agrabes

I'm not sure on Taravangian - I think he's said both before and after ascension that his goal is to save Roshar. And the idea of him conquering it in order to save it also tracks both before and after. So I'm not sure that he has bigger plans - I don't think he's planning to run off into the Cosmere and start conquering immediately. But, I do think he knows some things we as readers don't know about the overall state of the Cosmere. What those are, I'm not sure, but I get the sense he also feels threatened. I do agree though, I think just in terms of this battle/contest specifically he definitely has more tricks up his sleeve. The Alethi law thing is weird and doesn't really make complete sense like others have pointed out. Even taking these capital cities on its own is huge for Team Odium, without the weird technicalities of taking the city meaning taking the whole kingdom. Also the way it's couched in Taravangian being able to break the spirit of the agreement while Rayse couldn't doesn't feel right to me. It seems to be the nature of Shards that they can't go against their nature and I feel like going from "completely impossible to break the spirit of the deal" to "completely ignores the spirit of the deal" is a bridge too far. I think (I hope?) we'll find out this is an incorrect interpretation by "Frost's Sister" and Hoid.

Yeah, agreed. I'm still planning a full SA reread ahead of WaT's release and had previously felt like OB was not great but after rereading it I enjoyed it a lot more the second time around. I do wonder if I'll like RoW better the second time, but I'm not so sure. I think that what others have said is exactly how I'm feeling too - things feel just a bit fanservicey. Like in today's chapters, the nod toward fan slash pairings w/ Kaladin hugging Adolin longer than Shallan? Or him just directly saying his feelings about Shallan unprompted? Feels a bit awkward. Though I'm glad he did that one just because I feel like it was a bit awkward that he didn't address that situation at all in RoW.

I don't think Shallan will create a separate body for Radiant. It feels like the book is more foreshadowing that Radiant will be "reabsorbed" or whatever you want to call it similar to Veil. For example - the thoughts Shallan had where she corrected Radiant about the true nature of herself (saying that the shard blade was never her true weapon, etc). I see that as Shallan recognizing that Radiant is only one part of her self and that having the Radiant part of herself operate without the context of the rest of herself isn't going to end up with things going in the way that she wants. In this case "whole Shallan" knows that you can be brave and fight in other means than just with the sword, while Radiant can only think in terms of battle. I think that's strongly hinting that Shallan is getting better in terms of recognizing her own self as a whole person and that Radiant will fade into the background similar to how Veil was shown in earlier WaT chapters. Not making any commentary here about real life mental health conditions, only my interpretation of what I see happening in the book. Also, Kalak describes this capability to make a "solid" illusion as fleeting/ephemeral. Granted, Kalak could be wrong. But, I don't think so. It fits with the lightweaver theme too - that the things they create are illusions and fleeting, but even something that is short lived and not strictly "real" can still be deeply meaningful. So, I don't think it would make sense for Radiant to have its own body.

Not a huge fan of the Syladin ship personally, but agree with everything else. I think you could maybe say Kaladin did too much in the first two books, he does practically nothing in OB and RoW. I think he is going to play a bigger and more active role in this book though. If he does become King of Urithiru at some point in WaT then I think it makes sense both in terms of being prominent as far as on screen pagecount, since he's always been the male lead of the story and in terms of in universe justification since he has also been Dalinar's most trusted confidant since at least late WoR but really important since the end of WoK. If I was Dalinar, I would also choose him to be essentially leader of the Knights Radiant and associates. It would be really hard to put a non Radiant in charge of Urithiru (ruling out Alethi high princes, etc) and Kaladin is the logical choice if both Dalinar and Navani are out of the picture. Anyway, aside from all that I think if Kaladin does become king and survive/continue into the back 5 novels, I see it as a significant reduction in his role/on screen time. The king of Urithiru is going to spend most of their time bound up with administrative responsibilities and other duties to their people. So, whoever does take on that position is not going to be out actively adventuring or taking much on screen time. Every now and again, they'll get a scene pondering the future, offering advice, declaring war, etc, but they won't be driving the narrative. That's why I say it would make sense if he moves into that role for SA6+ and lets the younger generation take the lead. If you're more concerned about power creep, etc then I would say that becoming the Honor shard is even worse, though I don't know if you're in favor of that. To me, that just doesn't seem like a good fit for him. He doesn't seem to fit the type like Sazed or Taravangian who have always been focused on big picture items. I could see him in a Vin-like situation where he basically holds the shard very briefly and goes out in a blaze of glory but I like Kaladin so I hope that doesn't happen for him, personally.

Good call back to this death rattle. I think if we look bigger picture, this might be setting up things for SA6-10. It would make a lot of sense for Kaladin to essentially fill something like the Dalinar role in the back 5 of SA. This arc (WaT) is about him gaining the right mindset to become a high level leader. He's naturally good as a squad leader type, but when he was leading all the Windrunners it was just too much for him - he couldn't pull back and look at the big picture. Every loss crushed him. Chapter 6 was about Dalinar planting the seed that Kaladin is capable of being a leader like this and that he needs to forget his prejudices and take up the mantle. I'm not saying he couldn't take up the Honor shard but I don't really want that to happen. I feel like there is a lot of character growth left for Kaladin that can't happen if he becomes a Shard. I'd like to see him learn to become part of a family, to lead people and make hard choices, to learn to love himself and someone else. There has been a lot of foreshadowing (mostly in comments from Syl) that Kaladin needs to learn these things. I could see SA6-10 including a bit of sideplot where Kaladin gets to be happy and grow, since I expect he won't be a major character in those books. This is more my hope than a prediction though haha. In other thoughts about this chapter - I also liked how we got to see Szeth from an outside perspective. When we see him from inside his head, he seems mostly ok even if he's dealing with a lot of stuff. And our main POV characters tend to not interact with him much or even think about him - rightfully so since to them he is still mostly just the Assassin in White. So seeing Kaladin observe him as basically a dangerous crazy person is fun. And I think it sets up a fun storyline of the two of them getting to know each other, since the last time they spent any significant time interacting with each other it was a duel to the death. We also get to see more of what Szeth is really like, from the outside.

I think the quote "people begin to reconsider that the wind is not their enemy" is implying that people are starting to consider the wind as an enemy now. Since their original position is "the wind is not their enemy" it means that to reconsider that position they now feel the wind is their enemy. Which would potentially make sense - humans or listeners might easily have considered the wind just a force of nature. I wouldn't call a real life hurricane an enemy. But now with the Everstorm, it is truly an enemy since it is directly serving Odium. At least, that's my take.

Do we know if the Recreance was before or after they realized they'd created the Parshmen? I always took it as before/simultaneous where the bulk of them didn't know, if any did and their reasoning for the Recreance was not tied to the Parshmen. It seems like the "official story" in the book is that the Radiants learned they were the original Voidbringers and basically felt really bad when they learned their ancestors had invaded the planet thousands of years ago. They probably also learned of the dangers of their powers and decided that the right thing to do was to give them up in order to save the world. I always saw the BAM mission as basically "we'll do this now to end it for good, so let's make one last push before we give up our powers." Either way, yeah this will be really interesting when we find out.

I agree - I would also point out that we actually don't know that this was truly a safe that was effective in containing a shardblade. I have always taken it to have been just a regular safe. Lyn put the shardblade in there to lock it away physically but not magically. He likely wanted to take the blade for himself at some point after the crisis and horror of seeing it kill his wife, but he probably came back and found the safe empty. We also know that Shallan lies to herself - its easily possible she faked the memory of the blade being in the safe and/or that she faked the memory of it still being there when she went to get it again later. I'm not saying it isn't possible that he could have had a special aluminum or other anti-shardblade safe, but it seems really unlikely. I don't remember a mention of anyone else having one such as Dalinar/Adolin or any other of the people who used shardblades before Radiants came back. I also think it's unlikely that Chana would have had one. If it was something the Heralds knew about, they would have done that earlier on in the desolations. True, thousands of years have passed and they could learn something new, but it still seems really unlikely to me. If Chana and/or Lyn Davar knew that putting their honorblade in some kind of special safe could have stopped them from going to Braize, then I have to believe that at least some of the other Heralds knew it too. But we don't know of any other Heralds doing this.

Another thing I saw in the Prologue which seemed interesting to me was how the Stormfather talked about BAM. This is the basic story we knew, but slightly different. What we've heard before was that the Radiants captured BAM and hid her away because she was causing a semi-desolation. Basically, it was part of the war effort and the way to defeat the Voidbringers was to stop the source of their power. In this line, it implies that BAM had somehow gotten out of control and was risking the destruction of Roshar, so the Radiants sealed her up basically for her own good. Not because they needed to do it to win the war but because BAM was somehow becoming unstable. Maybe she was tied to Roshar in some way and was pulling the life force out of the planet? Draining too much investure? This was also the time when Honor was going a bit crazy - maybe he was ordering the Radiants to kill her and end the cycle and a few decided that they needed to go a different way. I suspect we'll learn more about this in WaT because Shallan and Adolin are trying to find her.

After reading the new version of the prologue, I am really excited for SA5 now. Just everything about this draft feels better. Gavilar's character fits way better with what we had seen from him before. The 2022 version showed Gavilar as a nasty power obsessed one dimensional person. This version shows him as, well, still nasty and power obsessed but no longer one dimensional. It shows us that he was always power-hungry (which we knew) but that things changed over time. That he was at one time both ambitious and still a mostly decent person, that he did really love Navani. It hints that back then, Navani was also a schemer who did some pretty shady stuff to help her husband rise to the top and he fully trusted her to help him even if he was doing distasteful things. It makes sense how people could have loved him and looked up to him, he reminds me of people in my own life. If any of you work in the corporate world - he reminds me of how there are two different types of ambitious people. One is out only for themselves and will do whatever it takes to get to the top, the other is also out 90% for themselves, but still has enough decency to take care of the people who they are leading and try to gain power mostly through doing things that make it better for most people. Young Gavilar feels like the second version, who slowly morphed into the one who forgot to care about anyone or anything else than his own power. The version of him we saw in RoW prologue and in the 2022 draft was just not someone anyone could have ever even liked, much less looked up to for years and years after he was dead. It feels like Sanderson is a lot more back on form. It's hard to describe in words, but it just feels right. After reading this, I used to be on the Stormfaker train but I'm now leaning against Stormfaker. I think it was just the early draft nature of that preview which made the Stormfather seem off. To me, this version reads as the Stormfather we know but a less experienced version. It feels like he learned from his experience with Gavilar. Or, it could be something to do with what we know about how the remnants of Honor are somehow merged with the original Stormfather spren. Maybe at that point in the story (while Gavilar was alive) Honor was less integrated and the two disagreed about how to do things, etc.

I think that's a good way of looking at it in terms of Kaladin's arc. I do like the idea of the Windrunner 5th Ideal being about bringing peace. I don't really like the idea of the route to that going through an awkward arc of preaching about therapy. I'd like to see it more along the lines of recognizing that peace is the best way through practical reality. I think you're on to something that this is something Kaladin is learning throughout RoW. An arc where he observes people with PTSD, depression, or other mental health challenges and comes to understand that the war is the cause of all these things is good. What we actually got was not really that though. I don't think it's good (or necessary) for Kaladin to become some kind of proto-therapist in order to realize he should aim for peace. I guess what I mean by course correction is - return to the style he used in earlier books. Portray Kaladin in how he deals with his mental health while he's out doing dynamic things in the world. Please, please don't have a plot about him serving as a therapist to Ishar. Please. If he wants to have a debate about morality or war and peace or whatever it may be I'm totally down. What I really want though is for Kaladin to really think about and decide things for himself - be forward-looking for once. I know that's hard for people who have depression in real life. Anyway, I think I mostly agree with/like what you're saying I just hope it's handled a little more subtlely vs RoW.

I think for me, Adolin is probably the character I've had the most change of feelings about. In early books, my personal feelings were more "meh" about Adolin and the way so many people here seemed to really love him honestly turned me off to him. That said, I felt his arc in RoW was one of the best parts of that book. It felt like he stood on his own in RoW and did his own thing for himself. I'm probably not describing it well, but I think his character settled in for me after that. In terms of Shallan, I probably had the opposite arc from you. I really liked her in early books. She felt interesting and relatable and was clearly dealing with trauma, like you said. In Oathbringer, I really disliked the arc she took with her personality disorder. Honestly, if anything I would say discussions in the community and debates over the nature of that condition, what is an acceptable way to think about her condition, etc really turned me off. But I felt like I also like the way her arc went in RoW. The Adolin/Shallan arc in general was the best arc of RoW by far. The other thing that bothers me about characters in general is the change in Sanderson's overall approach toward trauma and mental health issues. I think in early books the approach was to try to realistically portray people suffering from mental health conditions as part of the overall story. A little bit in OB but especially in RoW we are starting to see these mental health issues take center stage such as Kaladin's arc of going to the mental health hospital/sanitorium. I feel like that is just a bit too much on the nose. These kinds of things work when you have someone like Kaladin suffering from depression and you show some of the ways he struggles with that, what helps, and what hurts him. If you have him on screen saying "doing x is good, doing y is bad" it starts to feel a bit preachy. I'm interested in a book about a band of heroes trying to fight evil and save the world - having people struggle with their mental health as part of that is great. I'm not interested in a book about how my favorite magical warrior becomes a therapist. I do wonder if Sanderson is going to do a bit of course correction on some of this. Either way though, I'm really excited to start seeing the preview chapters coming out in a few weeks and looking forward to discussing it all here! Hope to see a lot of familiar names back on these boards.

When Odium said a true ending, etc he was referencing the current hostilities. He was trying to stop Dalinar from stalling for more time to make a better deal. He doesn't say clearly if it's intended to be permanent as in forever. And other things he says imply that it is not. For example, he says "I will be able to focus my attentions on sending agents to the rest of the cosmere, using what I've conquered here as enough for now." He wouldn't say "for now" if he meant he would never be able to conquer the rest of Roshar.

What oaths did Dalinar swear? None yet that I know of. The entire point of my post is to provide possible ways Dalinar could win the contest and then violate the deal. One way would be for him to realize he's bound by conflicting oaths - one that says he must protect certain people and another that says he must let them die. He could easily swear a new oath in the early part of SA5. It's not spelled out that each side can cross the other's territory to get to their own territory in what we see of the deal on screen, but seems likely to be part of it. Those are the kinds of provisions always included in these types of deals. If you look at any contract in the real world about this kind of thing, it always includes provisions to make it so someone can't landlock you out of the use of your property. And if the two sides are at peace, there seems to be no reason to prevent them from entering each other's territory. Generally peace deals include things like the right of each others' citizens to enter each other's territory. If it was during war - yes everything you're saying is true. But if you agree to peace with someone who controls a city in the middle of your territory, you're agreeing to let them access it. Just like West Berlin - there may be tension but it will be allowed. After Stalin cut off land access, the NATO side supplied the city by air for several years. Theoretically, the Soviets could have shot those planes down, but they knew that would start a nuclear war so they didn't. So what would really happen is, at worst Odium would send supplies and reinforcements by air. He'd probably do something similar to the "Fourth Bridge" we see in RoW. Even in the worst case - let's say everything you are saying is correct. Odium sends a small force and captures a city. Dalinar ignores it, knowing it's best for him to let it go. Odium's forces can't come and go, so they can't effectively rule. The people rise up in their own name and do not propose to join Dalinar. They are free of Odium's effective rule. Ultimately, they still all starve to death and the land remains in Odium's control. Per the terms of the deal, that land belongs to Odium and Odium can refuse to allow Dalinar to send any aid to the city or allow anyone to enter the city at all. The Fused hole up in the city walls and prevent anyone from leaving. They might not be able to effectively hold the city against military invasion but they would have enough people to hold the city gates against a popular uprising for 6 months until everyone starves to death. So we end up with a situation where people begin starving to death because no one is allowed to come in or go out of the city. If Dalinar sends aid, he's violated the deal and Odium goes free. I just don't see Dalinar sitting around and watching a city die of starvation any more than I see him watching Odium slaughter a city of people he views as his. You're right, Dalinar isn't Kaladin and he understands sacrifices must be made for tactical reasons. But that and this are different. He's the ruler of his people, choosing to let thousands of people die in suffering. That does not square with his oaths as a Bondsmith in my opinion. But who knows - this whole scenario will probably never happen anyway.

He rejected Hoid's contract, but the final contract is not much different than Hoid's original contract. And Hoid cares most about Odium being bound. And there are no real stakes to the contract for Dalinar other than Hoid being bound. He wins - great he gets some of his territory back but Odium's still around. He loses, and everyone still has peace and loses no ground from their current state. They only lose him. I don't see why they should be overly afraid of that - he is not that much more powerful than all the other powerful fused that Odium can call on and they already have another bondsmith. Dalinar's bond to the Stormfather won't go with him if he dies and becomes a Fused, so someone else could eventually take his place as bondsmith. The stakes are just too low for the Rosharans - barely anything changes either way. It's not going to be a permanent peace - it would make no sense for Odium to agree to that. They didn't say "permanent". They didn't say it specifically, but there must be some time limit on it. It's probably the original 1000 year term. The only terms changed from Hoid's original deal (at least the part we know about since it was a sheet of paper and could have held more than Dalinar and Odium discussed) are that the Fused and Voidspren won't be locked away. They will only be ordered by Odium not to attack Dalinar and his allies, which is effectively the same thing. This is Hoid's deal. What the Rosharans want is to end the cycle of desolations. They want to make it so that they no longer have an evil god living on their world, bent on their destruction so that he can be freed into the cosmere. They want to win the war or have a real peace to end it. That requires destroying Odium or letting him go free. This deal doesn't do that for them and they only accepted because they were sure they would lose without it. It's possible they could get a 1000 year deal at the end of SA5 and then in SA6-10 we come back 1000 years later to see them fight to actually win for real. But that doesn't really seem to line up with the overall cosmere timeline. Maybe it would happen though - can't say I'm an expert in that stuff.

You're right - the contract is based on what Hoid wants. He had a huge hand in writing it and the Rosharans are basing a lot of their decisions on what he tells them. That's why to me, it feels like a lame conclusion to the front 5 books if the Rosharans are doing this all to achieve Hoid's goals and not their own. I think you're right that Jasnah is waking up to this and realizing that Hoid isn't working for their interests even if he does help them sometimes. Also - I definitely missed the part in that reading where it said they called a meeting within an hour. So, yeah definitely was urgent! I think they are there in person - hence the meeting in the middle of the night. But I don't really feel strongly one way another. In terms of Odium and his overall strategy: the whole purpose of the Oathpact was to keep Odium trapped on Roshar. I don't think it's his chosen home territory, I think it's his prison. He wants to be out splintering shards which is what he was doing prior to being trapped on Roshar. So if he get the ability to leave, he's gone. We're supposed to be afraid that he will get loose and destroy the Cosmere and the whole premise of the story is that our heroes have been told by the Stormfather and by Hoid that they have to keep him trapped on Roshar to honor the oaths made by Honor and those who came before them. I personally think that Odium is not actually as strong as we think. Him getting free now would be a problem, but not as catastrophic as we're being led to believe by the Stormfather and Hoid.

You're thinking of this the wrong way. Odium's goal is not to win the war against Dalinar, his goal is to trick Dalinar or his allies into violating the terms of the agreement. Odium doesn't have to capture a strategically significant position and he doesn't have to capture it for a long time. In the most extreme example, he could simply send his Heavenly Ones and Skybreakers to an unimportant and lightly defended medium sized city and occupy it in the last few hours of the ten days. Then, per the treaty it is his territory and Dalinar is not allowed to take it back. So maybe he decides to start killing off civilians, one a day until Dalinar stops him. Or maybe he doesn't even do that. Dalinar swore an oath to protect them and keep them out of Odium's hands. Dalinar might be compelled by his oath to fight to take that city back even if most of the people there don't mind being ruled by Odium. At worst, you have a "West Berlin" situation. Odium can't break the terms of the deal due to his nature as a shard and how he is bound by the Oathpact so he will not fight Dalinar's side. He will have to be allowed peaceful passage to and from his territory. So he can bring in troops, supplies, etc after the contest is over. And if the population rises up against him, all the better. Either they have violated the deal if the rebels align themselves with Dalinar, or if they don't they create a humanitarian crisis which puts pressure on Dalinar to interfere and break the terms of the deal.

I think it's interesting - I'm approaching this with the idea that SA5 and the first SA arc should be about things that matter to Rosharans first and foremost. Hoid can want what he wants and he can help here and there, but (I really hope at least) this book is not about him achieving his goals. I hadn't been keeping up with the new readings but I did check out the one you mentioned. I don't really think there ever was an alliance between Hoid and the Rosharans. Hoid is out to achieve his own goal, but whatever that goal is, it's not the story of at least SA1-5. His story just overlaps with it a bit, like it does with all the other cosmere books. It terms of your second paragraph, I see what you mean. But I'm looking at it sort of as a set of mixed goals. Winning the contest is important, but Dalinar knows that winning the contest isn't everything. It just takes away the immediate threat of being ground to powder by the constantly regenerating Fused. There are a million other things to do. So, I think what Dalinar is doing is basically saying he will handle the Contest mostly on his own because at the end of the day no one else can help him anyway. He's already on to the next thing and putting contingency plans in place by getting things going with BAM and Ishar. We haven't seen it yet, but I'm sure he and Navani also come up with plans for how to build on what they've done so far at Urithiru and how the Sibling is now awake, etc. From the readings, we do know that Adolin and Shallan report in, but do we know it's about something urgent? I think they are just reporting in to say "Mission Complete, here's what we learned. Now what should we do next? Here's what we think we should do." What I honestly think is that Odium does get his loophole. It would make a ton of narrative sense. Odium leaves Roshar and runs out into the greater cosmere. That leads to really cool stories and really starts shifting the conflict to a cosmere scale. Odium "wins" and scrams out of Roshar/Braize. This leaves our heroes free to deal with the local problems that are affecting Roshar and get things in a pretty good place by the end of SA5. They probably do something like broker a peace agreement with the Singers and maybe even the Fused. SA5 ends with Roshar mostly safe but our heroes are feeling really guilty knowing they've unleashed a great evil on the rest of the cosmere. They are safe, but everyone else is not. So they spend the "gap years" training and building cosmere knowledge so that in SA6-10 they take the fight to Odium wherever he is.

Hey thanks for the shoutout. This definitely would be an interesting way to go and it ties in with the death rattle. I like your idea and think it would be a good story, but I was personally thinking more along the lines of Dalinar winning the contest of champions and then breaking the agreement. The agreement says Dalinar will let Odium keep the lands he controls (not sure if this is at the time of the agreement or at the time of the contest) minus Herdaz and Alethkar. I could easily see a situation where something like this happens: 1) If the deal is based on who controls what at the time of the Contest, then Odium makes a huge push and conquers land that Dalinar has made an oath to protect right at the last second. Dalinar wins the contest and then has to choose between breaking his oath and honoring the deal with Odium, or keeping his oath and breaking the deal with Odium. 2) If the deal is based on who controls what at the time the deal is made, then during the 10 days Odium gets some of his followers to pose as refugees from some of the lands he controls. Or, he gets his followers to chase refugees out to Dalinar. They beg for Dalinar's aid and protection. Maybe he doesn't know where they are from. He swears an oath to defend them or to restore their lands. Dalinar wins the contest and the refugees tell him it's now time for Dalinar to hold up his end of the bargain. What does he do? Will he break his promise, or set Odium free?

I think it's a good point to bring up that there might not even be a contest. It would honestly be cool if there wasn't, IMO. As I was writing this response, I was thinking about why the Contest seems really lame to me. I think it's because the stakes just don't really make a lot of sense from the point of view of the Rosharans. The idea behind it was to try to stop Odium/Fused from destroying Roshar in war by tempting Odium with something he wants. Good idea. But now, the agreement means that basically nothing changes either way for the Rosharans. So why should they care? Worst case, Dalinar sacrifices himself to save millions of people and gives everyone a thousand years to prepare for the next time Odium comes back. Dalinar should care personally and do his best to prepare himself to win and he should ready his people to continue without him should he fail. In terms of is the Contest the resolution or not, I don't think making it not the solution leaves loose ends. I don't really consider the things you're talking about to be loose ends that are relevant to the story of SA. The things you're talking about are loose ends in terms of the wider story of the Cosmere as a whole but that story isn't over so they really aren't loose ends. Kaladin knows that there's an offworlder working for Dalinar - but there's not really a need for him to pursue that any further and I don't think Dalinar or others learning that particular secret has much relevance to the story. The immortal in question isn't going to get involved in Roshar's wars and Dalinar & Company can't make him. Same with Shallan and Adolin - the things they learn that are relevant to Roshar will be revealed such as if they are able to find BAM, etc. That's going to happen regardless - it's their main mission for SA5. There might be a throwaway line in the falling action about how Shallan figured out some things about the Ghostbloods, the Cosmere, etc but it's not going to be center stage. Honestly, I'd love it if Part 1 or Part 2 was the end of the Contest. My ideal early plot might be something like this: Kaladin and Szeth go to Shin to talk to Ishar. They find a way to talk with him without him trying to kill them, but quickly realize that talk therapy isn't going to work in 10 days and likely will never work since Ishar's madness is based in magic. They have to scrap Dalinar's plan and try something else. Adolin and Shallan get some kind of clue about how to find BAM and return to report in to Dalinar. They leave quickly on a new mission to find and possibly restore BAM, possibly in conjunction with Rlain, Venli & Co. El and Moash do something interesting and creepy, giving us a hint at Odium's plans and/or how their personal goals deviate from those plans. Dalinar, Navani and Jasnah sit in Urithiru and contemplate strategy (both battle and philosophical) for the Contest. The Contest happens, and the results are unexpected. Whatever happens, it launches us into the true climactic conflict. Whatever the true conflict is - it will have stakes that make sense as something extremely important for Roshar. Ultimately, I think you have it right - Odium doesn't care about winning the contest. His goal is to trick Dalinar into violating the agreement, which would free him to move around the Cosmere and do what he wants. I think it's more interesting if he does that after Dalinar has already won the contest. Or possibly before, if it happens without spending huge chunks of the book dwelling on the ten days. I just don't really see a good story in spending the whole book preparing for a contest of champions where the result ultimately isn't relevant (if Odium succeeds in tricking Dalinar into violating the agreement) or isn't interesting (if Dalinar wins or loses and then everyone goes home to sit on their hands for 1000 years while Odium sends his agents out into the Cosmere).

I think you're right. The contest can't be the climax of the book because it feels way too straightforward and it leaves no time to set up the state of Roshar and the cosmere going forward. Part 3 makes sense per Sanderson's SA book structure like you said. If SA5 were the complete end of the SA then I could possibly see it. Good guys win, Odium destroyed or otherwise handled forever, or a WoT type ending where the cycle starts fresh and a new age begins with the bad guy locked up. But we know that's not the case - this is just the end of the first arc of Stormlight and we at least suspect that Odium's plot has bigger implications for the grand story of the Cosmere at large since he's been set up at least so far as the Cosmere's ultimate big bad. That may not be true in the end, but it's what we're being set up for so far. I think the timing/continuity aspect ties to the 10 day time limit and probably isn't relevant to where in the book the battle will be. Sanderson probably wants the contest to tie into some kind of in world event such as a certain moon being in the sky, a highstorm being present on the battlefield, etc. And most likely, saying that it will be 10 days until the contest puts him in a bind because the highstorm is supposed to be in a different place than he wants the battle or a different moon is in the sky, etc. My personal theory is that the battle will happen early or at the midpoint of the book and the results are unexpected. For example - Dalinar wins and per the deal Odium withdraws and returns Herdaz and Alethkar to the Knights Radiant. However, something causes Dalinar to violate the terms of the agreement. There could be a lot of things that could happen - maybe Dalinar becomes obligated to fight to conquer one of the nations he promised that Odium could keep. Breaking the deal would void everything and set Odium free on Roshar and the Cosmere. The contest itself is not exactly boring, but not super interesting, IMO. What makes it exciting is the preparation leading up to it and the way everyone deals with the aftermath. With the battle being only 10 days away, I can't really see either side doing anything too major for preparation. It's not like Dalinar can go off and do a months long training arc. Dalinar's plan is for Kaladin and Szeth to cure Ishar's madness enough without magic that he will train Dalinar in how to be a bondsmith. I don't see that as something that can be done in 10 days. With the way Sanderson has written mental illness up to this point I just don't see a true cure happening in that time. And Ishar himself talks about gaining sanity for a short time so that he can explain how to fix the Oathpact, which feels like a longer term thing that's mostly unrelated to the Contest. Shallan's quest is also unrelated to the Contest and feels like something that addresses the longer term situation on Roshar. There's just not much interesting prep that can be done leading up to the battle. So I think the bulk of the book has to be about the consequences of how the Contest goes weird - either winning with unexpected consequences or losing and salvaging the aftermath. There is a lot of foreshadowing about this, imo.

I think you're right about the backlog thing - I think it's an intentional strategy and if he can stick to it honestly I think it will be really good for him personally and for us as fans. I personally feel like the quality of his writing (though still good) has been going down since probably Oathbringer. It rebounds a bit when he gets to try something new like the first Skyward, or his first Secret Project. But when he feels boxed in and he's writing just because he's promised us he would, he loses his creativity and the books just don't feel right. I know a lot of fans just really want to see the next thing in Cosmere and find out the next secret. But for me, those secrets really fall flat if I don't care about the characters and I'm not right there with them thinking holy crap what does this mean for them and their world. Lately it feels more like the secrets are laid out for people who care the most about the "laws of physics" of the Cosmere. Which is great for a lot of people, but isn't for me. If he assumes 300k per year and writing 3 Ghostblood novels at 200k each plus two Elantris novels at 200 k that puts him at 1 million words to write. That would be about 3 and a third years. So you'd be looking at him done with all three in early/mid 2028. That gives him two and a half years of "quiet time" to write what he wants without pressure. Imagine what he could do with that time. I think it leaves him free to really set up the second Stormlight pentology on solid footing. Maybe he'll come up with a new format for the back half that lets him write them without so much burnout. Or, maybe he jumps to a different planned trilogy while slowly writing SA in the background. If it's successful, I could see him trying to write all his major trilogies/pentologies/etc in one go. Releasing public plans many years in advance (in my uninformed opinion) may have led to him feeling a bit boxed in creatively. It'll be sad to go years without a major Sanderson release, but I think it will be worth it. Heck, even if he just needs 2 years away from writing, he deserves it.

I really like this approach to who this being might be. That said, I think there's a possibility you may be missing here. I think that Gavilar was being approached by more than one entity - one of which was the Stormfather (who sends the visions, etc) the other was something unknown. Sometimes, the Stormfather behaved like normal and others he didn't. I don't know that the Stormfather would know when or if another being is getting into Gavilar's head. Do we know of anything that would preclude two voices in Gavilar's head, both claiming to be the Stormfather? It would require a few things as I see it: 1) Real Stormfather can't detect others' influences in Gavilar 2) "Stormfaker" can detect the Real Stormfather's conversations with Gavilar and insert its own snippets to lead him astray Both of these things seem like they would be possible and it gives me a strong Ruin/Preservation vibe.

Yes, that was what I meant by saying he plots each Stormlight book as multiple books, I was just too lazy to go in and dig up the exact terminology he uses for it. I've seen that quote before, or maybe one of a handful of others where he talks about this topic. There are some other quotes where he goes into more detail about how he plots out each section. The way he talks about it, it seems like it's an idea he got which worked really well for tWoK and WoR but then he was committed. The extra stuff (and by stuff, I mean the interludes in particular) he put in the last two books, especially RoW, was just not as good in my opinion. I don't really care to read about the favorite romance novels of a random no-name character who is not at all part of the main story for example. Even parts the main story (Eshonai/Venli's flashbacks) just didn't seem to be nearly as good as in previous books. I think Sanderson knew this - he talked about it in his writing updates on RoW and how he felt Eshonai/Venli's flashbacks just weren't working well. But, he'd committed to make a major part of the Stormlight book structure to be flashbacks of a character so he didn't have much room to work. I'd rather have had him cut maybe 50-60% of those flashbacks, rather than stick to the format of always having major flashbacks. Those are the kinds of things I'm talking about. Your mileage my vary, and obviously I'm just speculating about all this and could be completely wrong.

I agree - I have said things like this several times but I think that Sanderson has painted himself in a corner a little bit by planning some of this out too much. He feels like he's made promises and plans and needs to live up to them even if the creative energy isn't quite there or isn't leading him in the direction he thinks he needs to go based on his plans. He talks a lot about how he wants to follow the same format for every book and particularly for Stormlight he wants each book to be kind of multiple books within each book. It's a cool concept, but I think it's gotten away from him a little bit in the last few books. If I was going to say what I would like to be cut it would be things like this - Expanded Bridge Four sections in OB, The entire siege/occupation of Urithiru to be tightened up significantly somehow, Interludes not related to the main story of the Stormlight Archive. There have been some sections in the last two Stormlight books in particular where it feels like neither the plot nor character development is moving forward. If I had my wish - for SA6-SA10, I hope Sanderson scraps the idea of his format for the Stormlight books and just writes what he thinks is the best, what his creative sense tells him he should do. I think we've seen from the 4 secret projects that he does his best work when he's able to just write free and not be constrained by these massive interweaving plans and promises he makes to fans years in advance. So, if I had my choice - make it any length but write free Mr. Sanderson!