king of nowhere

I beg to disagree (the spoiler contains an image of a fetus hand reaching out to the surgeon during a surgical interventionon the uterus. While most people find it beautiful, it contains a lot of blood, and I figured someone may not want to see it, hence the spoiler.) Now I may never be able to look at something like that without thinking "my life to yours, my breath becomes yours". In fact, it may actually work as a form of neonatal surgery: the fetus is ill? give it plenty of breath, so it will get better. get it back once the child grows enough to talk. The uusefulness is unfortunately limited because it requires a lot of trust among the people involved. Aside from that nitpick, I have no idea about any of the original questions, although I think haradion makes good points.

If you read sanderson books in any language different from the one it was written in you are not a sanderfan enough . How can you allow a translator to put himself between you and the word of sanderson? Just be glad he's not writing in inuit language or somesuch.

Simply because most people don't know much about depression. I am interested in all sciences - including medicine - and I have read a lot of stuff, yet kaladin is virtually my only source of knowledge on how depression works. That, and real people suffering of depression asserting that kaladin is a good representation of how it feels. I'd guess people either are medics/phsycologists, or they have a loved one suffering from depression, or they know almost nothing about it.

It's not about needing, it's about wanting. If I care for a story, I want to know what's behind the next hill, what would happen if some specific things were done, the how and the why of things. And the author has better come up with satisfying and exhaustive explanation if he wants to keep me enthralled. I may stop liking a story if there are no good answers to be found. Even if I liked it in the first place. And I must stress that the story-did-not-need-those-answers. They were left out of the book because the book would have become a boring piece of info drop for like 90% of readers if those stuff was put into it. I want to know it anyway. If I like something, I want to go deep. To me your attitude makes as much sense as eating some wonderful food and not wanting more of it. But hey, people are different, have different tastes and look for different things. With your attitude, it's no wonder you don't like sanderson - in fact, I'm surprised you're liking the stormlight archive, because it goes deep. And, I'm gritting my teeth saying it, but you will probably like terry goodkind, for some of the very reasons I don't like him. At least if you don't mind the author using the books to propagate his political views, and crafting all the world in a way to make those views right.

well, it's not a matter of being sanderfans or whatever. if i liked a book, i want to know more about it. If, after reading - or watching on tv, or anything - a story, I don't want to know more about the world, the background events leading to the plot, and the smaller character quirks, then I didn't enjoy the story enough. That's the hallmark that I liked a story: that it makes me care for the world it takes place in.

i havent read shannara e i am not going to, neither am i going to see the show. But i heard that they were making it on tv, and i wondered why it appears that lately every fantasy saga is picked up for tv adaptation except the ones I'd like to see most. I read some people complaining it is clichèd, and while i cannot judge it for myself, it would be a good explanation; the producers of tv stuff don't want to risk spending milions on a show that will be a flop. Instead, to make sure they will have some public, they tend to produce exactly what was succesful before. If the public liked it then, they reason, it should be at least mildly succesful now. and that's the reason a lot of tv stuff feels clichèd. But hey, while I think they made a horrible mistake in not picking the reckoners or mistborn for adaptation, it could help pave the way for more fantasy adaptation in the future. Or it could reinforce in the general public the idea that fantasy is only about elves, vampires and werewolves.

+1 on that

Ah, that's also part of the plot. There was something about a soul that needs to have cracks for the investiture to enter in it, and that people must be broken in some way before becoming radiants. So, there's nothing to be done about it. the radiant group will keep looking like a psych ward. By the way, I like that analogy. EDIT: ninja'ed

I remember sanderson saying something like all the stories he read about a guy with depression are about the guy being depressed, while instead he wanted to make a story about a depressed guy where depression is not the central part of his story arc. It's just something he has, like a more innocent personality quirk. He also stated (I think in warbreaker commentary) that he wants to find plausible flaws/weaknesses for his characters. He mentioned them about vasher not being good with people. The same applies to kaladin's depression, I think. It is a limitation kaladin has, and he must manage to function despite it. just like vasher's lack of charisma. Or like shallan's inexperience about the world and lack of combat skills. or like wayne's inability to use a gun. So, I would agree with you that I don't want to read a family drama. except this is not a family drama. This is an epic fantasy with a guy who does fancy stuff, and by the way he is often depressed. If this was a family drama, kaladin would sit around moping. And then he woould mope some more. Then his dog would die, and he would mope even more, and the critics would praise the book. And maybe his mother would die too, but only if the drama is particularly meaningful - the critics would praise the book extra in that case. Therefore, unless kaladin returns home to find his mother dead, the pet axehound - that his parents took after losing their sons - also dead, and kaladin ends up spending all the book being depressed and doing nothing at all, you should not compare the two genres. I suggest you stop judging a whole book by reading part of a single chapter. It would be like watching the two minutes of star wars where alderaan goes kaboom and concluding that the villain is the protagonist. Or like reading the chapter of the wheel of time where egwene get punished in the tower and mistaking it for a novel about sadomasochism.

yes, kaladin waiting 5 days to go is clearly a plot device. kaladin needed to arrive in heartstone the day after the everstorm. Also jasnah getting "killed" is a plot device, or she would have done everything and shallan would have been reduced at the role of supporting character. And the alethi dueling rules stating that the side with the numerical disadvantage can get help as long as it stays in numerical disadvantage is a plot device to get renarin and kaladin in the arena. plot devices happen. As long as they are not too blatant, they are fine. There is just no way to write a story without a plot device, because everything in a story is a plot device, and a sufficiently savy reader will spot them for what they are. As for the rest, kaladin is suffering from cronic depression. Yes, I also want to throw something at him sometimes, but the way I understand it (i have no direct knowledge of depression, I only go by hearsay) he can't help being that way. Pity stormlight can't fix mental illness, only physical ones. Anyway, kaladin will keep being depressed. He was suffering from depression since his childhood, before anything really went wrong with his life, and the way things have been going downhill since then, he could have taken it much worse. Anyway, I wouldn't say that he has not progressed. He has progressed a lot. He just still has depression. But I don't remember, after book 1, that his depression ever really stopped him. He get depressed, mopes around, then he stand up and do soemthing heroic, and then he goes back to moping again. Yes, it can be frustrating to read, but I learned to love kaladin despite it. That guy deserves it. I'd say, overall, the most inconsistent thing is that dalinar allows kaladin to use all the gemstones they had to go save a flyspeck village; it would have made much more sense to send kaladin to the capital city. Of course, after all kaladin did, dalinar wasn't in any position to refuse him anything, but he should have at least argued about him going to the capital instead.

how unlikely is survival of a highstorm? i was inclined to believe that is was hard, but not miracle-like hard. hystorically, most trial by ordeal have a good chance of survivability anyway; if everybody subjected to the trial dies, you think something is wrong with it. sadeas going out of his way to stack the odds against kaladin also make me think that the chances of survival are not so small. especially if you receive medical care afterwards. as for the other details, like the miracolous recovery, we all know stories grow in the retelling. everybody probably just assumed the stories exaggerated how badly kaladin was wounded afterwards and how quickly he recovered.

actually, if i remember correctly, dalinar suspects kaladin of being something more than a talented fighter already after the duel. Or maybe it was just his son asking if kaladin had some secret? don't remember exactly. Anyway, let's look into it: - kaladin rescues dalinar at the tower can be explained by kaladin being really good at fighting and leading - kaladin survives szeth can be explained by kaladin being also lucky - kaladin fight several shardbearers we already established he's very good, but this seems to stretch belief. Some doubts start to pop up - kaladin survives the chasm dalinar now strongly suspects something is odd about kaladin, so he cconfronts him. kaladin let him down. What else is dalinar supposed to do at this point? He still had suspects, because he wasn't too surprised when kaladin rescued him from szeth. So, when kaladin survived once or twice against incredible odds, there was no real reason to suspect. when kaladin keeps doing it, dalinar actually starts suspecting. seems fairly reasonable to me.

ok, let's assume you are general of an army. one of your soldiers survive impossible odds three times. What do you think? 1) that guy is really good, and also very lucky. 2) that guy has supernatural powers. Well, if you are reaing a book about a guy having supernatural powers, you know that guy has those powers, and it makes sense. If you are one person in that world, you instead know that supernatural powers do not exist. If you are a general, you also command thousands of soldiers, hundreds of whom are very good. One of them could also be very lucky. So, from an in-world perspective, answer 1) is the most likely, and answer 1) is the one that will turn out to be correct. People applying story conventions to the real world is the reason we have all those conspiracy theories. Want an actual example? During world war 2, many thousand pilots dropped out of their plane without a parachute for a number of reasons. A few dozen of them survived, one of them without significant injury. What do you think? those guys are mutant who can secretly fly? Or they just got lucky falling over something soft enough to cushion the fall? EDIT: here, kaidembo said more or less the same thing, and probably better than I did

Male channelers were killed in seanchan too. among the aiel, they were sent in the blight. So, that's not a difference. The only place where male channelers left offspring is shara, where, starting from age 15, they are regularly sent to breed, until they are killed in their early twenties.

it was mentioned in the books that the percentage of channeling population during the age of legends was 2-3%, and it was much higher than that of the third age. The most we can do for the third age is make estimates with the numbers we have. I think the only case where we can make actual estimates regards the aiels, because - we have a good count of how many channelers the shaido had - we have a good count of how many warriors the aiel had, which can give us informations on the population - we know the aiel get virtually all the people born with the spark So, the shaido channeling wise ones were stated to be around 400 before the battle of malden. wise ones didn't swap clans for the bleakness, so that was all the shaido wise ones and only the shaido wise ones. we have no idea if the twelve clans have the same size, but lacking better information, we can assume they roughly do. That makes around 5000 female channelers among all the aiels. Before the battle of cahirien, we are given the total number of aiel fighters as around one million, among all the clans. We cannot infer the relative size of the clans from it, because many aiel abandoned their clans to go with the shaido. Now, we can try to figure out the general aiel population. that's mostly guesswork, because we don't know the percentage of the aiel population who were algai'd siswai. However, with preindustrial technology, most of the population would be needed to grow food. But aiels are very warlike, so we can expect them to keep as many warriors as possible. This gives us a reasonable estimate of the total aiel population between 10 and 20 millions. Less, and they could not feed all those warriors. More, it's not realistic; first, they would use the population surplus to make more warriors, and second, how many people can really feed off a desert? So, considering that half of those aiel are women, we get an estimate that one person in 1000 or 2000 has the spark. That among the aiel, where wise ones are held in high esteem and marry many times. In the westers lands, percentages ought to be smaller, but likely still within the same orders of magnitude: channeling women can go to the tower, where they either become aes sedai, who don't make children, or they join the kin, and don't make children. Or they never go to the tower and become wisdoms, who seldom marry. Basically, channelers in the westlands are unlikely to leave offspring, so there will be less of them. Given the size of randland, and estimates on population density in preindustrial societies, I'd guess they have 100 to 200 millions people, and a few tens of thousands potential channelers, most of whom never learn to channel because of the [sarcasm] enlightened [/sarcasm] white tower recruitment policy of waiting women to make the trip to be tested. That's consistent with what we saw: 1000 aes sedai and 2000 kinswomen representing the modest fraction of women who went to the tower. A somewhat higher estimate can be mmade by the recruiting of the rebel aes sedai, who got some 1000 novices from murandy alone. Depending on how far the women came to be tested, and how many women came to be tested in the first place, we could raise the estimate of potential channelers to several tens of thousands. On the other hand, the pattern was having a heavy hand in shaping events towards the last battle, so we can't truust those events to accuratelly represent the actual percentages among the population. Among the seanchan population the amount of channelers is even lower, since damane are sistematically culled from the gene pool - and even sul'dam don't look like they marry often. The seanchan continent is bigger than the westlands, but it is likely to have less channelers; probably a few thousand damane in the whole empire, with a few times that number in sul'dam. We never get hard numbers, but it seems the return comprises 300-400 damane, maybe 500, and they would leave some back in the empire. I have no idea about the sharans, and no good estimates for their population - they have a big land, but the disposition of mountains and the principle of rain shadow dictates most of it is desert. They sistematically breed their channelers, so they should have a fair number of those, and I was in fact surprised that (spoilers for the last book, just in case you haven00t finished the series yet) EDIT: but, as far as i know, there is no word of jordan or brandon with solid numbers of channelers otherwise

exactly this. As far as dalinar knew at the time, amaram was the best paragon of virtue around. dalinar was ordered to refound the radiants by the visions, so he did the best he could. yes, it would make no sense otherwise.To keep with the analogy, it's like some visions you have good reasons to trust tell you to form a team of people with supernatural powers, which you never believed even existed in the first place; you have no idea how to find such people, or even if they exist in the first place, so you apppoint someone who is lucky at cards. yeah, it doesn't make that much sense, but what else can you do?

yes, it probably would. unless whatever mysterious rule governs epic decides that the robot programmed by you counts as you trying to kill steelheart with an elaborate weapon. After all, the bullets fired against steelheart didn't fear him, but the people pulling the trigger did. On the other hand, david stuffed the explosives and set up the trigger, but it was enough for steelheart to press the trigger to switch the responsibility. It is not clear how detached from the event one must be to not trigger the epic invulnerability. By the way, the invulnerable steelheart could have easily died by tripping on his shoes, or suffocating with food, or any other stupid accidental way that didn't involve someone else.

extensive childcare is a luxury we got with an advanced society. for most of the human history, it wasn't like that. children don't strictly need that much care anyway. Oh, they will grow dumber without someone to teach them. and they probably will have some pshycological issue for the lack of attention. without an education, they could be more prone to violence and bullying. of course there is a greater chance they will hurt themselves. extensive childcare is a good thing. but if you don't care for the well-being of those people, and you only need to use them for manual farming under the threat of violence, with the prospect that they will age fast and die of the poor conditions by the time they are forty, then it's not your problem. i didn't like elend at first, but revised my opinion somewhere along the second book. or even near the end of the first, don''t remember

it has always struck me as odd that learned alethi men can read gliphs, but not alphabet, since the former are much more complicated than the latter. they look a bit like gerogliphics. Someone should calculate and monetize how much vorin society loses from their silly gender restrictions. From the time needed to prepare three different meals for men, women and kids, to that needed to go fetch your wife to translate a note for you, to that of learning gliphs when alphabet would be better and easier, I wonder how much farther ahead they would be if they devoted all that energy to doing some productive work. Also, by getting shardblades the men got to be the kings, but the women, being scribes and administrators, got to be the power behind the throne. I think they got the best out of the deal.

1) The terris also are the only people with any sense of cultural identity, and that can easily turn into xenophoby. Especially since they have always been a close society, since they had to protect themselves during the final empire. As for the fact that they were oppressed by one of their own, that hardly matters. In a xenophobic culture, when "one of us" does something bad, then he's just an isolated case, he was a bad alloy, and anyway he probably had some good reasons for it; while when "one of them" does something bad, it's because they are not like us, they are savages, they cannot be trusted. Also, people who are persecuted are the most likely to also oppress others when they are in charge. A big example? America was largely populated by people fleeing from religious persecutions and governmental tiranny; and look at how they treated natives, blacks and mexicans... 2) Yeah, most people don't want change. they may resent those who are in charge, but they often just want to take their role. Other times they just don't know what to do when the tyrants is defeated. Everybody knows that in ancient rome slaves occasionally made rebellions. Less known is that when those slaves conquered lands and formed governments of their own, they didn't outlaw slavery. they simply took other people as slaves. most of them weren't opposed to slavery, they merely wanted someone else to be the slave. Italy also have a long history of making revolutions that change little; when the fascist regime was defeated, mussolini and his main henchmen were killed or jailed, but most people in the public administration kept their place. After all, you need someone who knows how to run a nation. And in the nineties, when the "clean hands" and "tangentopolis" corruption scandals wiped out all the main political parties of the time, the old politicians (except those few who could actually be convicted, but they were a scant minority) simply made new parties and kept being in charge. The most notable exceptions was a guy who got elected in a landslide by denouncing the corruption of the other parties and promising to reform italy. His name was berlusconi, I'm sure you heard of him. So, it's a bit dishearening, but fairly realistic actually.

yeah, I don't remember the exact chronology and don't know where to find a link. I think i remember way of kings happens a few decades after wax and wayne, warbreaker is some 300 years prior, elantris is before way of kings but i don't remember how much before. sixth of the dusk is the last among the story published, and there is speculation the ones above are scadrians with space technology. But while I can't help you much with the chronology, I can help you with spoiler tags: the third button from left on top of your message window is called "special bbcode", you click on it and you can open a window menu with various options, spoiler is among them.

Where do you get that? In alloy of law, miles had an aluminium knife and, wanting to free his hands but lacking a pocket for it, stabbed the knife in his arm. He wouldn't have done so if he could not heal it. It was during the train fight. Unless maybe you intend that he could not heal while the aluminium blade was in him, but that's a small limitation. Anyway, none of those compounding powers make you invincible and capable of ruling the word alone, but you can do it with the support of a small group of faithful people. Consider how many warlords can dominate a nation in the real world without any superpower. Now think how much more they could have done if they were steel compounders. They would certainly found enough people willing to be their lackeys to protect them while they sleep. they would only have to personally do the assassinations of enemy leaders. Re: the dinamyte-slinging gold compounder: I doubt it's a wise idea. If a bullet hit one of the sticks you're carrying, it will set off. And then they will have to collect your pieces with a teaspoon. I don't think even gold compounding can fix that. Re: rarity of steel ferrings: in shadows of self the population of elendel is given as five millions (or maybe it's the whole basin? not sure). So there should be a fair number of steel ferrings around, and passable chances of at least one compounder. certainly enough that wax - a man who dedicated his life to fighting metalborn criminal - or wayne or some of the policemen should know whether tapping steel can make your gun work faster. Re: harmony would use the kandra to screw you up somehow: that's a good argument actually. I guess he would. Re: bleeder was probably capable of pulling her stunts because she was kandra, so she could disregard most wounds: that's another good argument. Still, things like friction on the floor and the speed at which you can fire a gun or turn a lock should affect her more than that.

On the other hand, wax made that assumption. he spent the last twenty years chasing metalborn criminals, he certainly has a vast culture on the topic. other learned people around, like wayne or marasi or any of the constables, didn't correct him. really, steel ferings aren't that rare. if a person that should know makes an incorrect assumption about something that should really be known, and there are several other people around who also should know and none corrects him, I'm going 'huh?' instead of assuming a simple mistake. And by the way, yet another way steelrunning is broken: gravity! A steelrunner tapping speed at 10x should not be able to run at 10x, because when you run you jump forward and upward with every step. If you arein bullet time, everything should be slower to you, including the speed at which you fall to the ground. Consider how astronauts moved in the low gravity of the moon; that's how a steelrunner should move. Instead, bleeder could move without limitation of the sort. We have the scene when wax has her same speed thanks to a bendalloy bubble (those bubbles speed up time, so it makes sense that wax is at normal gravity in the bubble), and he sees her running, not jumping around. Well, it is possible steel act on the way gravity affects you, but it's still another way it is overly powerful and keeps offering food for the whole "why isn't the world ruled by steel compounders? how did the inquisitors fail to spike elend and vin anyway?" arguments. Yes, I am afraid brandon wrote himself in a hole there. Either that, or someone should ask at the next signing some clarification about steel and all that. EDIT: @ three1415 I don't think compounding is really the problem here; compounding of other metals are strong, but still reasonable. as the first book has shown, there are plenty of ways to bring down a gold compounder, the easiest of which requires only some ropes. It's the power of feruchemical steel that is the problem. there just is no counter to that.

I believe preservation was hoping that vin would take the power of the mists mmuch earlier in the novels, which would have happened if run hadn't spiked her. And he also had flashes of a keeper that would have been relevant to it. I really doubt he could have predicted everything that happened, considering how harmony seems much more limited.

sharders is simply a name for people in this forum, since the forum is called the 17th shard. the dark alley is an internal joke that, to my memory, started when someone made a list of "people to avoid in dark alleys". Ever since, it has evolved in a place where unsuspecting people are given cookies with hemalurgic spikes hidden inside. Yes, I know, it doesn't sound funny when told that way. Injokes are like that.