Isilel

I have not been part of this conversation before my previous post. But IMHO you have not been reasonable - you keep re-posting the same stuff while completely disregarding textual evidence, which is why arguing with you feels futile. You just don't seem to care about what was actually written in the books. I understand that you dislike how things turned out in RoW, but that's very different from claiming that they have not been sufficiently foreshadowed. Like, for instance here. Did Rlain know anti-voidlight rythm? No. Did he know how to blend 2 rythms, which was required to heal the Sibling from the effects of BAM's imprisonment? No. In fact, nobody on the anti-Odium side except Navani did. The text is unambiguous about it. So, of course she was the only one able to help, whether you like it or not. There is a massive difference between saying that a prospective Bondsmith is unworthy and actively trying to kill them. And the Stormfather wasn't just obeying Honor out of respect/affection, he didn't have any choice: "I WAS REQUIRED TO SEND THOSE VISIONS ONCE THE TIME ARRIVED. THE ALMIGHTY DEMANDED IT OF ME. I COULD NO MORE DISOBEY THAN I COULD REFUSE TO BLOW THE WINDS." Words of Radiance, chapter 89 "The Four". He also says that he won't be bound just before Dalinar makes his Oath and binds him. Oh, and I am glad that you admit that Gavilar, who was the Stormfather's first pick, was unworthy - which means that the Sibling's first choice wasn't necessarily the perfect one either, particularly since it was mainly made out of anti-human prejudice. What does it have to do with anything? Navani directly guided her teams of researchers, gave them ideas, aimed them towards fruitful avenues of inquiry. We were shown this in the text - she was the one who came up with the flying ship idea, not one of her engineers. She also personally discovered how to blend various Rosharan investitures, how to fix the Sibling, which the pre-Recreance Radiants failed to do, figured out how to produce anti-investiture, and previous to all that she had also invented pain-rial. Wrong again. "I am led to wonder, from experiences such as this, if we have been wrong. We call humans alien to Roshar, yet they have lived here for thousands of years now. Perhaps it is time to aknowledge there are no aliens or interlopers. Only cousins" From Rhythm of War, page 5 undertext. RoW, Chapter 53 "Compassion". It is revealed later in the book that Raboniel was the author of the undertexts and that the copy of the notebook was sent to El and the other Fused. This is a valid consideration. OTOH, without the discovery of anti-rythms, Navani wouldn't have been able to reverse Sibling's Unmaking and they couldn't have taken back the Tower, as it's power suppression function would have still remained flipped. So, both the Sibling and Urithiru would have been lost, as the Fused would have been able to complete their task. At which point Coalition would have already been defeated, IMHO. Without Urithiru there was no hope in the long term. And yet their last one was Melishi, who was involved in something very dubious, with catastrophic results. Nor was there time for that anyway. Perfect is the enemy of good.

Discovered the way of reversing the Unmaking and restoring Sibling's broken tone and you call it "eh"? Really?!!! Without her the Sibling wouldn't have been available for anybody to bond, because it wouldn't exist as itself anymore. I know that it is futile to engage in this discussion, because your mind seems complete set on Navani hate, but give the woman her due! As an aside, I wonder if returning the mindless Unmade to what they used to be is now on the table. It would be a much more ethically thorny problem re: those that have minds, of course. Concerning the Kholins lack of emotions in response to relatives/friends (ostensibly) dying, I chalk it up to writing failure, myself. Dalinar's, Adolin's and Ehlokar's non-reaction to Jasnah's alleged demise always stuck out like a sore thumb to me. Ditto Dalinar after obssessing with preserving Ehlokar's life for the 2 first books and supposedly loving his nephew, took his death completely in a stride. Ditto Dalinar never actually grieving any of his lost battle companions and friends and Adolin only doing it in the most vague terms. Navani comes closest to reacting normally, even if in a "stiff upper lip" fashion, but her contentedness at the end of OB felt really off to me as well. OTOH, she at least mourned Jasnah and there are a number of indications in RoW of her grieving for Ehlokar, even though she does subsume it in her work. But the Stormfather wouldn't have chosen to bond or even to send visions at all if Honor's last will didn't compel him. In fact, he resisted Dalinar and tried to kill him! There are very strong hints that Dalinar got his first vision from the Stormfather _before_ meeting Cultivation, even though he couldn't remember it afterwards. Granted, he was already on the way to the Nightwatcher. But let me adress the elephant in the room - do you think that Gavilar was worthy? Given that he was the Stormfather's first choice to receive the visions? Yet completely failed at speaking the Oaths, and not for the lack of knowledge/trying. You don't know that "anybody" could have gathered the scholars and given them the guidance she did. We have seen her provide them with the big ideas and direct their efforts in the most fruitful directions. It was also her contribution that helped convince the Azish to join the coalition and she was the one who laid down the foundation of how coalition would function, what nation would take over which duties, etc. She was the one organizing and running Urithiru as a multinational city. From Sanderson's description of the Order: Keeping people together is very much a Bondsmith's job, as evidenced by the gem archives in OB. And doing it has been her job her whole life - first as Gavilar's helper, then in the last years of his reign, while he dove into esoteric pursuits and Dalinar drank, she was the one holding Alethkar together. Then she started helping Dalinar with building his ever-growing alliances and stepped in for him when neccessary. And finally, as @Jenet pointed out, Navani found common ground with one of the more frightening Fused, and, in fact, fundamentally changed her perception of humans! Which, being part of the notes, is likely to propagate to El and the other Fused.

She was absolutely bringing/keeping people together throughout OB and RoW! Even her interactions with Raboniel were a naive attempt to establish common ground. I understand that you dislike her character, but text is text. And other non-Radiants saw nothing when Dalinar opened his perpendicularity, but she did, and also heard the tones, of course. Not true - Melishi designed the protection devices for them, which required knowledge of fabrials. With Sibling being a giant fabrial, it stands to reason that an artifabrian Bondsmith could do much more with it - as Navani indeed proved. In fact, the only reason they had been able to reverse the damage so quickly were Navani's skills and profound understanding of the matter. I wanted Rlain to become a Bondmisth, but his lack of any particular interest in fabrials and civil engineering, made me peg him for the Nightwatcher's one. Alas... Sanderson could have quickly established that Rlain developed those interests during the gap and let him be more active in the attempts to bridge the divide between singers and humans if he wanted to present him as a serious/better candidate. As is, I wouldn't have found Rlain bonding the Sibling very satisfying. He just didn't accomplish enough to become a Bondsmith. The Sibling only wanted him because of their anti-human prejudice. I still very much hope that the third Bondsmith is going to be a singer, but I am at loss at who it could be, unless Rlain or one of the new listener Willshapers dual-bonds. I thought that RoW flashbacks would flesh out some of the surviving listeners, but it didn't really happen. Maybe Thude?

It has been established from the beginning that the Radiants used to number in the thousands, so their powers being restricted to a handful of people was never in the cards. We also learned in WoR from the epigraphs that the Orders expanded rapidly during the Desolations. It would have also been incredibly cheap and tropy if a small group of inexperienced new Radiants had succeeded where thousands of experienced ones in the past have failed. It is already on the edge of being ludicrous as far as I am concerned, and I don't want it to tip over. Also, that's why I dislike superheroes - they hoard their abilities so that they can remain very special and very important. Which, by a very convenient coincidence makes them into the arbiters of right and wrong. Funny, that. They say that other people can't be trusted with teh Power, but of course they'd say that, wouldn't they? Those who hold power and don't want to share it always do. I suspect that we'll lose at least one of Kholin Bondsmiths in book 5. If it is Dalinar, which is most likely, then the Skybreaker connection will fall away. For that matter, in such a case Kaladin will probably become less strongly aligned with Kholins and more independant as well. That's if he doesn't succeed Dalinar as the Stormfather's Bondsmith and bearer of Honor's remaining authority, for which there are a lot of hints. In such a case, he'd have more political and military power than the remaining Kholins combined. Shallan is not the head of all Lightweavers, just a leader of 2 dozen of them or so. In fact, most Orders likely don't have strict hierarchical organization and a single leader, so Kholins being/becoming members shouldn't matter overly much. But as to the narrative importance, well, the main PoV characters are who they are, and of course they are the ones who are movers and shakers, rather than the tertiary or bit characters. Personally, I do like observer protagonists, who are not all that important, active or powerful themselves, but provide a window on the characters who are, but this approach has fallen out of style and has never been Sanderson's way of doing things in the first place. Apart from her consistently exhibiting Bondsmithy qualities and attracting gloryspren on at least a couple of occasions? Or beginning to see into Shadesmar in early RoW? Dabbid is a wonderful man, but he has zero commonality with what a Bondsmith is supposed to be. Making him one would have been just a subversion for the sake of subversion and felt completely out of place. He'd make a great Edgedancer, though! Rlain could have fit very nicely, but he needed to be written as much more independently active in RoW and shown to have worked with artifabrians during the year gap. It had been pretty clear since OB that the Sibling's Bondsmith needed to be into fabrials.

But shouldn't Urithiru have been the repository of critical knowledge? It never fell during either the true or the false Desolations. It was a big self-sustaining city. If they kept both the written records/manuals and a pool of people with requisite skills safe there, and had them train as many others as possible after a Desolation was over, they should have been able to maintain their tech level. It wouldn't have worked with 19th century and later technologies, but keeping everything before that should have been doable. The singers had an advantage back before the advent of the Radiants that the Fused, who were still largely sane, came back with their artisan/technological skills undiminished and could quickly re-teach them to their people, since they numbered in the thousands. The Heralds just didn't have the time for that, with there being just 10 of them. Still, it does seem very odd that during the False Desolation the singers under Bo-Ado-Mishram's leadership were able to successfully oppose the Radiants even without the Fused, with just the Regals. Because in SoA newbie Radiants seem to greatly outclass the Fused and are all but unkillable. Sure, the Regals back then were likely much more capable, but they'd still die easily compared to the Radiants and unlike the Fused, they couldn't come back, so with every one lost, their skill and knowledge would have been lost too. I hope that Sanderson provides a good explanation for this discrepancy, beyond it being a hoary fantasy/video game trope that unlikely heroes are always much better and quickly grow to be dratsically more powerful than trained professionals.

But didn't RoW prove that Melishi had been the Sibling's Bondsmith? Wouldn't they have noticed if he was Ishar? Given that there is something different about Herald's souls according to Ivory in OB and that Ishar must have visited Urithiru before Aharietam...

But what about when Shallan mentally entered Shadesmar using just a dim sphere for stormlight and Jasnah had to pull her out? Surely Testament and/or Pattern had to be hanging around in the Cognitive close to Shallan then! Maybe. Ivory does have communication problems, so it isn't impossible.

Hm, if Testament caught up to Shallan in Kharbranth, Jasnah should have been able to see the deadeye when she performed Soulcastings or looked into the Cognitive. Ditto detect Pattern following and observing Shallan. Yet Jasnah seemed oblivious to anything extraordinary about her ward after Soulcasting her blood and tried to give her the boot for theft. Hm... BTW, another difference between Shallan and the Recreants may have been that she didn't break her First Oath, just her Truths, while they might have done so.

I wonder why T. thought that Malata would accept the truth and be content with Kharbranth's protection. Isn't she a Veden? Maybe she and Delgo(?) are married in?

I have seen folks jump to the conclusion that El practices hemalurgy, but this seems very implausible to me because TLR's Ascension when it was first "invented" on _Scadrial_, the planet half created by Ruin, was only 1300 years before current SA events. I.e. during the Fused long confinement in non-corporeal state on Braize. Additionally, even on Scadrial hemalurgy wasn't discovered normally, but handed to TLR by Ruin himself. It is a precision art where one needs to know exactly what they are doing and intend the result. I can't imagine people from a planet invested by a different Shard beating Scadrians by millennia in the discovery of Ruin's own magical art! OTOH, we know that native Rosharan animals, including the singers are basically living "new" fabrials, with spren captured in their gemhearts. So, doesn't it make more sense if El's metal inclusions are basically fabrial cages and he uses them to amplify and modulate his surge, exactly like Navani's lecture describes re: fabrial spren? That would allow him to get much more from his ability/form than the other Fused do.

Isn't Kalak really close to cracking the problem of getting himself out of Roshar system? And isn't it likely that the solution could be applied to the bonded Radiant spren too? I imagine that while no more oaths are going to be sworn in his proximity, Shallan as a Lightweaver can somewhat help with his mental state so that he finally achieves the breakthrough. And Hoid will reap the rewards of his involvement as always, heh. I am now wholly certain that Hoid will leave Roshar with Design in tow. I am somewhat unsure about this "war" between Shallan/Radiants and the Ghostbloods. IMHO, Mraize seriously overstepped and made lots of mistakes. His superiors might see how stupid and costly this conflict would be and throw him to the greatshells. I don't expect Thaidakar to show up in person, but he might send his "avatar" to negotiate/deal with Mraize. I agree. And the next cycle would start after he and Syl had been killed with the anti-stormlight? Because the Fused don't need to bother with the torture anymore. I don't see it. Maybe if Szeth is the one to go instead? IMHO, Kaladin is being set up as Dalinar's successor and eventually the next Honor. He is bringing humans and singers together, he is stepping away from fighting... Stormfather has been Connecting with him a lot. "Son of Tanavast", etc. Syl and the Stormfather sharing him is going to be hilarious ;).

At first I was confused by the "violet-blue glowing at the joints" and have been wondering why a future Willshaper behaved so contrary to their SA nature. Not to mention spoke like a Skybreaker. And, of course, why he didn't show his face. Rosharans are used to an oxygen-rich atmosphere, true, but it shouldn't have mattered for a surge-binder with access to investiture. Flying I at first attributed to the future fabrial tech. But now it occurs to me that RoW spoiler: In any case, both Scadrians and Rosharans come across as quite villanious in this. I am also at loss as to why Scadrians would be so interested in Aviar, as so far everything that we have seen the Aviar could do, the Metallic Arts can do better. Mistborn Era 2 spoiler: Mistborn SH, RoW spoilers:

Actually, the Fused are closer, as they are cognitive shadows stapled to a body, like he is. But maybe he'd prefer the Herald type of embodiment to get rid of the spike as the conduit to Harmony's influence. But yes, Kalak also knows things that they want to learn. Hm... If the Ghostblood dagger is different from the Fused one and atium is better at stealing investiture than raysium, then what happened to Jezrien wouldn't have necessarily happened to Kalak? I still don't understand how Jezrien's cognitive shadow could have faded so quickly if he was trapped in a perfect gemstone. Investiture isn't supposed to be able to leave it, so it shouldn't have mattered that his influx of it was capped. But maybe someone sabotaged the stone - or cutting Jezrien off from the Oathpact allowed him to choose death, as he had been unable to before. Do the Ghostbloods want BAM as a portable source of voidlight? Do they think that she could allow them to manipulate Connections of Rosharan investiture so that it can be easily transported? Why didn't they just try to trade information with Kalak - he wants to get out of Rosharan system as badly as Thaidakar wants off Scadrial, why not pool resources instead of hunting him down? This whole operation seems severely bungled to me. I hope that Mraize gets his come-uppance not from the heroes, but from his superiors.

Interestingly enough, that wasn't her actual wish, as Wyndle pointed out in her Interlude, her _actual_ wish was: "I said when everything else is going wrong, I want to be the same. I want to stay me. Not become someone else." If Cultivation's boon endures through an Ascension to a Shard and Lift becomes a Vessel, this could be huge. As it would prevent the Shard from changing and subsuming her personality, ever! And BTW, there is a WoB that a Vessel can lay down their Shard without dying, so maybe that's what Cultivation is planning for. Perhaps she feels that she has become too much of a slave to her Shard's Intent to be effective and is cultivating a superior replacement that would not have this problem.

Why? It was glowing, it was drastically changing shape and size for Shallan's convenience, and she even thought to herself that she couldn't use Pattern to move around illusions like she did on previous occasions due to... something, which turned out to be that he was the shardblade she lent to Kaladin. And that was at the time when she believed that Pattern was separate from "the fruit of her sin". She didn't want to aknowledge that Pattern could be a shardblade. If Testament's blade was already so much more "alive", then shouldn't she have been more like RoW Mayalaran in the Cognitive realm? I also don't think it likely that Shallan was further than on her second Truth/Third Ideal as a child. IMHO, it wouldn't make sense, given the fact that higher Ideals tend to be much more difficult and painful and require deep soul-searching. A child shouldn't be capable of doing this, they are still too malleable and changing too much.

This is wrong, she explicitely used Pattern as a blade to open the Oathgate and save them all at the end of WoR:

Kalak thinks that it was the Ghostbloods who killed Jezrien, but we know that it was Moash at the behest of the Fused. So, how did the Ghostbloods get the rare raysium dagger? For that matter, can it be that the Ghostbloods were the ones who designed the knives and shared this technology with the Fused in exchange for getting trapped Herald souls, which they promised to take off-world, i.e. "somewhere safe" per Raboniel? To me it looks like there is a much deeper level of cooperation between the 2 parties than is immediately obvious. And Thaidakar is really playing with fire concerning the safety of his own planet. I kinda wonder about this. It is up to Sanderson, of course, but the Heralds did channel enormous amounts of investiture in the past, due to inefficency of the Honorblades and their direct tap to Honor, and if that was not enough to make them properly persistent cognitive shadows without the Oathpact, it seems that nothing on Roshar can, short of being a former Vessel*. Can it be instead that Jezrien did have enough investiture to linger, but being cut off from the Oathpact finally let him _chose_ to move on and die for good? Also, if he was trapped in a perfect gemstone, investiture shouldn't have leaked out of it at all, should it? Like in Mistborn the Secret History: *Speaking of which, Rayse seems just the kind of person to hang around after death to me. But maybe (hopefully!) dying by Nightblood precludes it. P.S: Ghostblood's confidence in their ability to trap a Herald and bring them to another planet means that they have already succeeded in transporting normal spren out of Rosharan system, right? Which is very exciting for a number of reasons. Particularly if spren bonds aren't cut by this, just temporarily disabled.

I suspect that there were a few erased conversations in-between that we weren't shown, until TOdium was content with his deception. Deleting just _one_ recording shouldn't have dropped Hoid under the second heightening, surely? I do find it surprising that Odium could manipulate Breaths like that, though. The Mistborn analogy doesn't exactly fit, because Breaths belong to an entirely different Shard.

@Jofwu: Shallan specifically used Patternblade to operate the Oathgate for the first time during the clash of two storms, didn't she? And that was _before_ she swore the Truth about her mother. IMHO, all of her shardblade summonings in WoR were of Pattern. I don't think that she could have begun to repair her bond to Testament while denying her deadeye's very existence. Concerning her re-swearing the First Ideal, she was working on the materials about the Desolations and the Radiants, during her time at Kharbranth. It might have inadvertently happened then, somehow? Not sure about it. Maybe it wasn't broken in the first place, as Shallan continued fighting against the darkness consuming her family after coming out of her catatonia. I do wonder what is so special about Shallan that Pattern told her in OB that if he died, she'd be sent (yet) another Cryptic. Or was he indirectly trying to jolt her out of her obliviousness? What confuses me most is that Shallan briefly remembered using a Ghostblood communication device as a child - and that her parents had been quarelling "about her future" _before_ she attracted Testament. "She is one of them!" may not apply to Shallan's Radiance at all! But then, what could it possibly mean instead?

There is also the fact that while Cultivation surely would have killed R.Odium if given such an opening, she probably won't do it to T.Odium. So he could take this wound without the Vessel dying. IMHO, the narrative made us focus on and fear all the ways that Odium could be released through the actions of Honor's heir - but he is being imprisoned "by the powers of Honor _and Cultivation_." So, what happens if _Cultivation_ choses to remove her restraints? As she very well might, now? Besides, T.Odium likely won't have any objections to uniting his Shard with other Shards, and Cultivation appears rather incautious around him, so it is fairly likely that he will kill the Vessel in the short order and meld their Shards into something with a new and even more terrifying Intent. Speaking of Odium's champion being Gavinor, I find it all too likely. He is old enough to hate and to be counted as consciously willing, IMHO. And T. had been thinking a lot about how he loved having Dalinar at his side before his Ascencion, so he'd want to grab his soul as much as Rayse did. Also, I wouldn't be so sure that Odium won't be able to send the Fused out in the Cosmere as his agents per this contract. Which, BTW, doesn't seem to have any time limitation specified? Is it still a thousand years from the initial draft? Since provisions about Hoid still apply, even though Dalinar didn't reiterate them in the final wording.

No, Dalinar leveled up in OB to save the day. That's the third time in a row that a power-up in a nick of time was used to solve the climax of a book. This is becoming seriously repetitive, IMHO - time to try something new. If Kaladin will indeed be Dalinar's champion, he'll get his chance again (for the third time!) in book 5. I wonder if Zahel's method of infusing stormlight is going to be disrupted, given that it doesn't depend on a spren bond. Beyond that, I have to think about the "Zatoichi" series of Japanese katana films. The titular character in it is a blind swordsman and many of his moves have him only partially unsheathe his sword. Nightblood is a very different blade, of course, but if somebody invented similar techniques for it, it could be used relatively safely without the massive investiture influx. And as it happens, Szeth is a martial artist who had little to do for a whole year and must have been considering how he could use Nightblood in non-suicidal ways without having oceans of stormlight at his disposal. And maybe his odd revival, that Zahel specifically pointed out for some reason in chapter 15, will also become somehow significant? Now, I don't think of it as a serious possibility, but while Lift's access to surges was affected by the Radiance supression fabrial, I don't think that her ability to turn food into investiture should be. I have entertained the idea that adult Lift might become a bearer of Nightblood, given their chemistry in OB, but it is hugely unlikely that Sanderson goes in this direction in RoW, while she is still a kid.

I had a theory that Zahel would heal Taln using up his one miracle, but one of the reddit WoBs in the preview chapters discussions made me think that Sanderson likely intends for Zahel to continue being yet another of the long-lived/immortal dudes knocking around the cosmere. No, I am not hunting it down. In any case, IMHO Azure would have to be present for it, to explain the event to the SA-only readers and add to the emotional pay-off, and there is a WoB along the lines of "we will see one of the Nalthians and another will be mentioned" in RoW, so she is MIA for this one.

My preference would be for the normal people and the de-powered Radiants to deal with the Fused using the new fabrials and their own ingenuity*. And for Navani to bond the Sibling/ Kaladin to swear his Fourth Ideal if he does, only after the immediate crisis has been averted. I am really tired of Kaladin leveling up in the nick of time and saving the day. Let him be one of the many contributing to victory, instead of the the lone super-hero. IMHO the anti-Odium's side historically depending on the Heralds/Radiants so much was a trap that led to the repeated destruction of their civilization. Even at their height the Radiants weren't numerous enough to protect infrastructure. *and liberal application of Nightblood, of course.

You appear to be talking about the pre-singer conquest Alethkar that no longer exists and is therefore not relevant to this discussion. As seen in this very chapter, Urithiru has become a melting pot where people are no longer organized and settled by princedoms. The camps on the Shattered Plains have lost their leadership, are ripe for a take-over, and didn't have the kind of entrenched local customs that you bring up in the first place. We have no clue how things are in the territories in southern Alethkar that are still in human hands. In any case, Alethi society is already undergoing a huge, traumatic change, which distinguishes it from Austrian Empire of Joseph II's time, where people felt that he came and kicked over an anthill that was functioning more or less smoothly. In the aforementioned diaries of Russian intellectuals, the Tsar et al. were popular even after the disaster that was the 1905. In fact, these people often remained quite loyalist even as late as 1916. And then - what change the next 4 or so years brought! The circumstances are so wildly different that it isn't much like what happened in Austria at all. There is no hint of commoners in Urithiru being dissatisfied with Jasnah - in fact, the chapter where Kaladin goes out for drinks with Adolin and Shallan suggests the opposite. There is no hint of Jasnah trying to micromanage and centralise everything, like Joseph II did, or producing thousands of edicts in a short time, etc. And of course, there was no equivalent to the displacement of a whole nation, an apocalyptic war against another species, and the most powerful and essential people for the military effort coming from the lowest class. You want slow reforms, or maybe just for Jasnah to fail, but her failing in this particular undertaking doesn't fit the SA setting, IMHO. Alethi being able to successfully hold out against Odium while practicing human slavery wouldn't be believable. Odium is hatred, and slavery is a very fertile ground for it to grow and fester. P.S. I do feel that it was a misstep for Jasnah to say that she was going to do it because of her ethical values, instead of enumerating all the rational reasons for why abolition of slavery is necessary in their situation. I hope that this is being saved for a scene where she wrangles the Highprinces on-screen. I also feel that there should have been a much larger reaction and pushback to Dalinar's announcement that Almighty was dead, and because of that not worthy of being worshipped as a god (a very dubious idea by RL historical standards) than what we got, but religion is a tricky thing. It is difficult to understand why trying to implement changes to it IRL or coming up with a new one usually didn't work, but in rare cases was spectacularly successful in a short order. And for that matter I feel that handling masses of refugees should have been a much greater problem for Alethkar -in-exile and featured prominently. Instead we only saw it in the singer-occupied territory.

I hope that it is either Rlain or Taravangian. Either one would be much more interesting than Moash, IMHO. My preference would be Rlain, since RoW is a bit too human-dominated for a "singer" book for my taste. But Taravangian would be interesting too, particularly since I suspect that he'll die at the end of this installment. @Realmatic Shadow: There is a WoB that Szeth will only get one Interlude, but Taravangian might well get main story chapters, since Lirin's PoV in Part 1 seems to have been a one-off.