king of nowhere

shallan was one single person, her death would advance the diagram no more than the death of anyone else. i really doubt taravangian would have killed her. the risk/reward rate was very high simply because the reward was very low. there are plenty of beggars whose disappearence won't even be noticed. why take risks with a high-ranking lighteye (being daughter of someone who controls lot of land definitely counts as high-ranking. just because we got aquainted with highprinces does not mean that those who are a step or two behind them are low-born) when a single beggar can give you the same information? plus, taravangian knows that jasnah is researching the voidbringers, and so she can be an ally or at least discover something he may use. i think he'd rather keep jasnah and whoever is helping her in good shape if he has a choice.

no, a modern jury would not condone that, because it's not up to people to take justice in their hands, to decide who's a criminal and to hand down sentences, and self-defence laws only apply when you're immediately threatened. that said, a jury would give adolin the lowest possible sentence.

you are relying on several flawed assumptions here. give it time. nothing say the first age has to end now. it could go on for millennia. there is a myth about "merk and monsk fighting with spears of fire in the sky" or something like that hinting at an atomic war, but one has to consider the first book was written in the 80s, when an atomic war looked like the more probable catastrophe around. nowadays it would probably be something to do with pollution and global warming. there is also nothing to say that the end of an age must always come with a major catastrophe. maybe the second age just begun when someone learned to channel for the first time? first thing, myths can be very long-lived, especially if they become rooted in religion. consider how many religions have myths regarding a global flooding, and some think it originates in the flooding of the black sea after the dardanelles opened. we don't know if it caused the legends or if it is merely coincidence, but if it did, it's certainly a great deal of time to pass on stuff orally. which brings us to the second point: with printing, stuff is never forgotten, or at least not for a very long time. the breaking of the world destroyed records and technology, so stuff got forgotten pretty fast. things like the trolloc wars and hundred years war also did a lot of destroying. without those dramatic events, things are going to be remembered for much, much longer. they will only fade when there is so much accumulated knowledge that nobody will look for that specific bit. also consider that people who survived the end of the fourth age knows very well how big a danger shai'tan is, and know that it will eventually be forgotten, so they'll do all they can to remember it as long as possible. finally, we have no flippin idea what happens in the 4th to 7th eras, so it may be that something similar happens again. As for your revised chronology, i'd say it is too fast to really forget things. if you were right, we remember things very well from way back to the roman empire, and we have goood clues from before, but we have a big blank just before that? if randland is at the beginning of a roman empire and no catastrophe will happen, how come they have printing and clocks and the romans didn't? if our age was only 5000 years before the books, shouldn't they still find tons of plastic garbage wherever they dig?

if i recall correctly, brandon showed an outline of oathbringer divided by point of view, and they were labeled as "main character 1, main character 2, secondary character 1"... by that, we can say he considers main character kaladin, shallan and dalinar, and none else. of course, since the concept of "main" is felxible, maybe he's using different concepts of "main" in different circumstances

the problem is that if an assassin with a knife is attacking, you can invoke self-defence, but if said assassin just threatens to attack, you can't, not for modern laws at least. you have to call the police and denounce him for threatening you, and then the police will ignore you or at most give the assassin a stern warning and you will be killed at a later time act and everything will be all right. the reason you cannot react to threats in self defence is that a lot of people in the heat of the moment will make threats, but they almost never carry through. of course we know that in sadeas case it was different. I find that fantasy book morality is fairly different from real world morality because it has an omniscient (mostly) reader. A real world jury could not know for sure that sadeas betrayed dalinar, sent assassins after him, and would have fomented a civil war. that's why a real world jury would not condone adolin's actions. but we do indeed know, beyond any reasonable doubt, that sadeas did all those things, and so we can condone adolin's actions. Either way, as I said previously, if we want to find philosophical justification for adolin's actions, we can either call him a rebel against an unjust system, and invoke the right of rebellion, or we can call him a high ranking officer of the kholin princedom enacting an act of war against an enemy princedom in retaliation for said princedom's actions, and I think we could get a good case in both scenarios. Possibly we can even invoke martial law, there must be something about a high officer being allowed to act swiftly if he uncovers threats against the nation. We just cannot find a justification under civilian law.

a book like otahbringer for only 20 $? looks like a mistake. way too cheap. so maybe it was a mistake and they fixed it

roshar's sun must be pretty similar to our. We can make some calculations under the assumption that it has the same temperature and density of our own sun (which may lead to an inaccuracy or maybe 20 or 30%). Given our sun of radius r and mass M around which orbits earth at a radius R in a time y: we know roshar orbits in time 1.1 y, and that it has a similar temperature to earth: this temperature condition poses a condition for orbital radius: rR/r=RR/R. that's because the amount of irradiated light is proportional to the sun's surface area, so to r^2, and the amount of it that the planet receives is inversely proportional to the surface of the sphere with radius equal to its orbit, so to R^2. So using the equation for orbital period y=2 π √ (R^3/ GM ), valid for earth, for roshar we have 1.1 y=2 π √ (RR^3/ GMR ) and MR=M(rR/r)^3 and rR/r=RR/R, which are three equations with three unknowns (MR, rR/r and RR/R), a textbook example of equation system. the equation itself is unfortunately a bit less of a textbook example, but after some calculations, I reach the point where I get rR/r=1.06 RR/R, which contradicts my system. I can only take it to mean that if you increase linearly the radius of a star and the orbital radius, the orbital period will stay the same. Yes, I can now see clearly that if I double both the radius of the star and the radius of the orbit, the mass will increase at the cube, so I will have ((2*R)^3/ G(2^3)M ) (EDIT: I wrote the formula wrong) and the orbital period will remain the same. Which proves that with my approximated assumptions you can't solve the relevant equations. You need to assume that the sun is a bit hotter, or maybe the planet has a slightly different albedo or greenhouse effect. Still, roshar sun's mass and roshar's orbital radius can't be more than minus/plus 20% compared to earth.

if we want to go down that particular rabbit hole, adolin, for his position as prince, could be considered a representative of the people in a way recognized by the people. we may also question what "the people as a whole" is - it certainly is not each and every person, and as for the 50%+1 of the people, they would probably vote against sadeas if they could. or maybe not, because alethkar doesn't have a concept of democracy. democracy itself is moot without free media, so even if the people living under sadeas got to vote, the vote itself would be of little value. it could represent an enlightened minority of people, and that's probably the closest we got to the ideals of the french and american revolutions - most people would have likely supported the king because they believed in divine right, probably. the arab spring revolutions are a fine example of how often there really isn't something you can call "the will of the people": people in the cities staged mass protests, so it could be said that they represented the people as a whole, but when they made elections it turned out that they were the minority, because the people in the countryside had different ideas. So maybe the will of the people simply means whoever shout loudest and manage to convince any bystander that he represent the majority? those are overly nitpicky points, though, and not very strong arguments. So i will provide more substantial arguments. The first is that every revolution is born from individual action. the first person to throw a stone in a crowd is not really different from adolin. if more people pick up stones, then it becomes a revolution, and it can be said that "the people as a whole" is doing it, but there must be one person to start the rebellion. So adolin's gesture can be considered an act of rebellion against an injust government, the first act to ignite a revolution, except that adolin's action also ended said revolution decisively. But rebellion against an injust government it was: I'm sure adolin wouldn't have come to that if there had been lawful ways to fight sadeas. And I'm sure many more people would have followed him and staged a full revolution against sadeas (the bridgemen come to mind, and from what we saw of gaz and the deserters, probably a sizeable chunk of sadeas' army would have deserted too in case of rebellion), if adolin hadn't also terminated the revolution single-handedly. adolin thus represented all those people oppressed by sadeas who never had the chance to rise. There is also another way to interpret the situation, which is that adolin is the representative of a government (he is second in succession line, after all) and is acting on behalf of his nation, the kholin princedom, against a foreign nation, the sadeas princedom, because said nation was committing acts of terrorism against his nation. those two nations are bound in a loose allegiance, alethkar, and so the kholin government first tried to call to alethkar for a diplomatic settlement, but to no avail. their proof was judged insufficient. so adolin committed an act of war against sadeas. I don't need to cite precedents in contemporary history for this kind of situations. Note that in said contemporary precedents many people argued against war, and the main arguments were two: 1) the proof was insufficient to be sure, and 2) innocent people would suffer. And in the kholin vs sadeas case, both those arguments do not apply. Ok, I know fully well that adolin wasn't thinking along those lines when he acted, he wasn't acting as representative of the people or of the government. but hey, apparently the fact that sadeas intended to foster a civil war during what can be called an alien invasion also don't count, so if intentions do not count, let them not count on our favor.

All those discussions about law and rights only apply if there is a law that can be applied. this is clearly not the case here. the system is crooked, the only people who could judge sadeas are his closest allies and lackeys, and the men is abusing plausible deniability past any stretching point.b without hope for a lawful solution, I invoke the right of revolution for adolin. well, let's see: acts against their common interest? totally. he uses them as arrow bait because it's less expensive than the alternatives. threatens the safety of the people without probable cause? absolutely. he directly caused the death of 6000 of dalinar's soldiers, plus he's sabotaging the whole war effort for no better reason that his personal ambition, during a desolation no less. there is no lawful way to overthrow sades lawfully? certainly. not realistically at least. there is a theoretical chance that he may be rebuked by the other highprinces, but it's more like a theorietical possibility used to appease those who care about lawfulness than a real thing. Therefore it was morally justified to rebel against sadeas, which is exactly what adolin did. EDIT: or at least there is a strong argument of political philosophy in its favor

yes, a thread like this pop up every now and then, but you are the first one to think to start a poll, so kudos to you. Still, I would like to vote all three options togheter: it was good, I was cheering him the whole time, but he will likely pay a price for it, and while it was good that someone like sadeas got his comeuppance, adolin doing it was more necessary than strictly good or evil. politics is often like that, and in the past it was like that even more. sadeas betrayal worked (mostly) an so the others fell in line with him for fear of being the next one. if one achieves power through immoral means, many would rather curry favor with him rather than risk to try and punish him. for every one who would denounce a corrupt politician, there is another who will rather buy him, and another who will just try to stay out of trouble. but hey, sadeas' actions weren't entirely without consequences. one pretty big consequence happened to him at the end of words of radiance.

it was a bad wound, losing the leg due to complications later is perfectly plausible

well, if the stone shamanate was not in turmoil before the everstorm, it certainly is now. by now, they must have figured out szeth was right, but they are probably too busy to give it much thought. they may even be all dead, except that storytelling convention makes it unlikely. and yes, it is possible they will offer leadership to szeth.

Strange. You have 450 posts, you should be well aquainted by now with the level of depth we're willing to analyze stuff

While I don't know A and Cd and ρ, I know the terminal velocuty on earth is around 200 km/h. roshar's atmosphere is a bit different, but its density should be very similar (nitrogen and oxygen have around 15% mass difference, and we don't know exactly how much oxygen is in roshar's atmosphere), and roshar's gravity is 0.7 g, giving us a terminal velocity around 160 km/h. So four lashings give 320 km/h, and sixteen give 640 km/h... of course, they could do it in the vacuum of space and avoid drag altogether. the only limitation is how much stormlight they can carry

there are two things that people get worse at with experience: marrying and staying alive. Now I just need a proper way to finish that

Actually it's not clear, because iron feruchemy is not 100% consistent with pure mass change; there are a few effects (I don't remember them right now) which work a bit differently, especially the way your kinetic energy is affected. but yes, you can call it a mass change with good approximation, and therefore in space it would work as usual; it's just that it would't really change anything noticeable about you until you tried to fire a rocket or something. Well, technically, since orbiting around a planet or star actually means that you and the planet/star both orbit around your common center of mass, which just happen to coincide almost perfectly with the center of the planet/star because it is so much heavier than you, if you tapped enough weight you could noticeably change the orbit of the celestial body you're orbiting. But there's no realistic way to compound that much.

greek fire was an incendiary weapon developed well over a milllennia ago. even before that, more rudimentary fire weapons based on pitch and resins were available. doesn't take that much tech to develop a flammable sticky mixture.

No idea about it, but I found a list of licensed translations, and swedish is not among them Notice that those rights do not imply necessarily a translation (there is "UK rights", but I doubt there are enough readers who care so much about language purity as to require a translation from american to biritish english), but for countries with languages other than english it is likely that a translation was made. So we're looking at 17 languages (16 is china chinese and taiwan chinese are the same language). Unfortunately for your mom, swedish is not there; one of the downsides of living in a low-population nation with a language spoken by only a few million people worldwide is that not much stuff is translated in your language. But hopefully your mother could be fluent in one of the other languages. I don't know, if she is good with german or danish you could order a copy in that language. EDIT: I've seen that the original mistborn trilogy has a swedish translation, though, so you could get her that one. Information comes from here: http://awfulagent.com/jabclients/sanderson-2#TWOK

there isn't a "mandatory" reading order. while cosmere books are interconnected, the connections are so thin that they have nothing to do with the main plot, and only concern some hidden cosmere plot that we haven't figured out yet. So, go ahead and read whatever you can grab first

mistborn, first trilogy:

You could wear some themed jewelry. I found this site selling brandon-related pieces: http://badalijewelry.com/cart.php?m=search_results&headerSearch=Y&search=sanderson I was suggesting a survivor's pendant, but unfortunately they don't seem to have it.

is seems blue is a common colof for investiture. a better question may be why blue and not red, or maybe something more exotic like a radar signature? Well, a wizard writer did it

i imagined tearans with hispanic/arabic skin tone. the sharans are deeply black, and also the sea folk and some of the seanchan. so there are some black skinned people in randland before the seanchan arrival, but they stick to the sea. still, showing some in tar valon would be pperfectly fine, since their ships trade upriver too (I think, not 100% sure)

you get an upvote from me for final empire alone.

I know about chaos, but that was math. It's easier to make problems with math because math is everywhere. On the other hand, rarely sanderson books get into chemical details.