king of nowhere

again, brandon said that he wanted his stories to be readable by someone who don't know the wider cosmere. which they are, if you don't mind seeing weird stuff and just accepting that "oh, aliens can do that"

Those are not easter eggs. It's a full crossover. And it was brandon's plan all along. He's been sayg he wanted to merge the storylines of the various planets since the beginning. The result was not as good as it was hoped for, but it's not "attempts at fanservice". On paper, developing the various planets, advancing them technologically, and bringing them together in the space age was an extremely cool concept, and i was hyped - despite disliking all crossovers otherwise; in this case, crossover makes sense. In practice, hard magic stops being hard when there are dozens and dozens of different powers and abilities available. I guess we have to thank brandon for discovering this.

I am very worried about that, indeed. Jasnah has been shown capable of soulcasting while in the cognitive realm. With the right knowledge, she could create nuclear bombs. And they will certainly know how to create nuclear bombs in the space age of the cosmere

metal reserves don't significantly alter an allomancer's power. if a mistborn has 100 metal vials, he's not any stronger, he still can only flare metals so much. even with duraluminium. jasnah with 100 times more light can create a thermobaric explosion. kaladin with 100 times more light can lash an object so much as to effectively create a railgun. some feruchemists have that problem. wax with enough weight can flatten a building by pushing on the nails. wayne is only immortal as long as the plot requires it - i liked a lot how it was handled in the first book, he had a limited storage and we had a rough idea how much healing that was; later books, he just has as much healing as convenient for the story. we could estimate that it takes between one and two weeks of bed rest to gain enough healing to cure a bullet wound, which justifies not having a greater reserve. in later books, it becomes more vague. and let's not even get into what a steelrunner can do. that skill is way too overpowered. indeed, every single time it was used, brandon had to remove it (sazed running out of speed going to luthadel, then running out of his speed ring fighting marsh. bleeder running out of speed at the beginning of the chase with wax. marasi draining speed from the bands to reach wax in time; nobody in the set, for all their extremely overpowered combination of powers, got a single Feruchemical steel spike); remove it from the heroes, else they just win without any difficulty, and remove it from the villains, else they just kill the heroes. that said, i'm happy there's anti investiture, because it keeps the power of radiants somewhat in check.

The Shards are on screen pretty often at this point, have expansive knowledge of the present, have arguable degrees of practical knowledge of the future*, have limitless power**, but operate almost exclusively*** in ways that would make Rube Goldberg weep. And while I'm open to there being well thought out, internally consistent reasons that they don't act as directly as series protagonists do, if we don't know what they are then we're back to the reasons seeming like arbitrary decisions to service the plot rather than an application of strictly in-world, consistent rules. I think it's totally fair for people to be satisfied with the explanation so far, I'm just saying that I, personally, am not. Thanks for bringing sanderson't first law, I wanted to reference it too. Because both several radiant powers, as well as most cosmere crossovers, do violate that law. the thing is that, while individual magics may have internally consistent rules, the more stuff you throw in the mix, the more options there are, until at some point the author can justify pretty much anything. mistborns could push and pull on bits of metal. book 1 kaladin could fly, make stuff fly, stick stuff together, deflect arrows. limited powers with limited applications, it was fun to read those powers put to creative use, and it was fun to read about protagonists that had to find ways around limitations. then we have jasnah. she can turn people to smoke. at a distance. or, she can turn the ar around them into something flammable, then ignite it. she can create thermobaric explosions anywhere she can see. her limitation is, mostly, how much investiture she has. which is incredibly arbitrary. sanderson can have her throw thermobaric explosions in one scene, then conveniently take away the ability the next minute, because she just happens to have less light. something we can't really control or predict as readers. her powers are less defined, more vague. then we have cosmere crossovers, where really everything flies. the feeble old man who had some minor creation/utility power suddenly becomes a giant golem and wastes soldiers. the woman that can make doors in walls suddenly becomes another person and can teleport and shoot lasers from her hands. marsh comes in for one scene, looks cool, then is removed from the story. the god who is intervening enough to power up wayne and explain to him in detail what he needs to do, decides to not intervene enough to create a forcefield around the explosion, or move the bomb to orbit, or something like that. all those are instances of powers that are not understood by the readers, but are used to solve the plot all the time. granted, it made for a very compelling read while I was there. but the you reach the end, and you wonder what it was that you just read. The sunlit man is the perfect example; I was super hyped about it, I devoured it... and then realized it's the story of a superpowered individual who can very conveniently use or not use his power whenever the plot requires, and keeps conveniently getting new powers as the plot requires. It's the only book of sanderson that I didn't feel the slightest inclination to reread. That stuff works in small amount. Vin drew the mist to defeat the lord ruler, and it was ok, because we all understood there would be a payoff for it. and indeed there was a big payoff. but if that kind of things keeps happening with no payoff besides the individual scene, it doesn't work. There's a limit to how often you can pull complete surprises on the reader, before the reader just figures it's pointless trying to follow what you are doing.

hoid has a special holy rock from ashyn because he was there when they crossed planets... wait, did he kept it for 7000 years in his pocket? where has he kept it all this time? how could he fetch the rock within the short time frame? fortune, i guess. i always assumed that the shin were forbidden from walking on rock because of the initial pact with the dawnsingers that only the soil was their land, and worship came after... didn't expect another reason. i am now picturing people about to flee in front of impending destruction, tearing down the saint peter cathedral or the mashid al haram and carrying a stone each... very sad picture. gives an idea of the conditions of those people

that applies to preservation, and to a lesser extent to sazed. but cultivation, she has no excuses. besides, while a world full of beings with colossal-though-ill-defined powers where nonetheless the muggle without special skills has to do all the work is a staple of fantasy ever since tolkien invented it in its modern form, i never liked it when it was a new concept, now that it's old I like it even less. #TomBombadilMustDie hey, this thread is called "unpopular opinions"

speaking of cultivation, the first time a god delivered a cryptic message because he couldn't act otherwise (preservation) was cool. the second time (sazed, alloy of law) it was understandable. the third time (sazed, all other entries) it felt contrived. now that cultivation joined the club, it's infuriating. if you have important information to pass, pass them! else, shut up! if you actually want to help, stop dropping hints and tell everone clearly what they should be doing. if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem

shallan trained for a full year with adolin (the break between stormlight 3 and 4), she learned to fight competently there.

lift is just like that. she mixes inanity with deep moments. i liked her line about stuff that you are told not to do, and stuff you really should not do, and nobody telling the difference; it was actually a profund way to express an antiauthoritarian, but good, person. in the end, i'm not a lift fan, but i decided to accept her. you can't read something as big as the stormlight archive and expect to like every pow character. and hey, at least lift has much better tastes in men than vin had during her zane phase.

If you notice her first experiences, she would have died a half dozen times without her powers. So, at first she just leveraged stormlight, and then she gained experience

fun fact: what you are protesting is called a valutation grid, and i have to deal with them in my job as a teacher. and as i was introduced to them, i had your same reaction: you just made up those numbers, it's not scientific at all. however, i was explained that it's required to deal with lawyers. apparently, if i say "this examinaton is worth a 5 (which would be a D in american system)" the student's family can appeal to the court and the lawyer can say I pulled the vote out of my ***. But! if I say "this examination is worth X in this category, Y in this category, and Z in this other category, and all together it averages to a 5", the laywes can't do anything. apparently, if i make up one number, it's deemed arbitrary, while if I make up several numbers, it's deemed objective. same goes with brandon and dan. but in that particuloar instance, i do believe brandon still was the more objective, because dan was giving marks just on what he thought, and you can't do much worse than that

consider, it will be 20 years in the future. lift may get some significant growth in the meanwhile

while i also get the feeling that something in shallan's mission will go horribly wrong, I wouldn't want to give too much credit to the ghostbloods. sure, they have lots of capabilities that shallan doesn't have, which is why mamy things can go wrong and at least one probably will. but they are still bound by practicality. I doubt, for example, that everyone in there will be a decoy, or that there's a squadron of supersoldiers, for the simple reason that it's extremely inpractical to take those kind of precautions at each and every single meeting, and not justified by external threats. too much paranoia will get in the way of doing actual work. of course, it could also be a trap, but it seems exaggerated. convoking most of your members on the planet, while planting clues, all in the hope of trapping shallan? seems, again, very risky and unpractical. there's a very high chance that shallan will miss the clues you are leaving for her, or that shallan will decide it's too dangerous to try, or that shallan will bring a full contingent of windrunners. I am happy with the solution to the fabrial spren problem. it was clear, since the sibling started bringing the conflict with navani, that something would have to be done about it. I was worried it would be something extremely convenient dropping out of nowhere, but this development in spren actually fits well with what is estabished about them

Central to the plot of mistborn: the well of ascension, Kwaan knew that Ruin could alter written messages unless they were on metals, so he etched his warning on a steel plate (hint: if you must pass critical information, put it at the beginning of your message, with clear indication of its importance. Not in the end, after a needlessly lenghty, off-putting wall of seemingly mundane text). The slab was then moved to the conventical of Seran, where it remained for 1000 years before Sazed found it... Steel is an amazing material. We don't appreciate it enough, because it can be made with very common ingredients, but it's got a wonderful mix of mechanical properties that make it good at almost everything. It's only got one weakness: corrosion. I have a very hard time accepting that the slab of steel could have preserved fine etchings (such as those you could make by manually scratching a pointy, hard object on the surface) for a full millennia. Even if it was kept in a cool, dry (maybe) environment all that time. The closest parallel I can think of is ancient armor; we have some well-kept specimen, but to the best of my knowledge they still did form a patina of black oxide on the surface. patina that was kept scrubbed clean over time. however, the scrubbing would destroy the fine etchings and make kwaan's slab unreadable. I am not aware of any artifact from 1000 years ago that was preserved well enough to still be readable. please, prove me wrong. I'd rather not have found a plot hole. P.S. Using copper would have been better. It's a lot more corrosion-resistant, and it's also softer, so you could leave deeper indentations that would preserve better. I'd have zero problems believing that a copper plate could have preserved the message for 1000 years. Gold could have been even better, no corrosion, except that someone could have stolen the plate and melted it for a quick profit.

wait! does that mean that, for all its cultural tradition, vorinism never invented punctuation???

I don't see how any of that disagrees with my statement. You concede that fused powers would be negated by the tower regardless of rythms. Plus, simply locking doors would be well within the sibling capacity

He may not be hurt directly, but he still will lose his powers, and he will be alone. Hard to achieve anything, even if the tower is stripped of defenders. The sibling could still lock him behind closed doors anyway

oh, but i didn't complain about villains getting killed off. though exploding power level is another concern, and i think brandon made radiants too powerful to meaningfully interact with common foes. their super healing, in particular, kills most battle suspence. i was complaining that too many villains are redeemed too easily, and are revealed to not be all that villainous after all. though now that i think of it, there's that librarian, and there's venli, and nobody else really; so I should retract that point.

"Your honor, it's true that my client burnt down a whole city, but it was their fault, for resisting invasion. Besides, my client can't be held accountable for killing those few tens of thousands, because he was high on drugs when he gave the order. Furthermore, he feels really sorry about it". Somehow, it doesn't sound very convincing. You're also completely forgetting the brawlers he maimed

i'm not talking of WaT here, but of a general trend in later books. the dilemmas have always been there, but they shifted from "let's explore this weird alien culture" to "let's show this weird alien culture that our values are actually better". at least that's my perception.

i don't understand what you are saying here. though thank you for reminding me of raboniel and moash as good (in a narrative sense) villains. the frequent jumps of point of view is intended to give a sense of urgency. sanderson has always done it in the final part of his books. the fight... it was mostly just to introduce some concepts, really. but adolin got to finally be able to fight a fused, so it was good.

this has got nothing with dalinar's crimes, and it's just that dalinar is not a good father. it's an entirely different thing.

I'm on the "quality has been declining" train, but don't get me wrong, this is still a good book. Not as good as the original mistborn or the first two books, which were amazing, but i wouldn't go anywhere near calling this "trash". There are problems, and they are mostly unavoidable. The first book followed three plot lines with six major characters. Now there are dozens. The plot is more dispersive, the pacing slower, some things are sacrificed. This happened with every major saga that i know of, it's probably a consequence of having a kudzu plot. I don't like the magic system. Too many soft interactions. The first mistborn, the first stormlight books, they had very definite powers and interactions. Magic was harder. Now magic is softer, because there's so many things that are just "this uses connection and is totally possible, trust us on that". By sanderson's law, the softer the magic, the less you can solve problems with it; sanderson has a softer magic, but still the whole plot relies on it. And the more we go into cosmete crossover, the more the ability of readers to understand magic will be lost in favor of "and then character X comes along and out of nowhere brings out this amazing new power and fixes everything", which is lame. Brandon said to err on the side of awesome, i think he's sacrificing too much internal consistency for it. I don't like how those books are taking a turn towards feel-good self-motivation. A person with disabilities learning to accept themself and rise above their limitations is good. A whole plot of them is preaching. Every bad person being good at heart and just needing help overshoots into cringe. The scene with kaladin shaming the librarian is a perfect example. Did anyone try that with real bullies? I did, and it doesn't summon shamespren. No, those people will laugh at you for being a whimp encouraging weakness, and will not change their ways. Vorin culture encouraging competition should be even worse. Where is the old "i must present neutrally all points of view, i must represent correctly those who are different from myself"? Every villain is just a weak person in need of help. The books devolve more and more into moralizing (note: that is bad for the books even when i happen to agree with most of the proposed morals). Those are flaws i see with all later sanderson books. Still, those flaws are not too pronounced. There is a notable political agenda that wasn't there in the first books, but it's soft enough that it doesn't ruin things too much. We are nowhere near stuff like the sword of truth or some later disney productions, where the agenda does take over. The magic and plotting are not as tight and they used to be, but there are no real plot holes that i'm aware of; just, some things seem too arbitrary, some plot twist seem like coming too much out of nowhere, but still to an acceptable extent. Worldbuilding is still great. We don't spend as much time on it because we already established roshar. Characters are still great. They followed their arcs over multiple books in satisfying ways. Sanderson is still a damn good writer, and still writes good books. Yes, some things in his writing got somewhat worse. Panning his later works is way too much of an overreaction

Invading your neighbors because "they have stuff. Maybe we should have that stuff. So we took it" is absolutely and unquestionably wrong. Burning a city because "hey, it's war"... The rifters pulled a nasty move with the betrayal, but still too much. Especially since it was dalinar's side that started it. I could almost accept it, if he hadn't ordered shoot the messengers who were trying to surrender. One thing i give him, killing evi wasn't his fault. And even had he known it, it would have been wrong to let himself be blackmailed just by your wife being taken hostage. He is willing to gamble the lives of his men, he shouldn't make favoritism. That said, dalinar has changed enough that he can mostly get a free pass. As wax put it, "you haven't been that man in years"