Child of Hodor

Book too big. Make book smaller. It's hard to review because it's so big and has so many different storylines. I enjoyed the lore dumps of the new visions and Tanavast POVs. Kaladin's mission felt too videogamey go defeat the guardians of the temple to unlock the triforce type of thing. I felt like we didn't get enough of where people lived in Shinovar. The big loophole in the contract being capturing the capitals was a little disappointing. It was confusing how Taravangian can kind of fudge things in that regard, but Hoid is like "we can't change the laws that would be cheating". El didn't do much after a big buildup. BAM literally didn't do anything after a big build up. Rhlain and Renarin freeing her was a nice touch calling back to when she was trapped. I thought the ending worked well. Having Shallan playing Hide and Seek in the Visions felt a little redundant. We see the visions through Dalinar and then we see them through Shallan. I was definitely poisoned by Brandon saying the book would wrap up the front 5 arc and it didn't except for Dalinar. Looking forward to the Voidlight archives (Warlight whatever). Dismayed that it might be another 6.5 years before the new release.

It's my least favorite of the Cosmere secret projects. One big chase without many memorable characters except Nomad and Aux. The banter between Nomad and Aux was good. Brandon is good at coming up with those types of pairings. I got a little tired of the constant Breath Equivalent Units counting. The world building is interesting. Brandon having to dance around all the future book spoilers was annoying.

What does it mean to be Investiture?

I received an email about how the Wandersail story had a video associated with it. They try to describe the essence of the story: That last part is accurate, but hope?! It's the same story as in WoK. They kill a serving girl for nothing and then the society tears itself apart when they find out the Emperor is dead. I guess they'd rather entice with nonsense then say "this is some dark stuff actually"

One of the things I'm looking forward to most is Mistborn It's not "grimdark" but the setting of Mistborn is very bleak and Stormlight isn't much better. Stormlight

From State of the Sanderson 2025: Also, from State of the Sanderson 2025: Running a tv show is a fulltime job, it takes much more than 40 hours a week. Even if Brandon is not a fulltime showrunner, but just reviewing scripts a vetoing certain things that will take a lot of his time. It just doesn't seem realistic to expect to be able to be very hands on with ongoing shows AND complete his books at anything like the rate he's set out.

"You often seem to say the first passably clever thing that enters your mind." Jasnah to Shallan in Way of Kings. Just a viscous burn.

I like the Lopen more simply because we've gotten less of him. I haven't grown tired of him like I did with Wayne.

I've always thought Odium and Rayse are the "We". The Shard and the Vessel were not the best fit for each other. The Shard had previously tried to ditch Rayse for BAM and subsequently in RoW we see this golden light inside Rayse moving around it is trying to get out. The plural is an indication of the two entities not being aligned. Rayse isn't thinking of them as one singular being in that moment of stress. Rayse also uses "us" and "our army" when talking to Taravangian at the end of OB. It's like losing Dalinar as champion caused even more of a divide between the two entities and changed his self-conception.

Argent: "I was standing 1 foot away from Brandon" *whispers* "Tell them I'm not the traitor, Brandon"

Performed the feat of re-splitting the shards. He took up Autonomy and split Ruin and Preservation. He's autonomously the vessel for all three shards. Or he holds Autonomy separate while Ruin and Preservation stay merged. We're assuming it's Sazed since he's referred to as "nice", but it could be a different Scadrian. (please not Kelsier please not Kelsier)

It felt like two unrelated novellas stapled together. I enjoyed Starling and her crew more than the Dusk sections. In part because there were more lore drops in the Starling sections. Which makes sense she knows Frost and Hoid and she visited Silverlight at times. I agree with what a lot of people have said the villain wasn't very good. Sunlit Man also had a weak villain. I did like how he was very condescending to Dusk as a lower tech local. That felt very true to life. I'll have to go back through all the lore bits.

That's a good point about Taravangian basically making an arrangement with himself that he can tweak or dissolve. The reasoning around why Taravangian can exploit loopholes, but the other side can't always felt like handwavy nonsense. Why can't they change the capital or change whether capturing the capital means you control all of a country? 'Cause that's cheating ... somehow.

Nale says that Odium claimed Jezrien's blade when Moash killed Jezrien and took it. It's been "corrupted". I think this means it no longer counts as an Honorblade.

My issue with this and the contract law in WaT in general is that somehow the changing of the Vessel from Rayse to Taravangian meant Taravangian could exploit loopholes despite Rayse promising not to, yet somehow Dalinar could not also exploit loopholes by say changing which city was the capital of a nation even though Dalinar never explicitly promised not to use loopholes. Do these promises hold despite the Vessel changing or not? I think they should and Taravangian shouldn't be able to destroy Kharbranth without consequences, but I don't know anymore.

The ending was much more of a ... then I was expecting. I don't like thinking about how long it is until book 6. I'd argue that despite being free Taravangian is now more constrained than he was before. He's respecting the terms of the contest despite it being nullified just to keep Honor happy. He didn't kill Gavinor even though he wanted to because it would make Honor upset. Now he is being hunted by a bunch of shards he has to be stealthy in how he acts. The sapiant honor shard is a ticking time bomb that will cause Taravangian even more problems. It is sort of a pyrrhic victory for Taravangian because he took up that extra shard.

I think a major difference between the first 3 (OB still really good imo) and the last 2 is the last two had flashbacks for characters that aren’t the main characters or even close to the main characters. The first three had strong themes connecting the present day and the flashbacks that resonated. The last two don’t resonate as strongly to me. Another thing is the macro structural changes he made to the books. RoW had Part 1 be the climax to a book we didn’t see and a big lull in the middle. WaT he did the 10 days structure which is very different from the 5 part structure of the other ones. Finally LENGTH! WaT is easily the longest book and was written in about the same time in years as other books when you factor in him not working on it much in 2022 due to Hollywood stuff. There are more modern expressions and more noticeable continuity issues in this one than the others. It probably, in part, comes from there just being more words to write and edit in a similar timeframe.

Maybe the First Gem he was the bearer of. His Topaz ring. Frost refers to it as being "dead" in his letter to Hoid. In Dragonsteel Prime the ring contained a Dawnshard until it transferred to Hoid. Perhaps that much investiture being in the ring for a long enough period of time caused the ring to gain sapience in some way and the transfer of the Dawnshard killed it? I don't know.

LOL at the title No, he is not alright. He has huge problems with all the other Shards after him and getting a somewhat sapient Honor will be trouble for him long term.

A point against Taln having had the Exist Dawnshard is he has no problem hurting people, he's quite good at it. Holding a Dawnshard is not the only explanation for the soul warping. It could be explained by Cultivation changing his spiritweb as she likes to do to people on occasion. Heck the order of events might be slightly off. Maybe he went to the Valley for a boon and didn't like the resulting change and tried to stab her. It's a good point he clearly thinks he is mortal. It could be he had one that didn't give him that or he hasn't figured out that he's immortal because it hasn't been very long since he gave it up or lost it. The Dawnshards don't exactly come with instructions that explain the consequences of being one.

He did get super ripped during his time as a Herald, he is described as having a gut right before he became a herald, so there's that change .

I don’t think Exist would be that useful in killing by itself. It along with the other 3 were used to kill Adonalsium but by itself I’m not sure. Having been a Dawnshard would go a long way toward explaining why he resisted the torture far far longer than anyone else besides just saying he’s that much better than everyone else naturally.

"The light I love" seems to be the "captive". Either the Girl Who Looked Up or it's a back half thing having to do with the limited availability of various lights especially Stormlight.

It seems like Braize was always an attractor of investiture with its strange metal core "well of souls". That's just the default setting for some reason and the Heralds took advantage of that to create a cage around it. Even now that the cage is being applied to spren on Roshar it doesn't change default setting of cognitive shadows being pulled to Braize. It's interesting it doesn't pull most Roshar spren there only Cognitive shadows and spren connected to them like Nale's spren.