Oltux72

Are the people of Vax another alien species? Where else does the perpendicularity of Vax lead? What has happened to the Ghostbloods? How come no Aetherbound work for Scadrial? Does this confirm that Roshar will lose its perpendicularity? Have the Iriali lost their ethnic cohesion? Is their path over? How and when does Nazriloff die?

I liked it, though it had some weaknesses the main antagonist veers off into comic book villain territory it obfuscates the question how Aviars reached Roshar Otherwise, a good yarn. I would have considered it almost impossible to write a book so deeply embedded in the Space Age while revealing so little about fture events. Structurally I was reminded of Tress in the Emerald Sea, especially in the choice of protagonists coupled with the quasi-naval setting.

Is First of the Sun the world MeLaan met refugees at?

You are up against the mathematics of compound interest applied to likelihood. Let's say you can cover one world in twenty. (If there are sixty worlds that means three). Likelihood of not skipping to a world they are waiting for you: (1 - 0.05)^x - where x is the number of skips. After ten skips that gives you a 40% chance of catching him. Now, it is possible that his skips actively avoid the Night Brigade. But if not, the Cosmere needs to be big.

Yes. That is the benefit. But you are not allowed to use that frequency band unless you keep to such rules. But I see that we cannot get to the core of the issue without taking more political examples. Why are we generally not allowed to consume opium? Looking at the opium wars I am hardly going to argue that the state is abusing its power in banning opium. But given that people are perfectly legally able to drink themselves to death, you cannot argue that banning opium is necessary to stop people from harming other people.

You are putting me into a difficult position, but consider this: The Night Brigade needs to chase Nomad. What does that imply? That they cannot just preposition forces to await him. They wouldn't even need to get it right immediately. I'd say that The Sunlit Man just does not work in terms of logic unless the Cosmere contains thousands of worlds.

Because these goals and other goals are independent of each other therefore will conflict eventually. To give you a trivial example, lest this get unnecessarily political: WiFi is an established technology precisely because governments imposed the standard. The idea of limited freedoms governed by strict necessity and nevertheless getting an optimum outcome for the community has been falsified.

Presumably the same stuff the Ire makes their vats for Investiture from. There is just no need for exotic new materials.

One bit of criticism, if I may. The next time you discuss matters of language and make a survey, please include a question on whether people who are reading the books are reading their native language or not. There is decent chance that it matters in this case.

Don't they have newspapers and books in the Cosmere? You'd assume that Sigzil does read all the books on Roshar he can get. They deviate from the tech tree. As far as I can tell, early "space" travel is Southern Scadrian airships in the CR. That is not a big jump.

That would be a little lame. The Ghostbloods may be trading/capturing Towerlight using metalminds (Nicrosil) Purified Dor The Ghostbloods may have found a way to tap other metalminds They may be using spikes as a power sources The Ghostbloods may be trading with Cultivation for Lifelight

Given that we have evidence of earlier visit to Scadrial, I think that we can draw no conclusions from Waxillium meeting Hoid before he employs him. Exactly. We know for sure that there were more Spren among the Iriali. Assuming otherwise would mean that there were no Radiants among the Iriali. Though that makes me wonder about the WoB. What happened to them?

Trouble to keep that position filled indicates that they tried multiple times. In fact it raises the very ugly possibility that Hoid arranged for the position to keep reopening. And there is another problem: the letters between Harmony and Wit and the tissue sample They mention previous visits of Hoid to Scadrial while Harmony's agents were operating, so they have to be after the Catacendre.

WoB on Skybreakers Sanderson is devious. Look closely at what he denies. He says that no Skybreaker moved from Roshar to Scadrial by that time. This does not rule out that unbonded Highspren have gone to Scadrial. The people would be Scadrians, but they would presumably be bound by the oaths. The Spren knew that something bad was about to happen. It is entirely plausible that some Spren went as far away from Roshar as the mechanics allowed and were free to leave unaffected by the dilation effect. In fact we have strictly speaking no idea whether even Ashyn is affected. Hence I am afraid we cannot draw conclusions towards the timeline from that.

It just takes knowledge. If you know that antimatter exists, every Soulcaster becomes a potential continent killer.

I am not one of those who feel that the quality of the prose has decreased. Hence, if you want to know whether the effect was caused by bloat, you have to look at what shortening the book would entail. Good question. The default answer would be to kill Lirin. And then you'd have to change more to which I cannot give default answers. No. The Ghostbloods did not care about the Radiants. They wanted something. Somebody got in their way. an allowance a pardon for her people leadership of an order of Radiants wife of a High Prince magical powers two spren steals a mighty magical device without consequences gets away with murder Do I need to go on?

I have to disgree. This was supposed to be Szeth's book. It wasn't. That much I think we can agree upon with something approaching consensus. Now, you may think that his plot was weak in structure or that is it was neglected. I would see it the latter way. It could have been expanded on. In a way kills his family. Done in a few pages. In Rhythm of War the plague plot was cut. I can understand the psychological reasoning, but in hindsight it was a mistake. If you want to expand Sleepless planting bugs on Jasnah and Wit -> no consequences Jasnah dumps Wit and does nothing about no longer trusting him Odium sends a fleet - no naval response El was merely a plot device Dai-Gonarthis had more or less a cameo with some mysterious price to be paid in the future We finally see what Elsecalling does - in a few pages You move a whole people - in a few pages Felt takes Kalak prisoner -> no consequences Taln takes up arms again - off screen The Thaylens switching sides could have used some more foreshadowing (Was that lost with the plague arc?). How do the Spren collectively react? No show. And so on. No, I am sorry, but the proposals to cut stuff out deserve a closer look. That means that a serious proposal to implement them had to be made. So I took the most obvious stuff to cut. Only then could we seriously say whether this would have made the books better. Something to deeply affect Kaladin is needed. Killing a close friend is the obvious alternative. But not a peace. Thaidakar cannot do anything to harm her anyway and he pays his debt. This is a truce, not a peace. The conflict will reengage as soon as the flow of time will have renormalized. Another, better, way to end her plot line would have been to make clear to her that she cannot have her private war with a powerful organization while doomsday is on and she will have to accept a settlement. One of the weaknesses of SA is that if Shallan wants something, she gets it. Case in point: People still complain that Adolin faced no consequences for murder, but nobody talks about Shallan in that regard.

First of all I do care about improvements. I am unsure of the methods. That is a small but crucial difference. Second, if you are unsure about how to improve, options have to be looked at. Hence if you are looking at the option of streamlining you will have to suggest plot threads to eliminate, because taking details out of all plot lines is unlikely to work well. Kill Taft earlier. Options exist. You do have the Ghostbloods as a dangling thread. Killing Iyatil has crossed a threshold. If you wanted closure on the Ghostbloods, you'd have to include a peace settlement with them. Thaidakar is not going away or going to die from old age. OK, somebody has to say it. The road is correct, but we are walking it in the wrong direction. I am going to say it outright: The last two books of the Stormlight Archive are worse not because they contain too much fluff, but because they are crammed. They resorted to telling instead of showing because telling is shorter. These two books should have been three books. I suspect you need some way to get a limted form of Surgebinding working in the back half. Having one of the Five Scholars in Urithiru makes that plausible through technological innovation.

Eliminate the Mink as a character Eliminate Fourth Bridge (the airship) Eliminate the Gem Inquisitor part Eliminate the Rlain/Renarin romance Eliminate the loophole subplot Let Mraize live - in fact let the Ghostbloods just get away Eliminate the Kalak subplot Eliminate the Exodus of the Iriali Shrink the search for the traitor in Shadesmar Eliminate the subplot about Ialai Note that I didn't say that that would improve the books. I merely said that it can be done.

The vincinity of a dieing vessel is unlikely to be safe. He might just have feared Tanavast who had nothing to lose anymore.

It is possible that Brandon Sanderson is at a level that allows him to ignore editors more easily and this is not good. I'd say that the first part of that statement is obvious and the second is a possibility without conclusive evidence in support. You are correct. That is not really contentious. This could be done. Would it make the book better and, more crucial, would it make the series better? How much of what we now call fluff is necessary setup for the back half? Would cutting it make the book better? If you prefer short books, the Stormlight Archive is not ideal for you anyway. Could I ask that we make up our minds? Is it the quality of the prose? Or is it the amount of prose? Is it both? Mind you I am not saying that you are wrong or that it is both. But we need to make up our mind about what it is.

Yes, though that does not mean that the issue can simply be ignored. If we stay with the concrete example, then Kaladin due to his medical training for sure knows concepts like physical therapy. Hence he must have words for them. That these concepts are also used for mental health is a peculiarity of certain languages. Now Kaladin does not know what "therapist" means. That suggests that what he actually says (presumably he was speaking Alethi with Szeth - does Kaladin know any foreign language?) is not based on the word he uses for ordinary therapy. What actual word did Hoid use? One of his native language? A Scadrian term? A word from whatever is used in Silverlight? Now a suggestion I've heard is that he should say "mind healer" or something similar. That makes no sense to me. He would know what that means. In fact most likely there is an Alethi term for those Ardents specialized in aid to the mentally ill. The whole point of the conversation was avoiding that. Now. Brandon could have used an invented word. That is problematic, for he would have needed to settle on a language for Hoid to draw such words from and decide what his translation powers do in such cases. That is different from the "rust" example. Alethi must have a word for rust. They just don't use it that way. Hence I am not sure whether we are actually looking at an issue of style or whether we are looking at a deficiency of world building with respect to language change. Certainly true. The question is whether a simple delay for editing woud have fixed that issue. In fact it is not clear to which extent there is an issue. I personally take Oathbringer as the pinnacle. The last book in a series has always the problem of being the last. You need to give answers. Those are often less liked than interesting questions. And much of this particular book is in a sense retrospective. You could see it as one gigantic infodump with glorious battles for Adolin and Sigzil interspersed. Hence I cannot agree that simply adding time would have improved the book by enough to justify it. By the same logic you could say that the first half should have been six books.

We used to wonder how Jasnah's policy of modernization would fare during her reign. Well, she won't rule Alethkar or anywhere any longer. So what will she do? Search for interstellar allies? Abandon all politics and concentrate on arcane studies? Turn to politics within the Knights Radiant? Exile?

Jasnah is not just a queen. She is also a Radiant. That makes her a figure of religious significance, as well as a factual power, as well as a political power. She can literally turn opponents into dust. Turning against the Radiants means giving up perfect health care, soulcasting and magical food production. On top of that you'd fight people who can strangle you with your own clothing and turn the air to poison as well as fly. The politics are thus altered. The very irony is that Jasnah's powers enable her to push through reforms she likes and undermine the ideology behing these reforms. Yes that would have happened after the end of the war. Jasnah was saved by defeat. However, in Urithiru rising up against the Radiants means going against the people who control everything. That leads to an interesting question how you would combine democracy with a state religion taken really seriously.

No, he is not. I am sorry but I have to factually dispute that the ardents have a full branch dedicated to the mentally ill and they have theories Shallan reads literature on mental illness Adolin and Dalinar discuss (putting it politely) the effect of ald age on mental functions Kaladin is the first therapist. That is different from a general idea about psychology. They clearly have studied mental illness, as they have scholarly articles on it. They just have not had the idea that it can be cured the way Kaladin tries to cure it. That very muchs suggests that they also have studied how the healthy mind works.