king of nowhere

brandon already slowed down compared to a few years ago. he goes to tours often, he has a family... of course he will write less. also, when he was writing the first books, he could do pretty much anything; now he has to triple-check throug millions of words for continuity. that also takes time. So, the real question is not whether brandon will slow down, but how much.

That's also something I don't like about her. the way she messes up with other people without caring for how she's making their lives more difficult. But in the novellla, most of the times she did it, it was for a good reason; for example, when she makes a scene at the guard post to attract nale. In her first appearance, she broke into the middle of the important people to steal their lunch, causing many innocent guards to be punished, and putting in trouble her felllow thieves, just because it felt cool to do it. What to say, in front of her steady progress, I'm willing to cut her some slack on account of her being 13.

serious answer: someone like dalinar would fit pretty well. anyway, with the millions of people across the planet, finding one that fits is not really a problem. No idea if an animal could take a shard, but i doubt they are sentient enough. My money is on "no, a shard an only be taken by a sapient being". No idea if something in between, like a rishadium horse, would fit. non-serious answer: the dominator in a master/slave sadomasochistic relationship

Alternate Brandon:"and if you buy the insurance against your brother being gang-pressed and killed in battle, we'll offer for free an insurance that will cover your slave debt in case you are made a slave and forced to run against archers while carrying a bridge" Customer (young man around 20, student of medicine but secretly longing to join the army):"those seem oddly specific occurrences. Why would I want any of those?" Alternate Brandon:"Huh... I had a feeling of what could have happened in an alternate universe"

It's Lopen, not lopin. Anyway, lopen consider a "cousin" anyone who is tied to him in some way. I'd guess when talking with other herdazians he refers to all the members of bridge 4 as his cousins too. So yes, on another world he would also find cousins.

I ordered my copy of arcanum unbounded from the british provider and I wanted to make sure it has all the illustration it should have. In my version there is an image at the beginning of every story, and one figure of the star system at the beginning of each star system, and nothing else. I thought there was also supposed to be a star chart? I am suspicious because I've seen the italian version of words of radiance and it completely lacks the splash page of shallan, so I figured maybe some british editor also did cut out some image. So, can someone confirm that I have all the pictures I should have, or if my copy misses something? Thanks

When one of your coworkers enters into your office shouting "colors! colors!" and your first reaction is wondering if he's a nalthian worldhopper. Alas, nothing so spectacular. As one of the enterprise chemists, I am in charge of preparing dyes under 5 grams of wheight, and so he was just asking me to make a color. Still, I tried to tell him about nalthis. I don't think I was much convincing, though.

if there are, they are secret enough that we don't know of them.

I very much disliked Lift before this story, now I love her. It's surprising what difference can make a sprinkle of maturity and a purpose. I never realized the deep meaning of "Lift had been ten years old for the last three years". And who counld have guessed that in order to get her to grow up, you'd need to stick her inside a palace? all of her wishes fulfilled, so that she was forced to look for something deeper. And she grew up all of a sudden. I didn't even need to throw her out of a window for it! Ah, Lift, your capacity of loving everyone is what really makes you awesome. the stormlight stuff is just a stunt. Welcome to the club of ficitional characters I'd like to have as little sisters. Meet Shallan. I wonder what will happen if she gets thrown at mr T.

well, there is cultivation about growth, honor about not hurting others, and odium against those threatening which jasnah hold dear, so.... self-defending sustainable development!

Earth is not part of the cosmere. I think humankind originated on a planet called Yolen, before the shattering of adonalsium.

First of all, I'm not sure if I should put this in some spoiler section, like maybe the arcanum unbounded. the story was published with the MAG years ago, after all, plus it doesn't really have any cosmic revelation. If it needs be spoilered, then some mod please fix it. That said, I wonder what really happened there. It's obvious, even without the steward's notes, that the story was highly fictionalized. we can safely discard the talking bird (too small to be a kandra), the jump from the cave into the river (it didn't rain, as jak himself stated as leaving a trail in the dust) and the feat with the air balloon (not enough air to give buoyancy there; plus, it was air lost from jak's lungs, so the total buoyancy of jak+bladder would remain constant). on the other hand, we know with reasonable certainty that he did find a crate at a depth of 18.3 fathoms and rescued it, and that Elizandra and koloss trying to kill him were involved in some way. even the fact that jak has been prisoner in the cave is confirmed. So... any idea?

eh, i thought about the "he already did something similar with sazed". But then again, he also did a "perfectly arranged marriage" with sarene/raoden, siri/susebron, wax/steris, and shallan/adolin. just because he's done something similar in the past, it does not mean he will not do it again.

there really is no evidence for it, and there cannot be that early in the story, but I can't help noticing how fitting it would be. Jasnah has a strong connection to all three shards. she is normally cool and collected, but we have seen her executing the robbers in the alley: she seems to hate people doing evil, enough to go out of her way to hunt them, and takes pleasure (not in "sadistic pleasure of hurting them", but "righteous pleasure of having ridden the world of them") in dispatching them. Well, pleasure is too strong a word, but "satisfaction" is appropriate. So that's her connection to odium. she is often described as stern but fair. She treats anyone with honor (except for those she hates). She is pragmatic enough to hire assassins, but she has a moral compass. that's her connection to honor. She dedicates her life to improvement. To become better than she was, to help others become better, to make the world better. To make things grow. To cultivate. Her connection to cultivation is probably the stronger. Then, brandon said that he always imagined her as an atheist, and what better joke to pull on an atheist than to make her a deity? I already envision her post-ascension speech, in an equivalent to the scadrian words of founding: "I am definitely NOT a divinity. I just took upon myself huge powers that make me virtually omnipotent in regard to this world, extremely intelligent and knowleadgeable, and timeless. And so while there is nothing holy about me, from great powers come great responsibilities and I will do my best to protect and shelter and elevate you. But do not pray to me! Ever!"

really good, but you should fix the links. i spent a minute before i could find the actual video

yeah. it felt like a slap. and i was all "oh brandon, how could you do that to your readers?" and then there was the true ending. And I almost risked spoilering it. I saw the wrapped page with "open only after finishing the book" on it, and I assumed it would be a joke on those who read the last page first, like there was in the previous four books. Almost read it there and then. If you're wondering why i was looking the last page, i wanted to see how many pages the book had to judge if i could finish it overnight or i should put it back and leave it for the next day

interesting. language families let you track ancienty history, and by studing the languages of two people you can establish with good accuracy when they split from a common ancestor (by how different they are), their technological level at the time (because words for already existing objects would share a common root, while stuff invented after the split would have completely different names) and a lot of other stuff. Not a linguist myself, but I find the whole thing fascinating. So, most things here are to be expected: language families following geography, as regions with close ties influenced each other languages. Nothing surpriseing about the vorin, makabaki and iri groups. aimian is surprising: one island having two different languages that aren't even related? there must be some reason why different parts of the island had different languages. maybe a people invaded the place long ago, bringing its language, but could never conquer the whole island? there is a similar situation on some indonesian island, I think, where one people survived by agricolture using species that only grew on the mountains, while another people survived fishing on the shores, and neither was capable of surviving in the other's environment, and so they evolved very segregated. Still, there could be plenty of reasons for it, and not necessarily story-related. dawnate is the most likely to be a clue to something plot-relevant. Shin, listeners and horneaters have a common root. Since listeners and horneaters have a strong relation with spren, maybe they split from the shin when they bonded spren? It also casts doubt on the "listeners are roshar's natives" theory: it shows that they have ancient cultural ties to others. though, of course, it may be that they were enslaved at some point and forced to adopt the language of their conqueror, their cultural identity completely annihilated.

I'm a bit confused here. In sacrificing Attica, Biblioden supposedly made a ritual that would have deprived the smedrys of their powers. That would also have killed granpa, who is only kept alive by his talent. so what about the ritual? did it not work? did the talent take a life of his own and defy the ritual? or maybe sacrificing a smedry was only the first step, and more stuff needs to be done, and they will have to stop him in book 6? EDIT: now I also read the blog post where brandon explains all the behind the scenes. Damnit. Planning to throw a punch like that to your readers, and getting away with it? Brandon, you evil genius! We are lucky you are content with writing, instead of trying to take over the world. And I'm now so sad I got to meet him in person one month ago and still hadn't read the dark talent. I could not properly congratulate him on it.

Now that I think about it, at some point brandon posted a screenshot from his computer showing his "work in progress" folders. And one of those was scrubbed out of the image, and had "secret project" written on it. Shortly later, mistborn secret history came out, and everyone assumed it was the secret project. bbut reallly? If one folder had been named "secret history", there would have been no way we could deduce anything from it, no need to ccover it. Had it been alcatraz 6 all along? EDIT: I remembered about a blog post made a month ago with big alcatraz 5 spoilers, and yeah, it really was alcatraz 6!

it wasn't that bad. kelsier arrived at the southern continent years after the final ascension, and the southerners survived that long. if it had been so bad, they would have all died in a matter of hours, days at most. the fact that they survived for years means that with modern technology they would have survived indefinitely. at least regarding heating. the real problem would have been to grow crops that were suddenly unsuitable to the climate. you can grow stuff in a greenhouse, but you can't feed a whole nation that way.

Even if it was a perfectly vertical drop, stormligh would allow her to survive the fall. But that's fully intentional. She's a kid, and she's kindhearted, I would not want to kill her. Just knock some sense in her head

stay strong, maxal. I also liked adolin a lot, but I'm sure the SA will be great anyway, and adolin will be a good secondary character anyway. For me it is worse, because Lift is my most disliked sanderson main character of all, and we know she will be very important. I'd be all in favor of tossing lift out of a window and putting adolin in her place. that's not happening, and i'm sure sanderson knows what he's doing anyway. heck, i haven't gotten my copy of AU yet (so no spoilers), so who knows, maybe lift get some character development in the right direction. you know, stop being mean to her spren for no reason, stops putting her life and that of those close to her in danger just because she finds it fun and she's too immature to stop five seconds to think of the risk vs reward, starts to accept information from her spren instead of shutting him every time he tries to explain her how to use her powers and then still finding out how to use those powers just because she's a protagonist edging close to mary sue land. Eh, better i stop there, before i go full rant mode. I make you a proposal, maxal: you trust brandon over adolin and i trust him over lift. not trusting that the story will go where we hope it will go, but that the story will still be a good story. Also, you can take the fact that adolin has no inner conflict as a sign of strenght. When kaladin was betrayed, he spent hundreds of pages anguishing over it. When adolin was betrayed, he kept going. not everyone who takes a metaphorical punch need to spend hundreds of pages suffering; sometimes, he just gets up, dust himself, and go back doing what he was doing. adolin doesn't need to appear on screen to be badchull. the more they try to hide him, and the more he shines for it. EDIT: if you want, you can open a thread where you go on about how bad it is that adolin won't get a bigger part in the story, and confine your ranting there. I will most certainly do so with lift, after i read arcanum unbounded. Afterwards, you could just link that thread when you feel the need to Last, I wouldn't give up on hope that adolin will become radiant. renarin did, and he had much less screen time.

they were freezing to death after the world was moved back into its proper orbit. if they had industrial level technology, they could have heated themselves by burning whatever fuel they were using to power the industries.

the south could not be that advanced. in fact, the south was not advanced after the last ascension. if it was, they wouldn't have been all that bothered by the colder climate; they would just have turned up the heating.

I'm in europe, so maybe that's why.