Elegy

Spirited Away would be my recommendation. It's very different from those you've seen, more of a whimsical kind of magical and not quite as serious as Mononoke and Porco Rosso. But those three would give you a pretty good look at Miyazaki's different styles as a director. And depending on what you liked about which of these movies, you can move from there.

You chose wisely Always nice to see Whisper of the Heart that high. I understand that it doesn't have the broadest audience of all the Ghibli films (at least in the west), but I still think it's kinda under-appreciated. Also, having a fantasy epic and a whimsical slice of life flick next to each other at the top is a nice testament to Ghibli's versatility!

It was time again, and it was beautiful as always. The last two episodes in particular always get to me. Wirt is one of my all-time favorite characters at this point!

I think we will only really know after the sequel is out. The explanation that it's set on earth makes sense of course, but then again, it wouldn't have been that hard to just change the setting to a non-Earth Cosmere planet. But he's repeatedly stated that the sequel would involve (and require heavy research for) Aztec culture (the challenges of which are part of why the sequel still hasn't been written yet). And that has to have a function for the story more important than it being in the Cosmere. I guess we will see why when it's finally released someday.

So, I felt like this book had an extreme strong emotional core, even compared to most other Cosmere books. And by "emotional core" I primarily mean Yumi's arc, which is, in its core, a story about a person who was never given even the slightest bit of joy or even self, all of her life is duty, and there's something incredibly touching about those moments when she realizes what she can have, and that there's no way she doesn't deserve these things as well. It makes the slice-of-life moments of the book hit pretty hard. A scene about going shopping probably wouldn't be quite this magical without the arc of her discovering these normal things firsthand. It adds a whole other layer to those magical everday moments, it makes them both everyday and literally magical at the same time. The three scenes in particular I'm thinking of: The shopping scene, the flying scene within "her world", and the carnival. On a side-note, I've read Sanderson books for more than 13 years, and back then I was a very plot-focused reader who was always looking for the next captivating story. That was when I was in my teens. My time at university had me discovering how beautiful depictions of everyday life could actually be, mostly via Ghibli films (Whisper of the Heart and My Neighbor Totoro come to mind), but also due to arthouse films like the Before trilogy by Richard Linklater or the filmography of Wong Kar-wai. From then on, these have always been sort of two different things to look out for in a film or book in my mind, and they've been kind of separated: Sanderson is a story-teller first and foremost. Filmmakers like Wong or Linklater don't care quite as much about story and more about the vibes, the little things, the everyday stuff. Of course, Hayao Miyazaki is already kind of on the edge on these things (Mononoke being more story-driven, Totoro being more vibes-driven), but most of the time, it works well to think of these as two separate intentions that art/artists can have. And this book is outside of these categories in very beautiful ways. Sanderson has found a way to make these little moments matter in a broader, captivating story and the arcs of its characters, specifically Yumi. With her, he has created a premise that can make these everyday moments work perfectly in a tighter story. And in some strange way, having followed his writing for so long and having my taste expand so much, I'm somehow oddly proud of him pulling this off. I think this is the latest point where people criticizing him as mechanical or too plot-focused or not as strong in terms of prose have to deal with a very, very strong counter argument.

It was confirmed via WOB some time ago: But it's still good to have it as book canon!

But once every 3-4 books is actually an outrageous amount if you consider that doing it constantly can make the stories lose stakes for a lot of people. There have been several instances of characters actually dying and people needing Brandon's confirmation via WOB that they were actually died because they didn't believe they actually died (and a shoe was once eaten because of it ). Cases like these show that this is not something that an author should do liberally. Of course, I understand your experience. But I've heard it repeatedly that people are annoyed at this. And this particular case was one of the worst in my opinion. Like, it literally says that she "evaporated into nothingness" (what's a more definitive way of saying that a character died) at the end of the chapter, so it's hard for me to imagine that Brandon didn't want the reader to believe she died and feel the feeling as if she had died. And, like I said, to me that feels dishonest. (Now that I think about it, I wouldn't have been nearly as mad about it if he had just let her come back at the end of the chapter instead of closing that door in one chapter, then opening it again in the epilogue as a separate chapter and doing it the other way. It just wasn't well-done imo.) Anyway, there's more discussion about fake deaths in this section of the Cosmere Beef 2 Shardcast episode (obviously full of spoilers, even beyond the Cosmere, and released waaay before Yumi, so I have no idea how the casters think about this particular case). I think I said what I wanted to say about this topic, especially considering that I didn't want to talk about it initially The ways we perceived the ending are both valid and we can agree to disagree. It is, however, a fact that to some people, Brandon's tendency to bring characters back feels a bit overdone and easy. I promise I will write something more positive about the book in the next few days, because like I said, I loved it and there's so much to talk about, and it feels bad to just rant on about the one single thing that I disliked about it. (EDIT: Took me a bit longer than I wanted, but there it is!) Also, the physical copy just arrived and it is such a piece of art, I'm going crazy over it.

@king of nowhere (This is not the Cosmere spoilers forum, so better hide that second part of the reply.) I wasn't saying that no characters die. The fact that people die in Brandon's books is no argument against his liberal use of fake deaths, which, like I said, isn't a topic often brought up in connection with him for no reasons. From the top of my head, in the matter of seconds, I can name seven significant fake deaths of major characters in his work. This is not a problem that a list of actual deaths will nullify. Like, the man has written like 40 books, of course characters can die. Edit: Also, regarding your very last point, no, that's a fake-out death by every definition of the word.

Epilogue 1, although my problem is not necessarily the plot armor, but the fact that the book tries to make the reader feel the sad ending without commiting to it. Which feels like a major fake-out. This thing would be frustrating in any work of any artist, but on top of that, Brandon has pretty much written a library worth of books with fake-out deaths, several of which feel deliberately dishonest, almost mean to me in the way they try to pull emotions out of the reader by having them believe the character is dead just to reveal that these emotions were basically for nothing because surprise, they live. Plus the fact that readers already complain about this all the time (one of the major criticism that comes up in the beef Shardcasts, for example), yet he just does not learn that this kind of thing feels bad to many of his readers. This one was the worst of all, because it made me feel the deeply emotionally resonant ending that the book could have had. That ending would have been such a stand-out in his work, people would talk about it all the time. But he dropped it for the "everyone's happy, also they take over the noodle shop", which feels like fan fiction, or a meme ending, to the point that I think it's possbible that Hoid just made it up on the fly because everyone in the audience was crying and the tragic ending might be what actually happened, because it felt like such an odd decision. And I get that you want to make your audience satisfied with a neat little happy ending that is cute and all that, and Brandon can do that, but why in a book about art that resonates and does something to people on a deep emotional level? You watch too many Disney movies Brandon ahaha. ... And this is why I initially didn't write more about it Sorry haha. The disappointment is still too fresh. Might have been one of my all-time favorite books if he had been brave enough to push through with it. The way it is, "only" masterpiece status. (I'm just so impressed with basically everything else.) The Hoid epilogue was great, I really liked it. I somehow assumed that it was obvious which one I meant (since I've seen other people disappointed/confused about that part, for example Merphy Napier), but yeah, I wasn't clear ^^ (EDIT: To clarify, the ending would have been better if he hadn't made it seem like he wanted to commit to the sad ending in the first place. Having a happy ending for this story is fine. It's the fact that he wanted the reader to believe that the sad ending had already happened just to undo it that makes me mad. If he hadn't done that, I would have happily gone along with the happy ending, even though it wouldn't have been nearly as emotionally resonant to me as the one he almost did. At the very least, it wouldn't have felt dishonest.)

Loved it, his best since Oathbringer easily in my opinion, and one of the best Cosmere books in general. It's so full of ideas and inventive, he really went all out this time, a book that is packed with stuff that could have easily filled three books by most other authors. Also, easily the best prose of all of his bibliography. The flying scene in particular stood out as Brandon's best writing ever imo. Just extremely happy with it. On a side-note, gah, I hate the epilogue and I could rant about it for a thousand words (but I won't). Genuinely felt like he abandoned the artistically resonant ending for the safe and forgettable one - in a book about artistic resonance. I think it's a very bad decision and it drags the book down a bit. Which goes to show how much I loved the rest of this, because it's still a masterpiece. Komashi is up there with Scadrial as a runner-up for second place for my favorite Cosmere worlds right now (Roshar #1 of course). Great collection of moods and ideas in general.

I fully understand and respect that! Of course, there are characters in other Sanderson books (Stormlight in particular) that also depict mental health problems very realistically (and for some readers frustratingly so, from what I could gather), and those tend to be among my favorite characters (the obvious one being my favorite character of all time, and that one's story has been very inspiring to me in my day to day life - he's one of the biggest of the many reasons why I'm here in the fandom). But I think that there is a difference between something like Stormlight and this book. There is a time in fantasy for protagonists that struggle with realistic mental health issues, but this book's tone didn't lend itself well for that in my opinion, and in this case I felt it hindered the straight-forwardness that was what it seemed to be going for. In contrast to Stormlight where these things are an in-depth focus since it really takes time to delve into the characters. Like, I definitely agree with you, but I think that in the context of what this book was going for tonally, it didn't seem to work in favor of the book altogether. If that makes sense Interestingly, I'm still pretty excited for the physical book because of all the artwork. Argyle really gave it his all!

I'd like it if the gap between Era 1 and 4 was 1000 years. Then the time we'd spend on liberated Scadrial would be equal (or more) than the Final Empire lasted. It would also be the time that the Well theoretically would have filled up again. Not in-world reasons, but I imagine it'd be kinda cathartic/poetic.

Well, this is going to be a negative one. I really liked the preview chapters and the handbook excerpts are great. In general, it has a lot of cool ideas. But as a whole, this was a complete mess. The plot hits a wall in the middle when seemingly random new stuff is introduced without enhancing the main plot, the love story is genuinely horrendous (and Sefawynn one of the blandest characters Brandon has ever written), the protagonist is annoying (how often do we have to be told he thinks he's a loser? Seemed like every three pages or so in the last part), and the finale is easily the weakest, most confused, least interesting action sequence he has ever published. It never really came together and felt like something that would be set back to get worked on more some other time (like he did with Apocalypse Guard ... if this was ready for publishing, I wonder what that one was like...). To put it with John's words: Two stars, needed several months of additional revisions.

Sadly, that's not his plan right now:

One of the most messed up writer's I've read for sure ha ha. Not sure he's to the taste of many Sanderson fans due to the surreal, explicitly illogical, and also often pretty sexual nature of his books - combine that with the fact that his huge selling point is his prose and never the story, exactly the opposite of Sanderson. I guess both have a very vivid imagination, but they certainly go very different places with it Anyway, I really like his writing, there's an ease and fluidity to his prose that I find unique. My favorite is Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, one of my favorite books ever and perhaps the least explicit book of his I've read. Just be warned that it doesn't have a conclusion to its story in a conventional sense. Kafka On the Shore was fascinating, maybe a step or two too far in some places. But reading it was definitely an experience. And as a huge Franz Kafka fan, the allusions were interesting to see as well. Overall, I'd put him in my top 10, but not in my top 5 of favorite authors.

Whimsy is the only Shard that is semi-confirmed to be not relevant for Lumar: Then later that stream (after using the word whimsical several times): And no, we still don't know what it was he was alluding to, although I still think it's this one: So the Shard might be Autonomy (yet again), given the bone spore part that seems to hint at Taldain Dayside sand on Lumar.

A Dawnshard should probably be a verb. A Shard name, on the other hand, should be something that can be strived towards. I can't really imagine how a person who has entirely become fate would work, as opposed to Honor, Ruin, etc. It makes sense to me that it would have something to do with the "destiny" mentioned in the Hemalurgy chart - some kind of future that the Spiritual Realm intends for individuals. It could be similar to how Returned get brought back with a purpose. Maybe every person in the cosmere has something like that to a degree, just not on the same level.

Yep:

Theoretically yes, but in this case we know Sazed didn't send him

There has been a (kinda short) thread about it some time ago: The show is one of my favorite things ever The mood, the music, the characters, everything's on point, and I tend to watch it from start to finish sometime around Halloween each year (since the whole series is only 2 hours in total).

It's said that Sazed released the kandra, so they don't serve him anymore. It was actually Hoid who contacted Ulaam with a letter, which made him come to Lumar where he found Hoid in his cursed state (it's explained very fleetingly in chapter 22).

Just a kinda spontaneous thought I had when thinking the same thing after that part - would carrying a Shard as a vessel or a Dawnshard also count as a form of a bond? They sure distort the person holding it on a spiritual level, so maybe that's the cost.

This cover was always meant as a placeholder. It's by Steve Argyle, while the official cover is by Howard Lyon, the artist who designed the whole book. The other covers will be by their respective artists and none of them will be the same as on the initial announcement. So the reason is not any similarity to another property, it was always planned to be changed. Regarding my personal opinion on them, they're pretty much equally good to me, while Lyon's official art looks a bit more unique to me, which is why I prefer it a little bit. But both are good in my opinion. Honestly, I wished Lyon would have used that more minimalistic style for the in-book illustrations. His realistic style always looks very religiously inspired to me, which didn't feel like it fit the fairytale-style story very well, imo.

Investiture color schemings don't seem to apply when in metal form. Atium is described as silver despite the appearance of Ruin's Investiture being black. I generally think that Brandon putting in the Sazed line is basically as close to a confirmation as we could have gotten. There is no reason for him to be sneaky about this and misleading us. To me, it basically felt like him winking at us the fans like, "yeah, don't worry guys, it's actually Bavadium". Plus, a new metal for each avatar on top of one for each Shard is just a completely crazy thought imo

There are two gas giants in the Scadrian System that have moons: So they probably have a word for it, although its use would be mostly astrological and not as wide-spread.