king of nowhere

The book cover points towards a huge battle somewhere. So you'll get what you want I'm getting a discriminatory vibe out of the whole "white savior" thing. As in, somebody coming from a position of privilege cannot be a leader of the oppressed. He/she/it cannot selflessly help those people, otherwise it would undermine the message of social equality - equality for those at the bottom of the social ladder, of course; those at the top are contemptible people whose privilege make evil automatically. Oh, I get that the white savior must have been done a lot with racist connotations, but it's actually the most realistic lead: the downtrodden people doens't have skillls of leadership, or technology, or magic, because nobody taught them, which is part of what kept them downtrodden. It makes sense that they will find very helpful soomeone who knows those stuff and can teach them.

Soulcast aluinium is known in roshar; in one of her flashbacks shallan was gifted an aluminium necklace. So if bloacking a shardblade was as simple as using aluminium, someone would have found out already. Like, a guy struck by a shardblade is saved by a bit of jewelry he was wearing. I hope so. Her father deserves his memory to be partially rehabilitated. As in "he was a monster and a murderer, but he became such as a consequence of great stress that was not his fault". I am thinking, in fact, that knowing that could heal shallan's family. After all, shallan's mother was the one who started it by tryiing to kill shallan for being a protoradiant. She was killed in self-defence by shallan. this caused her father to go crazy, and in his madness he did some horrible deeds, culminating with killing his secnd wife. He was also killed for self-defence". This shift most of the blame to shallan's mother, and more importantly it gives better reasons for all gthe bad things that happened. It wasn't just jealousy and pettyness; the mother was likely more misguided than evil, and the father was mad. that could make the rest of them fel better about what happened after. At least it would make me feel better, knowing that my parents had actual legitimate reasons for doing bad stuff that before looked completely unjustified; I don't know if it makes sense to the rest of you. Given how important the number 10 is in vorin culture, I'd say there are 10 signs, one for each month. So, about one tenth of the population is born under the sign of nine. Doesn't seem much of a clue about anything. As for his shardblade, adolin won it in a duel; he got the plate from his mother, and wagered it the blade of another guy in a duel, whom adolin won. It is mentioned in WoR Actually it does, if you're called Legion. In fact, there are a lot of similarities there too.

Well, give it a bit of time. In epigraphs, it had been 15 chapters, but in the actual oathbringer book, it was 3-4 sentences. As a mental exercice, try to take a sanderbook - even a short story, like sixth of the dusk - and divide it into small sentences, one or two lines at most. then put them as epigraphs of another book. Then be annoyed at how long it took sanderson to get to the point.

Now I'm seeing shallan with a half-dozen lovers trying to explain to all of them that each one of them is a necessary part of maintaining her split personality that she absolutely need to get some things done, and that she actually loves each one of them, when she is in the right persona. And then dalinar will pass nearby, and shallan will be able to project her strange mind over the others, and they will all accept to be lovers each to one of her personalities. Quoting from chapter 1 "A golden light, brilliant yet terrible. Standing before it, a dark figure in black Shardplate. The figure had nine shadows, each spreading out in a different direction, and its eyes glowed a brilliant red. " Yelllow not being an evil color seems the same as red not being a color for marriage I hadn't considered taravangian as pssible author. He does sort of fit, but nobody calls him an heretic yet. Well, many inappropriate things are discussed in calculus. Like division by zero, for example. And damnit, I also run out of reputation.

that spren is definitely of oodium, btw; we establlished in the first dalinar's chapter that golden yellow is odium's color. So convenient to have shards color-coded

So... does it mean dividing by zero becomes acceptable in human society after performing proper rituals?

Shallan and adolin are sooooo sweet! I love seeing them interact. I'll have to go reread them after I finish posting. Waiting for adolin to make his confession about the murder at any time, by the way. And that line about the monstrous voidbringers playing cards made me laugh so hard.Too bad the chapter was cut so short; I want to see what those voidbringers are thinking. Also how they are related to the mythological monsters, but that will likely come later in the story. But it shows how deeply pattern cares for shallan.

We have figures! Arcanum unbounded gives the size of planet roshar as 0.9 earth radii, and its surface gravity as 0.7 g. With those numbers, it is easy to get an average densitiy of the planet (which was closer to the value of mars, by the way) Still, we don't really know how big is the continent compared to the planet. We could make some reasonable assumptions assuming that taylenah is at 60 degrees of latitude and the reshi islands straddle the equator, but those are all assumptions. Still, we can get an approximation within +-30%

As far as spreading the oathgates go, they are fairly evenly distributed, with the exception of northeastern roshar laking one, and the gate in kurth being too close to the others - and only servicing a relatively small peninsula. Is it possible that we have wrong information and the oathgate in kurth is instead somewhere else? that would fit perfectly

It is also possible that they could not build oathgates, but their construction was something not repeatable. In which case they didn't put one in the northeast because of reasons. Maybe because the alethi and veden can take care for themselves, maybe because they had good highways and so could rally troops by foot fast enough. In general, if building an oathgate was so simple, I'd assume they'd have made more than 10. And if destroying an oathgate was so simple, I'd assume more would ahve been lost. In fact, the strongest refutation to your theory is that there are 10 platform around urithiru. If they ever built an 11th oathgate around northgrip, there would have been the platform; once the gate was destroyed, the platform should have remained. Also, even if your idea was correct, making an oathgate in northgrip would have made perfect tactical sense: it's just as far from the horneater peaks as vedenar or kholinar, and it would allow to open another front. In fact, if I was planning against such an invasion coming from the shardpool, I'd make an oathgate in one of the islands in the reshi sea: easy to defend, but within striking distance of the coast. Now I only have to leave a small contingent of troops to protect that oathgate, but the enemy has to put sooldiers everywhere around the coast to repel possible strikes. Note, I'm not saying your theory has no merit; it may or may not be true. I am looking for counterarguments for the sake of scholarship

I don't know how much I'd like if every single named character became a radiant or squire, but I certainly would like it for lirin. He deserves it.

I don't regard killing the kid in the circumstance such a terrible action. Of course it is very sad to read, and of course gavilar's team is a villainous conquering force, but that has nothing to do with the kid. He was armed with a shardblade and was willing to use it, after all. Shardblades are light enough that even children can use them effectively, and dalinar's plate was broken in many places, most notably in the hands, preventing him from disarming the child - which would have been the "right" choice otherwise (ok, the right choice would have been to not attack rathalas, but barring that). And most important, regardless of how I feel about the deed, there's how dalinar feels about the deed. I don't think he would have been so disturbed by killing wht can be considered an enemy child soldier. And Kadash? He wasn't with dalinar when it happened. We know from other chapters that something really bad happened there, something that caused kadash to forfait the army and join the ardentia. So far we've seen nothing of it. No, the whole chapter is fishy. I think it will be something like shallan's flashback, where it appears that her father killed her mother, when it was shallan doing it. Or like kaladin's first chapter in WoK, where it seems kaladin was defeated in battle and made a slave, and you realize later what actually happened. I'd bet you good money things did not go as they seem. And that we'll see what happened at a later point in the book.

First of all, I see them less as peeping and more as exploring. they all seem curious about the world and the humans, so why not sex? And it's not like humans haven't done whacky things in the name of knowledge. One scientist once got a couple of contorsionists to have sex into a nuclear resonance machine, so he could see what their internal organs were doing. A scientific divulgation magazine once put together a few thousand singles in what was basically a mass blind date to get statistical data on dating. Being a scientist myself, I cannot but approve. FOR SCIENCE! Second, syl seemed at times to actually be flirting. I wonder if spren become more and more humanlike to the point of becoming potential romantic partners for their radiants. Or for each other. It may have all kind of implications.

could be somwething as simple as mr T thinking he could get her as an ally at some point without needing assassination. Or the political structure of taylenah shattering in a way that would not be conductive to taravangian taking control. I would like to see mr T as "the left hand"of dalinar. REgarding the diagram, I think it's shoot to hell by now. It didn't mention finding urithiru or stuff. It called for stopping dalinar before he could unite the alethi, which he sort of did already. So a reasonable mr T may come to realize that the diagram failed and the best he can do is take his achievements and put them together with dalinar's. On the other hand, I don't see the story going that way. The whole diagram setup doesn't seem like it can end with T and D allied.

well, the flashback implies that gavilar was starting to change already. we don't know, however, how exactly he changed. discovering his involvment with the sons of honor certainly gave a completely different twist to it

he definitely would not have been the same person. However, how different would he have been? the fact that he choose to ask for erasing some of his memories shows he was already conflicted - indeed, today's flashback shows that he was starting to become conflicted already by now. So it's unclear how much the memory wipe made dalinar change, and how much it simply helped him along. And glowing. Let us not forget about the glowing. Rigth; if adolin inherits the place of highprince of war, the investigation should go to the highprince of information. I doubt adolin would get an appointment only to have it revoked after a few chapters, though. let's not forget one thing: the king made a decision, but it's not official yet. it will be a while before it's actually finalized. So, that means that the whole "investigation" business will have a resolution pretty soon?

So they're using connection to speak and understand the local language? they don't actually take the time and effort to learn the local language? I mean, it makes sense, but I assume if one wants to stay on a planet for years he may want to study it a bit better.

Not going to happen. This is a sanderbook, and adolin is a main character. there's no way he'll avoid thrauma and suffering. To quote someone unconventionally wise: if writers were good people, they would write about cute fluffy bunnies

they consider stormlight too holy to use. szeth remarks how it shouldn't be used for illumination I don't know where he found a radiant, if indeed he found one, but it is not that hard to find some radiants if you have a kingdom worth of people and know where to look. Alternatively, he may have had one for longer than we assume; whoever was sent to take control of szeth disappeared after soulcasting a wall to smoke, and that means either T has secretly a soulcaster, or he has secretly a radiant.

Hey, I was forgetting the most important part: the dalinar flashback doesn't fit with what we knew from other released material. Namely, we were told that he got his plate from marriage, while it is clearly not the case. And we still haven't seen what caused the ardent to quit the army. Maybe we'll be shown later in the book? I mean, dalinar killed a children, but he was a children armed with a shardblade and determined to use it. and dalinar was without gauntlets and had both hands wounded, so grabbing the sword and disarming the child without hurting him was not possible. I doubt a hardened soldier would have been particularly disturbed by that. And anyway, that trap to collapse dalinar into the canyon smashed several homes, it certainly killed a lot of people too.

On the other hand, if the voidbringer start attacking everything, dalinar will have an easier time to unite the world. if the voidbringers present a reasonable facade, they may well manage to get allies. divide et impera, after all. He could just present dalinar with a unified jah keved, and unite with him. perfect solution, and taravangian actually contirbuted to something useful. well, almost useful. I mean, yes, he destroied most of the nation's army and infrastruture, but what little is left he will present to dalinar. jah keved would have probably been more useful to the fight if divided but in its full strenght, but regardless. i worry T will still try to betray dalinar, though. they are just curious. it's not like we don't do the same in the name of science.

She's definitely a prime candidate, but we can't be certain so far.

That's not the only mountain on roshar. Without plate tectonics, there should be no mountains at all. In fact, there should be no continent, just an endless ocean with a flat bottom. Posible reasons are: roshar had plate tectonics but it stopped recently (in geological terms), possibly because the nucleus cooled down too much or some other reason like that. Or a shard made roshar with mountains and everything else. considering how much shards shaped roshar, I'd be more prone to this explanation. Also considering that the shape of the land doesn't fit much with plate tectonics. In particular the mountains east of the horneater peaks and those west of shinovar don't fit much with normal orogenetic processes.

If that was the case, the higher balconies would shade the lower ones. You would not gain any terrace space (wheter you go large above or below, the surface is the same) but it would be awfully inefficient. Not to mention the structural instability. I think the image in the first post is a good approximation. Soomeone should show it to shallan

With a volume of one third of cubic km, it's some 300 millions cubic meters. If we give everyone a room that is 10 square meters in size and 3 meters high (it must include walls and supports) then it can house 20 million people. that's not the whole roshar population, but it's a fair number. As for supporting, the thickness of ceilings does nothing there, because the ceilings are not supporting the weight of the structure. In fact, you'll want them as thin as possible. What supports a structure like that are pillars and looad bearing walls. There must be enormous ones scattered around the structure. However, when building pyramid-like, you can go very high, provide you set a wide enough base. So urithiru looks like a building that can support itself easily. It has been calculated that, if there was the will and money to do so, we could make skyscrapers up to 20 km high with current technology, if we used a large enough base. We could also make a skyscraper going all the way to geostationary orbit, but the base would be about one third of the planet's surface. I read all that stuff while reading about space elevators, but it's not directly on wikipedia's space elevator page, so I can't quote you an exact reference