Ahriman

I noticed it breaking down and rebuilding but I didn't know that was supposed to be Kaladin, or that the original faces were supposed to be Heralds. I don't know what any of these people look like and I don't look at pictures, so I usually forget there's even a graphic at the beginning of a chapter and just go for the words. So thank you for telling me what that actually meant!

Given the amount of discussion and reflection among many white Americans and Canadians over their history, me being one of them, I was really invested in finding ways for them to understand their national identities and value their herirage while also trying to find a way forward for both humans and parsh, some form of justice. And maybe that will happen but I feel like it's been dropped for now. And I completely agree about the less human/in tune with nature stuff, I've seen plenty of things where humans are colonial and greedy while nonhumans are the opposite, and it rubs me the wrong way. All the victims of colonial societies are just as human, and colonialism isn't an inherent part of being human. But I think Sanderson did pretty well with having the singers being their own complete society with its own history. Their kind of relationship with the land works, I think. Yes, that was the most satisfying part of the book for me. Lots of potential there and I'm curious how any humans who find their way there will be treated.

You, my friend, have just determined how I'll be spending my weekend. I looked that up on Steam and I like all those tags.

Unfortunately no, or I'd be writing it myself. I'm sure if a writer sat down for long enough they could at least lay out a set of patterns or instincts for them to follow. Or maybe replace some human instincts and behavioural patterns with insect ones, so suddenly life becomes cheap since everyone lays thousands of eggs, or fathers get their heads bitten off, or birth is always fatal for the parent but still desired. I think it would also be easier not to make them major characters, or at least not characters interacted with terribly often. Adrian Tchaikovsky did something like that in his Final Architecture books, where there was a race that was so hard to follow that even with translators it wasn't entirely clear what they were saying, or if they could understand human concepts. I don't remember how that went in the long run. We've gotten very off topic here though, sorry about all that.

I'd thought we were having a conversation rather than an argument or debate, but I see what you mean. I honestly would sometimes prefer to have characters so alien I couldn't understand their motives.

I don't know that I've ever related to a human character either. Relating to characters isn't something I look for very often.

That seems very odd (alien?) to me, but you're probably right. Is that the best we can do? Obviously we can't realistically figure out what a nonhuman intelligence would be like, whether or not such a thing exists, but to me the whole point of having nonhuman beings is to have things that are, on a fundamental level, not human. Maybe some writers have tried this and I haven't seen their work, but I'd like to see science fiction or fantasy where there's something you truly can't form the kind of relationship with that you could with another human, something that just can't be understood or fully seen eye to eye with. I get that's not what Sanderson is doing, I'm just always a bit disappointed when the interesting, strange alien creatures all end up acting like regular people with a new paint job.

I get that, I just find it odd that fiction in general so often wants me to see all nonhuman beings as people and not as something fundamentally different and alien. If all these things are just humans with different bodies that's much less interesting to me. Spren and singers and kandra become less compelling to me the more human they seem. And I'm not saying interspecies romance shouldn't ever be acceptable, I just find it odd when questioning it isn't treated as reasonable.

I feel like the whole Parshmen thing has gotten swept up in other issues, which is disappointing. In previous books, it felt like one of the driving forces in the book was much of humanity reckoning with its imperialist past, discovering and accepting that what land they have was taken from others so forcefully that the old occupants nearly ceased to exist. Given the relevance of that concept to North American societies, I hoped that would continue to be explored. But instead of making them important characters in their own right, they've just been snapped up by the other imperial power of Odium. That's a shame, since I found that much more compelling than the mental health angle. Also, this is my favourite typo ever.

I thought that was cool too. I also like how it ended up being permanent. Sometimes "everyone gets healed all the time" removes the depth and impact.

I've made most of the complaints you're talking about, but funnily enough I usually like Shallan quite a bit. I also think she's too much of a mess to be let out of the house, but that's part of the charm. I also think the Dalinar/Retribution parts of the ending are intriguing, but other aspects of the ending (like Ba Ado Mishram's release coming so late and doing so little) really did frustrate me. These books always have pacing issues, due in part to their size, though I don't think that should be dismissed as a legitimate problem. The language was especially jarring in this book; there is a certain literary style people tend to expect from the genre, and although we know Sanderson won't give us that it seems he's going further and further from that to something that's very hard to take seriously. It's not just language, but also his choice of emphasis and punctuation. As for LGBT stuff, there will always be people who complain about that, especially if it appears after the beginning of a series. That being said, I think I remember a comment about Azir having gender paperwork before, and that character's deal was summed up in a single sentence that felt more like a comment on Azir's bureaucracy than anything else, so anyone harping on about that is being far more dramatic than they need to be.

It's very common, but it's interesting to me because I often find that nonhumans in fantasy/science fiction are too human. To use your Mass Effect example, I did find the concept of romance with aliens in that game sonewhat offputting (though I wish I could have played as one), and I was disappointed that mistrusting aliens in general was treated the same as racism. I've always found the general comfort with interspecies relationships odd. Not necessarily bad, but I've always wondered why "Is this acceptable?" is rarely treated as a decent question within these narratives or in real-world discussion of them.

It's a huge thing. Tanavast was awful at being Honor! And Cultivation spent the whole time confused and scared of what she'd cultivated, so while I think she still has schemes (Lift), I think she also genuinely messed up big time. It's a little disappointing; I'd like to see some Shards doing well out there.

I feel similarly. The visions were interesting to me but they didn't feel like they had the right gravity. And the prose was so much worse than usual, it's like there was no editing at all. Which made it harder to enjoy the parts that were mostly good.

That would have been perfect honestly. Weird, pointless, arbitrary rules are a big part of the Skybreaker philosophy he breaks away from too so it would even be all literary and thematic.