshadowed by the writings of kwaan not making sense (cause they were changed). plus, if you check on the epygraphs, you see they were changed. So you could realize there was something wrong about all of it. All considered, I see nothing wrong with it.

Is there a chance to get it if you have a physical copy of the book? Because, while I normally don't mind expences when I buy quality stuff (and anything written by brandon definitely qualifies) paying 5 dollars for a single chapter of cut content from a book I already have seems a bit exaggerated.

syl didn't knew herself she was a honorspren. many others may have forgotten and just be shambling about, until some ac of honor happening nearby wakes them

yes, our society makes lots of judgments based on expectations that are really just prejudices. And yes, most of us, when we are young, go with it. Because having prejudices is easier than trying to consider everything with fairness. Most of us also get over that with time. pity for those who don't. I got over mine around age 20, when I accepted I was a nerd and, if I have more fun videogaming than partying, thhen I should try to be a happy nerd rather than be a different person bassed on what society considers entertaining. I still wouldn't look at my little pony or twilight, however. not because they are girly, but because they are not my cup of tea. EDIT: "...an eleven-year-old boy who is currently in the hospital after his attempted suicide. It would seem that the attempt came after alleged bullying by his classmates over being a Brony, a fan of the show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. While this is undoubtedly a tragedy ..." when reading, at first I interpreted the phrase as "he was a brony, and that is undoubtedly a tragedy" rather than "he attempted suicide, and that's undoubtedly a tragedy". had to reread to get it right. anyone else fell for it?

I also wondered at the purelake. if nothing else, a big lake that is only one meter deep should be geologically unstable. it would fill with sediments in no time, or it would evaporate, or grow. retreating underground during storms is another oddity. So yes, I agree that there is something strange with the purelake. it could actually be a shardpool (can they be so big? all the others we saw were at most a few meters across), although it don't fit much with shardpool's known behaviour. It could be something else, but i'd bet for sure there is something unnatural with it

Wow! I wish I could do that, locking myself in my home with the book and enough food to last for a week. unfortunately i can't, i don't know how long shipping will take and my brother will also want to read it. and yes, wishing to take vacation and lock myself at home counts. so does thinking about ordering two copies, one for me and one for my brother, so that no one will have to wait before reading

I don't know but I can try some hypotesis: - making different releases dates will give more time for the good to arrive. sure, brandon finished wor a good month before the deadline, but it's not always that way. having release out of usa delayed by two days means brandon had two more days to complete the book. And once he completed it in advance, the release date was already fixed and would have been too much of a hassle to change it. With digital goods, it still takes time for the cd to ship. - another option is that there is some release party where the writer is invited, and by delaying the release abroad they can make more parties and still invite the author. So brandon that way can attend a release party in usa, one in canada, and one in europe. - third option is that it is just a tradition from where commerce was slower. No other ideas. None of the above seem goood enough to explain all, but they probably have some truth. Strange, I never tought about the issue, it always seemed logical, and now that I think about it I can't find a justification.

it is the first time i saw it near a person, it's even bigger than i assumed!

normally this is an editorial move to keep people intersted. but it's not much good in this case, as anyone who subscribes to this is already going to buy the book anyway

I like all the wheel of time, included books 7-10, although I did find the perrin subplot annoying. Mat, on the other hand, keeps getting better. Anyway, the final decision on whether it is worth reading the books is yours. we don't know your tastes well enough to judge. If you want to skip directly to the ending, it is possible to do it and just read a summary. http://encyclopaedia-wot.org/ is a very good site for that. maybe, once you've read the ending, you'll want to go back and see what you missed.

Yes, I know, even if I like to think about it. In truth, if the stormlight archive was the wheel of time, it would have been planned to a trilogy and then extended up to ten. Also, sanderson is in a better position than jordan because if joprdan had said he wanted to write a saga of 14 huge books no one would have published him. after seeing the success of the wot, sanderson could plan for it. Still, there are likely to be side stories. I mean, alloy of law was unplanned, and yet brandon said he wanted to make a sequel to that too. As a writer, he keep thinking of new stories, and want to write them. for a world as extended as roshar, i'd be surprised if he didn't have a few side adventures he really wanted to tell...

if this goes like the wheel of time, those 10 planned books will become several dozens by the end...

i wanted to say that. yes, what actually break something is incredibly complicated and determined by so many different things that there isn't a real way to predict beside making experiments. there was a thread on how to fight shardbeares a while ago, and my personal version of the roshar hazekiller was equipped with a half-shard shield, a heavy hammer, a heavy crossbow and a thin knife. from afar they use the crossbows to crack the plate as much as possible, in close combat they form a wall of shields and try to smash the hammers on the shardbearer, and if they can they try to jump on him, carry him on the ground with their mass, and use the thin knife on the eyeslit. The balista is still the most effective solution, as it is most likely capable of penetrating a shardplate in one blow. of course it is not very mobile, you have to carry the thing on wheels. However it is pretty accurate; the romans used it to snipe enemy leaders. Big slings also look like some good choice. they probably have a "cracking power" comparable to that of an heavy crossbow. the advantages are that they are lighter and can fire more often. the disadvantages are that you need to take the rocks from somewhere, and they are less accurate.

I think mostly everyone would like that. not only a girlfriend, but also my best friends. i trust them enough to use emotional allomancy to help me and not to take advantage of me. but NOT my parents. they'd try to manipulate me into doing what they think is best, in terms of life choices. and since i have totally different opinions compared to them, it would be a disaster.

I suppose if you make yourself light enough you could float around with a reltively small helium balloon. You'd still need some wheight for the metalminds (and I suppose you want to keep some clothes too), and that would be enough to make sure that you can't just lift with the buoiancy provided by air on your body alone (the mass of air is roughly 1.3 kg per cubic meter, a normal human would receive less than 100g of lift. And I suppose you'd need a sizable metalmind to fill all that wheight for any lenght of time). Or you could still be light enough that you'd be blow away by a relatively weak wind. But I think the coolest thing would be to strap wings to your arms and fly. You could also walk on water thanks to surface tension. Or go parachuting without a parachute. Now lots of awesome things to be done with Feruchemical iron are mocing to my mind. I want it!

tensoon (or marsh) is not an hemalurgist. tensoon is a hemalurgic construct. he's the product of hemalurgy, but he's not an accomplice. we can make a comparison with rape, and say that rape is always bad, but calling tensoon an hemalurgist would be like calling a rapist a person born from a rape. the hemalurgist is the person committing the act of spiking someone, i.e. the rapist in the example. the subject has no choice in the matter, and in the case of tensoon he wasn't even sentient at the moment. he certainly cannot be held guilty of anything, no more than a child could be held guilty if her mother got pregnant following a rape. So, while a kandra is the result of a definitely bad action, he is innocent of any wrongdoing. he get all the benefits without getting any blame. which is a pretty cool thing. it's like getting tons of money because your parents were robbers, but you are innocent of everything and can just keep the money. Ok, this is not a good example because you could give the stolen money back. you can't give back an hemalurgic spike. But I hope you got the principle: being a kandra is awesome and don't have any moral drawback foor the kandra himself.

Yes, but that's the point: it was all stuff I was convinced of from before I started reading sanderson, and I had no need to quote anything to support that. But now, everytime a discussion goes towards some philosophical debate, I feel the need to use his words.

I never had a dream with cosmere revelations. However, just this night I dreamed that I was ordained a cardinal of the catholic church. And I am not even a religious person. And the bishop who was my underling was doing some impressive stunts with a car.

No idea on the karats, but I'm pretty sure that gems are much more common, and thus much cheaper, than in the real world. for example, I wouldn't be surprised if a diamond chip (the smaller coin) contained one karat worth of diamond. which in the real world would be worth a few tens to a few hundreds euros depending on quality and cut. In fact, a chip can hardly contain less than one karat (roughly 0.2 grams); a smaller peice would be difficult to see and to handle. As for an equivalent value, the way they are used make me think that a diamond chip would be worth 2 to 5 euros at purchasing power parity. EDIT: the majority of you americans can easily change "euros" with "dollars" and be fine with it. those estimates are approximate enough that the exchange difference between euro and dollar isn't a big deal