king of nowhere

the stormfather is dead. there is no more stormlight. apparently, there are no more highstorms, but the perpetual night of sorrows. and that's massive, because highstorms were part of the life cycle of many creatures. many creatures pupated and needed a highstorm to reach the next stage in development, among them chasmfiends and chulls. many creatures have gemhearts, which they used to store some light that was of some relevance. aside from that, the constant night is going to hurt most diurnal creatures that relied massively on sight. i don't know if birds can fly all that well in constant rain. there should be a major extinction event on roshar following the night of sorrows. i doubt brandon will want to rewrite the ecology, though, so he'll find some excuse to avoid it.

the bad guys winning definitely creates a strange feeling, but this is the halfway point, i was expecting some of that. as for human moments, i think everything adolin does is awesome. it took me a few days to process dalinar's choice. i disagree with it, but i came to the conclusion that there were no good choices. killing gavinor would have merely shifted the problem to the future. while one may hope future generations to do better, it's most likely that taravangian would have been able to keep manipulating events to his advantage. in that light, what dalinar did was... i wouldn't call it wrong, nor right. he had a bunch of bad choices, he tried to pick a lesser evil. in his place, i'd have considered killing odium, making sure to shelter at least a few survivors to rebuild. an equally bad choice.

Why is cultuvation dismissed? With all the focus on improving, dalinar is very connected to cultivation - and not at all to retributiin, he doesn't desire that. Cultivation is also the only other shard that we know for sure was watching

Well, the end was... Weird. Too much stuff happening, diminishes the full impact of stuff. I definitely wasn't expecting T to take honor. Frankly, i think dalinar should have killed gavinor and let odium bear responsibility. If odium had sent a different champion, dalinar would have had no qualms killing them. It was a form of nepotism, making such distinctions because of familiy connection. By the way, i wonder how gavinor will feel, the way odium treated him. Jasnah was well executed. I like how previous moments that were all like "wow she is so cool" came back to bite her. However, there is an important argument she missed. T was invoking the nirvana fallacy; jasnah is imperfect, so they should side with odium. Maybe jasnah cannot be trusted completely, but taravangian cannot be trusted at all. Even bound by contracts, he's shown great ability in manipulating them. Someone should have brought that up. I was expecting something terrible to happen with sigzil, given... Well, spoilers from other cosmere stories. What actually happened is pretty tame. Vienta should be grateful that sigzil saved her life, now that they know they can fix deadeyes. Would she have preferred the alternative? I was afraid sanderson would kill adolin, but he's the only one scoring a clear victory. He weaponized being nice, which is cool. Having seen how ridiculously powerful the heralds are, i have a hard time thinking what could be a threat for them in the next return

When ishar said "keep your children songs and rhymes to yourself, the adults are trying to save the world" it was cathartic. I've been wanting to say that to hoid every time. Too bad he said it to the wrong person

i'm definitely unhappy about taravangian. the reveal that he was selfish all along detracts from the character and its depth. i've seen many characters like him in the media. people who were doing terrible things in the name of a greater good. and in every case i remember, they turned out to be selfish all along. this both cheapens the moral dilemma presented, and appears to be moralizing. i liked taravangian specifially because he appeared to be actually striving for the greater good. now, i could have totally accepted him changing after taking the shard of odium. but the book is pretty clear that it had always been about him. it turns the taravangian of the first four books into a shallow character. bad move there. to avoid accusations of negativity, i'll also mention something that surprised me positively: renarin and rlain. inserting a homosexual relationship in a story is dangerous; not much for the backlash from the least tolerant members of the public, but because it's easy for it to be cringy, or to appear like some hamfisted woke element. there are many pitfalls there. when i learned it was going to happen, i was worried for its execution; additionally, i never liked renarin, and was neutral on rlain. but i can say, the story was well laid out and executed. the subtle plants of rlain orientation left in earlier books paid well, as without them, rlain turning out to be gay the moment renarin showed interest would have seemed too much of a contrived coincidence - which in turn would have fed the sense of "it's just to fill the wokeness quota". no, the whole thing develops naturally and feel real. good job there.

halfway through the book (it shipped very late), i have to say i love how much of a team player adolin is. the way he shares his shards and fights as part of a unit is even more badass than his combat skill. learning of shin culture is great. really crazy people. "he subtracted! with a rock!!!!" it's a minor miracle the country hasn't been subjugated by a military rebellion, the way all the people with weapons are little more than slaves. also, after kaladin realized that szeth is tien, and elokar is tien, someone should make a meme of tiens everywhere

i had to wait nearly 3 months due to a big amazon delay, but I finally got my copy! soon i will be able to catch up with everything! woooo!!!! just had to share my joy before reading

i'm sure it's said somewhere that the metal returns to the planet, it's not destroied. good luck mining it as traces dispersed in the ground, though

i wouldn't give tlr much credit. he was a bigot racial suprematist before his ascension.

It was delayed well before the fires, but i see the point

pretty much as the title says. I ordered my copy of wind and truth on december 8 with amazon. i didn't get premium shipping because i figured, getting the book a few days later wouldn't be an issue. a couple weeks ago i checked my amazon account and found a notification that my order was delayed, and they were asking me if i still wanted it sent, or if i would rather cancel it. i confirmed to send it. since then i'm checking regularly, my order still results as not yet shipped. do other people experience similar delays? at which point should i try to contact the customer service?

there was never a chance to try it in the first place. the parshendi would shoot humans on sight. the only way it could have possibly had happened was rlain deciding to reveal himself, telling kaladin he was a spy and he could safely guide the bridgemen and vouch for them. then they'd need to sneak away from sadeas with the whole bridge, something they never managed to do until the final battle at the tower. i mean, "going with the parshendi" was an answer to where to go after escaping. the first problem was how to escape, and it's entirely unrelated.

i don't think there has ever been such a culture, because it would require a lot of trust. however, i'd think that many people would choose to pass their breath to some relative when close to death. some families could gather a small fortune like that

according to wot encyclopaedia, "Per Robert Jordan, Elaida's primary motivation is to see the White Tower as strong as possible. Because of their strength and potential, she wants Moiraine and Siuan to succeed despite the fact that she despises them. " the same website remarks that elaida's intent is not clear, though.

I was about to complain about spoilers, then I realized this is the spoiler area. And I'm still waiting for my copy to arrive via transoceanic shipping. I have to get out of here

well, if they are immortal, they will not end up, period. there is no such thing as a happy ending, because there is no such things as an ending - barring maybe the heat death of the universe, but that's very long term. no, there is merely a moment when the storyteller stops telling a story. furthermore, if immortality is a curse because in millennia they will eventually change and break up, what about mortality? they will be happy for 40 years, then less happy for another couple decades as he becomes gradually more invalid and she has to gradually transition from wife to caregiver, then he'll die, she will be miserable for a few decades, then she'll bond someone else. in a few millennia, kaladin is going to be no more than a faded memory, at best. and of course, he'll be long dead. how is that any better?

i assume you mean syl spear. if you live in the united states, you can wait until brandon goes to a convention close to your place (there is a whole thread in the forum to track that) and give it in person. else, i suppose you could mail it, but i can't help you with that

it's koloss head munching day, and we are all awaiting the state of the sanderson. but does anyone know at which hour it will be released? it's not that I can't wait a few hours*, but given the time zone difference, i'd like to know if it makes sense to stay up for it today, or wait tomorrow. *Ok, ok, I can't wait a few hours. Doesn't help that I got three packages delivered in the last few days, and every time I got my hopes up for Wind and Truth, and every time it was something my brother ordered to my address, so I'm all hyped up

awakening a dog costs 1 breath. cost effective, that works. do notice that dogs are still vulnerable to being skewered and sliced as much as anyone else on the battlefield. if they were all that effective, they'd have been used a lot more often. awakening a rope costs dozens and dozens of breath. that's very expensive, and the rope can be cut. not effective. putting the rope on the back of a running dog.... what kind of accuracy can you reach that way? if you want to convert breath into artillery fire, it's much more effective to use one single breath to awaken an archer. if you want to awaken a rope contraption to toss stuff, you can do it, but you certainly don't want to send it in the middle of the fray where it's easily destroied.

consider how big it is, the price per page is actually lower than most books. and there's the artwork too. it's not overpriced compared to other books

the reason I care is that I'm thinking of naming a mountain range on kerbal space program as "vin's scar range", because it's slanted on the face of the planet exactly as I'd imagine vin's scar to be. i wanted to make sure vin actually has such a scar before posting a mission report that other people will read.

In well of ascension, when zane is slashing vin, there is this piece of description So, Vin had a scar on her face left from her encounter with shan elariel? none of the other descriptions about her mentions a scar, and none of the official artwork includes a scar either. yet, zane certainly wasn't working from a description there. perhaps the scar was healed well enough that you'd only notice it burning tin? i'm trying to solve the conflict between that piece of description, and canon art.

Or, we can say more concisely that sanderson is running afoul of his own second law of magic: limitations are more interesting than powers. When the characters have too much stuff available, they have very few limitations. It also runs somewhat afoul of the third law: go deep before you go wide. Sanderson has done an excellent job of establishing the cosmere as a whole, but when radiants have access to 10 powers, each giving 3 surges, plus a unique boon, and the fused have those power differently... That's 50 more or less unique powers. Add in how they interact with offworld stuff, there's just no way to go deep and properly establish that. Not in a way as satisfying as the first books

it still applies, as long as you don't mind seeing stuff you won't understand