Galavantes

I have almost no doubt that Brandon has tiers for at least the powers that he has mentioned on stage. For instance the "Class C self-transmutation abilities" referred to in firefight. I have no doubt that Brandon knows what class B and A are capable of as well.

At Seattle he has had the benefit of someone dedicated to taking pictures and he has a pretty good process for keeping the line moving but doing pictures.

 

I was an event assistant for his Memory of Light tour in Raleigh. If someone wanted a picture they would have to give me their camera, I would count to 3 and Brandon would look up right at 3 for the picture. Then look back to whatever he was doing.

 

It was pretty amusing actually.

We've also never seen him use his powers while he's not using his powers. Maybe not using his powers is his weakness.

Ooo i just had a thought. Could it be that Calamity is meant to destroy the earth, bring the apocalypse so to speak. He doesn't want to though, so he is gifting his powers to others to keep from going insane and going on a rampage. He is gifting epics in order to save humanity from himself.

 

Like it. Not sure I buy it. But I like it.

Brandon is also really good at misdirection, I'm expecting to find out that Calamity is not in fact the source of the Epics. If only because I tend not to believe anything that is "common knowledge" in a Sanderson novel.

I agree with that person who has a number for a name ^^

 

Brandon loves to touch on religion, but has always strayed away from coming right out with definitive divinities. Even in the cosmere the entities often regarded as gods aren't truly divine. I would be very very surprised if Calamity turned out to actually be an angel. An experiment perhaps. Although that is one crazy experiment. 

Wow, I totally did not remember that. Very cool.

I wonder where the Elantrians went, though. More importantly, why that pool allows for worldhopping while the Well did not.

 

I believe that Brandon stated somewhere that the Elantrian shardpool wasn't exactly the same as the Well. In fact it seems like he hinted that the one we saw in Elantris may not have been a shardpool at all. 

Of course it's also possible that pools have different properties when a shard has been shattered. Or it could even be the case that no two shardpools are exactly alike. 

WoB is that there is a huge clue regarding how Hoid accomplishes his world hopping in Elantris. So huge that he was under the impression that it couldn't be missed. "Intuitively obvious to the most casual observer" one might say.

 

Given that in WoR we saw:

 

It seems reasonable that the hint revolves around the scene of what appeared to be a shardpool in Elantris. However the two scenes in which it appears don't seem to yield much information. 

 

Has anyone spotted this "hint" yet? I'm willing to start a reread of Elantris to search for it, but perhaps I missed something here on the forums. 

We know that at least one order of KR did not abandon their oaths, and that they in fact went into hiding. Due to what we presume to be Nalan's continued activity as Darkness, some have postulated that it was the Skybreakers who went into hiding and continued work behind the scenes to halt the Desolations before they begin.

 

I theorize that it was in fact the Stonewards who went into hiding, in Shinovar. There are several small hints that lead me to this conclusion:

 

1. The traits associated with Stonewards are Dependable/Resourceful. It makes sense that the order which is specifically described as dependable would be the one most likely to maintain their vows.  

 

2. The essences associated with Stonewards are Stone/Rock, which the Shin treat as holy.

 

3.  In WoR we see the following quote from Szeth:

The "we are all that remains" is the part that I find interesting here. In the same breath that he mentions the KR.

 

4. The Shin seem to posses if not all, then probably MOST of the Honorblades. They also seem to have pretty extensive knowledge of surgbinding in general. SOMEONE likely trained Szeth after all. It seems apparent that they went through a lot of effort to preserve their ancient knowledge, and to keep track of the honorblades.

 

5. Szeth states that the stone shamans would recover his blade if he lost it. As if it were a certainty. The stone shamans must be quite powerful. Simply another sign that they have preserved their knowledge of surgebinding.

 

6. The Shin are stated as being highly Xenophobic. Which makes perfect sense, because if your entire nation is in fact harboring the last of the lost Knights Radiant, you wouldn't want to encourage outsiders to visit.

Actually, the guess that he may have had a spren is spot on. Since Brandon has said that <you know who> is exactly the same as a Shardblade.

And this is why we love Brandon.

I don't do audio-books.  I can't.  After listening to someone talk for ~10-15 minutes, then my brain tunes them out as white noise that's not something actually real going on.  So, if you have to do audio books, I have no idea what quality they come in, and I'm sorry.  Also, my taste in books isn't the same as everyone else, so I'll also mention books that I dislike so that you can compare likes and dislikes.  Obviously, we at least somewhat agree, because Sanderson is freaking amazing.

 

GRRM last two Song of Ice and Fire books were terrible, each one worse than the one before it. The first three are really, really good.

Abercrombie has terribly written characters in boring worlds (with an INCREDIBLY notable exception of Best Served Cold, which you should read).  Drastically different style than Sanderson; incredibly good.  Avoid the rest of his books like the plague.

I never could get into Erikson's Malazan series, but will be giving it another go soon.  Too many people whose opinion I trust and taste in books is similar to mine keep saying it's good for me to give up after only two tries.  I love Mass Effect, and it took me 5 tries to get into the game at all, so /shrug.

Terry Goodkind's books are, with one notable exception, awful.  Wizard's First Rule, the first of the Sword of Truth series is jaw-droppingly good.  The next two are not nearly as good, but I still made it through.  Halfway through book 4 I dropped it, stopped, and never looked back.  At the time, this was the first time that I had made it more than three chapters into a book and stopped reading it.

 

Non-Sanderson great books that people have mentioned that I will repeat for added emphasis, as well as a few new ones:

 

Scott Lynch -- Remember Kelsier and Crew from Mistborn?  Think that, but they have no magic.  And written incredibly well.

Patrick Rothfuss -- Beautiful prose.  I love the books.  A common complaint is that they're somewhat boring (definitely not non-stop action-packed, so if that's what you want stay away.)

Brent Weeks -- Over-the-top ridiculously awesome, take everything up to 11, and then maybe 12 or even 13.  God I love this guy.  If you want realism, stay away.  If you want a fantastically good time, then dive in.

Peter Brett -- Darker and more gritty than Weeks, just as well written.  I like 'em, some of my friends hate them.  I bought Book 1 because the cover art on Book 2 was so amazing that I was willing to pay $7 for the paperback just to have it.  I now own the three that are out, and consider it the best impulse book-buy I've ever made.

Jim Butcher -- His Dresden Files (Urban Fantasy) series starts out somewhat rough, but gets better; as I recall, after book 4 each one is substantially better than the one before it--and none of them are bad.  Codex Aleria (Epic/High Fantasy) is really, really good.  He uses some of the same basic principles of Sanderson (Heroes should be Heroic), and uses them well.  The magic system used, and the way that it affected the development of the world is one of the most clear-sighted, well-thought out and natural presentations I've ever seen.

Michael Sullivan -- The Riyiria books are definitely worth a read.  While solid, they read very much like First Published Novels.  I'm not really sure how to explain it, except to compare Elantris to Mistborn.  No disrespect intended at all, just that he obviously gets better as the series goes on, and there comes a point where pretty much everything that happens is what, why, and how you would expect (or at least I did.  But I was tipsy at the time, which occasionally induces prescience in me.  Or at least the feeling that I'm prescient.  Which really isn't the same thing at all.)

Michelle Sagara/Michelle West -- Same author, writes under both names.  Has a different series for each one, with rather substantial different 'feel.'  I love her books, and she has written plenty of them.  As Michelle West, she writes high fantasy, with a wide cast of characters and points of view that mesh together very well.  Incredibly believable characters, that are also all distinct and unique individuals.  Lots of politics and intrigue, mixed with some great fights and just good fun.  Her prose is good, but relies more on suggestion and painting a picture of what's happening than Rothfuss.  If Sanderson is my favorite author, she's my second favorite; both have rather different styles, but one thing they both do so well is create believable, relatable characters--and then we get to see how they react in situations that range from dire and deadly to fun and fabulous.  She also has another series, which is Cast in <Insert-Noun-Here>.  They're more--hrm.  High fantasy police procedural?  Yes--that's probably the best description.  Much shorter than her other novels (which are ~700-800 pages long), they read faster, but still have the same trait of great characters.  A substantially smaller cast, as there is just one POV character, too.

Mira Grant -- I originally forgot to include her.  Read Feed, take whatever time you need to recover, then the rest of the trilogy of Deadline and Blackout.  All three were nominated for Hugo award for best novel.  Drastically different style, genre, everything from Sanderson--but some of the best books I've ever read in my entire life.  There are no books I recommend more often or with more praise, I just forgot about them because they're post-zombie apocalypse.  Don't let that turn you off, though; I was looking for a nice hour of reading before bed, and something light that I could not care about or focus on.  80 hour work-weeks tend to drag me down, and fluff-reading is a nice catharsis.  I, er, ended up not sleeping that week--well, I got like 5 hours of sleep.  Spread over the course of 5 days.  If you are having troubles finding something to read, then read Feed.

 

I can't even describe how much  I agree with everything said here. These comments are exactly how I feel about all of those books.

Did I miss something about Zahel - is he vasher??

I have to admit it's hard to keep track at the moment.

There certainly are some similarities...

 

Also Vasher's sword does seem to be roaming around on Roshar as well.

 

"It's a stupid maneuver," Zahel said. "When it works, it's only because most Shadbearers learn to swing their weapons without as much force as they would a regular blade."

Perhaps a little ambiguous there. I read "not as much force" as slower. But like you said it's not super important. Either way I feel like the speed of any sword swing is not comparable to a dartgun.

One more item, however...performing the "thunderclap" (if I remember the term correctly) seems to me to be as hard as catching a dart in the air, from a dexterity/hand-eye-coordination standpoint. Kaladin is there already, in my mind!

 

"Lastclap" I think? Va...er..Zahel mentions that the only reason they are able to pull that move off is because the shardbearer gets used to swinging their swords more gently than you would with a normal sword, so they're already swinging more slowly in general. A dart is significantly faster than even a fast sword stroke, not to mention much smaller and therefore less room for error. To me these two actions are on two totally different planes.

Also didn't the dart come in from over Tal'n's shoulder? Maybe I read that wrong but I thought he caught it without even LOOKING at it. That seems way past Kal's abilities. At the moment at least.

This "Taln" is a world hooper, so it isnt impossible to think he was burning atium.

 

And thanks for the downvote, u narrow minded person :c (whoever u are)

 

Yeah I upvoted to balance out that neg. The post didn't deserve it. And the rep system around here is silly anyway. But I really don't want to derail another thread with this topic. So let's just leave it at that.

I still suspect that Cultivation's name is Rysha.

I've wondered about this for a while, we know Vasher will die if he is wielding Nightblood and runs out of breaths but this seems likely to be because it would then drain his divine breath removing the thing keeping him alive. Do we have WoB on what effect Nightblood would have on someone who isn't returned? Would it kill them or simply leave them drab?

 

This is actually a good call. We've never seen someone who isn't a returned or "evil" use nightblood yet. It could just turn a normal person drab. And drain a surgbinder of all their stormlight, then pretty much quit.

(I'm planning to ask what the "exchange rate" between Breath and Stormlight is at the signing in DC next week - I'll be back with an answer if I get one!)

 

I wanted to know the same thing.

 

 

“What is a man’s life worth?” Dalinar asked softly.

“The slavemasters say one is worth about two emerald broams,” Kaladin said, frowning.

Sanderson, Brandon (2010-08-31). The Way of Kings (Stormlight Archive, The) (p. 957). Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition.

 

It's not much, but for right now I'm going with the assumption that one breath is worth two emerald broams worth of stormlight.

Good to know. I am not satisfied there. On top of that, I did make the argument that I wish Shallan had used Soulcasting. I wrote a blog about how those things just fell off of the map and 90% of the book felt like a side step instead of progression. Shallan could have soulcast to help them out of the chasms plenty of times, but she pretends she can only use Illusions! WHY? Because Jasnah said not to use it and it is dangerous? It's not a logical move to abstain from practicing if Jasnah is gone. She will have to try on her own at some point. 

 

 

We saw her try to soulcast a stick into fire, which we would assume should be a pretty simple soulcast, only to have the stick basically tell her to go away. Her illusions on the other hand came to her pretty easily, so it makes sense that she leaned on those. Especially in a life or death moment.

I suppose we could have seen her try some more soulcasting, but Brandon obviously didn't want her to have that particular tool yet, so it would have just been more scenes of her trying and failing.

 

 

 

. I can't see why anyone would purposely ignore the entire glowing green thing in his hand because they don't see it as a good picture of a gemheart and then  not even have an alternative possibility that makes sense in context.

 

We have an entirely plausible explanation: Artistic license. It seems obvious that after further review someone on the team decided that the original depiction didn't fit the descriptions in the text and it was changed to better depict what it was always supposed to be, which is Kaladin landing and glowing with stormlight. 

I'm with Argent. Never looked like a gem to me. And as he said the cover art does not perfectly describe any scene, so we can't take its details too seriously. To me it always looked like the artist's rendition of Kaladin pooling stormlight.

 

Edit: I just realized the cover was actually updated. Looks like someone thought it wasn't a good enough depiction of Kaladin using stormlight. More reason to think it was never supposed to be a gem.

Unless you're like me and choose to post Warbreaker spoilers in WoR threads. In which case I like to let people know in the title.

My interpretation here was that trying to bond to a honorblade is a lot like a non-Knight trying to bond to a shardblade. They can get some of the functionality out of it (summoning and dismissing) but not the full suite of abilities like morphing its shape or instant summoning. Perhaps you can "partially bond" an honor blade, in that you can get some of its benefits but not all. So you can summon and dismiss it, and you gain some rudimentary surgebinding, but nothing like what the Herald would have received. 

Q: At the midnight release I asked if an Elantrian took their seon to a different planet and modified the aons to use the seon's aon(its core aon) would that allow them to use their magic on the other planet. A: He said it would be very hard but it could be done. Q: Later at the signing I Asked Sanderson if Raoden found a way to make Sarene live as long as he does or if he gave himself to the pool after she died. A: He r.a.f.o.'d me and said that the pool wasn't what people think it is.

 

He's actually said that about the pool before. I'm curious what we've missed there.

Mentioned in one of the early/mid-ish Kaladin chapters.

 

Paraphrasing but "Damnation, called Braize in the old songs".

Well...ok then. I even remember reading that now that I see it and I just didn't retain it for some reason.