agrabes

Yeah, that is a good point. And to be fair, I'm not saying that support characters "must" have limited roles. It's just that in a lot of cases if everyone in the story including the secondary and tertiary characters have the same powers as the main characters it reduces the feeling of the main characters being special. It makes the radiants feel that much more powerful if you have a guy like Adolin who on Page 1 of tWoK was one of the most powerful people on Roshar gradually become relatively less and less powerful. It's a good measuring stick for our main characters' progress. I'm a little torn on the whole "secondary characters becoming radiants" issue though. On the one hand, as I mentioned above, having too many people become too powerful takes away our point of reference for how powerful they are. On the other, realistically we need a lot of radiants. The impression we get (this may ultimately prove to be wrong) is that a force of hundreds of radiants is necessary to fight Odium and that the spren themselves recognize this and try to form bonds in times of need to create more radiants. So, we're probably going to have a lot of radiants by the end of SA5. With that in mind, it does make sense for at least some of those new radiants to come from the ranks of our secondary characters. From my perspective though, I think Adolin is more interesting if he's not a radiant. If he basically gets the best "dead" shardblade ever, that makes him unique and unlike the main characters who are all Radiants. It gives him his own space to be good without having to directly compete for greatness with our main heroes.

That's the issue though - I don't think that in the world of the Stormlight Archive the Skybreakers order subscribes to the Natural Law argument you're talking about. There may be some philosophers who've reached that belief, but there's no implication in the books that it is actually a restriction on how the Skybreakers function. In fact, Sanderson has implied the opposite - that the Skybreakers are an order who have significantly differing interpretations of what is right. I think the fact that Nale exists as a 5th Ideal Skybreaker proves that. If his actions and intent were in conflict with the 5th Ideal, he would have broken his oath and lost his power as a Radiant. It comes down to the nature of philosophy - philosophers can argue that the proper way for law and society to be established is on the basis of natural law and that there are certain rights which all people must have by nature. That's a fine argument, as far as it goes. It doesn't mean that it's a law of physics though - people are free to establish human laws that are contrary to what might be considered natural law. Societies built on laws that we would today consider a violation of certain freedoms or that enforce things many of us in western society would consider inequalities today can be long lasting, stable, and good for most of the people living within them. Natural Law is a theory of philosophy, not an actual set of laws and there is debate among philosophers as to what the correct "natural law" is. Don't get me wrong, the philosophy of Natural Law has done a lot of good for us here in the real world. I just don't think that it's solid enough or codified enough to be something that is going to make an appearance in the Stormlight Archive as a hard coded morality ruleset for the Skybreakers.

I don't think there's any implication that it's necessary to agree with your interpretation of the law's purpose in order to reach the 5th Ideal. I don't disagree that your definition of the law's purpose is a good one, but it's not the only one. For example, I believe that someone like the Lord Ruler from Mistborn could achieve the 5th Ideal. He was in favor of extremely strong law and order and was consistent with those laws, but was also in favor of killing good people. If a person sincerely believes in a system of law and order set up to serve a purpose they believe in, then I think that person can achieve the 5th Ideal of the Skybreakers.

I think the reason a lot of people don't want to see Adolin gain powers, or maybe think that he won't, or that he shouldn't is because of his position in the story. He is a side character. It's sort of a rule of the genre that the side characters have two options in terms of power level: be weak but still a relatively important part of the story, or be strong but off doing their own thing independently of the main heroes. I think we are going to see this start to shake out - the Bridge 4 Radiants, Malata, and others are not going to be parts of the story hardly at all while Navani and Dalinar stay on screen. To me, wanting Adolin to become a radiant is a lot like saying "Why can't Alfred become a superhero in his own right to fight alongside Batman?" It just doesn't feel right. What's great about Alfred or other side characters is that they are different from our main heroes. They have strengths that fill in the gaps and weaknesses of the main characters. If Alfred was instead just another "Batman", that would be pretty lame for the story. We already have Robin to fill that role. The story needs an Alfred to be good. It needs our main characters to have someone that is a non-hero to fall back on. Someone who isn't a bad person, but just isn't up to that role of fighting evil on a day to day basis. To me, that is the role of characters like Adolin or Navani. They make what the main heroes do more meaningful by contrast. You see two people who are both super competent in their own ways but just aren't right for the jobs that are done by people like Kaladin, Shallan, Dalinar, etc. So to pull it back to your superhero analogy, I don't want him to be Hawkeye or Captain America. I want him to be something like James Rhodes/Warmachine - someone who can go out and fight evil if he needs to but it's not his day job. He's out there as a military officer doing the normal fighting stuff in the mundane everyday sense most of the time, coming home at night to the family. Then, when the chips are down he can suit up and provide some help to the heroes. He almost serves as a liaison between the Radiants and the Alethi as someone who's partially both but not fully either.

I think that has some contribution, I think the other major factor is the type of recruits and leadership they were getting. There is a WoB out there saying that Skybreakers can interpret this ideal differently. It's equally valid for a Skybreaker to take a generally good path of upholding justice and fairness and for a Skybreaker to go down the Judge Dredd path so long as they sincerely believe it. So, I don't think it's inconsistent with their mission of killing proto-radiants to be a full fledged 5th Ideal Skybreaker. I think it's just the types of candidates that Nale is bringing in that are generally not of high enough quality. In a lot of the scenes where you see Nale with his acolytes, they just want to kill people. I can't remember whether this was in Edgedancer or one of the interludes, but Nale has to hold them back from just killing people without the proper paperwork. Also Szeth's training scenes indicate that most of the Skybreaker candidates are not exactly great people. I think we're shown these scenes to point out to us that Skybreakers (like the real world police) should normally be a mixed group with some "good cops" and some "bad cops" but Nale has selected primarily only the "bad cop" types. People who want the power to kill and are willing to use the law to justify it after the fact. I think this stops them from advancing far in their oaths. The ideals of the Skybreakers are to uphold the law as their primary value. The current group seems to uphold power and killing as their primary value, with the law a means to an end.

To elaborate I would like to see the Parsh split into 3 factions: 1) Pro-Odium: The Fused's faction. 2) Pro-Human: Rlain's faction - a faction that wants to join in with the humans Radiant Alliance as full members. They forgive the humans for enslaving the parsh at least for the most part and just want to become equal members of the human society. 3) Anti-Odium, Anti-Human: Venli's faction - a faction that doesn't want to be ruled by Odium and the fused and actively fights them, but also hates the humans and does not want to become a part of their fight against Odium. They will fight their own separate war against Odium, not allied to the humans and radiants. I think over the course of SA4 and SA5, they become allies to the Radiants, but not close members of the Radiant/Human group. Sort of like the Soviet Union in WW2, allies by necessity but not friends. I'm not sure if this would actually happen, but it would be fun if it did.

Here are my hopes: More Radiant orders and how they work Consequences and real repentance for Szeth Serious investigations into how to make Urithiru work again Discussion about the economics of Alethkar and Urithiru, food supply, etc Balance of safety of Urithiru vs. the difficulty of supporting a population there without having the ability to grow food. This will probably lead to farms being maintained somewhere else, requiring protection of those farms from the Fused which will probably be iffy at best, taxing or overtaxing the soulcasters, etc More political negotiations: Dalinar/Radiants to Human Nations, Internal Alethkar/Radiants Politics such as Sadeas' murder, Parsh self-determination - choosing whether or not they want to follow the Fused, join the humans, or form their own third Parsh only faction. Rlain forms a pro-human Parsh element, Venli forms a Parsh "independence" element that is opposed to both humans and Odium. The two of them try to negotiate with each other and the humans, while dodging Odium and the Fused. Character progress for Shallan - confronting at least some of the things she tried to run from in OB Information on Shallan's brothers and what the Davar family has been up to Kaladin says the 4th Oath and learns to use shardplate in the middle of the book, only to find that plate alone is not enough for him to do some critical plot related task later in the book, pushing him to strive for the 5th Oath in SA5. Romance plot development for Kaladin Adolin's shardblade becomes the best "dead" blade ever and he may even gain the ability to talk to it, but he never becomes a radiant or truly revives the spren. Rock as the only Bridge 4 member with significant screen time, the others fade into the background so they don't take screen time from other key events and characters Worldhoppers, including Hoid, stay in the background as very minor characters. They should only become part of the main plot when the plot is about them, not steal the spotlight from our Rosharan friends. My preference is that in SA5 the Rosharans/Radiants start to realize that there are people from other worlds among them and try to decide what to do about it. Maybe it's Shallan's big revelation at the end of SA4 that the Ghostbloods include worldhoppers and she reports it to Dalinar who has to decide what to do leading into SA5. Nightblood is returned to Nalthis by Vivenna or stolen by another worldhopper while Szeth is in prison and exits the SA story entirely. He's basically a cheat code right now, not fun to read about.

It is true, Tarah left when Kaladin needed her. But, I also think that we don't know the full story on that - we don't know for sure what she was thinking. Wasn't that a scene that we only have from Kaladin's memories, not a flashback? I think if we saw it from her perspective, we would see that she wanted him to come with her or to really try to stop her from leaving. I think she was trying to drag him out from wallowing in his guilt. I think she could see he was going into a bad place mentally, forgetting everything except his work of being a soldier and wanted to shock him out of it. She wanted to force him to take some agency in his life, to make a change for the better rather than just accept his life as a soldier and his self-imposed mission to make up for his inability to protect his brother. Kaladin just didn't understand that at the time, and probably still can't understand it as of the end of OB.

Probably depends on your definition of love triangle and what you think of Kaladin's "you remind me of my brother" "revelation" at the end of OB. In my view, if two people have romantic interest in the same person and decide to compete for their affection that is a love triangle. That definitely happened in OB. I don't think Shallan/Kaladin was "thing" in the sense that it was a one sided interest from Kaladin, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a love triangle. IMO, it's pretty common for a love triangle plot to have one side of it be unrequited or mostly unrequited. I don't think you could call it an attempt to escape growth from Kaladin's side either, it was an attempt to seek growth, an attempt to let go of his slavish devotion to his men and his work and go after something that he wanted for himself. And he learned something about himself by doing it, so I would say he did achieve growth. It's hard to say much about Shallan's side with how messed up she was mentally during OB when Kaladin was trying to get serious about it. I personally think Kaladin has shown that having a romantic relationship is important to him, or at least having a relationship that brings him joy and is not one that is a burden/responsibility to him. In his mind (and seemingly Syl's) he seems to believe that a romance is the place he can find that, but maybe he'll learn in Book 4 that he can have it from platonic friends. There are hints he might be headed down that path. If you look at the close relationships he has in the book so far (other than with Syl), they are all the type of relationship where he gives more than he gets in return. His closest friends are all in Bridge 4 and while they are friends and make him happy he also sees them first and foremost as an obligation and duty. He is looking for someone who can be on a more level footing with him - where they each support each other. That's what he saw in Shallan, but that didn't work out. Adolin could become that for him, but they aren't close emotionally as of the end of OB. Shallan could become that as a platonic friend, but I have a feeling they will not try to become close friends out of respect for Adolin and Shallan's marriage. So, I could see really any of the primary romance candidates of Laral, Tarrah, or even Rysn as being that person for him. I think before he does get in a relationship though, he has to develop more as a person. I could really see a budding relationship push him toward personal growth and learning to let go and accept that it's OK for him to build relationships in pursuit of his own goals. If he does meet up with Tarrah again, I think that would be an easy way for it to happen. He knows what he did wrong to lose her, it's just a matter of whether or not he is willing to change his ways. So it would come up - hey Kaladin you idiot you can't just live your life for your fellow soldiers and sacrifice everything for others. She's already shown that she is her own woman and would not put up with Kaladin trying to "rescue" her. I think she wanted to rescue him from himself when they first met in the aftermath of his brother's death. We only have Kaladin's memories of their relationship, but I imagine if we saw it from a more neutral eye we would learn there's a lot more to her than we've seen so far. Whether or not they actually get together, I think meeting Tarrah again will be good for Kaladin.

Personally, I think the similarities you are seeing are probably more due to Sanderson's style as an author. He has certain character archetypes that he likes to re-use and certain ways he likes to write certain kinds of scenes. For example, in point 2 you talk about how they have similar mannerisms, but I think that is more likely to be caused by the fact that Sanderson writes scenes of people at ease with their friends in the same general way across his different books. What I think are different about the two is that Spensa is very much a girl who loves being physical, doing things with her hands, hunting, climbing, fighting, etc. She is aggressive and goes directly after what she wants without subtlety. She knows exactly who she is and has no reservations about that and doesn't pretend to be someone else (outside of spy missions). Shallan is different. She is not a physical person, she prefers intellectual exercises like research and art. Shallan is naturally shy and doesn't want to go after her goals directly. She can overcome her shyness and do what needs to be done, but she's not naturally ambitious and aggressive like Spensa. Shallan is also the type of person who feels she needs to put on a face for other people, to the point that she literally split herself into three people because she wanted to be what she thought other people expected of her. You can argue that the influence of society, life experiences, etc have caused them to diverge more than they would have otherwise, but I don't know if that's a meaningful argument. People are who they are based on their life experiences, you can't take that away and try to create some kind of "base" personality. Or, if you can we haven't figured out how yet in science or philosophy. From my perspective, I like both characters, but I don't think you can draw anything from Spensa to see a future Shallan. They are too different. They have each been shaped by their own life experiences. Let's not forget, Spensa's father died when she was young and her whole family was disgraced and pushed down to the lowest rungs of society by what he did in his final hours. She's experienced her own trauma, though it was very different from Shallan's. So it's not like Spensa is a Shallan without trauma. Shallan will always be a little more shy and hesistant, she won't be as ambitious and aggressive as Spensa. She will always love scholarly pursuits and art, while Spensa will never love those things. Spensa loves to fight in deadly combat, Shallan doesn't. They have some similarities, but also plenty of differences.

Yeah, that's fair enough. You could easily be right. I personally would prefer it if it's a mix of both - Heralds are strong but have weakness AND Odium's still playing it close to the chest and not exposing his true powers. To me, the idea of perfect/infinite healing is uninteresting especially if it's a common power. It's ok if there's one character with that ability in a story - then it's an interesting mystery to figure how or even if that character can be defeated. That's a big part of the plot of the first Mistborn book. If it's a standard thing that you have to overcome extreme healing every time you get in a fight, that gets boring at least to my taste.

I would say a slight edge to Skyward. I liked both a lot, but the downside of Starsight to me was that the story changed so abruptly from being about the plucky humans surviving against all odds in an austere environment to Spensa living as a spy in the ritzy alien capital in the blink of an eye. It felt like we didn't get much time at all for her to sort of consolidate her gains from Skyward before she was plunged into the new plot. Maybe if there could have been a few chapters where the (can't remember her name) new alien arrived on Detritus and sort of convinced Spensa to go or something. Then again, what do I know.. I loved both personally.

I do like your idea (that the Delvers only attack due to sensing negative emotions) but I'm not sure it has any supporting evidence. Especially with the slugs. The only thing we know about the slugs and their ability to jump is that when they do it in the Superiority ships, they scream so that every cytonic can hear it. They don't do it when they are just jumping around on their own. They do scream when Spensa probes out to them cytonically, but they also scream when she doesn't probe to them. My guess is that the Superiority does something bad to the slugs to make them jump - hence the screams. I get the sense that the reason the slugs are safe while humans are not is that the delvers start to hone in on someone or something that jumps too often. You see the one start to take particular notice of Spensa more and more the more often she jumps. So one possibility may be that the slugs are cycled out quickly. They only do one or two jumps before they are replaced. That doesn't totally make sense because MBot has only one slug. It also is contradicted by the fact that the slugs jump all the time on their own. I do think that the delvers do react to some extent to negative emotion. Or, it may be that when they see a more complex consciousness they see it as sort of a leader of the insects and prioritize it to be eliminated while they ignore the simple slugs. Who knows, it's a good thought though. And it might turn out to be right, or at least partially right.

I think the Heralds are definitely very powerful, but I also think they have to have the ability to be killed in a reasonable way otherwise it wouldn't have been possible for more than one of them to be killed in most desolations. I do think that you are right that Odium has way more powerful abilities/resources that he has not yet used, but even then if the Heralds had infinite healing power to the point that they could come back even if their entire physical body has been reduced to atoms it seems impossible for them to be killed. So I think that means we have to be missing some piece of how their power works. We know they were killed regularly. So something must be missing, there must be some weakness. I think it has to be one of three things: 1) The power of the two surges granted by the Honorblades are magnified greatly by being fueled directly by Honor, but not the healing property of stormlight. This would make sense and seems plausible because (I believe) we know that Radiants' healing abilities are granted by stormlight and we also know that being directly fueled by Honor, the Heralds did not need stormlight. We do not know for sure whether or not being directly fueled by Honor would grant healing abilities. I don't believe that healing abilities were granted in the Mistborn examples that people are talking about, only magnification of the existing powers held by the person who was fueled by the Shard. If that's true, then other than the Heralds who have healing abilities from their surges, the others do not have extraordinary healing powers. This means that if you can pin them down, wear them out, or overwhelm them somehow and get to them then you could kill them. However, this would not explain how it would be possible to kill a Herald with a healing surge. 2) The Fused, Unmade, or Odium himself have the ability to attack or disrupt the "spiritual template" referenced the WoB above. This would stop the healing abilities of the Herald. How they do this I don't know - but if all the Heralds really do have the extreme healing abilities it seems like this would be the only way to kill them. Get enough overwhelming power working against them that it severely damages their physical body while simultaneously attacking their "spiritual template". 3) In the first Desolation, when they were all mentally strong, the Heralds really couldn't be killed by any means. After the desolation, they went to Braize and eventually one of them broke under torture, losing mental resolve. After being broken thoroughly enough, the Heralds stopped having this "spiritual template" or just simply the force of will to continue on after suffering severe damage and the ones that had been broken allowed themselves to die. This seems impossible though, because we know Taln died at least once prior to being broken. What it comes down to is we have to reconcile two known facts that seem to be contradictory. I think the most obvious one to target is our knowledge about the Heralds' abilities. We don't know a lot about it yet, so we could easily be misinterpreting something about them. Just my thoughts.

Right, we know she would have been capable of doing it. Just not sure if she actually did it. There are cytonics in the Superiority that would be capable of FTL travel, but they aren't actually used for that purpose. But if she did say that she "was" the ship's engine then that seems pretty concrete.

Spensa's great grandmother worked in the engine room, but wasn't necessarily the means of FTL travel. In the Weights and Measures it seemed that they had a cytonic crew member who activated the slugs somehow. That could have been Spensa's great grandmother. Ha- my theories were also wrong so I guess we're in good company? I like the idea that the taynix might be related to the delvers in some way. I'm not sure if they are the larva form of Delvers, but don't really have much to back it up one way or another. They are bugs/slugs, so maybe they are the original pests that the Delvers get annoyed with, bringing their attention to the "dimension" or plane of existence that everyone in the story lives on and assuming that all cytonic activity sources are just pests that bother them? Regarding the DDF - I think the reason you see it get better is just complete organizational change. That can be very powerful in a military. Two armies with equal numbers and equipment do not perform equally. If one is demoralized, has poor leadership, poor training, less will to fight, institutional pride, etc then it will do much worse even if it has superior numbers and equipment. Ironsides seemed to have this desperate feeling to her - she was so scared that she just needed ships in the air no matter the quality. She threw raw cadets into harm's way. She was the one who created the expectations that the best pilots would actually be removed from fighting as a reward for their skill. Everything she did was focused on surviving just one more day. She created a culture that was defeatist. Compare that to Cobb - he instilled professionalism, skill, pride, value in the individual pilots. He planned for the future, he wanted to build up a strong military. He is just a better leader and he got more out of his troops. He did have some equipment advantages too, but his biggest advantage was the cultural and leadership advantage.

With all the restrictions on MBot's programming, I almost got the sense that they were afraid the Delvers (or some other enemy) could take AI's over. Things like - don't fly by yourself, don't engage your weapons by yourself, don't lie, don't reproduce. It makes me think of how in BattleStar Galactica, they build all their electronics in special ways to prevent them from being hacked by the Cylons. With the way MBot has acted, he really seems like he is no threat in the traditional "robots take over the world" sense. MBot uses cytonic computing which makes it seem like he would be opening himself up to bad signals coming in through cytonics. Maybe a powerful cytonic person could take him over if they knew what they were doing? Then again, maybe I'm just overthinking this and it's just the traditional AI fears. We still don't know a lot about the human wars and their causes. There being three wars makes me think of the three Punic wars (Rome/Carthage) in ancient history and wonder if there's a parallel. Here's my theory/speculation: 1st Human War: Humans start by trying to just operate in parallel to the Superiority, making allies with various alien species who are not "primary intelligence" but this leads to conflict. Eventually, the Superiority contrives a way to say the humans are dangerous and need to be destroyed. Maybe the humans accidentally summon a Delver? There is a long fight where neither side is really gaining much. Eventually, the humans and Superiority decide to make peace with mostly even terms. The humans feel resentment because they saw themselves are trying to help the oppressed species of the galaxy, but were painted as villains in the eyes of most of the galaxy. 2nd Human War: The humans resent the fact that the Superiority has painted them as villains, when they see the Superiority as the true villains. This time, they start the war with the intent of taking over the spot as the "leaders" of the galaxy to allow freedom of expression, etc. They lose a lot of their allies over this, who never wanted to start a war. They have some huge victories early on due to superior technology and skill at war, but over time due to sheer numbers they lose. They are nearly defeated and in desperation they decide to try to weaponize the Delvers, destroying Detritus. They surrender. This time there are extremely harsh penalties - humans are no longer allowed to have any kind of military. They have to pay reparations, they aren't allowed to travel FTL other than through Superiority transport. 3rd Human War: Humans are thriving because they dedicate all their resources to peaceful purposes. In secret, they've got some spy programs going on (MBot and others) to stay abreast of galaxywide events. This time, they try the diplomatic approach to change the way things are. Maybe ships like MBot are primarily used to spread human propaganda. They show the example of how successful and good the "overly aggressive" humans are, even though they don't lock up people with different views. The Superiority leadership decides they can't allow this challenge to their authority. They make fake charges that the humans are being dangerous again. The humans deny it, try to lobby against it through official channels, but to no avail. They are wiped out and sent to the "preserves" to keep the existing Superiority structure in power. The humans are only kept alive at all because after the fact, many of the Superiority leaders feel guilty about what they have done.

It's available for free on Sanderson's website. It's a short story set in the same universe, prequel to both Skyward and Starsight. It might be worth a read to help get a little context of the history. -Also, sorry for some spoilers for it, I assumed anyone on the Starsight spoiler board would have read all published books set in that universe. In the future, I'll label any DE spoilers. https://www.brandonsanderson.com/defending-elysium/

I would say that theory has a pretty low chance of being right. If you're halfway in (I'm not quite there yet), you know there is at least one other planet that allied with the humans - the planet of the person Spensa is impersonating. Also, if you tie in Defending Elysium and what we learned from there it doesn't seem like the humans are on the path of simple conquest. I think that conquest and empire could be part of their motivation, but everything coming from the current powers in the galaxy is heavy with propaganda. Were the humans fighting to wipe out life in the galaxy or were they just presenting an alternate form of government that was intolerable to the powers that be. I'm maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of the way through the book and it seems like the aliens from DE are still in charge of things. Still talking about "Primary Intelligence", locking up people who don't agree with the prevailing opinions of "peace", etc. My guess is that humans started these wars to interconnect the galaxy and free the social dissidents who were locked up by the alien overlords. But, that's the moral question set up by DE - is it right to lock up people who have differing views in the name of peace? Anyway to twinsuns7 - I'm a little behind you in reading but getting a similar vibe. I'm also getting the sense that the delvers may not be what we think they are. Could they be descendants of the political partisans we saw in DE? Maybe other escaped discontents?

I agree that people seem to be overestimating the Heralds. There are a few things we are missing/forgetting in this picture: 1) We really don't know the Heralds' true power level. We don't know (for example) that the power provided by the Honor Blades when they were tied directly to Honor would actually grant the healing capabilities of Stormlight or in the same way. It seems like the Heralds were very powerful in their strengths, but because each one only has a certain set of two powers (plus a possible healing ability), they likely had weaknesses. 2) We also may be over inflating their abilities based on the historical perceptions we see from the people of Roshar. It seems like a large part of the role of the Heralds was to come back and teach the humans how to live at basic levels. The way Taln talks about the past, it seems like society was so destroyed that they lost civilization and humans were living like cave men or early tribal societies. So it seems likely that only a few of the Heralds were actually powerful at fighting. The rest were probably still held up like gods by the people, but only because the people were so limited in the later desolations that they didn't understand the heralds weren't actually that far above them. 3) I think people are interpreting the wrong thing from that scene with Renarin and the Thunderclast. People are interpreting it like it means that a Radiant or Herald can survive being flattened so long as they have enough stormlight. I didn't read that as Renarin getting smashed into a pancake, then reforming himself and slicing out. It was more like he got out his shardblade and sliced just at the right moment to keep all the weight from coming down on him. It seemed to be pretty much instantaneous, the foot comes down then the shardblade pokes out. You see this kind of action scene in books and movies all the time. I think the Heralds can be killed in generally normal ways. It just takes the right moment. Catch them when they aren't looking, destroy their body so badly and so long that there's nothing left to heal. If the body of a Herald were completely smashed flat, or dissolved to atoms, or burned to ash, or decapitated, etc how does the healing even happen? Doesn't there have to be something to build from?

Jasnah does not strike me as a mathematician - someone interested in the pure advancement of means and methods of calculations and equations. Mathematicians like the Bourbaki say themselves that their driving principles are to come up with more pure and streamlined versions of existing mathematical theorems and/or to develop new theories. Their work is definitely very valuable to society, but the more advanced it gets the further it strays from practicality. You have to sift out the practical uses from the theory. Jasnah strikes me as a very practical person. She seems more like an engineer or a scientific researcher than a mathematician. She doesn't seem interested in developing theories for theories sake, she is interested in solving a particular problem that she has identified. Contrast that with the description of the Bourbaki you provided. They are not interested in solving a practical problem - they are simply interested in advancing the purity and rigor of mathematics as practiced by French mathematicians.

Yeah, it's really a matter of personal taste. I guess I personally see his entire character and over the top antics as part of his humor - annoying to me. All the things you're saying that could be positive definitely would be with most other characters. It's just because of the fact that his entire character is one big (and to me) unfunny joke, that anything he does is tainted by it. The idea of getting a group of handicapped people together who try to overcome their disabilities is great and uplifting, but I just have this feeling that with Lopen it would be played for laughs. With his arm, I totally agree it could be plausible that he (or someone else) could grow it back. But, the way it's played with his character is like "Ha ha ha! The great Lopen has always had two arms! You fools just couldn't see them both. Ha ha ha!" So rather than being uplifting, it comes off as a bad joke. If a more normal character had his arc, then I would be all on board. It feels like to me that the few scenes we do see of Lopen where he has the chance to go into a more serious mode, he doesn't. The arm scene is a good example - he could take a minute and really think about what it means and contemplate it internally in a serious way. But he doesn't. He just reacts in a goofy way. I could appreciate the character a lot more if you could get a sense that he acted in a goofy way because that's what he thought he needed to do, but underneath it all he is still a real person. I just don't get that sense. But it all comes down to is personal taste. I don't think there's anything wrong with Lopen, I just dislike his character.

If we did see Lopen running around with a band of one-armed soldiers as his potential squires, that would be yet another bad joke. There may be depth to Lopen, but so far the more depth we see the more corny jokes we see. His entire character concept seems to be a gag - the idea that he has dozens of cousins with random jokey jobs, the idea that someohow he never saw himself as having only one arm because he's just too stubborn and dumb to internalize the difference, etc. If it works for you, hey that's cool. I'm not going to say remove him from the story, but the humor does not work for me. I will add that I'm a little bit of a grinch when it comes to Bridge 4 though - even if we did one day find that Lopen is actually a very cool character that hides his insecurities with bad humor or something like that, I probably won't like it. I didn't like the Teft arc in OB, even though I actually like Teft as a character. It just seemed unnecessary. Rock is the only one from Bridge 4 that I would be interested in learning more about for his own sake. Though if there was an arc where Lopen learns to stop being a walking talking bad joke, that might actually be interesting and even funny. Maybe he becomes a lightweaver and his truth is that he is not funny, that he's making up all this crap in an attempt to be funny, and he needs to knock it off and become a normal human lol. Now that would be a side story I could appreciate.

For me personally the reason I'm on the fence for characters like Lift and Wayne and dislike characters like Lopen is that their humor just doesn't hit for me. I think based on various podcasts and other events, Sanderson has said that this is the style of humor that he likes. This and the puns. For me, it's a little too on the nose. I think he's even mentioned that he understands most people do not share his sense of humor and he intentionally tries to limit it in his books. With Lift and Wayne, they do have this annoying sense of humor but they also have other character traits that balance it out. Also, every now and again their jokes are at least a little funny. With Lopen, it feels like the more we've gotten to know him the worse he gets with the overly corny humor. It's like the more you peel back the layers the more of it that comes out. So, I guess to sum it up I think it's not that they bring some levity or comedic relief, it's that their style of comedy doesn't work for us.

I think you're being a little hard on Shallan. I can't say she doesn't do the things you say she does, because she does. But, I believe most of the things she's doing in the way she talks and interacts with other people are sort of a screen to keep from showing her true self and to do what she feels is necessary to appear powerful and in charge. I do think the one that really sticks to her is immature. She is immature and believes that she needs to put on a certain face to be accepted in society. You can see that there are times she has her walls up and times she doesn't. We should remember she is only 17 in Rosharan years (something like 19-20 in Earth years?) during the series, so I think as she gets more life experience she will grow up. A lot of the reason she could be called classist is because she is highly motivated to protect and improve her family's position. I wouldn't necessarily call that classist (or at least not a classist motivation), but it definitely can come off that way. She seems mean spirited at times because she likes to engage in verbal battles. I don't see anything wrong with that, especially considering that she can take it as good as she gives it (see her conversations with Kaladin where he responds back in kind). Not everyone is going to like that kind of humor or personality, but I appreciate it. I don't like her puns (ugghh, why does Sanderson love puns?? his greatest weakness haha), but her biting humor I like. It doesn't come across as mean spirited to me, it's all a game of who can cleverly walk the closest to the line without going over. You also notice she only plays it with Kaladin because she knows he's an equal player. She doesn't do it with Adolin (or others) because he doesn't have the kind of personality to appreciate it. I do agree she's probably not ready for a relationship, or at least not a marriage. Regarding the Syl/Kaladin ship, I can respect the people who favor it but it feels wrong to me. I think it was discussed earlier in this thread, or elsewhere, but it feels almost incestuous for there to be a relationship between Syl and Kaladin. Their bond and relationship feels very familial. Like, early on Kaladin is sort of the father who teaches Syl about the world and helps her understand what humans are like and why people do the things they do. Then, it's more like a big brother little sister relationship. It's moving more and more toward a relationship of equals, but still has that family aspect. For me, any kind of romance between the two of them would be a violation of that familial closeness.