ftl

Lots of people bonding Soren on no what

I think the stakes are escalating. The superiority is trying to weaponize the delvers, and if they succeed at that, nothing about acclivity stone production matters a single bit. So the real fight is trying to figure out how to beat the delvers, which is what Spensa is up to. Staying in the Nowhere to (maybe, eventually) cut down the Superiority's acclivity stone production wouldn't contribute much to keeping humanity alive.

Doesn’t that get resolved in the ending? M-bot “abandons” Spensa (or forces her to “abandon” him?) because it’s what needs to be done, it’s like a mirror image of what happened in Starsight. I thought that brought it full circle - showing that MBot now understands why Spensa acted the way she did, and would do the same himself. [edit] yeah, the parallel totally works. In Starsight, Spensa leaves MBot to fight the war, leading to his body/ship being destroyed. She comes back for him later. In the finale of Cytonic, Spensa “leaves” MBot, his body/ship is destroyed - except this time, it’s entirely MBots plan. He’s showing through his actions that he finally gets why Spensa left him in Starsight, and not only “forgives” her for it but actively thinks it’s the right thing to do and makes her do it again.

I have definitely noticed that these books sometimes feel rushed, but I think that's just because they're so short. Almost feels like Sanderson is fitting a big novel's worth of plot into a smaller container. If this were a Stormlight book, we'd have gotten three chapters of Gran-Gran experimenting with her old cytonic powers now that they're not considered a defect and it would have built up to that escape. We would have had several chapters of Rig fixing up Alanik's ship and Skyward Flight fixing up the platform they found themselves on. And so on. The escalation of powers definitely feels like classic Sanderson - at the beginning of the first book cytonics are a distant myth/"defect", now by 2 books + 2 novellas there's a bunch of cytonics, they all are using different powers (including minor characters getting powers), and there's plenty of slugs with all sorts of powers being used to do all sorts of things. If you compare the state of "magic powers" between the beginning and end of some of his Cosmere series/books you often see something similar.

Wait, does that make the UrDail elves?

I liked that in this one, we got a good feel for ReDawn (the location) and it mattered. In Sunreach the alien space flower and station seemed kind of random and its interior was a generic space station, whereas in ReDawn I really got a feel for the giant alien floating trees, the miasma, etc.

Yes! Good point about boomslug's powers. Sounds like there's one slug for each cytonic power - we've seen the ones that hyperjump and the ones that do ftl communication, but boomslug might do the equivalent of mindblades. Definitely agree about Sunreach... all I really remember of the interior of sunreach was one room with all the people in it, and one corridor, and that's about it? The outside was very distinctive but the inside could have just been any random space station anywhere.

Oh hey, a romance! Feels like Janci's influence to me! I liked it.

This is a real old post, but for some reason I just was reminded, went to that scene, and looked at the interaction. I think the person called "Temoo" actually IS Thinker (Demoux), not Galladon. It's not clear because its' a three-way interaction - Grump (Galladon) tells Blunt (Baon) that the fish thing is superstition and then Blunt asks Demoux (Thinker) for his opinion. The full interaction is below: To me, "And you, Temoo?" Doesn't seem like a direct response to Grump's previous comment - it was Vao asking for input from someone who was being silent (hence, "And you?", which doesn't make sense as a direct retort.) In addition, Blunt complains at the guy for "pontificating", which also seems like he's referring to "Thinker". So I'm sticking with it. Galladon = Grump, Blunt = Baon = Vao, Thinker = Demoux = Temoo.

Huh, yeah, you're right. I misread that, just went back and checked. Navani hums anti-Odium tone earlier, but then switches to Honor to fix the Sibling's Light. Nevermind!

I think there was one more prerequisite - Odium becoming Invested enough in Roshar to become a Rosharan god, and this making Ba-Ado-Mishram into a Godspren like the Stormfather and Nightwatcher. Note that by the time of RoW, the Sibling doesn't just need Honor and Cultivation's tone to make Light - it also needs Odium's pure tone, which Navani learns to sing for the Sibling. There are now THREE pure tones of Roshar, not two like the Sibling first throught. Also, in history, we know that the False Desolation was caused by Ba-Ado-Mishram "learning to give forms of power to the singers". I think this is via her becoming a godspren like the Nightwatcher and Stormfather - and thus becoming able to dispense Odium's Investiture just like the Stormfather dispenses stormlight. So I think that's the sequence of events there. Odium becomes a true Rosharan god, now his tone is one of the three pure tones of Roshar, B-A-M becomes a godspren, and thus becomes connected to all the other spren. Then she starts using her godspren powers to give out forms of power and voidlight, gets gem-trapped, which now leaves all spren without a connection to Roshar since one of their three godspren is trapped and disconnected.

I'm not sure, it seems very much like a Parents sort of plan that "My son is going to get the best education he can. And what about us? ...well, we'll survive somehow."

Ooh, I really like that as an explanation of why Terris had all the Feruchemists. Previous HoA before Rashek was Terris, did a decent job keeping the world reasonable, but gave his people a bit of an inherited boost.

When there's discrepancies, which one is considered canon? Graphic Audio or Graphic Novel? Or both in some superposition?

I was hoping to link https://coppermind.net/wiki/Summary:The_Way_of_Kings to someone who wanted a refresher on TWoK without spoilers for anything else; but unfortunately, that summary DOES have some spoilers (at the very least, I noticed that in the Ishikk interlude, that summary reveals the identities of the worldhoppers - something that would be a spoiler for people who have yet to read those other series they're worldhopping from). But that page is mostly spoiler-free, so it's close. Are the chapter summary pages for the books intended to be spoiler-free? It would be nice if there were, since it's pretty common for people to want a refresher. (spoiler-free for later books or other series, obviously....)

No, it is not.

I've always thought that the contest is not going to be the climax of the book - it's going to be the midpoint. Narratively, it'll be at the same point in the story that the Siege of Urithiru was in book 4. It'll be the big mid-book setback for the heroes - Taravangian is going to find some way to weasel out of the contest. We had some foreshadowing of that in book 4. Wit talking about how he once lost a win-win situation by forgetting to specify what happens in case of a draw. Dalinar and Navani both agreeing "even if we lose the contest, humanity's gonna be ok". I think that's setting up for the contest to happen mid-book, and for the heroes to somehow have an outcome that's scarier than just losing - I think it'll be Odium somehow finding a way to nullify the agreement. That way, there doesn't need to be a timeskip - the action will just continue.

On my re-read, I caught the moment where, before Shallan leaves for Shadesmar (soon after she finds the cube), Pattern runs off to say goodbye to Wit, saying it was really important. Shallan disregards that as Pattern misinterpreting a joke - but knowing the whole context, that was when Pattern must have gone to talk to Wit about the Seon and how to communicate with him. On my first read I'd already caught that Radiant was the spy/assassin (based on her interactions with the other lightweavers), but I didn't catch the setup for Pattern using the cube. Everything was foreshadowed!

I have comment which seems minor, but is pretty important - the bracers store youth, not age. It being reversed matters. If you could store age, it would be easy to live as long as you want - just keep storing your age to stay young. Then if you lose the bracers, then fine, you've lost the age you've stored, who cares, you didn't want it anyway. But the bracers store the reverse - youth. So to stay young, the Lord Ruler has to constantly compound Atium to generate more youth, store it in his bracers, and then tap it. Since he was over 1000 years old at that point, he constantly has to compound, store, and tap A LOT of youth, and if he ever *stops* doing that, he'd quickly start catching up to his actual age. No amount of pewter can keep a 1000-year-old man alive! As to why Vin could have enough power to push even super-invested bracers - when she wasn't wearing the earring, she could directly use the power of the mists, Preservation's investiture directly. That was pretty powerful.

It seems like the "small chance" scenario was fight the war and win, which is what Dalinar is trying to do.

I'd say this should definitely give you reason for hope that you'll enjoy Jasnah's book when it comes out! To me, part of what this says is that the charaters Brandon takes the wordcount to flesh out are often more likeable. You see Navani's insecurities and her growth, both her strengths and her weaknesses, shown clearly in her PoV chapters and via her interactions with everyone else. RoW was a major Navani Jasnah, on the other hand, is a secondary character through and through. In TWoK she was mainly there as a mentor/opponent to Shallan, in WoR she was gone the whole time, in Oathbringer I only remember her basically in the Battle of Thaylen Field having one soft moment with Renarin, and in RoW she's put in the weird position where she actually knows so much more than all of us because of her interactions with Wit, so even though we get her PoVs they're deliberately limited in insightfulness and we don't see her planning. Reminds me of Lift. Like I think almost everyone else, I hated Lift during her interlude. Then she got an actual novella and hey, she wasn't that bad, and was even likeable! I would guess there's a decent chance the same would happen with Jasnah or many other secondary characters - having a good look below the surface with some focus is likely to be generally positive.

Raboniel might not have been awake yet at the time of the battle of Thaylen field, and so wouldn't know. Or maybe she's had ages to plan this particular attack, and is just going through with the plan now that she's back alive.

None, I think. Part of what's going on with RoW is the transition from old antagonists to new, scarier ones, and storylines being wrapped up. The Sons of Honor are basically gone. The remnants of the Sadeas line, killed. I'd put the Diagram along with them - disbanded, no longer relevant. On to bigger and worse things.

Agree on all counts, I think.

Kora and Tan, the Avasts. Adorbs.