Topomouse

I read Index but not New Testament, after a while it was getting boring, and I just couldn't like Touma as a protagonist. I tried Reading the manga of Durarara but i dropped it quickly, so I'm not particularly eager to check other stuff from the author. I think I'll give that Mushoku Tensei a try though. On the other hand, I recommend the works of Yu Wo which can be found at PrinceRevolution. In particular the series Half Prince is completed and absolutely hilarious.

They have appeared in the WoT section: http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/21117-how-to-get-river-of-souls/#entry205438

Sorry, I just don't understand what do you mean by by saying that space travel and time travel are the same thing, could you elaborate? By "space travel" do you mean just moving in a different point of space?

This is how I interpreted the whole thing: We now that "common" Shardblades are dead sprens, when someone bonds them can summon them by synchronizing their heartbeat with that of the spren and giving it back a semblance of life. Given what we have seen I also assumed that contact with a Radiant gets a bit of life back in the spren, enough to make it feel again the pain of its "death". That time with Relis we had the superposition of these two conditions, which resulted in the one who bonded the blade (Relis) somehow re-living the death of the spren, a monent when the spren likely asked why he was been killled. Just my two cents.

Well, yeah. It's probably that way. But since there is a topic full of people praising these books I wanted to give them another chance before dropping them altogether, see if someone could point out the best point of the series and convince me to go on. @Ashiok: Thanks for answering! If the main setting is the "school" then does it focus on the fine point of the magic system and religion? That would really interest me.

I just finished the first book after seeing the review on Sanderson's site, and I have to say I'm not really impressed. I didn't really like any of the characters, and somehow the magic system felt kinda "artificial", even thought it was actually what interested me the most while reading. Right now I don't intend to buy the other books, but can someone here convince me to do so? I see that meny people are liking this series so maybe I'm just missing something.

Ok, this was awesome! The parallels between the characters work so very well it's almost frightening.

Oh, yeah. There was that stuff. I don't think it gets referenced any more in the books, it was probably a plot point that got discarded in the following books. @King of Nowhere: I also find myself to defend books 7-10 from the critics. Then again, I read the series in almost one go (when I started reading it The Gathering Storm was about to come out), so I probably have different perspective from those who read it from the beginning. I can imagine that after climax of book 7 having to wait for a year or more and get Path of Daggers(which is objectively short compared to the other books, and relatively uneventful) knowing you will have to wait for another year or more can't be very good.

It seems we have similar tastes, my opinions of the various plot lines/event are very similar to yours, there are only two exceptions: Rand against the Seanchan in PoD, and Mat escape from Ebou Dar in WH. I really didn't like reading about Rand definitely switching to emo mode. On the other hand I found Mat trying to escape from Ebou Dar, and accidental royal kidnapping, very funny. Ah, what do you mean by "anomalies in the source around Ebou Dar"? Right now I can't remember what you are referring to.

I had completely forgot about that, and I even re-read Hero of Ages last week. Well, I have to say that that is pretty strong evidence, apparently Feruchemy is less fussy about metal purity compared to Allomancy.

I was about to answer no, what I meant with the picture is that different pure metals form different types of lattices, but it is actually possible. For example: at ambient temperature iron is body-centered cubic, but at about 1000°C its stable form is face-centered cubic. Normally if you cool it from 1000°C to ambient temperature it shifts from face-centered to body-centered but if you cool it very quickly you could have the face-centered lattice at ambient temperature. The process to obtain allomantically pure iron should be complicated enough that there is no way that someone could try to prepare allomantic iron and end up with the face-centered matrix by chance, but it's theoretically possible and it could actually change the metallic art properties of the metal. For other pure metals, and even more for their alloys, the question would be more delicate, but it would still probably not be a problem unless you were actively trying to make this happen. In order to have such a quick cooling you have to submerge the metal in a water or oil based solution, that's bound to introduce impurities in your metal. If you are trying to obtain a precise composition for an allomancer you not going to risk it just to make it cool faster unless you have a really good reason. @killersquirrel: We have some Word of Brandon that the atomic structure does matter. Moogle quoted it earlier.

I'll try explain what I meant a bit better. These are some examples of the cells them make up the crystal lattice of a metal(in my previous post I said "matrix", sorry for my bad english): Every metal is composed of a lattice of one type of these cells repeated in all directions of space. With a pure metal you just have a standard lattice, but if you have an alloy, the atoms of the alloyed metal will insert themselves in the lattice in various configurations: As you see just one different atom disrupts the matrix in 2 dimensions. Now consider that there are a lot more extraneous atoms in a typical alloy, and that the cells are three-dimensional as I showed earlier, you will see that the lattice can change dramatically. @Stormwalker: what you described, taking smaller and smaller pieces of copper and lead and mixing them could only work until you come close to molecular length. Up to that point you are just accosting two different lattice of two different metals, you could have a bit of mixing al the borders of each crystal but not much problems. But when you talk about alloy and/or metal impurities, you are talking about difference at molecular levels, with difference in the lattice.

Response from an engineer: Metallurgy is pretty complicated, the properties of your metal depend not only on the composition but also on the exact process of solidification. For a pure metal (i.e. iron, tin, copper) the atoms form a mostly regular matrix formed of repeated cells. When you put in other components and make an alloy the new atoms deforms this matrix by substituting atoms of the main metal in the grid or by lodging themselves in the gaps inside each cell. So, the properties of an alloy don't depend just from the sum of its components but also on their interactions. Consequences for a Cosmere-savvy reader: The difference between a perfect alloy and an imperfect one( or a pure metal) is not just Cognitive but also Physical, so I don't think it's just a matter of capacity of the metalmind. Also, when you say "leak" do you mean that the charge in the metalmind diminish with the passing of time, or that you can tap it for less then what you stored but still a fixed amount? The former seems more like Hemalurgy, so I think it's the latter. Another possibility is that with an impure metalmind there is a sort of resistence in storing and tapping, so you have to both in great intensity in order to get power in or out of the metalmind.

I'm sorry to be a killjoy, but I think Voidus is right, there should be no additional forces in allomantic push and pulls. I just re-read the first pushing contest between Kelsier and Vin: it starts with Kelsier shooting a bunch of coins towards Vin who immediately pushes back. Most of the coins get thrown sideways by the opposing forces, and just one, by chance, remains exactly in the right position so that they can continue pushing on it. Now strictly speaking that would be a very unlikely chance, and any little disturbance should make that coin fly away as well(the system is unstable, if it was a pulling match it could be stable), but it's physically possible. Keeping an object still by yourself on the other hand is not really possible. You can probably do some very interesting things like Kelsier shows when he fight the inquisitor, but it can't be really fine work. As for you starting request, I think it should be easier to use tin effectively if you are burning pewter. In the third book Spook finds that having pewter complements his tin, it helps him ignore everything what he is interested in in that moment.

Me too. Till now I have failed to see the joke/pun/whatever in the name. English is not my first language so maybe that's part of the problem.

Somehow I don't think that line of Warding are so "hard" for the chalklings(total speculation on my part, that's just how I picture it)), so it wouldn't do much damage thought it could still inconvenience them. Maybe you could just shoot very long ellipses, they ought to do more damage. Anyway the idea is very interesting. But even better, what happens to chalklings attached to a circle what it gets thrown away? you could have someone like Melody in the back line that keeps tracing 9-point circles, fill them with chalklings, and when they are ready you shoot them into the fray. That ought to have some effect.

But in the second possibility you wrote in the OP you said Kaladin was, that uniting him and Dalinar was important. Anyway, what I (and many others it seems) am skeptic about is the fact that Honor could have seen the future in such details, which is a prerequisite for both of the possibilities you outline in your post. Now, it's possible that as you say now that was a brief moment of clarity on Honor's part, but it seems a odd. It's such a little detail whose consequences depend on the actions of many different people that it could have happened in many different ways, so it seems unlikely that it was a tentative from Honor to guide Dalinar through a determinate path. Especially since the vision could have been received by someone else entirely instead of Dalinar. For the same reasons, I highly doubt about the other possibility, him encouraging trust since he can't do anything else. This one is even more unlikely because from a storytelling point of view it's just strange to bring in precognition and what not just to show a minor point about a character.

That still doesn't help much. Even if you see each possibility very well you are not going to get a clear picture of the future if there are millions of them. Also, we can assume that most possible futures are going to be pretty similar to each other on the macroscopic scale (there are some big events that are going to happen regardless of the actions of an individual), but very different in the little details. Little details like what the undetermined person your Cognitive Shadow is going to send your vision to is going to say in a determinate moment and what the situation around him is going to be. I really can't call what you describe seeing clearly. it's like having 100 different very high quality photos of something, one is true the others have been modified in some ways, you have no means of distinguishing the true one. The best you can do is guess the general shape of whatever is depicted in the photos by taking the most common shape for each feature. You are probably going to get the general shape mostly right but you are going to be fuzzy on the details.

I just re-read the relevant part, and I still think your theory is too forced. In all the visions Honor's discourse is very fragmented, he jumps from one argument to another in each sentence so it's understandable that Dalinar assumes to be having a conversation, but the "yes" you talk about does have it's context. The full paragraph is: "Yes," the being said. "This is important. Do not let strife consume you. be strong. Act with honor, and honor will aid you. While this statement can be referred to Sadeas, it has meaning by itself. Also Honor says that he is not so good at predicting the future, so I don't think he could have predicted a minute detail like what Dalinar would say at that precise moment.

I'm currently re-reading the Mistborn books, and I just finished Well of Ascension and saw its Ars Arcanum. In that table there are only 12 metals and Atium and Malatium are switched for Cadmium and Bendalloy among the temporal metals and that got me thinking about their pattern: Normally in each group of metal we have 2 pure(Pulling) metals, one internal and one external, and their 2 alloys(Pushing), again internal and external. But in that group the pattern is broken, Atium is a God metal and Malatium is from another set of 16. My point is: if a skilled Seeker studied their allomantic pulses, what would he see? I figure that since Malatium is the equivalent of gold it should have the pulses of and internal Pulling metal, but I can't imagine what Atium's pulses would look like. So, what do you think? Could a very skilled Seeker had noticed, via some very expensive experiments, have noticed the break in the pattern and saw that something was going on with the metallic arts? Do my musings actually have any reasons at this point of the series? Will I continue writing the word "pattern" and resist making a joke about lies? Who knows...

I think you are a bit confused, it gets explained at the and of the Way of Kings. It seems that you have already reached that point but I will put the explanation in spoilers to be sure: I hope this answers your question.

Yeah, Checkov's guns should be handled very carefully, and they are often abused. But they are so much fun to play with as a reader! I usually reserve Occam's razor for real life use, but if like to use it on your books, go for it!

The characters sitting down and taking with each other like adults would simplify the plot of many books and films, not only this one. That said, I always felt that in WoT the characters reticence to talk was justified in-universe. All the characters are well established and there are reasons for what they do, they act stupid and commit errors, but that's hat real people do. I always liked this about the books. And I'm glad I'm not the only one that was often overcome by the desire to put Egwene in her place...

You make a good point, that phenomenon does certainly exists... But I think my explanation is way more fun Com'on we frequent this forum in order to theorize and understand how the various world works, you can't just go for the simpler and mundane explanation!

IMHO this book has one of the best ending climax of the whole series: the battle of Dumai Well's, with troops and channelers from many different group and factions; the first "public"(and bloody) apparition of the Asha'man; the Aes Sedai that swear fealty to Rand! What more can you wish for? While meeting her toh was a very redeeming point for Egwene, I still didn't like her. I actually didn't like her until the end of the series. I think that among the women of the series she is the one that incarnate the ideal Aes Sedai the most, and that's not complitely a compliment. As for Gawyn, I think the most interesting fact about him (and a couple of other secondary characters) is comparing them to the main characters, in particular with the Ta'veren. If one of them had been in his place, the Pattern would have shaped the events in his favour, putting him on the right side of the conflict. But he is not Ta'veren, and he ended up making a bad decision and now he is moving against the will of the Pattern.