king of nowhere

It would be good, when making such an announcement, to also link to the offical announcement. the closer I found is this http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/wheel-of-time-tv-series-sony-1202390897/ I'm not familiar with tv show industry. I know a lot of stuff is planned and then never done. I have no idea if what is said in that announcement actually means that there is a high probability the wot series will be made for real, or if it is yet another bubble that will likely burst at any time, or slowly deflate. I can only say, I really hope it becomes real. I am waiting for commentary from more experienced people than myself to let my hopes high, though.

I don't know any appropriate by sanderson, but if by "age 5-10" we mean "closer to 10", then I may suggest the order of the stick's board game. it is good for casual playing, and while relatively complicated, it only requires one person to really understand the rules (rather annoying, because I play it with a bunch of people who never bothered to learn the rules and I have to explain them everything all the time); taking in-game decisions is rather simple, and should be within the capabilities of an 8-years-old. the cool story to go along with it is the order of the stick webcomic, of course. a lot of people in this board are already familiar with it. in case you are not, I will only say that some years ago its creator set a kickstarter to raise 50thousand $ to reprint some old books, and ended up gathering 1.3 millions. That's how much fandom that comic has, so if it is so popular (and apparently a large number of sanderfans also like it) (and apparently also brandon himself consider it noteworthy, because in the reckoner's saga there is a mention of a "durkon's principle", and durkon is a character of the order of the stick) it may be worth checking out. Yes, this is shameless advertising on my part. I have done shameless advertising of sanderson on the order's forum too. I always shamelessly advertise the things I deem worthy of being shamelessly advertised

I think it is no more than coincidence. if you look hard enough, you always can find connections. I would say, in fact, that they are very different. vin is mostly a creature of instinct. she rarely second-guesses her decisions, and when she does, she often get into trouble. When she plans, she generally ends up manipulated. she has good instincts, though. she has good instincts, she is smart, but she is not an intellectual. marasi is a scientist. she values deep analysis, information-gathering, that kind of stuff. she can fight with relative competence, but she is not a warrior; just as vin can research with relative competence, but is not a scholar. she was forced to act quickly several times, and she was good enough at it, but she really shines when she has time to think. also, her main skills are out of combat, and her allomantic power is seldom-used. vin is self-reliant. she fights, she sneaks into yomen's vault, she lures the inquisitors to luthadel... she is the only person with certain skillsets in her society, but more than that, she is the kind of person who does things by herself. probably part of her being raised to trust only herself. marasi, instead, is a leader and a supporter. she knows the right person for the job, and she help that person do the job along the way. she does not look for positions of power, but she looks for positions of close support to those in power. she helps wax, she helps aradel as chief constable, she helps aradel as governor. In alloy of law, she goes to wax asking him to investigate the vanishers, and offers her support. in shadows of self, she suggests aradel as a good governor. in bands of mourning, she gives the bands to wax. Makes sense, because 1) she lives in a society with many competent people, 2) her skillset is better used for support. In the core of their being, marasi and vin are very different, almost opposite. the similarities are all on the surface. in fact, the two you present as support are very stretched. as for clothing, vin prefers utilitarian clothing though she appreciates dresses occasionally. to her, dresses have a whole lot of meanings, connected to the good sides of noble society, her courtships with elend, and her acceptance of her role in life. one could write a threatise on the meaning of dresses to vin. I never felt that depth from marasi. one could argue that at the core of it there is her mother's dissatisfaction with her social standing, which pushed her to try to look more refined, but it is a weak argument, especially considering her relationship with her mother and her values isn't the best. I always got the idea that she likes to present that face too the world. she wants to be an accomplished learned person in middle-management position, and that comes with a certain dress code. marasi does not like utilitarian clothes, she only prefers it for physical activities - like riding or fighting. she complains that women constables are expected to ride and fight while being elegant, but her take on fashion is completely different from vin's. as for both having a crush on an older heroic figure, that's merely a result of fate pushing them to develop a close connection to said older heroic figure. if I was rescued from the streets and groomed by a female version of kelsier, or rescued from bandits by a female version of wax, I'd also find them very attractive at the least.

chances are good for stormlight 10 before that date. after stormlight 10, though, there are the mistborn future trilogy, and then dragonsteel, before the cosmere is finished. I'm younger, but I wondered about that: if I got a terminal disease, and I had a few weeks of life left, would I contact brandon and ask him to tell me the whole story of the cosmere - with all big spoilers - so that I can know it before I die? how would he react? he would certainly want to fulfill a dieing wish, but will he trust an unknown guy - one who has literally nothing to lose - to keep the secret? did brandon ever got such a request, a terminally ill fan asking for some big spoilers? I do believe there are contingency plans in case brandon dies, but i doubt the stormmlight archive would be finished in that case. one thing is a 12-book saga that needs the last book to be concluded (even if that book is so large it has to be split in 3), another is a 10-book saga of which only two books have been written. Ok, 3 because oathbringer only needs minor revisions. anyway, if another author were to write 7/10th of a saga, it just wouldn't be sanderson's anymore. probably someone would complete the first half of the saga, the remaining two books, that probably will have some kind of good resolution for the whole "everstorm" thing. certainly woould be published a lot of unpublished material - early drafts, random chapters written as an exercice, random notes and schemes - but the cosmere would mostly stop there.

you could have cosmere books to look forward to in the far future if brandon wrote one book every ten years, but that's not exactly an apppealing scenario. no, i don't mind the wait because it's wait filled with new books. there's just a lot of cosmere.

as far as i know, we don't know. nobody knows, not even harmony. still, does it matter? it doesn't change the story. she did it when it was more convenient for her. if we want to speculate, we may surmise a few weeks at most; the governor is always surrounded by bodyguards, it is difficult to sneak around while impersonating him. better to put all pieces in position, then take the governor, then alert wax and start the story. On the other hand, there may have been parts of the plan that required impersonating the governor. maybe it really was bleeder who let herself be bribed to further exasperate the people? so it may have been years. difficult to say.

you're not the first one to voice those concerns. yes, brandon has a lot on his plate. yes, if everything goes as expected, he will finish the cosmere when he is seventy. he writes pretty fast, but the cosmere is huge. regardless, we can only wait and hope. yes, we can make all sorts of calculations showing that he can finish it all within the course of his natural lifespan, but in the end it's all pointless speculation. the end of the cosmere is at least 30 years away.

a couple scientific nitpicks: - just because plants use it, crem does not need to be organic. plants get carbon from air with photosynthesis, and hydrogen and oxygen from water, and they rely on soil to get all the other elements, most abundantly nitrogen and phosphorous. but they do not need organic molecules; inorganic nitrates and phosphates are perfectly fine. - rock in the ocean floor is volcanic. magma seeps out from oceanic ridges, solidifies and makes new oceanic floor, pushing out the existing floor. the mechanism is regular enough that you can estimate the age of an oceanic floor solely based on how far it is from the oceanic ridge. I studied this stuff in my native language, so some of my english terminology may be inaccurate.

if this was a real, nonmagical planet, I'd say the contninent must be made of volcanic rocks, as all rocks are either volcanic or sedimentary (or metamorphic, but in that case they derive from either volcanic or sedimentary anyway) and highstorms pretty much exclude large accumulation of sediments. but this is not a real planet. wob also says roshar doesn't have much geological activity, so no volcanic eruptions and growing oceanic ridges that are the main way in which rocks are made on heart. investiture is certainly acting heavily there, as all that crem just does not get lifted naturally wherever the origin of storms is. in general, weknow rosjar has been engineered heavily by shards: it has three satellites in very unlikely orbits that are unstable over astronomical timelines, it has a continent with mountains without having any mechanism for orogenesy, and the whoole continent is made according to a mathematical equation. So, since it was a shard who made roshar, it made roshar of whatever it wanted. we just cannot speculate accoridng to science when science clearly does not apply.

i think you remember it wrong. ivory never specifically says it's not the painspren. the exchange goes "but they are harmless" "on your side, harmless. on this side, harmmore". so it definittely refers to the painspren

the simplest explanation is, he's a squire. of course we can't 100% excllude that he may have becoming radiant offscreen, but it seems very, very unlikely. I mean, he knows about kaladin, if he was bonding a spren he would have realized what was happening.

I don't know, considering that the five men all have terminal illness and the only way to save them is to kill a kid (which is a big no for any order), killing the five men may be the answer for several orders. In particular the edgedancers may save the revolutionary and support him for a more just society; the bondsmiths also, if they see a stronger society emerging afterwards, and especially the truthwatchers, if they see it will work out in the end. While I expect all orders to kill one person rather than five all else being equal, i don't think there is anything in the radiant oaths about five men with low life expectation against one men who can live decades. I think it would be mostly left to individual initiative. And I doubt any spren would get mad at his radiant for taking one choice over another.

really? i got it wrong the whole time then. well ok, by making yourself a more powerful feruchemist you can fill to burst your metalmind of "becoming an allomancer", and by becoming a very powerful allomancer you can get a lot of power from little metal, so the explanation still holds.

oh, you were talking about the steel he was burning. makes sense. except, he wasn't burning steel. with feruchemy you can store investiture, and a steelpush is investiture. So you can burn steel and, instead of pushing metals, store that steel burn into a metalmind (i believe nicrosil is also the metal for this, but not 100% sure). then you tap the metalmind, and you can steelpush. Wax wasn't burning steel, he was drainig the bands.

the key concept here is that the bands were so heavily invested. They can be filled insanely because of the tricks of compounding. - you store your feruchemical power into nicrosil. - you compound and tap that nicrosil, becoming a more powerful feruchemist - you store your greater feruchemical powers into nicrosil - you compound/tap that, and become even more powerful and the more powerful you become, the less metal you need to achieve the same power. So you probably need some relatively large amount of nicrosil to become all-powerful, but once you reach that point, you can burn a small sliver of metal and get more than elend could get from dozens of vials. compounding allomancy actually works with scale economy, there is probably an upper limit somewhere to how powerful you can become, but it's very high. so yes, wax was burning really fast, and he would have exhausted an ordinary metalmind in moments, but the stored powers were so vast, they could support him for a while. the bands were invested so much, in fact, I am surprised they did not develop sentience.

eh, if we want to see this in purely evolutionary terms, then mating and surviving instincts are also a poor reference. while evolutionary success is measured very straightforwardly by "fitness" (the amount of fertile descendants you'll leave behind after a few generations; generally defined as the number of your fertile grandchildren, because barring really exceptional circumstances, if you have some latent genetic disease it will show up by the time your grandchildren reach fertility, or it will not impact your fitness enough), everything that increases your fitness will cause you to spread your genes better and will spread in the population. the instincts to mate and survive, are certainly not the end-all-be-all. certainly a creature lacking those will rarely spread its genes, but many more unrelated impulses evolved, simply because they generated from random mutations and the creatures carrying them somewhat performed better than the others. For example, in some species of fishes and insects reproduction happens solely by rape, and females have no mating instinct whatsoever; in fact, they try to stay away from males. they get raped enough that they still have children, and as they get wounded in the raping, if they had not the instinct to run away from males, they would die more often. while you can certainly justify the behvaior as a tradeoff between mating and surviving, well, as far as we can determine the fish does not think that way. the female only tries to run away from males, the males only try to catch the females, and individuals who deviate from this behavior have lower fitness, so the behavior remains. being abrasive to others, liking ornamental plants, being gay, all those stuff has really nothing to do with mating and survival instincts, but if by some contrived mechanism it actually helps you, evolution will keep it. If not, it does not necessarily disappear, there may be reasons for those genes to stay around. the obvious example is homosexuality; while clearly it reduces your chance to have children and therefore your fitness, it is caused by a wide array of genes, and each of those do actually raise your fitness when paired with some other gene. So all individual genes survive, and homosexuality would keep appearing on a few % of the population even if no homosexual ever managed to have children. with humans it is even more complicated, because we have a culture. ideas and ideology compete to be accepted by people in a way very similar to how animals compete for food. You may notice that we have a lot of ideas on what is right or wrong that we pass to our children, just like we pass our DNA. Except that culture does not need sex to transfer, so it is even less easily described. For example, a man sacrificing his life to save a complete stranger is a loser from a DNA-fitness point of view, but if his actions inspire two other people to want to do the same, then the idea is spreading. If altruism spread thusly in a society, the society may better be able to endure something like war or calamity, and so a cultural advantage will become a DNA advantage too. This is one of the few exceptions where the number of fertile grandchildren is not a good measure of long-term fitness. So even the strictly scientific view is not reductionist. Simple story: "things just happen; if some of those things just keep on happening, then they will happen even more in the future". Complex version: "there are some general rules, but they produce a completely different outcome for every different situation." btw, that phrase by einstein sums up perfectly the relation between natural sciences and human sciences.

one word: melaan

well, you should be aware that most of sanderson's books take place in the same universe, and while each is a separate story, they have elements of contact and there are hints of a greater story unfolding in the background. the greater story revolves around a godlike being named adonalsium, which was shattered and split into sixteen pieces, named shards. you've met some of those shards; ruin and preservation on scadrial, honor, odium and cultivation on roshar. conflict among shards and concerning shards is indeed behind many of the plots. you can find a lot of information on our wiki, the coppermind (http://coppermind.net/wiki/Coppermind:Welcome). Most of our knowledge come from questions asked to brandon himself during signings and other events. if you want a (reltively) quick recap, you should go on the coppermind and look cosmere, hoid, shard, adonalsium.

Seconded. I probably am pretty strange in this regard, but I actually feel less sexual attraction for girls I'm romantically involved with, not more. I feel more like cuddling, and cuddles become gradually more sex-oriented until they lead to sex, but I don't feel inclined to outright take out my gun. If I were about to be murdered with my love interest, I'd want to hold her close. Not all people react the same way to the same situations.

I did say myself that those factors have a lot of influence. What I disagree about is that they are not the only influence. they work well at explaining average behavior, but not at explaining individuals. On average, men are more sex-oriented, women are more romance-oriented, because men get a better reproductive success by mating with many women, while women have better success by forming a stable relation with a partner that will help her raise the children. but when you go down to individuals, you'll find many sex-oriented women and romance-oriented men. On average, men are more power-oriented, because being the boss of the tribe would offer you more reproductive chances, while women are more family-oriented; but you'll find plenty of career-women with housewife husbands. You can use those ancestral influences to explain why on average there are some tendencies, but you cannot use them to explain why mr. john smith is feeling a certain way. Anyway, now it's my turn to not understand your more general point. So, you are arguing that people are more animal-like than we think, and you'd want to see them portrayed as such in books? Are you saying that you would want to read about Dalinar losing control to emotions, because that's how humans are supposed to behave and all the polish we acquired from civilization is but an illusion? Would you want to see Elend's honesty explained in terms of instinct to mate, because that would make the character ring more realistic to you? I can't get what's your problem with people not succumbing to passions in brandon's books. If the problem is that they seem too stable to be real, consider that they are exceptional people, otherwise they would not be the protagonists. EDIT: @samaldin it's not a specific factor, it's the result of complexity. it's what I was defining an emergent behavior

I am not refuting the thesis that we are animals and ultimately driven by instincts. I am refuting the thesis that such is a good description of a human. I am stating the thesis that we are so complex, we become something very different from our constituents, and we can no more be described as just the sum of our parts. So I am reaching the conclusion that instincts are not a good description of an individual's motivation. "Technically correct", here, mean "in practice, wrong". As for pshycologists dissecting our motivations into primal hardwiring, I'd be very careful in accepting that. You can "demonstrate" anything by justified a posteriori something that has already happened. This guy loves his wife? clearly it's so that the stable coouple will give more chances for the offspring to survive to adulthood. This guy cheats on his wiffe? clearly he is increasing his chances of reproduction by mating outside the couple. This guy killed his wife? clearly his instinct was telling him to move on to a more attractive partner, and the old one was weighting him down. this woman killed her children and then committed suicide? well, clearly her biological imperative found that those children were too much of a hassle to raise, and she'd have better chances at reproduction by killing them and starting with some new ones. but then she realized how horrible was the thing she did, and so she killed herself out of a desire to protect the tribe, which also carries her genes, from herself. No. Science doesn't work this way. Those theories may be fascinating, they may make one think he understand anything and can explain anything, but they are scientifically worthless, because they cannot be falsified. Because in order to have value, a theory must not predict what will happen. A theory must predict what will not happen. For example, the law of gravity predicts that between two objects there will be a certain force; and if we found a slightly different force, just in one single case that we could confirm, then we'd have to change the theory. Those phsycological theories, instead, can be fitted to justify anything, therefore they predict nothing. That doesn't make them completely worthless, but I wouldn't trust them to actually describe what happens in our brains. You can try to find something from Karl Popper about the distinction between science and pseudoscience. By the way, I used to think as you do when I was a kid and I was trying to figure out the world. Then I realized it just doesn't hold. There are too many genuine acts of altruism, too many people doing pretty much the opposite of what their instincts should suggest, for that explanation to be exhaustive. Not exactly: it shows that we are very susceptible to our own opinion. It shows that what we think of ourselves becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And if we have this power of persuasion over ourselves, then it is in our bes interest to use it to become better, not to become worse. I knew a few guys who eventually became criminals, and guess what they all had in common? parents who never blamed them, who never held them responsible for anything. they are people who are more accurately described by pulsions to survive and mate, and last I knew they still think there's nothing wrong with them.

I am not a pshycologist either, but I am a scientist who specialized in complex systems, and I am particularly fond of the notion of emergent behavior: you take a simple system obeying simple rules, you let it expand, and it will gradually get more complicated, until at some point it will form new rules that are in no way apparent from the starting conditions. Take for example an animal: an animal is a collection of atoms, and everything in an animal coul be described in terms of electrostatical interactions between its protons and electrons. All the interactions in the animal can be described by one single equation. Well, except they don't. An animal is a complex system that obeys rules that have nothing to do with the schroedinger's equation. And yes, you could theoretically describe the instinct to survive and to mate in terms of schroedinger's equation, write the equation for all the atoms that make up the animal, but not only it is way too complex to be realistically done, but it wouldn't help you actually understand what the animal is. To understand what an animal is, you need other rules, emegent rules. So, while it is true that everything in humans was shaped by the evolutionary forces, which can be summed up as "maximize the amount of descendants you leave behind", and while it is true that many patterns in the human brain, from the tendency to gang up in communities to the different courting preferences of the sexes, can be traced back to self-preservation and mating instinct, at the same time a human is a much more complex construction, and it has made its own rules. Trying to understand a human in terms of instinct is like trying to understand an animal in terms of schroedinger's equation: technically accurate, but it completely misses the point of being human. Humans are defined in other ways, by what we believe, what we stand for and what we stand against, which beliefs are flexible and which are absolute, and how much we are willing to sacrifice for those beliefs. You certainly could describe them all as being derived from instincts, maybe the will to persuade others of your opinion comes from you thinking you knew best how to make the tribe - and thus your genes carried ammong your offspring and relatives - survive. But by doing so, are you gaining depth, or are you losing it? There are some pretty good musings on the subject on some of the volumes of "the science of discworld", by the way. There is also another reason to see a human as an intelligent, free individual, and it is that it actually improves the world. I once spectated a conference on the subject of free will, and one talk described a very interesting experiment. Some volunteers were subject to some kind of experiment, which was irrelevant. during the experiment, they had a chance to steal something, apparently without the researchers knowing. before the experiment, they had to read a few phrases: one group had phrases denying free will, stating that humanss are slaves of their instincts, or maybe of their very atomistic determinism; the other group had similar phrases, but with different meanings. Result: the people that were made to think they had no free will, i.e. that they were not ultimately responsible for their actions, stole more. The people who tought they were responsible were more honest. Yes, we are such an emergent behavior that our own emergent behavior changes our own rules and make up more emergent behaviors. And so it is important that people think they are responsible for their actions, that people choose, that people decide. And it is not even a lie: if by thinking that I have a choice I can act differently, well, then it pretty well demonstrates that I really had a choice. Yes, ok, ultimately it may all be just a necessary result of an overly complicated schroedinger's equation, but does it really matter? Maybe there is a god, and maybe such god can see us as our schroedinger's equations and figure out the solution and know exactly what we are going to do, but at our own human levels, as far as we can see, as far as we're concerned, we do have a choice, we are not an equation, we are not animals driven by instincts. At least we are not as long as we think we are not. If we don't want to find ourselves living in some crappy steampunk dystopia where all the people around us are edonistic egoists motivated only by surviving and mating, I strongly suggest we try to instill into people the opposite view, and we use the comprehension of our animal instincts to find our weaknesses and improve them. Yes, I try to spread this point of view because I believe I, or people sharing genes with me, will live better if this point of view gains more traction. I am ultimately acting out of a selfish instinct to spread my DNA.

oh, and i forgot to mention about religion: you probably do not know, because there are hints hidden around but they are not obvious and the only real way to figure it out is to read the various questions and answers with the author, but every cosmere book has a greater story happening in the background. You see, there was once a single god, named adonalsium, which was shattered into sixteen pieces (names shards) and scattered across several planets. ruin and preservation were two of those shards. on roshar there are three: honor (dead), cultivation and odium. odium is particularly important to the cosmere, because he is trying to destroy the other shards and shatter their power. on sel (the planet of elantris) there are devotion and dominion, both shattered by odium. there are many minor characters that are actually appearing in many books, they can travel between planets using the cognitive realm (what on roshar is known as shadesmar) and pursue their own agendas, at the time still unclear. The most important of those figures is hoid. So, it is not a wonder that religion takes a central part in many of those books; most of the conflict is actually generated by conflict among the shards, with the book's protagonists acting as unwitting pawn in larger games. It deserves mention that while we think of shards as good or evil, they are more like forces of nature than real people. ruin is not evil per se, it just has a goal that is conflicting with our biological imperative to stay alive.

@ rockobar: I just want to discuss one specific point of your answer to me probably this is where our disagreements come, because I totally disagree with this premise. To me, our deepest primal urges are what make us animals. What make us humans is what we build upon it. If I read about a character having "deep primal urges", I'd see him at best as an immature kid who hasn't taken charge of his hormones yet. At worst, as a potential rapist. Again, don't take this as the remark of a prude, because I'm anything but prude. I don't want to give detailed descriptions here because many other forumites may not like them, so please take me by my word; and in fact I kinda regret being unable to be direct here, but plenty of people read this forum. But the important thing here is, sexuality isn't an important part of who I am. Even if I spend a sizable chunk of my free time on it, it is not somehting that defines my identity. It is a pleasurable activity that I do for fun. incidentally I also need it, but I need it like I need food: I eat way before I am at risk of starving, so the "need" thing doesn't really come up. But that's it. If I was a character in a book, readers would not need to read about it to know who I am. Other stuff I do for leisure are important for my personality. I am an avid videogamer with a preference for strategy-focused games, and this is part of my personality: I like intellectual challenges where I have to outsmart an opponent. I am an active chess player, again this is important, it reinforces the "intellectual gaming" part and it also instilled me several ideas about personal responsibility (you make a wrong move, you can't blame someone else. But you can't also be blamed for somebody else's move, so I'd feel very uncomfortable in a position of responsibility, where I'd have to take credit or blame for what others are doing). I am very competitive in games, but I am nonconfrontational in real life, because one thing is a game, and another thing when people can actually suffer as a consequence. All those things actually tell things about me. But not sex. the food metaphor is again appropriate; I'd need some to live, I get more to feel well, but it doesn't impact more (tthe metaphor is not accurate in that sex doesn't make you fat; luckily). Even with girls, I am much more likely to want cuddles than sex; I don't remember ever feeling the need (as in, a strong urge that is difficult to resist) to have sex with a girl, while wanting to hug one is pretty common. the only thing about sex that would actually tell something about me is that I am very free about it. My most important moral guideline states "an action that hurts nobody cannot possibly be wrong", and I see no way sex practiced under the "safe, sane & consensual" unbrella can hurt somebody, not directly. I am not very satisfied with this post, I fear it may read as too self-absorbed and linked to my particular experience, but I can't really find a way to express it better. Yes, sex is an important part of life. No, sex is not an important part of a person, not for most people. That dichotomy is justified by sex not being linked to what a person strongly believes or opposes. Here, now I like those two lines much better than the rest of the post, except that if I cut away the rest of the post, they would come as "out of the blue" statements with no justification.

everyone, try to calm down. yes, that letter is poorly conceived and it has some "my world view is the one true view and so I feel i must impose it on everyone else", but it was politely worded and therefore deserves a polite response. Do we not brag about the niceness of this community? Is this not a place where one can write his ideas without fear of being bashed if they do not conform to the majority? And, perhaps most relevant to the specific case, can we convince him of his mistake by calling GRRM an old pervy and his followers people who are only in for the sex and violence? This is the same attitude we want to discourage. Yes, the OP dislikes many of the things that are the mark of sanderson and that are exactly what most of us likes about his books. Yes, the OP shows he has not understood some subtleties of the story - you'd be surprised, but not everyone reread every book several times looking for subtle clues and then goes to find all the author's interviews; casual readers don't know of adonalsium or hoid - and he probably cherry-picked some evidence to support his wrong conclusions about religion in the books. and yes, he had a somewhat arrogant attitude about it - something many people, me included, can adopt without realizing. There just isn't enough to bash him like some of the replies did.