Child of Hodor

Nothing beats a good flute solo.

It might ultimately be a bit of a hand wave to justify Kaladin getting a brand new honorspear instead of getting a sword which he has no experience fighting with.

It depends how much you trust Nale. I take what he saying as true, but I can't tell you what corrupted means mechanically.

I think Nohadon was just a guy that helped found the Knight's Radiant and wrote a book on leadership that Dalinar made his entire personality . He shows up for Dalinar because he's important to Dalinar and who Dalinar has been looking to for advice this whole time. As to the mechanics of it my guess is it's this: Kaladin got to talk to his long dead brother via Dalinar Connecting him to something. The Nohadon thing is probably similar.

Definitely. The way Ishar fought the windrunners at the end of RoW also looked like he could see their moves ahead of time. They also have super endurance and healing. Like wounds that would hurt a radiant don't bother them. Nale shrugs off an arrow threw his head in RoW, Taln, without his blade, takes 11 spears through him and is fine.

Herald would be more powerful assuming they had access to light they can use to fuel their surgebinding. Which is up in the air with the changes to Roshar. In Ch. 120 Tanavast says the Heralds "WERE ABLE TO DRAW ON THE POWERS OF ROSHAR ITSELF INSTEAD OF JUST MY SURGES." whatever that means. The true tones of Roshar are powering them? The three OG gods? Does having bodies made from investiture help them?

Shallan is super glib in every book. In fact, a ton of Brandon characters do this taking what another person is saying literally to have a glib response. It comes up so much I have a name for it "I meant a real ____" I'm not saying it's good, but it is prevalent throughout Stormlight. Oathbringer: Way of Kings Ch. 3 Way of Kings Ch. 29 Errorgance (ugh) Words of Radiance Ch. 1 Oathbringer Ch. 21 Oathbringer Ch. 64 Edgedancer Ch. 10 Words of Radiance Lift interlude: This is just me looking up particularly glib characters from memory and keyword searching the books for "I meant".

This. In addition to refocusing the scope there should be fewer POVs and less fequent POV switches in books 6-8 than there were in the last 2 books. Especially WaT. It felt like there were 3 POVs in every chapter in the second half.

Taravangian honors the contract even though Dalinar broke it to make the Power Honor happy.

Lift learns and starts using Zahel’s color-based sayings.

It would be cool if Kaladin showed up in the epilogue of 6. I wonder if Brandon has it in him to keep Kaladin out of an SA book that much. Kaladin has by far the most POVs and page count of the main characters. He really likes having Kaladin around. As far as things recurring, I think some of the Death Rattles will happen again in other words they apply to a scene in the front 5 and to a different scene in the back 5. Valor will show up. Endowment will be involved I don't know if she'd planet hop though. Maybe Mercy will get involved since Mercy was involved in Odium's fight against Ambition.

Yes! I always thought that passage on Bravery seemed like a shard description and stuck out there.

In Hero of Ages Vin chose to do the Shard combat determined to kill Ati which she did and died in the process. Dalinar did the opposite thing, not to try and kill Taravangian and let him win for now. Then instead of (part of) the planet being transformed into an idyllic ecosystem the planet gets worse. If he’s cribbing from Hero of Ages he’s looking at that and doing the inverse.

She did say to Taravangian in RoW that she changed him into someone could “bear this Power with honor”. Now he is holding both Odium and Honor. She may have gotten what she wanted or a thing she wanted anyways.

Overall it’s above RoW and below WoK on my favorites list. It’s a good book. I loved the new visions and Tanavast POVs. Gavinor thing was underwhelming ultimately. I’m cool with the way Dalinar’s final scenes played out overall. I enjoyed the Shinovar trip a lot. Every time we were in Azir and the Shattered Plains I was a bit bored. BAM more of an important historical figure than important present day actor. I was kinda tired of Mraize at the start of the book but he became more interesting during this book. Should have seen Kaladin becoming a Herald coming, other people did. I didn’t want the Oathpact restored but they made enough changes to it that it’s not the same doomed endeavor. I don’t think it’s that much like Hero of Ages. There’s a Shard merger, but there are 16 of these things some are going to merge. He’s gotta be allowed to merge shards more than once in these books. I thought it was heavily foreshadowed that merging a shard or more with Odium is the way to give it the contest it lacks and restrain it somewhat. I really enjoyed Taravangian not being able to gloat over Dalinar. Go kick rocks Taravangian. Tired of him. Can’t for Jasnah to out maneuver him in Book 10. Oh wait I have to wait at least 20 years for that .

LOL! Yeah, they are all still mad just not as out of it as Taln. Jezrien was a responsible leader once and now he’s inverted to being an irresponsible drunk. Which makes him about as functional as Taln but it’s a bit different.

Yeah, that's a good point he had not been a mortal for a long time. Conversely, Taravangian was very recently a feeble old man who could barely do anything physical. Being powerful enough to slam a vault door shut might be refreshing for him.

It's fun to see Taravangian screw around with things almost as an afterthought while he's talking. I'm not sure how different it is from before. Rayse could do stuff he struck Dalinar's copy of The Way of Kings with lightning in the climax of OB and he swatted away a gloryspren that was swirling around Dalinar. He did favor pulling people into his golden mind palace instead of showing up in person, but when he did show up he could interact. I wonder if shattering the special shape Stormseat would have had as a Silver Kingdom Capital City, like the others demonstrated by Kabsal's cymatics, broke some sort of magic ward. Like it was originally shaped by a note from the pure tones of Roshar or whatever and that interfered with her powers somehow. The special cymatics shapes don't seem to bother the other unmade as 3 were hanging out in Alethkar no problem. Must be specific to how she does her thing or there's a different reason.

It's hard for me to buy that he was writing about ruling the humans before Odium deemed him "Ruler" in this chapter. Ruler was Odium's flourish not El's. El refers to himself ruling the humans twice. Why would he assume he'd get to march at the head of a human legion specifically when he has been in the dog house for so long? Again not a huge deal, but the best handwave is that this was taking place on Day 1 and it's just shown to us out of order.

I think it's too late for that unless he wants to do what he did with WoR and fix it in post, but I don't think it's that big a deal. Further evidence that this is an error is that the epigraphs in RoW were tilted "Musings of El, on the first of the Final Ten Days." during which he says he looks forward to leading the humans yet he only gets that power in this interlude which is after the end of Day 2. Unless this is supposed to be the first day, but positioned in the book after the 2nd.

The El chapter seemed a little inconsistent with his brief appearance in RoW. Odium rushed the Pursuer's return so that El could use the dagger on him to see if the anti-voidlight would work. I would think they knew of each other. Plus, the Pursuer is surprised to see El like Odium reincarnated someone Rayse had kept on Braize. Now Odium doesn't know who he is "Who are you? Ah ... yes I see." I guess we can handwave that the 9 asked Odium to return the Pursuer and El didn't interact, but it's a little weird.

Yeah, it's child champion time. Going to the spiritual realm gives him an opportunity to see how Dalinar treated Elhokar, specifically the scene where Dalinar knocks him around and take power from him. Gavinor has sworn to kill everyone who "hurt" his dad. It might also give Odium a chance to talk to Gavinor and convince him to turn on Dalinar. He's not quite a suckling babe, but he probably still sucks his thumb. My theory about the Death Rattles is they are a little off because he's going to use them twice. Once in the front half and once in the back half. Alternatively, I think it would be hilarious if he was sent into a different series. He gets spit out in a garbage strewn alley in 1980s Mistborn no clue what's going on.

She probably just hitched rides from town to town to get close and walked the final leg. Hitching is how she got to Yeddaw to Edgedancer. I doubt she walked much of the distance.

Jezrien didn't die until well after the death rattle was recorded and presumably the person was witnessing the shifting of the burden at the time it was shifted, which was 4,500 years in the past when the 9 heralds refused to go back and abandoned Taln. My general theory on the Death Rattles is that they will recur. More than one event will fit these descriptions through the 10 books. That's why the True Glory one mostly fits Kal and Shallan but they get Shallan's gender wrong. You could look at it as trolling I look at it as this is his big secret foreshadowing: we cross them off the list as they come up, but they will happen again.