king of nowhere

i think it had been established already? but maybe i'm making confusion with the fact that there are no other continents. Anyway, I am worried about the long term habitability of the planet. Plate tectonics are dirven by internal heat, which is the same mechanism that creates a magnetic field. And the magnetic field is what stops the solar wind from stripping away the atmosphere and turning the pale blue dot into a barren desertic dead world. It could mean that plate tectonics stopped shortly before, and the rosharans should have a few tens of millions of years to figure out space flight and abandon their planet. Or it could mean that shards used their shardic powers to make that planet livable.

spook would have taken volunteers to be spiked, he wouldn't have spiked unwilling people. especially not just to experiment, as the set seems to have done. plus, if spook wanted to reach some goal - any goal - all he would need to do would be reveal himself, and everybody would fawn over him. he's actually worshipped as a god. he wouldn't need to start a secret society.

kanddras also never got a chance to experiment, since they didn't want to kill people to make metalminds.

the more we figured the riddiculous power of the lord ruler, the more people cried foul that a mere mistborn like vin could best him. In fact, after BoM, we see that rashek was even more ridiculously overpowered than we assumed. But that also explains why he apparently went dumb. We've seen both wax and marasi tapping so much speed that they virtually stopped time. We've seen that wax was healed from death. So, of course rashek had nothing to fear from vin. no surprise that he was toying with her; he totally could afford it. And then vin ripped off his metalminds. First of all, let's see how impossible that should have been: those metalminds were so heavily invested that there was no way anyone could push on them (yes, I know the bands in the book were made by kelsier, I'm just assuming rashek's metalminds were similar in power, albeit probably only attuned to him). They also pierced a body. vin could only rip them because she was empowered by the mists. rashek had no way of predicting this, or expecting it, or fearing it. as far as he was concerned, it was plain impossible. with his metalminds, rashek lost his capacity to slow down time. consider someone who could practically stop time, think carefully through everything, and then act. consider that suddenly he loses this power, and he suddenly find himself with a few minutes left to live because he lost the capacity to tap age. Is it a surprise that he suddenly cannot make good decisions? He also lost much of his power. He lost all the feruchemy, and he also lost most of his allomancy; without his investiture manipulation, he was a much weaker allomancer than he was used to. With his reduced power, he could not just pull on his metalminds: they were too heavily invested. All he could try was to recover them by hand. which he tried to do, but vin pushed them away. At this point, he was already too feeble to do anything else. yes, he could still have used allomancy to jump out of the window (still, not much chances of finding the metalminds in all the mess, since they were invisible to allomancy), if he even bothered to take metals before; since he could empower his allomancy with the investiture in the metalminds, it's likely he didn't. Why would he? There is absolutely no chance in the world anyone could rip his metalminds off of him. So, rashek not only found himself severely crippled and with all the usual responses he had ingrained in his "muscle memory" (useing the term loosely to refer to the use of allomancy and feruchemy) not working anymore, but he may have completely lost the capacity to use all his powers and succumbed to lesser people just like a modern army would succumb to an ancient one if it was stuck without ammos and gasoline. The moment he lost his metalminds, rashek was already dead, and nothing he could do would alter that.

stamping would not work on scadrial. the reason it must be in contact with the skin is that a metalmind cannot be acccessed without contact wiith the body.

probably you should check sos again. I don't think it was made 100% clear, but I got the impression that the shooting of paalm by wax wasn't harmony intention. And harmmony apologized in bom. No, I had issues with how harmony acted after sos, but I am mostly fine now. Although I still think he should recruit people by having kandras reveal themselves to them and offer them a job rather than manipulating. See, this time he sent some kandra to ask, and all went well. when people are on your side, asking nicely generally works better than manipulating.

i doubt the "excisors" would be allomancers. if they were, he wouldn't have referred to the metalborn before. they could be spikes. maybe metalborns are very rare on south scadrial, but when they are born they are constantly protected and they are spiked before death, and their spikes are then passed around, so that allomancy keeps going.

I definitely think it means you can store more in the same metalmind. Wax did not recognize the spear as a metalmind because it was so heavily invested; he can feel other people's metalminds. why would normal people need more expansive metalminds when they could store so much in so little space? well, the easiest answer is that they cannot actually store so much in so little space. And that's why kelsier (I'm assuming obvious he's the one-eyed-spiked sovereign, but apparently some people are arguing over it) was able to fit so much power into a piece of metal easily held in one hand.

this villain who had freed his people. Who has helped defeat ruin. Who saved an entire continent. Well, I think the world would be better off with a few more villains like him. Also, just because he had a bad first impression of hoid the first time, it doesn't mean they must keep hating each other. Now kelsier knows much more, and he can appreciate what hoid does. on the other hand, I don't see them getting along. both have plans, and they probably interfere with each other. again, we would be better off with more psycopaths like him. Also, look at his interactions with the crew, and his real grief at losing dox and clubs, or even at the fact that skaa lives haven't changed much. kelsier is definitely a nice guy. And also a psycopath. He is a nice guy and a psycopath at the same time. Just as he helps people to fuel his ego and out of real selflessness at the same time. That's kelsier.

I thought it was devotion, and "seon" would come from senna. But I checked and we already know the name of devotion (aona). So it is most likely a new shardholder. maybe cultivation? according to the coppermind, she's the only known shard of which we don't know the name.

So, he should have let the southerners to die. yay, those dirty southerners deserved no better. i mean, it's not like sazed took care of them or anythhing. he could have done something to heat them, then they wouldn't have looked at kelsier as a deity for saving them. regarding kelsier's ego, it is true that he needs a wheelbarrow to carry it around. but after he escaped the pits, I've never seen him fuel his ego with acts that were less than selfless. when somebody regularly helps people he owes nothing to at great personal cost and risk and without asking anything in exchange than be cherished as a hero, well, I feel he has a right to it. I'd certainly not be saying something on the line of 'you bastard, I don't want your help cause you're only doing it to feel good yourself'. Not when he's casting off a god-emperor who enslaved everybody, or he helped defeat a god of destruction that was killing all life on the planet, or when he saved the people of a whole continent. I wish there was more people as selfish as kelsier.

And now, less that three days later, I've been one day around with a friend that I won't be seeing in a long time, I helped load the car, I've traveled to several offices to deal with all the paperwork entailed with moving to another country, but I still managed to finish both books. And I went to post about it.

I'm wondering about the numbers given there:

what team? they are all brandon sanderson, who as a literary exercise pretends that he's another guy editing his books. Then he goes working on the printing press, and then he takes the truck with his books and drives it to the stores, because he want to write a book with one character who is working at a printing press and one who is a truck driver and he's doing research into those roles.And while he's driving, he dictates another book, too.

I have just bough bands of mourning on kobo - which is the best way to get it in europe, and on which I already had an account. I got also the secret history, and could get it as an epub easily enough. Then came the problem. Bands of mourning was not available to download as an epub, and the only option was with adobe drm. So I downloaded adobe drm. Once I was done, I clicked on the "epub with drm adobe", which was the only option. Immediately it asked me for an id authorization. It gave me a list of ebook sellers (not in alphabetic order, which made searching much more time-consuming) and kobo wasn't in it. So I had to click on "continue without authorization" or something, and my pc told me that in that case I wouldn't be able to open the book with any other pc, and even making a system reboot will forever forbid me from opening the book. Well, not too bad, I plan on getting the paper version in one or two months anyway. Although I was planning to read it on my tablet and now I will have to use my laptop instead. I opened the book, and noticed that there was no way of saving it. Yes, I cannot save the book and I cannot read it without an internet connection. I will take a trip shortly, and I was planning to read the book during the trip, and now they tell me that I cannot because I will have no internet connection during that time? This sucks! Then I started to flip the first few pages, and came across the maps. They are very small. I can't read them. I tried to zoom and, surprise, apparently there is no zoom function! So I have my laptop with a huge screen and I will have to wait the paper version to be able to see the map. Also, I cannot enable scrolling, I have to flip pages - and when reading ebook, I really prefer to scroll. So I paid almost as much as I would for a paper version, and all I get is a book I cannot download, cannot access from another computer, cannot access when I don't have an internet connection, like during a trip or in my mountain home, cannot see the map, cannot read it the way i prefer, and I will lose access to it when I change my laptop. Well, as I have already bought the book, I feel fully entitled to go look if I find a pirated pdf version, that doesn't have all those problems. If I find that kind of thing for one more book, I will stop buying ebooks entirely; or, if it is only a kobo thing, I will unsubscribe from kobo - although it is difficult to buy those ebooks from europe otherwise, other vendors give me the error message. I am paying good money and I don't see why I am to be limited to a crappy reader with limited functionalities. Unless I am missing something and there are hidden options I haven't been able to activate? Anyway, if brandon has any control over it, then please, please, make your ebooks available in a format that will be comfortable to use also for those that don't have a smartphone. Thanks. EDIT: Ok, after fiddling around a bit, I found a way to save the book so I can read it without a working internet connection. Still, the other limitations stand.

Today I discussed my PhD thesis, and got formally appointed. That has been the only thing that has kep me from getting BoM immediately two days ago. Now I just came back from the ceremony. The first thing I did was sending a mail to a dear friend I haven't seen in a while, but now I will immediately buy it and the secret story too. My plan was to start reading immediately, but I got sick and so now I will sleep. Now, if I had any sense, I would delay getting the books until after I finished with moving away from the country and back to my old one, but there's no way I'm not going to spend reading any free moment I have left. Not buying BoM three days ago and reading it at the expence of my performance today already took some willpower.

aww, that would be quite boring; at least in the wheel of time the wind always moved in a different direction. Also, I didn't think somebody would reanimate this thread until after the release of oathbringer.

well, it would also affect speed because there is friction with the air at some point, but i don't know how relevant that gets at those speeds. Anyway, there is the scene where bleeder is pretending that she's trying to kill the governor, and she breaks into the safe room, and wax goes in a couple seconds later at most, and finds the clothing of bleeder ahead in the escape tunnel. so in those couple of seconds of accelerted speed, bleeder run to the end of the tunnel, stopped, changed dress, run back, shot the bodyguard, then took the place of the governor. that scene stretches a fair bit the laws of physics. Everything else is basically fine.

demonstration that you need more friction to steelrun: so, the friction force is equal to k*F, where k is the friction coefficient and F is the force applied perpendicularly to the surface. When you try to turn or accelerate or brake, you are exerting a force diagonally on the floor. the perpendicular component of that force works towards friction, and that friction applies in the opposite sense of the motion and it is the speed that lets you change direction. As you can see, if you stomp harder, you'll exert more friction, and you will have more control. Except that there is one limiting factor: your own wheight. If the force you are applying perpendicularly to the floor exceed your mass*gravity, you will jump in the air. so, calling your wheight W and the gravity g, the maximum amount of force you can get from the floor is k*W*g. And the maximum acceleration you can get from the floor is k*W*g/W=k*g. This is the reason you can't run on ice without skidding, no matter how strong or fast you are. And this is the reason astronauts on the moon didn't run but jumped.

Well, I think it would be possible to have cells capable of changing their properties; they would have to revert back to indifferentiated staminal cells and then differentiate again to something new. Problem with it is, it would take hours, or possibly days; biochemistry is fast and efficient, but even it has limits. And second, it would take a lot of energy to disassemble most of the cell's proteins and build new proteins in its place. Which is probably the reason nature didn't use that mechanism. So, kandras are not physically possible without magic, but they would be if their transformation was slower, so it is within the limit of "scientifically possible with some artistic licence"

yeah, but that gives me an alternate plan that still involves metal spikes. You plant one that has no hemalurgic charge through sadeas heart. you can bet he won't be doing any evil deed afterwards.

It is, of course, fully possible. As a rule of thumb, when a reasonable scientific explanation is available, I tend to assume that magic is not at work, but of course that is only a working hypothesis.

it's exactly the timing that makes me think direct apoptosis could be more likely. Now, I am knowledgeable in molecular biology, but I am not a biology, so I don't know how long a cell takes from the moment it receives the signal to "suicide" to the moment it actually dies. On the other hand, a rejected organ will still remain functional for a long time, while paalm died in minutes. I'd think death by autoimmune reaction would take longer than that. Unless the kandra could make large amounts of linfocytes, which would greatly speed up the process, and it is of course a possibility.

it's certainly a possibility, but as far as i know we've never seen her around

I am not a molecular biologist, but close enough, and from what I know, no, it would not work. They tried to remove antigens from cell surfaces in laboratories, and they saw that the cell work just fine by itself, but the body don't function correctly. Apparently those antigens are needed for cell-cell interactions, so removing the genes for their expression from mice embryo resulted in development defects and abortion. So, I would say the answer to the question lay in whether kandras can imitate human antigens. Sure, they can change a muscle cell into a brain cell, but can they change the recognition proteins on that cell membrane? if they do, how can they avoid having autoimmune reactions? if they cannot do, then kandra organs would have rejection problems like any other transplanted organ. But hey, better than nothing, it could still keep you going for several years, and I think a skilled kandra may be able to supply a few dozen organs per day. Certainly seems like a useful application for their powers.