Oltux72

I am afraid I have to point out that we got viewpoints even from Tanavast. And exactly here is the source of the issue. Wind and Truth is full of gods acting directly, talking to each other and to the protagonists. Getting readers to identify with a god is much harder. Yes. Just as the Renarin and Rlain story line. Even Sigzil's battle did not really matter. I suppose Shallan's plot line had to be there so that it became impossible for the Ghostbloods and the Knights Radiant to make peace. But for now that does not matter.

A big shoutout to @Red Blue, whose answer showed that an obvious question has arisen. We have been overlooking that question. How did Sigzil get out of Urithiru?

I need to point out that humans have been doing so for millenia. The Spartan Way works. It gets you warriors. No, that line is not fine. Harmony treated Waxillium like an attack dog, not like a man. There was one crucial error he made. He lied to Waxillium on who Paalm was. Incidentally Harmony failed for a reason related to the reason Jasnah Kholin failed. Utilitarianism does not work. Actually I doubt that guns will ultimately win against bladed weapons in the Cosmere. Allow me to elaborate. The decisive factor is defense. We defend against projectiles with armor. The problem with armor is that it requires more mass to protect more surface area. However, as soon as you go to active defenses like steelpushing, the scaling changes. Your surface area no longer matters. Your defensive push has to be quick enough to act in time powerful enough to stop a projectile The bullet has to spend resources to accelerate survive the passage through the air overcome defenses Now, you cannot make a projectile arbitrarily heavy. It would kill the shooter by its recoil. Nor can you make it arbitrarily fast. It would burn up in the air. Hence at some point your weapon will have to work by a payload in its warhead as opposed to a kinetic kill. But then why do you fire it from a gun?

I am sorry, you are right.

How do we know that? Sigzil is most likely stuck in Urithiru. Frankly I am pretty sure that a subgroup among the Knights Radiant will accept Retribution as their god.

The issue I see is that Retribution is on the run. And I think Brandon did that intentionally, because he wants to reduce the scope of the story line from gods clashing to more human proportions. And that is wise. Very loosely it looks to me like the future will feature Scadrial and Harmony entering an internal crisis, which forces the leadership of the Ghostbloods to become more active. That may involve Roshar, but I don't see Thaidakar starting an outright interstellar war.

My broader point is that from the Parshendi position Wind and Truth ended with pretty much the realistic best case. Sure, you can come up with something even better, but I don't see how you would have a realistic hope of getting there. That on a meta level leads me to ask whether the question of whether the ending is a downer has an objective answer, or it just depends on which side you root for.

As opposed to two hostile Shards? And in what regard is Retribution to them? He put Parshendi in command. That was kind of unavoidable. If Odium lost, they would have faced a hostile Shard as underdogs. If Odium won, same outcome as now. Well, it is Roshar. There must be a Storm. And that is worse than getting their light from Honor?

I am forced to disagree with this because it implies a dichtomy that does not exist in the Stormlight Archive. From the Parshendi perspective Wind and Truth ended reasonably well.

I am afraid there is an extreme good reason for him to exclude that example. In fact, possibly two or three of them. The obvious one is that to him the worst outcome to Odium being freed from Roshar would be the vessel of Odium being freed bearing an additional Shard of vessel having voluntarily relinquished it. Or alternatively he may doubt that a full human being could do what Kelsier did. In fact, technically we have no precedent.

Whenever he introduces himself - arguably. He'd probably tell you that it is a matter of perspective. He'd tell you that Kelsier wasn't mortal at that time. However, would that be his reason as opposed to be his justification?

She expects the other Shards to fight Retribution. If she wants to survive long term Retribution has to be defeated. That makes Roshar a target. Roshar in her mind is the place you do not want to be. It is like going on a trip to Hirosima on Aug, 1 of 1945, knowing what is to come. Not advisable.

There will be internal social conflict. The next generation of Singers will not be content with letting the Fused rule. In fact they will eventually see them as parasitic bodysnatchers. If Fused bodies age they will be forced to use suicidal Singers or criminals tortured into accepting a Fused as hosts. That is not a recipe for staying popular.

The first question here is to which extent Intent is important. You may have to mean that prayer. Do they even know that you can charge spheres by praying at midnight? Retribution send the Listeners a messenger. They needed to be told. It is not obvious and it is not clear whether they will make that advantage public.

Or alternatively, Hoid is so mean that he intentionally strikes Kelsier from the historical record.

It would have lost her all other allies. In fact she'd have no guarantee that she wouldn't face a revolt among the Radiants, some of whom are Thaylen, if she tried it. Nobody would ever make a treaty with her or Alethkar. All the old prejudices about the Knights Radiant would have rematerialized.

The culture of the Singers is dead. The Parshendi themselves are not, but the only ones who have a trace of their genuine culture left are the Fused and the Listeners. Picking them as PoV charcters makes sense. Otherwise Brandon would have had to deal with an alien mind in an even more alien situation for no gain in the story.

Why? What role did her atheism play? Her fundamental flaw was not living up to her own standards. That is not a shortcoming atheists display more often than religious people, for it is too common for that.

The back half of the Stormlight Archive is supposed to feature the Heralds. I doubt this is going to be Ishar and Kalak playing tennis on a paradisic beach. So they'll need to return. But why will they do so? Sheer boredom? Retribution returning to Roshar? Will somebody contact them?

Why would Cultivation allow that? She fled to be safe. Why reinvest in Roshar? On the contrary, we might see her calling for her spren to evacuate to her new seat.

At the risk of being pedantic: There is no evidence that Edgli created Nalthis. A world being too young to have macroscopic fossils is meaningless. Earth's oldest fossils are from the Ediacarian, maybe, maybe Tommotian. That is less than 800 million years in the oldest case. This planet is 4.5 billion years old.

These solutions may get you a stable government, but obviously it means that you'll have to cede a lot of power to the Radiants. Now, it leaves open how exactly you'd do that? A council of orders? Or a chamber elected by the Radiants as individuals?

If you were an Alethi woman, would you challenge Jasnah Kholin on philosophy? She is the sister of the king, respectively the queen. That would be a high-risk move. You may be exactly right on how experienced she is.

Not if dozens of people who have a good reason to say something stay silent. Because it would work. The need to demonstrate your own superior intellect is a weakness independent of other capabilities. Rayse may have been so vain. As soon as you know that Rayse is no longer the vessel, assuming anything is just stupid.

It is plot, but it is not plot about war in the strict sense it is secondary plot. Presumably it will become important. In Wind and Truth only setting Ba-Ado-Mishram free mattered in a peripheral sense almost everything is subverted, indeed doubly so - for no good reason. At least no good reason apparent to a reader now. (Except the Jasnah plot) I am sorry, but Brandon wrote a series of five books about a war. They included a prelude to war, the start of the war and the end. Suppose you wrote about WW1. Your series has the assassination in Sarajevo, the Battle on the Marne and then you switch to the failing German offensive of 1918 and the subsequent armistice. You see the issue? It is structural. And again that is a structural problem, because he had already done so. If the bridge runs of The Way of Kings don't convey that message, nothing will. The message had been delivered - with triplicate carbon copies. Seriously, that book was Brandon's version of "All quiet on the Western Front". No need to add any message on the horrors of war. In fact if you do, you'll bore the reader, worse, you risk undermining the masterpiece you already wrote. And that leads back to Wind and Truth. It is about a clash of ideas. There is nothing wrong with that, but it is put into a book that should be about a clash of armies or superheroes. There is no logical reason given for Dalinar's conviction that there will be no physical battle. And I am sorry, that is a plot hole, plain and simple. Instead we get Dalinar viewing visions. Try as I might, this is not true plot. Nobody is acting. These are basically recordings that are viewed. Now, sure that is not the only thing that happens in the book. But it is the core of the book. As I write this, I am beginning to wonder why the book worked so well. And it did. I spent a weekend with an unhealthily low amount of sleep on it.