king of nowhere

I have an intersting case of a friend I got to read the mistborn trilogy. She claimed to like it, but she took, like, 4 months to read it, and she would oftenput it down to read something else. On the other hand, she showed actual appreciation for it, and she had no reason to lie to me, she showed interest when i mentioned alloy of law, so I believe her. She then picked up the way of kings, but stopped in midread claiming that the amount of bad stuff that happens to kaladin is too much and makes her depressed. I'm inclined to think that the steep learning curve of sanderson's books make them stuffy to her, even when she enjoy them. On the other hand, her son became a good fan of the books. Unfortunately I haven't been able to expand their cosmere culture because of several concurring factors - I read the books in english, but they are not comfortable with that and require the italian translation, so I can't just lend them my copies - books are incredibly expensive in italy. At least those books. I spent 30 euros to buy them TFE and get them intersted in the series. - apparently, italian libraries are ignorant of what constitutes good fantasy. Sanderson's books are difficult to find. Many libraries won't even have a single book by terry pratchett! Last time I went into one, three quarters of the "fantasy" section were filled with either werewolves/vampires stuff or elves and other glorified tolkien fanfiction. - my friend and her husband don't have a card for internet purchases. - she and her son are quite lazy when it comes to doing stuff outside of their routine (not that I am any better). The husband and other son are not intersted in reading. - italian translation sucks! Really, all the magic terms are translated in a totally unsatisfactory way. I read the first szeth scene from the italian version and was horrified by how stupid all the words sounded when translated that way (admittedly, it isn't easy to come up with better words). The funniest translation I found was in a piece of the wheel of time, where warder was translated of "protettore". While protettore means literally "guy who protects" and so could easily fit in the context, in everyday language it is most often use to refer to the male boss of a group of prostitutes (google translation gives "pimp" as the english term, but I don't know if it is accurate). I still laugh every time I think of that passage sounding as if moiraine was a prostitute under lan's patronage. So, for all those reasons I couldn't spread Sanderson's work much in my home country.

we have to keep in mind that scadrial and nalthis are different worlds with different shards and different magics. I don'tm think returned and kelsier work under the same principle. I like kaurne's idea on kelsier's action, and people believing him a god, created an impact in the cognitive realm that allowed him to stay around. I wonder if he managed to reunite with mare in some way beside that. returned on nalthis work differently. maybe they are handpicked by the shard, or maybe there's somethign else there. It is also possible that they return because they leave a strong cognitive handprint (that don't need to be as strong as kell's one), but I do believe they are quite different situations. About the idea that returned are bound to the physical realm by cognitive impact, it would explain why children can sometimes return: if their parents feel particularly strong about them. it also explains why people taking eroic deeds are more likely to return. It don't explain however why famous people aren't more likely to return than anyone else. I expect that if the "cognitive impact" theory was true, then a renowned singer/actor/artist with enough fanbase, or a political leader with enough following, would be practically guaranteed to return. damnation, now I'm seeing returned hitler with a svastica-shaped biochroma.

I thought it was clear already from book 1. The parshendi were fighting for the gems, and they had to eat something. So they had to have soulcasters.

right, then i misread. There goes my perfectly reasonable explanation.

I got the impression that deathpoint was covering behind steelheart from the soldiers, but the protagonist's father was on the other side, so he had a clear shot on deathpoint. It would also make no sensse the other way. since steelheart is higher than deathpoint, if the second was behind the first, there would be no way to hit him. only way was for the father to see deathpoint in front of steelheart.

Aww, sanderson really loves crapsack worlds, don't he? I remember him mentioning an idea for a world where only evil people ggot superpowers. I guess it's this one. About steelheart, I got the impression that he was vulnerable to a bullet that has killed an epic in its course. or maybe that has been soaked in the blood of an epic

I didn't knew there were so many people who have problems with sex or sexual violence. I have no problems with it, if it fit the story. not if it is fanservice. What I like about wot is that it is a strong story. It is well made. It's difficult to say what''s so strong about it, but I'm reading now the sword of truth series and, men, I feel the difference. magic is some kind of omnipotent force that does whatever is convenient to the plot. the books are constantly solved by the protagonist pulling new skills out of his chull whenever he needs it in a totally deus ex machina way. there are plenty of moments that feel just clichè. I'd have stopped reading by now, But I become fond of the characters (I'll give that to terry goodkind: he's good at making characters I grow fond of) and want to see what happens to them. The wheel of time avoids all of those common pitfalls of fantasy. it never feel stereotyped, and all the action makes sense andd is not just the magic solving everything because it's magic. On the other hand, I never felt fond for the characters. In fact, I'd have liked to bash them on the teeth with a baseball bat several times. But hey, if the characters in the wot talked to each other and took rational decisions, the whole thing would have been wrapped up in three books.

hammond is also the name of the guy who set up jurassic park. I guess it's just a common fiction name. it has a nice sound to it.

when rashek was in charge, feruchemists were hunted. as far as he knew, there were none left. he did not concern with how feruchemists would be harmed by using electrum. he just hid electrum because it counters atium, since he used his atium monopoly to control the houses

your muscles are still doing part of the work. you'll have to bench press much more, but you'll eventually build muscles

I don'0t think phase changes in lerasium are controlled by temperature. it is not a metal, but a god metal. common laws of physics should not apply very much to it

BLASPHEMY! here, in a forum of sanderson's fans, you DARE ask whether one of his books is worth finishing? As in, implying it may not be worth finishing? Let's get out the torches and pitchforks, and someone track his ip to see where he lives! But, seriously, Vivenna got on my nerves too, but it's well worth finishing. You should know sanderson's books tend to have explosive endings. Plus, vivenna really gets taken down in just a few chapters. this triggers some serious change in her. By the end of the book, you won't recognize her.

Don't think so. every metal has a very specific effect. atium is the power of ruin, but ruin caused heartquakes and took control of hemalurgical creatures, while aium just let you see ahed in time. So i expect lerasium to do something very specific

i'd think the kandra would not be able to reproduce the pigmentation, but could use the one from the ingested body, just like he uses bones. some natural colors he may be able to reproduce, but not all colors. I think a particularly skilled kandra, like tensoon, may also be able to rearrange the pigments to produce a different tattoo, but it'd take lots of skill

i think it more likely that to gain feruchemy an alloy of lerasium and atium is involved, since feruchemy is the power of balance between the two. however, just like you burn lerasium to gain allomancy, it is well opossible that you have instead to tap sazedium to gain feruchemy. it would be a metal that anyone can tap and is already charged. once you took feruchemy from it, it's spent, and can't be used to grant feruchemy anymore. it probably still has an allomantic use

actually, kelsier didn't even have that one bead: he had to give it up when he exited the cave. after kelsier gave his bead, and mare waws found without beads and killed, kelsier snapped, but he had no atium at the moment. However, even if he only had trace metals in him, he could also count on surprise. there's a lot of damage a few seconds of pweter can do when the guard in front of you is only seeing an unarmed prisoner. He could have easily killed a dozen guards with just trace metals. then maybe he gained access to atium. or maybe he just snuck out. I wonder what happened to the other prisoners that were in the pits at the time.

Brandon has been presenting the flashbacks in chronological order, but for tien's death he made an exception. That flashback is important to a future pivotal scene, so it is presented then. I can't say much more without revealing spoilers.

so if a mistborn burns an alloy of lerasium, he get demoted to simple misting? Now I'm picturing an evil overlord forcing his enemies to take an alloy of lerasium and aluminium How about trace impurities in lerasium? at what point do those traces impurity become enough to make you become a misting and not a mistborn?

i think alcohol would not count as nourishment and you would feel its effect. the metalmind would only store the nourishment coming from alcohol, not the intoxication. otherwise, it would have been a really nice trick to get drunk or sober at will. and it would also have worked to remove from your body most toxins

Nice idea. At the time of the final empire there were full feruchemists. So with brass to soak up heat and (I don't remember the metal for keeping food and water) a feruchemist could make it. he would also need pewter to carry all the metal he needs, but on the plus side, as he empties the metalminds (or fill, in case of brass), he can abandon them, so he can slow down on peter tapping. To save wheight, he could melt the brass once it's full, but i'm not sure there is something to burn in the burntland. all the plants died 1000 years before, and spontaneous combustion should have taken care of burning everything.

An object is either all in or all out a time bubble. So the bullet, when it comes across the boundary, for a small moment is still affected by the bubble, but its tip is touching the air outside the bubble. Or at least there's enough to make a case for it. I find it much more convincing that the alternatives. Also, if it worked like rifraction, but with objects, bullets would also be deflected when going it. There's a scene in the final fight when push is firing at him, and wayne put a bubble just in time, and they look at the bullet going towards them and duck. when the bullets comes into the bubble, it do not deviates the trajectory, but passes through the air where wax was an instant before. If time compression caused some refraction-like effect on objects crossing the boundary, then it would have deviated. Also note that my explanation works pretty well for why bigger objects are less affected. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure brandon will rule that the deviation out of the bubble will also happen in vacuum, and so the future trilogy will probably disprove me. Because, let's be honest about it, that deviation exist to keeo people killing everyone in a heartbeat from inside a bubble. As much as we can try physicla justifications for it, it's plot-based. wax is not "a man with a gun". wax has education. he has studied, he get informed. he can improvise a laboratory of metallurgy in his home. I'm sure once he started going around with wayne he have looked for that kind of informations.

could be that it is because when the projectile leaves the bubble, it is sudenly traveling superfast compared to air, so it slams against a wall of air and gets some random deviation from this impact. That also would explain why it is not deviated when going from outside to inside. In fact, now that i think about it, the projectile should be so fast when it leaves the bubble that it should burn with attrition and be totally harmless. I don0't think it makes sense to talk about refraction, a bullet is not a wave. I also think, since in scadrial they know the scientific method, they would have noticed if the angle of refraction was constant, and wax would have known it. after all, scientists have been experinmenting with the metallic arts.

sazed surely moved all the storage caches so they would be in the same place. he also created the elendel basin, and he removed the ashmounts. We don't know how radical are the transformations he did otherwise. But we can be sure he moved the people in the southern continet too, otherwise they would have found themselves suddenly in the middle of antartica and would all have died. I wonder why he choose to keep the popolations separated.

There were groups who would go out there to escape the Lord Ruler, and the Final Empire in general. Survival was practically impossible. It's possible someone might have gotten across to the southern continent, but it would take a small miracle. I wonder how that would be possible. in our world, there are about 40 degrees of difference from the average temperature of the tropical zone and that of the north pole. 60 degrees to that of the south pole, but antartica has the circumpolar stream keeping all hot air away, makinbg it colder than it would be just by the latitude. Anyway, if on scadrial the polar regions are temperate, we can expect the average temperature on the tropical regions no less than 50 degrees. and tropical regions do not have a winter like temperate ones. temperaure never fall below 20 degrees in several places on earth. though it is possible that something on scadrial is different (after all, they have a huge imbalance of temperature because they have the ash around the north pole but not on the south; that would cause some quite peculiar weather patterns), so if one made the trip on a particularly cold winter he may make it. I also wonder, if those troopical regions were a desert, where an hypotetical traveler would find food. deepwater fish would probably survive, as only the firrst 30 meters or so of water are affected by air temperature, but all shallow water fishes would likely die too. Since such a trip would require years (compare marco polo's trip to china or ibn battuta's travels), what would someone eat for all that time? (Note that multicellular life is probably capable of thriving at up to 70 degrees, but that would require plenty of adaptation. New proteins stable to that temperature would have to be evolved. It would take millions of years.) I feel that, more than a small miracle, it would take mat cauthon himself leading the party.

as for exploring the world, with what we know of scadrial the temperature in the tropical region would be between 50 and 70 degrees, depending on seasonal and day/night fluctuation. 50 degrees are enough to kill anyone with prolonged exposure. and unlike cold, there's no way to shield from heat by putting on more clothes or lighting a fire. there is simply no way people could have gone through the tropical area before the invention of air conditioning. On the other hand, flight solves all the problems. at high altitude it's colder anyway. there would still be techninal problems however. One is how much fuel is needed to go around the world. I'm not sure how easy it is to make a plane with 20000 km of autonomy. make it 40000, since it must also come back. Second, they cannot expect to find airstrips. they may use planes capable of landing on water, but what if the north pole is completely covered by landmasses and you can't find a river straight enough to land while your limited autonomy dwindles? The safest thing is to use a vertical take-off and landing plane, but that's some pretty advanced stuff. Another chance is to send a closed ship with a strong air conditioning system. still, making it work is not easy. and there's plenty of things that can go wrong with a 20 thousand km trip through uncharted seas in an environment that would kill a person in a few hours. basically, it takes a lot of technology to do the trip. no wonder those on the south pole didn't make it. And when scadruial was restored back to normal, they suddenly had plenty of goood land to explore and settle in the tropical region. so no wonder they haven't gone so far norrth to meet the other guys. As for the matter of how much technology they have, it is also debatable. While on our world there has never been such a fthing as technologiucal stagnation, for mnost of our history technology progressed very slowly. We are used to the idea of progress, to the concept that our sons will live in a different world than our, we've seen computers spread in every home, we learn every year new tricks to work on DNA... but in most of our hystory, change was too slow to be detected by people living in it. agriculture was invented 10 thousands years ago, and it needed several thousands years from there to go to bronze working, and other thousands to discover iron. Romans had a good grasp of engineering, but most of their knowledge was lost when they fell and had to be rediscovered later. Then, somewhere around 400 years ago, we started the scientific revolution. we discovered the scientific method, and we had printing to spread it. new discoveries became exceptionally fast. So, if people on scadrial south pole didn't hit the scientific revoloution, they may very well be still living as the ancient romans. if they did hit the scientific revolution during the early days of the lord ruler, they may very well be traveling in space by now. Or, they may be stuck by lack of resources. If we had no coal or oil, we wouldn't be able to mass produce energy. without that energy, we may not be able to get further developments needed to produce that energy without fossile fuels. Not to mention that around 90% of our chemicals are made with petrol derivatives. those on the south pole are stuck on a small geographical area, it is possible they don't have access to fossile fuels. Or to many other things. platinum and palladium are very rare metals, they are extraced in no more than a half dozen places in the whole world. but they are very important catalysts in many chemical reactions. without them, there are several chemicals we would not be able to produce. Iridium, osmium and some other noble metals are also exremely rare, but are needed for some highly specialized alloys without the which some things would not be possible. alluminium is widespread, but very difficult to extract; it requires some complex chemical procedure, that requires some specific material, which may not be available on the south pole. Then aluminium would remain a rare commodity, and could not be mass produced. Basically, there are many things that could prevent the south pole from expanding too much.