king of nowhere

there are mentions of a legendary metal that falls from the sky and can stop shardblades. It is supposedly the same metal that was used in the siege of kholinar to shield the soulcasters. I know it's supposed to be aluminium, as it has been shown cosmere-wide to be a relmatically inert metal. But the facts just don't add up. We know from a shallan flashback that rosharans know aluminium. they soulcast into it. so I can't believe it never happened that a shardblade was used to hit someone wearing aluminium jewelry. Heck, with all the people szeth killed with his blade during parties, you'd think some of them had some aluminium. even more shacky is the claim of falling from the sky. I've been looking into it, but I can't find mention of native aluminium being found in asteroids - though it is certainly a possibility, as asteroids lack the oxygen that oxides the aluminium on earth. But aluminium is much rarer on asteroids: it aggregates on a planet's crust because it's so lightweight. If lumps of native aluminium are found on asteroids, they are rare and small. So... what the heck? is that a case of brandon making a mistake? is it a different metal?

I also suspected timbre is eshonai's soul or something. I was expecting some sort of reveal by the end of the book, but othing so far

I think of adolin as an old buddy. I have a lot in common with him - although my talents are in completely different areas than dueling

I don't see shadolin as boring at all. they were very cute together. and they gave the impression of stable, dependable relationship. Shalladin gave the impression of a quick thirst of passion followed by nothing. I take committment over passion. Plus, shallan has passion for adolin, and she makes it clear several times. Finally, all the shalladin teasing was not for nothing. It was to show how mentally unhinged shallan was becoming. the personas she started by using them as acts and disguises took lives of their own and ended up influencing her. It was masterfully done. And shallan still has three personalities, and is at risk of splitting more. I wonder where this is going in the next book.

When your cat goes "mao", "meo", "mreo", and you wonder if she's trying to communicate with aons

i think right of satyre is part of the freedom of speech. plus, just because we like sanderson, it doesn't mean everybody else has to. and teachers giving students big books to read that appeal to the teacher but rarely to the student is a staple of literature classes. so, just let it be.

it's something to do with pether alhstrom, whom old account was "ookla the [something]". in this time of the year some people temporarily change their name to ookla to honor him. that's as much as I know, somebody else can get more details

that's pretty much my angle too. though I admit I have enough admiration for adolin to react about him a bit as if he was a real friend and not just a fictional character. I have a lot in common with adolin, so you could say he is my role model.

Adolin is one of the best person I know. I won't stand for slander about him, even if he's just a fictional character. adolin wants to help people. and since his family is led by the big good dalinar, then helping people means helping his family 99% of the time. But can you name me a single time where he acted selfishly at the expence of someone else? Now, to add something willow still hasn't, adolin had never once complained with his father that allying with other highprinces - and giving them good deals for dividing the spoils - would weaken their family. he argued that they may be betrayed, or that they may be belittled, but never once he seemed to complain that others would gain more power than the kholin family. did you ever see him trying to persuade dalinar to make a push for power? If he wanted power for his family, then bringing in a knight radiant by marriage would be a great move. yet he actually went and told shallan that she'd probably like kaladin more. Are those the actions of somebody out for power?

The original post looks like a huge attempt at using exact words to twist meanings. from the whole context of it, adolin snapped, in a moment of stress, under sadeas' provocations. you take it so lightly. Many other posters argued that such a huge shift into his personal world should have affected him more. it's not about social status, we have seen adolin cares little for it (proof: the way he treats everyone the same, and spoilers from the end of OB). it's about his place in the world. all the times we see him, it's clear he's in love with shallan considering what sadeas did (especially at the tower) it would have been strange if adolin had not wanted to kill him. Still, that's not what premeditated means. premeditated would mean that adolin planned to kill sadeas. he didn't (unless you count the plans of cornering him into a duel, which would have been legal according to alethi law anyway). adolin would have liked to kill sadeas, but he never planned for it or took steps to make it happen, except in a duel. that's not what premeditated means. So, from this small remark you would assume proof that he did other bad things in the past that we are not aware of? doesn't look much like an argument. no, adolin simply knows he cannot be as stoic as his father. adolin has always been more hotheaded. as for what would he do if dalinar were to change, do you think the adolin we read about could have condoned dalinar's actions during his warlording days (again, going into this fully would be OB spoilers) if he had known them in full? this is using one specific word to draw all kinds of conclusions. sadeas is called highprince many times, it does not mean those who call him highprince do not see him as a person. heck, if adolin had been "I killed sadeas" would you have argued that he gives no respect to social standing because he didn't think of sadeas as highprince? As far as connection to the victim, adolin think that he killed "sadeas" many times later. and their connection was one of enmity. really, sadeas tried to kill him and his father multiple times, and almost succeeded twice on his father and three times on him. can you really argue that adolin should respect sadeas as a human being? adolin is in shock. Also, he is capable of putting aside other considerations and focus on the here and now. it's fairly clear from the way it is written. you can't really take it as evidence of cold blooded murder unless you already reached that conclusion beforehand and are ignoring all the context and the rest of the chapter. Furthermore, I want to call the greatest adolin's expert we have, @maxal: she will do him better justice than me.

I reiterate, it is a matter of how much power is being irradiated. the microwave oven heats stuff up because it generally uses 800 watts or more. A strong lamp uses 100 watts. If you put a lamp making visible light inside a microwave oven and powered it with 800 watts, it would heat the food just as much. if you pointed a 100 W microwave lamp against a person, it would do no more harm than a 100 W floodlight. It's watts that matters for energy transfer, not wavelenght. wavelength matters for potential dna damage, and as I said, even with gamma rays a lethal dose takes up a fair amount of power. now, the way shallan makes her illusion doesn't obey any normal law of energy consumption - otherwise, starting the illusion wouldn't be much more expensive than keeping them up. Given the amount of gems she needs to start up a normal illusion, however, I believe that the stormlight required to weaponize lightweaving - either by making a laser or a gamma burst - is prohibitively high in normal conditions

random tangent here: in the epigraph, there is a funny literal reading So, you must know that dalinar committed genocide, and what it cost him. dalinar cannot teach it, so you must seek to experience it in person. Huh. Looks like dalinar is inciting people to commit genocide in order to learn its price.

microwave is not really useful for figthing. we use them for cooking, but the problem is always the amount; they are no more energetic than visible light, if you want to hurt someone with the heat the energy requirement is the same as if you were using visible light: a lot of energy, too much to be practical. radiations are somewhat more useful, but not too much. sure, you can irradiate an enemy army, and for a moderate amount of power they will get cancer... within 10 or 20 years. not of much help right now. and if you want to kill them with acute radiation poisoning, again, that takes a lot of power. the use of a perpendicularity to power surgebinding is the only thing making this viable

funny thing, he actually did change the world. now the abuse don't happen anymore to some people or some other. no, they happen to everybody. human? kept as a slave and scheduled for exterminatiion. singer? will be sacrificed to reborn a fused. spren? voidspren are conquering shadesmar as we speak. everybody is suffering. yay for equality!

he was always hateful from the start, and I never liked him. kaladin however had a lot of darkness in him. i think that's part of the reason they got along: there was a bit of moash inside kaladin. i am so glad to see him putting that part aside. And by the way, speaking of elokhar, he wasn't even the real responsible for the death of moash's grandparents. roshone was. elokhar was simply a fool. I think, considering his sterling behavior after he got his memory wiped, a judge may apply some leniency. dalinar would still be subject to some harsh sentence, though. Maybe he'd be imprisoned but he would be allowed to keep doing his "job" in prison. which dalinar would accept and perform with honor and distinction, eventually earning a pardon.

that's actually a goood point. they may be people from other planets. though I can't even start to imagine how brandon can fit that into a book while keeping it accessibkkle to those who don't know the cosmere at wide.

It's not that. Nobody expected him to fight for a brightlord. I expected him to run away with the group of trained singers. maybe do something like the listener ancestors and hide from their gods

I didn't like dragonball, and I don't like some things about SA that are too dragonballish (as in, over the top, exaggerated). Still, it's not so bad that it ruins my enjoyment. Also, seeing dalinar becoming a badass by his intent to be a good guy to the end was epic. I will take responsibility for my own actions. best way to achieve ultimate power ever.

The simplest interpretation is that rock's older brothers raised weapons even if they were not warriors. just because rock has stuck with his role to a fault it does not mean that everyone else on the peaks is as dedicated as he is. on the other hand, there may be some undertone to the conversation.

I wonder, is it possible that adolin may revive the spren without becoming a radiant? it would make him something different from the others.

At first, I hated him. Then, when he stood up for the downtrodden singers, I hoped he could have a redemption arc and lead a revolution against the fused. but no, he just killed humans. because both sides used him as expendable troop, but the singers at least gave him sturdy boots and gloves. so I hated him even more. I hope he dies slowly and we keep hearing his wailing and gnashing of teeth for a long time. guy deserves it.

In the first interlude there is a guy manning a lighthouse in the east coast who think there is some people living across the ocean who will come back and conquer them - which is very reminescent of the seanchan in the wheel of time, hence the title. then nothing is done about them. is it foreshadowing for a future book? a red herring? do we know anything else? On one hand, brandon denied the existance of other large landmasses. (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/105-17th-shard-forum-qa/#e1128) there can be some islands, but certainly nothing capable of sustaining a massive empire capable of conquering a continent. then again, why insert that interlude if it wasn't foreshadowing something? Ok, technically it could be that the foretold return was that of the singers, and the message got confused with time, but it seems really a stretch as a reason to insert the interlude.

I just figured that one year ago I made a map for a totally unrelated videogame and I posted a moral conundrum similar to that of the recreance. The posted map with related description (which was only meant to add a bit of fluff and flavor to a challenging desert map) is here great minds think alike, or there is no such thing as originality. You decide.

I don't see the deal here. syl is already dependent from kaladin. She already dies if he betrays his oath. By getting together romantically, none of this would get any worse. Kaladin is already forced to keep his oath or kill a sapient creature. You may say that you don't like the whole nahel bond thing, the idea that two sapeints are interconnected and that if one of them betrays oaths the other dies, and I agree, it's not an ideal situation. Once this situation is, however, I see no way adding a romantic involvment can make it any worse. In fact, I see it as making it better, because those two sapients are stuck with each other anyway, they may as well try to make the best out of it. Again, I don't see any big deal here. In every couple the people involved try to persuade the other to do stuff, be it something as simple as taking out the trash, or as complex as changing ideas on how to raise a son. You can say that both parties involved undergo character development where they both change to fit better with each other. This is often good for both parties involved: I wish I'd find a girl who would push me to overcome my lazyness and get in a better shape. Manipulation implies covert means and malicious intent, which is the opposite of what is happening here. Syl is not manipulating kaladin, she is talking openly and honestly with him about what she feels is important; she wants nothing but his good. Kaladin is not some clueless child that is taken advantage of, he is an adult fully capable of taking her ssuggestions and making what he wants with them. He resister her suggestions regarding elokhar, and he only lost powers because of his oaths, not because he refused to listen to her. And he kept resisting her suggestions about relationships. In fact, I'd argue that all of the bad things you say would happen if they entered into a relationship had already happened. The only thing they miss is physical intimacy, aside from that they are practically already in a relationship. And that goes for every other radiant we saw, though for syl and kaladin it's particularly strong. Notice that I don't want to take sides in a ship war. I am merely stating that there would be nothing unhealty in syladin - well, nothing unhealtier than already is - and I see it as a legitimate possibility.

You know what, I didn't like much the kholinar arc (well, I did like it, just not as much as the rest of the book), but I appreciate it more after this post. Because, yes, it shows that some of the main characters stiill have a way to go. In particular shallan; many people (myself included) were thinking that she was too successful in book 2, but this is the result. this is the logical follow-up. Shallan learned to put on a face of strenght to hide her weaknesses, but she lost a lot in doing so. and yes, she also has moments of immaturity stemming from not wanting to confront stuff. being so successful in the past aggravated it, giving her the feeling that she could do whatever she pleased. Jasnah putting her in her place was good for her; I just would like to know how did jasnah manage to figure out a pshycological profile of shallan so well after one day in urithiru. And kaladin has faced his demons in book 2 and made considerable progress - he's much less depressed than he was in the past - but he's still not 100% ok. so, I guess that was the reason for the story arc