Child of Hodor

I was just listening to this again and thought about something.

In Oathbringer, when the Stormfather tells Dalinar about the Oathpact he says "Honor let power blind him to truth.. spren and gods can't break oaths, but men ..."

In the final Way of Kings vision Honor says of Odium "He is bound by some rules. All of us are." 

Preservation (Leras) totally broke his promise to Ruin (Ati). They had a deal!!! 

" This, then, was their bargain. Preservation got mankind, the only creations that had more Preservation than Ruin in them, rather than a balance. Independent life that could think and feel. In exchange, Ruin was given a promise—and proof—that he could bring an end to all they had created together. It was the pact. — Sazed's explanation of the creation of mankind on Scadrial^[11] " https://coppermind.net/wiki/Scadrial

Sazed doesn't call it an "oath", but he calls it both a promise and a pact and as Harmony he would be in a position to know better than most. Ruin, a biased source, also calls it a promise in Hero of Ages. Preservation made a pact / promise to another Shard and he totally broke it! First he trapped poor Ruin's mind with the Well of Ascension and then set up Vin to inherit the Shard and kill Ruin with Sazed being set up to take both Shards after that. He did all this to make sure Ruin didn't get what was promised him by Preservation. 

So ... what the heck :).

Clearly, Odium agrees that he is bound by the champion challenge he accepted. He is convinced by Taravangian to accept his help because of this in their meeting at the end of Oathbringer. 

"You have agreed to a battle of champions. You must withdraw to prevent this contest from occurring, and so must not meet with Dalinar Kholin again. Otherwise, he can force you to fight. This means you must let your agents do your work. You need me."

I am not suggesting this is a plot-hole or a retcon or anything to get upset about. I just find this disconnect puzzling and wanted to point it out. 

On 7/22/2018 at 7:10 AM, Chaos said:

Well in that case I at least appreciate your zeal for correctness in this regard.

Still, I don't think this is really important. The whole shtick is that these books are received in translation from their native language to English (or whatever other language you are reading the book in). Different languages will pronounce names differently. So I mean, I don't really think this correctness is important.

Yeah, I usually go with how Kramer and Reading pronounce things in the audio books and I know that's not how everyone says it on the podcast and is not always how Brandon says it. One time it wasn't consistent in the same book. In the Way of Kings audio book the two narrators pronounce Sadeas differently, because isn't in any female POV chapters until Navani's near the end, so Reading didn't have to say it much and they weren't on the same page.

When in doubt I just go with what sounds best to me. 

Reading Oathbringer I found myself really resenting Hoid for the first time. He's super smart, super immortal, super wise, super quipy, super mysterious (vague) and isn't he quirky?! He acts like he doesn't care but "oh his real problem is he cares too much!". I think him telling yet another motivational story to a depressed main character to inspire them put me over the edge with him. He needs to storm off for a bit, not looking forward to him being the main character of the final cosmere novels at this point. 

I really didn't like Kelsier in the original trilogy. I appreciated him as a very flawed person who tried to do good later in life, but I didn't like spending time with him. I liked his arc during Secret History, but him being reincarnated annoys me because I have been feeling there were too many resurrections or fake deaths in Stormlight. Sometimes I get defensive (in my own mind  ) about it and think "Brandon killed off almost everyone in Mistborn era 1" but this undoes one of the major deaths in that. 

Spook's speech pattern annoyed me to no end in the early books. He mostly drops it in the third one, so I didn't mind him in that one. 

Brandon writes a lot of characters who can't utter a line of dialogue without it containing at least one bad joke, pun or quip: Hoid, Shallan, Lopen, Lightsong, Wayne. A character with a lame sense of humor can be fun, but it would be nice if a character actually told good jokes. One of my favorite scenes is in WoK where Jasnah goes off on Shallan for saying the first half-clever thing that comes to mind "Errorgance", ugh. 

I think the first 5 books will end with the current invasion and everstorm being repelled. Perhaps via the Champion challenge since Odium agreed to it.  I think the back 5 will be about getting a new holder for Odium and maybe combining it with something else to stabilize it. 

Dalinar seems on the path to Shardhood, but a fun surprise would be if Rayse died and Kaladin became the holder of Odium. I think he would be a good vessel for Odium, in the short term anyways. He is already becoming very practiced at getting his own overwhelming hatred under control and binding it to a code. I would imagine Syl would be part of the whole as well since she is bonded with Kaladin's soul. A tiny bit of Honor would be merged in there.  

Jasnah ascending would be very Brandon. The atheist becomes a god. She is kind of like Sazed in that she studied world religions and history very closely, she just doesn't believe in them. 

I think the influence Rayse has as the Vessel of Odium is the desire to be the most powerful being in the universe. This doesn't seem to be an inherent trait of Odium or Hatred. The way Odium has sought out powerful beings to destroy because he thought it was a threat is more coming from Rayse than the Shard intent. 

If another Vessel had held Odium, they may have just set up shop on a planet and been content to encourage constant war and strife while absorbing people's emotions. This version of Odium may not have been obsessed with killing all it's former colleagues. 

The death rattles we think we've seen come to pass, like "True Glory" are always a little off in the details. Broken One might be a weird misinterpretation of what is really meant. 

Tangent about Death Rattles: I wonder if they are kept vague in the details because they some are going to repeat / will be applicable to more than one event over the course of the series? 

Like this one that seems to be applicable to Dalinar seeing Kolinar destroyed in a vision:

A man stood on a cliffside and watched his homeland fall into dust. The waters surged beneath, so far beneath. And he heard a child crying. They were his own tears.— Collected on Tanatesev 1171, 30 seconds pre-death, by the Silent Gatherers. Subject was a cobbler of some renown.^[10]

No one was crying when Dalinar saw Kolinar destroyed in the vision and there wasn't any water. I'm not saying this Death Rattle doesn't refer to Dalinar, but that there may be another event in the series that will fit it as well or better. 

I suspect Amaram switched sides when he got caught out in the Everstorm traveling between the war camps and the Oathgate to Uirithiru. It is mentioned early in Oathbringer that he was caught out in the Everstorm, was injured from it and spent a week or so recovering in his quarters once he got to the city. I think Ialai Sadeas mentions this in the meeting with Adolin and Shallan. 

Style-wise I found it a poor choice to have all the characters in the first chunk of the book wear all white uniforms while they are in a desert where the sand is all white.

I know it is practical to wear white in the desert, but it doesn't look great visually. It also made it hard to figure out who was who as we are being introduced to the characters in this first part. 

The visuals in other locations were better and there are neat details like the face in the clouds looking down. I'm interested to learn more about this setting, but this didn't grab hold of me. 

Good discussion!

I feel Kaladin and Shallan have a more primal, basic attraction in that Shallan reminds Kaladin of his mother. His mother is very witty and throws his words back at him. 

Kaladin reminds Shallan of her father: dark and brooding, but Kaladin is able to contain his anger which Shallan admires. 

That said they are both such a mess psychologically at this point they would be a disaster.