PiedPiper

Welp -- I asked where I could get WoK prime before reading comments. Thanks.

L for occasional language. Ended up doing last-minute revisions before sending this one out, but I'm sure it's still easy to pick apart. Have a field day!

I'd say N's school arc is going to be far from your classical school narrative, although I actually have been going back through Ender's Game and looking at Ender's most important moments. Great minds think alike, but so do we! Also, totally on the same page with you about OSC -- love Ender's Game to death, hate him.

Jasnah mentioned in (I think) WoK that the Lanceryns (basically fully-grown Larkins) and the Chasmfiends were the last greatshells on Roshar, and that all the other creatures with giant gemhearts had been hunted to extinction. Sounds believable to me -- humans hunted down all the megafauna on Earth. What about the Reshi Isles? Each island, which can house hundreds of people, is one giant greatshell. It's easy to see there being serious preservation efforts directed at them, but all it would take is one rogue with a Shardblade to swim under the island, stab upward into the chest, and harvest the gemheart. Besides, there are no mentions of such efforts -- and you'd think they'd at least mention it in Rysn's WoR interlude -- and, in addition, Jasnah explicitly states: "When the lanceryn died off during the scouring of Aimia, we thought we’d seen the last gemhearts of large size." This indicates to me that no one had thought of the Reshi Isles yet. Am I missing something here?

It's similar to how spren work on Roshar -- bear with me. If you remember the Kaladin flashback where they talk about spren, Hessina mentions that if you cut something up, each piece just has a smaller bit of spren. So if, for example, you gave a shirt 100 Breaths, then cut it in half, each part would have 50 Breaths. If you cut those halves in half, each part would have 25 Breaths, etc. I wonder if something can have a fraction of a Breath?

Thanks for your critiques! It was actually helpful to know that there was too little description, because in the past I had put a bunch in, then cut it all out, thinking I went into too much detail... lol. I did some work clarifying the prologue, and I've spent some time refining my character voices since submission, seeing as people were confused/bored/annoyed by N and there were logistics problems with C. I wasn't sure how much you'd want to hear, but it is a space opera, and I don't think it qualifies as a mystery. It's possible that there will be a lot of unknowns in the beginning (maybe, to avoid annoyance, I'll just stop mentioning all unknowns until there's an opportunity to learn more about them), but I plan on having several POVs -- I don't think it'll be enough to be confusing, but I could be wrong about that -- and they each know enough that I'm pretty sure you'll have a good grasp of what's going on. I did plan on doing a school arc for N, which was going to intersect with C's spy project later in the book. I also have a betrayal story line with some separate characters that you haven't met yet, and I'm considering doing a split timeline with C/N's parents to show what happened with them. The different plot lines all come together in the end, of course. Now that I list all of this, I wonder if I'm trying to do too much and if it'll just be way too confusing. I think I'll have to keep writing it to find out. Stay tuned for more confusing answers to good questions.

No problem. Thanks for getting around to it.

I'd like to submit Monday 7/6.

I think the nature of the Women's Script accentuates Vorin sensibilities: they value elegance above most else, and their alphabet is no exception. It has a flow to it, and if you learn how to read it (which I highly recommend, because Navani's notebooks has some really interesting information on fabrials, even if her handwriting does leave a little to be desired), you'll notice that certain lettering groups are connected, which to me makes perfect sense when you pay attention to the little verbal linguistic details that Brandon leaves scattered throughout his writing.

Pg. 3 -- I don't understand why the troll is upset when she talks about why her dad left. Very confused. Pg. 4 -- why is this woman so significant? Is she just being rude? Overall, a fun and whimsical read. I really enjoyed it.

Thoughts as I go: Pg 1: "Her headache." -- I think you meant to write "Her head ached." "Her headache" is not a sentence. Pg 2: She talks about her uncle's death very matter-of-factly; why isn't she more upset about it? It sounded to me like they were at least somewhat close -- she did read his mind, and he left her money for college -- so, even if she's gotten over the mourning stage, I'm confused as to why she doesn't feel some residual sadness when remembering him. Am I reading the emotions wrong? Pg 9: I liked the detail about M being a lightweight; just thought it was funny because my mom's a serious lightweight too. My biggest problem was that it seemed to me like the issues Mi was having in the previous chapter were just conveniently put on hold so that this chapter can focus on M. I thought you wrote M's after-battle experiences very well; her fuzziness over what happened and anxiety were well-portrayed. Hope my thoughts were coherent; I'm liking your book more and more as I get farther into it.

It's highly unlikely that Tien was a Radiant, that he was in communication with the Sleepless, or that he has anything to do with the Dawnshards. The part about Tien talking to the cremlings was really just to show that he was soft-hearted and gentle, exactly the wrong type of person to join the army and therefore a great way to bring out Kaladin's depression over his brother's death. It wasn't indicative of some grander plot that Tien plays a major role in. Tien's dead. Your theory would be cool if it were true, but it's far-fetched and goes against every one of Kaladin's flashbacks. Besides, I doubt Brandon will actually deal with the Dawnshards until the back 5. It's just wishful thinking.

Not all of Roshar is bare rock -- Kaladin's hometown was a farming town, and I believe he mentioned soil when talking about pulling worms to make sure the plants grow. I don't have the chapter number, but I'm not going to try to find it. It's not worth it.

I think it could be argued that Navani's floating platforms, the heating fabrial, or the painrial could all qualify as sufficiently advanced technology to have kicked off the Rosharan Industrial Revolution. However, I'd say that Alethkar and Jah Keved are still in medieval times (or whatever the Rosharan equivalent is), because one of the hallmarks of said revolutions was advancement in technology outside of warfare. Inventions such as the steam engine, the spinning jenny, and the assembly line all were geared toward economic advancement, wheras all the inventions before then (gunpowder, seafaring technology, etc.) were made for exploration and conquest. When fabriologists start making gem-powered plows, and engineers start designing with iron and steel rather than wood and shalebark, I'd consider their industrial revolution underway. (Spanreeds were a huge step toward this, but could not constitute an entire movement alone.) You could estimate that Azir, even though they have a republic rather than a monarch, is also still medieval based on the chapters in Oathbringer where Dalinar visits and the Viziers mention that their craftsmen were angry about having to till the fields. This gives us two very important pieces of information: the first is that their economy is still very dependent on merchants and artisans, which means that they have not yet moved to assembly line manufacturing; the second is that their farming methods are still very labor-intensive, which means they don't have things like plows or crop rotation systems. Both are highly indicative of a medieval society. I would guess that Azir's sister countries (Emul, Yezier, etc) are similar in this way, seeing as they're described as being puppet kingdoms of Azir, and any technology they could have come up with would certainly diffuse to Azir rapidly. It could be argued that Thaylenah is industrializing: they have a very capitalist economy and a elective monarchy, both indicative of a more developed society (I used developed only in the economic sense; what is the average income, etc. There's a lot of baggage surrounding the term, but I use it here because it's the most descriptive.). They don't have the assembly line yet, but that did come later in Europe and America's industrial revolutions, so it could be not far off in the horizon. We can deduce similar conclusions about Kharbranth knowing that it's an eastern, if not world, capital for scholarship and medicine. Shinovar is hard; we don't know too much about it. We do know, however, that farming is central to their society (see first Rysn interlude where they meet a farmer and Rysn learns that farmers are considered the most important members of Shin society.). Again, this indicates that farming is still a very labor-intensive endeavor, which means that, like Azir, they do not have any farming technology such as plows or crop rotation systems. We also know that the Shin religion is very important to their culture, and generally, as a country develops further economically, we begin to see more secularist and/or atheist movements (the why of this particular fact is a very long-winded explanation; I won't get into it right now). Both of these signify that Shinovar is almost definitely medieval. The Reshi Isles and the Purelake are obviously not industrial. That's self-explanatory. Liafor is interesting, because we know most fashion comes from there (see folio pages in OB). The fact that their society is not agriculture-focused could indicate that mechanization of farming and urbanization are underway. However, we know so little about Liafor that we can't reach such a conclusion with confidence. The same can be said of Tashikk and its information centers. We have almost no information about any of the other Rosharan countries/regions, so I'll decline to analyze them at this moment. The problem with Roshar is that since the Era of Solitude, everything's been so disconnected, so every country is at a different stage in their economic development. We also can't measure development by the same metrics as we would on Earth just because their planet is so storming different from ours, so it's entirely possible that the goals of Shinovar's religion align with those of economic development, so they'll be the first post-industrial country on Roshar. It's unlikely, because their religion discourages use of metal or stone, but my point is that we just have no idea, and no way of knowing.

Thanks. Forgot about that.

You have a point -- we're lacking in information. Very well; I will hold off further judgement until more is revealed about the old Skybreakers.

Speaking of what can you soulcast -- gemstones? I don't understand how anyone could possibly be short on currency if they have soulcasters that can make a giant rock into a huge emerald/diamond/other stone. They have self-replicating money... am I missing something here?

I'm talking about both old and new, but what I meant to say is that Nale took power over the Skybreakers thousands of years ago and all his knights just accepted it without question. Shouldn't they have paid more attention to what code they're following? By the way, I think this goes without saying, but I realized I never did say it and I want to make my opinion more clear: I'm not saying that Skybreakers as individuals are mindless drones, I'm just saying that there are serious problems with their institution -- even the old one.

I don't have a problem with them enforcing the law, it's just that I think they're training their operatives to blindly follow authority, even if -- like with modern Skybreakers -- the authority is corrupt. Szeth is the first of their order in thousands of years to realize they're doing something wrong, and isn't that telling?

Just because someone says you should do something doesn't mean it's the right thing to do -- there are lots of corrupt people in positions of power.

I can understand the appeal for uniformity in having a police force that won't compromise based on their beliefs, but I think taking a strict textualist approach (just in the etymological sense of the word; I'm not talking about politics or religion) leaves little room for evolution in the law or interpretation regarding gray areas. Sometimes, it's better if people take time to wonder if what they're doing is wrong rather than continuing to do it out of complacency with their static society.

@Elsecaller_17.5 Elsecaller, actually. Just wanted to add that I'm having tons of fun writing Elsecaller next to your username.

What if the letter of the law conflicted with a universal truth?

Skybreakers is a pretty awesome name, but that's where I feel this order's usefulness ends. I know modern Skybreakers are corrupt and Nale is crazy, but I'm talking about old Skybreakers, not modern Skybreakers. Let's journey back to the Heraldic Epochs. Skybreakers start as squires and must learn that the most important thing is to follow the law before they swear the second oath. To become a full Skybreaker, they promise to fully and completely obey one person/system/pirate code (the pirate part is in a WoB somewhere -- I think one of his livestreams -- but it's not that important so I didn't bother finding it). It seems to me that all of Skybreaker training is about learning to not think for yourself. This is what Wandersail was all about: not taking responsibility for your actions and blindly believing what you've been told. Wandersail is a cautionary tale that no one is listening to. While oaths 4 and 5 do focus on finding your own justice, we know that very few people actually get to the fourth oath and no one new (or sane) has said the fifth in thousands of years. They even stress that it's perfectly okay if you never make it past the third oath, which makes it even worse. The longer you stay a mindless drone, the less likely you are to be able to decide things for yourself farther down the road. I hope I haven't upset anyone. If you disagree with me, I would love to hear your (non-inflammatory) argument.

Have any of you seen the King of 8 skit from Sesame Street? When I have to hang out with young kids, I show it to them. That way I don't have to interact with small people; they're sticky, and this is a tangent. Back to your regularly scheduled Sesame Street content: the 16 Shards reminded me of him. That's what I meant to say. Anyway, if you haven't seen it, look it up. It's funny.