Pagerunner

That's a good point on the highspren deadeyes. The impetus for the idea is from Sunlit Man; once we learned that Sigzil became a Skybreaker, it got me thinking that it'd be pretty neat for other Bridge Four members to join other Orders, and now I'm looking for ways that could be happening in Stormlight Five (aside from anti-Stormlight killing their honorspren). I'd rationalize the deadeye logistics here as: perhaps the Windrunner squires aren't suited in temperament to bond those restored deadeye spren, but Bridge Four themselves have a lot of variety.

It was an interesting set of scenes. A little slow, a little talky, but necessary to set up a pivot in Shallan's story to the Spiritual Realm. I am very interested to see the Spiritual Realm; this might be the time for me to finally read Rithmatist, since I recall that there are beings in there that were originally planned as residents of the Spiritual Realm. For some reason, Inception comes to my mind for how Shallan might wind up experiencing the Spiritual Realm. It won't be an alternate plane of existence like Shadesmar, but I think she'll have to have some construction through which she can interact with the SR, reliving her own memories or something like that. One other thing that stood out to me in this reading was the honorspren recruitment effort. They were unsuccessful in getting a lot of new Windrunner spren, but we get a reminder of all the deadeyes who are congregating at Lasting Integrity. I think they'll be the real payoff of Adolin's arc, and that it will set the stage for Sigzil's situation in Sunlit Man. Once the deadeye situation has been resolved, Bridge Four will be able to break the bonds with their own spren (passing them along to their squires) and bond former deadeyes, and then they can all bond former deadeyes of all Orders. I wonder if Aux is among the crowd of deadeye spren...

I've created a tag for hion lines and added it to the three WoBs in question. I thought we had a thread for tag suggestions, but I guess we didn't, so now we've repurposed one of the pinned threads to also include new tag suggestions. Anything else you or others come up with, please suggest it in there.

I've updated this specific instance, but fixing a dead link doesn't require an Arcanist. Anybody can sign in and edit broken links with updated ones. Especially since all these website migrations Brandon did broke a lot of links. And for stuff that is now completely gone, you can update with a web.archive.org link.

Done.

Where did he say that about Mythos? I'm not seeing anything like that in Arcanum.

We don't know much more than the name. It's a planet that was mentioned in The Lost Metal, and then it came up in the past two States of the Sanderson.

I'm guessing this was cheekily mentioned in the State of the Sanderson: My first thought was that it was the Grand Apparatus story, since he mentioned it unprompted a few times. But as I'm looking through the Backerkit campaign page, I notice that the new secret project is referred to as a "mythic worldhopper adventure." So now I'm wondering if that particular word choice is indicating the story on Mythos.

This year's State of the Sanderson is up, for those who haven't seen it yet: https://www.brandonsanderson.com/state-of-the-sanderson-2023/ A lot of stuff in there about the Kickstarter and future Kickstarters and collaborations and such. But there's also some pretty concrete plans about future books coming in the Cosmere (with Dan's series and Isaac's book thrown in there somewhere): December 2024: Wind and Truth Spring 2025: Skyward Legacy One(?) December 2025: White Sand Novel/Dark One(?) Spring 2026: Skyward Legacy Two(?) December 2026: Skyward Legacy Three(?) December 2026: Horneater(?) December 2028: TBD December 2028: Ghostbloods 1 Summer 2029: Elantris 2 December 2029: Ghostbloods 2 Summer 2030: Elantris 3 December 2030: Ghostbloods 3 (Granted, these have never been accurate beyond, like, two years. So we'll see how far these slip back as Brandon decides to write unplanned stuff. Also, I think the December 2028 TBD is supposed to be for December 2027, the convention release.) If Brandon can successfully hold off on publishing any major books for four years, he'll have that backlog he talked about in his early career, where he doesn't have to rush to finish a book to get it out. He'll be able to knock out a whole Stormlight book for 2031 at this rate, and he'll be pretty easily able to keep his yearly December tentpole release. It'll just take a bit of a reset here. And, truth be told... I'm ready for a break from new Cosmere material. I think there's a lot of stuff in Rhythm of War I still didn't get a chance to unpack fully, with regards to the realmatic theory introduced. A nice long break from new books will cool off some of the hype, maybe knock signing lines down to a manageable level (perhaps everybody can get a turn at Dragonsteel 2027?). Or maybe I can catch him at another convention again. I'm also looking forward to doing a nice, slow reread, take a lot of notes and such, without worrying about having to start over with a new book. I won't mind the fandom cooling down a bit. And, hey, then we've got the look to the future. Series that are mentioned, but aren't even on the projected release schedule (not even counting the Mistborn Era Four grand finale): Nightblood The Night Brigade Dragonsteel The Silence Divine The Grand Apparatus Mythos the Aether World book series I would honestly not be surprised if one of those slipped in as the 2027 release. If Brandon gets a little bit ahead on the others, he can squeeze something in and push it through editorial and publishing while he sits on the others. But, man, when is he gonna find time to write most of these? Even Nightblood, which is such a layup for "write a book when I find time to squeeze one in," can't even get on the schedule. He'll have, like, eight break slots for the back half of Stormlight (if he writes two books between each Stormlight book, which he's kept up with for the past few years), so that could cover everything if the Aethers only get a trilogy and Mythos and Grand Apparatus are standalones. That'd actually be a pretty neat way of doing it: 2031: Nightblood 2032: Stormlight 6 2033: Aether 1 2034: Silence Divine 2035: Stormlight 7 2036: Aether 2 2037: Night Brigade 2038: Stormlight 8 2039: Aether 3 2040: Mythos 2041: Stormlight 9 2042: Aether 4 2043: Stormlight 10 2044: Grand Apparatus 2045: Dragonsteel 1 2046: Dragonsteel 2 2047: Dragonsteel 3 2048: Mistborn Finale 1 2049: Mistborn Finale 2 2050: Mistborn Finale 3 2051: Rithmatist 2 Which would put Brandon at 75 years old when he finishes. Which is actually a few years ahead of projection I made four years ago, where I was assuming Brandon would consistently be cooling down with YA trilogies like Reckoners and Skyward. If he wants to focus on Cosmere and offload non-Cosmere as collaborations, then all those trilogies turn into these bonus Cosmere books. Which, honestly, I would be pretty thrilled with. Maybe I'll revisit that publication timeline chart after SA5, when I've got more time.

Sundays aren't great for book releases, but I managed to make it through it without staying up too late. The thrust of the main story itself seems pretty straightforward, but a few thoughts to get out of my head real quick: I was able to pick up Sigzil's Skybreaker past pretty early in the book. (He described Auxiliary as "gravitation and interaxial force," and I was like, "that sounds like Division.") Definitely some interesting things going on on Roshar. My impression was that he didn't bond his highspren until after he took up his Dawnshard (something about "choosing to bond" Auxiliary had consequences), but I'd need to take a closer look at the text to try and confirm that. After getting some info on Sigzil's Torment, I'm still leaning towards his Dawnshard being the one from Rysn. She describes it as "The will of a god to remake things, to demand they be better. The power to change." And Sig says that his is diametrically opposed to violence, i.e. unmaking and causing things to become worse. Zellion's new Connection situation is something very interesting. I'm wondering if he will leave behind a Threnodite Shade now, if his Oath to the Canticlites (or whatever that particular band of Threnodites goes by) was able to draw a small piece from their unreleased Shades to make one of his own. The cosmology of Canticle is still a bit of an open mystery. It seems like the Threnodites chose this planet because of its sunlight-racing situation... but why is it like that in the first place? The obvious question is: which Shard is the Investiture cycle from? I think we can get a clue from the compelled behavior of the Charred to fight each other; it reminds me of some of the descriptions of Autonomy from The Lost Metal. The stars in the Taldain system both give off Investiture through light, so I'm guessing this is a similar setup. (If I really want to go out on a limb, I'd call this avatar the "Sunlight Man.") Why mountains form in the same place every rotation also bugs me. It makes me think there's a terraforming process going on, very slowly and inefficiently (perhaps broken?), and every iteration the world is getting closer to a final version. Either that, or it's attempting to remake the original version of the world. (More on that later.) There's also the rings. They don't really do anything for the plot of this story, other than reflect sunlight so there's some light, but I don't think that's really necessary since just regular starlight during nighttime would probably serve well enough. So why did Brandon add them in? I think they're mass that belongs to the planet, I just can't decide which direction it's going. Is the terraforming drawing from the mass of the rings, and they're going to decline as the planet continues to be formed? Or is the planet ejecting mass (as was described in the mountain during the final sequence) and that's forming the ring? I'm leaning towards the latter, that the rings are splattered from the violent reaction at the surface of the planet. So, what's in the core, then? I'm worried the description of Threnody's Evil as "mountain-sized manifestations" hints at some Lovecraftian monstrosities running around the cosmere, one of which might be underneath Canticle. Hopefully we don't have an Eldrazi in there. But the Selish system essay also comes to mind, of how the land itself was developing sentience. I feel confident we haven't seen the last of Canticle. Zellion's last Skip. A watery world with Sho Del? Did he skip to UTol? We finally get introduced to the Night Brigade. They want a Dawnshard... but why? In the postscript, Brandon mentions an "ongoing conflict of a nature that might be too spoilerific to mention here." That has me very intrigued. This book mentions an arms race on all the major planets, and the Dawnshards are sought as superweapons... but what's the goal? I'm hoping we only have to wait a year to find out some of this stuff... maybe Stormlight Five kicks the door open. That's all that sticks in my mind for now. Maybe I'll have some more after sleeping on it, or if I can find some time for a quick reread once the physical book gets here.