Black_Shoshan

I'm personally hoping for Rlain. There seems to have been some setup for him to have some sort of arc/plot in this book, and I'll be disappointed if it ends up as a tiny subplot told through Kaladin's pov. 

On 9/26/2020 at 10:55 PM, Black_Shoshan said:

Hm, next three chapters?

One Venli, to reveal the cliffhanger with Leshwi and further introduce her storyline. One Navani, either to deal with the fabrials, and/or to show us Dalinar and his thoughts and decisions regarding the war. The third one I'm less sure about, but I'll guess Shallan, to have some sort of contact with the Ghostbloods.

So I got two out of three here.

We have 4 chapters left for part 1. We still need to see the decision to send people to Lasting Integrity, so I expect a strategizing meeting of Dalinar and the Radiants. That can be from either Navani, Kaladin or Shallan point of views, but I think either Navani or Shallan makes sense, since we've gotten Kaladin recently. I think we also need another Venli chapter to set up the infiltration plan. 

My predictions for the next four chapters: a Navani chapter, a Venli chapter, a Shallan chapter, and I'm hoping we get a chapter from Lirin's pov, to show the journey on the Fourth Bridge and give more info on the Mink.

From chapter 14:

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“Yes,” Raboniel said. “The device preventing us from attacking them there can be inverted. We will need to lure the Elsecaller and the Bondsmith away..."

...

“Your proposal is bold, Raboniel,” one of the Nine said. “And decisive. We have long been without your guidance in this Return, and we welcome your Passion. We will move forward as you request. Prepare a team for your infiltration of the tower, and we shall contact the human Taravangian with instructions. He can divert the Bondsmith and Elsecaller.”

I think this might mean group 3 is Dalinar and Jasnah. 

Group 1 is the plotline in Urithiru: Venli, Navani, Kaladin, and the other two characters (Szeth? Taravangian? Renarin? Lift? whoever they are)

Group 2 is Shallan and Adolin in Shadesmar

Group 3 is Dalinar and Jasnah is a third location, that is somewhere Taravangian lured them to.

On 10/4/2020 at 6:56 AM, lightweaver spy said:

Practically speaking, I am having a hard time coming up with a good explanation for what the Heralds will be doing in Stormlight 4 and 5. I look forward to anyone’s prediction or analysis on this topic. 

I don't think they will be doing much in Stormlight 4 and 5. Brandon even confirmed that Taln and Ash don't have any PoVs in RoW. We will probably see Nale again, if not in RoW than for sure in book 5, for Szeth's storyline, but other than that I think it'll be just minor roles and hints that will all be expanded on in the second arc.

Brandon said in the past that the second arc of Stormlight will deal much more with the heralds, and we'll have two books of heralds flashbacks. I expect that whatever ending book 5 will be and whenever the second arc opens, it will have a connection to the Heralds in a way that will make their backstory even more relevant to the conflict than the first arc is. 

2 hours ago, Bliev said:

Unless Restares is a title (like Sadeas), not a name, it couldn’t be Heleran. But it could have been Dreder, particularly if he didn’t die that day that Shallan remembers as “two corpses, but only one that bled” in WOR. 

The corpse that didn't bleed was Shallan's mother, since Shallan killed her with a shardblade.

Lin and Dreder fought with a knife, and Lin injured Dreder, but Dreder managed to overpower him and held Lin down while Shallan's mother came for Shallan. (side note: are we ever going to get Brightness Davar's first name?)

It's not clear what happened after Shallan killed her mother, but when Lin carried Shallan out of the room there were "corpses", plural, on the floor, and it's hard to believe Lin wouldn't have chased the injured Dreder if he managed to somehow escape the room.

When Shallan eavesdrops on Mraize in WoR, he says this about Restares:

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“You will bring these pages to Master Thaidakar. We are close, but so—it appears—are Restares’s cronies.”

The response came in a rasping voice. Shallan couldn’t make it out. “No, I’m not worried about that one. The old fool sows chaos, but does not reach for the power offered by opportunity. He hides in his insignificant city, listening to its songs, thinking he plays in world events. He has no idea. His is not the position of the hunter. This creature in Tukar, however, is different. I’m not convinced he is human. If he is, he’s certainly not of the local species. . . .”

Sanderson, Brandon. Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive, Book 2) (pp. 632-633). Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition. 

From this it seems like:

1. Mraize and the ghostbloods knew his identity already then.

2. He is apparently an old human man, and apparently Rosharan.

3. He is probably not a Herald, as Mraize calls Ishar "different", as compared to Restares.

What is less certain:

Was Restares already in Lasting Integrity at this point in time? I would tend to think not, as calling Lasting Integrity "his insignificant city" doesn't seem to fit. Also, Amaram plans to send a spanreed to Restares at the end of WoR. Can someone spanreed a person who is in Shadesmar?

This annotation addresses the Cosmere reveals in this chapter:

Hm, next three chapters?

One Venli, to reveal the cliffhanger with Leshwi and further introduce her storyline. One Navani, either to deal with the fabrials, and/or to show us Dalinar and his thoughts and decisions regarding the war. The third one I'm less sure about, but I'll guess Shallan, to have some sort of contact with the Ghostbloods.

Adolin is such an extrovert, he needs people around him to thrive.

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Veil rolled her eyes, but then she shook her head, and her hair blended to blonde and she sat up straighter. “Do get a full report from Dalinar later, Kaladin. There are oddities about the event that trouble me.”

If Adolin and Shallan will be off to Shadesmar soon, they might not have a lot of time to investigate Ialai's murder. I wonder if what Radiant says here means Kaladin might also be involved in the investigation? It will give him something to do, but I'm not sure how good a detective Kaladin is, and he might be stepping into minefields he has no idea exist (the ghostbloods and so on).

4 hours ago, Powerful Meower said:

I have to vote for Lift. The worst person to have around in a serious situation (like the end of the world) is one who does not outwardly take the situation seriously, that is the feeling I get from Lift. She may have very useful powers and be a good person but if she doesn't work effectively with the team she is worse than useless, she is actually a liability. I found it incredibly grating when she refused to listen to wyndel on how to take better advantage of her powers.  

Lift just gives me anxiety as a character and I find her poorly written, she is literally a collection of her own tropes and the word "awesome". Her personality and writing are VERY jarring and just don't fit with the mood or theme of stormlight at all.

That being said, because she starts from such an obnoxious spot, and is literally a child, I feel like she has a lot of potential for growth and depending on how she changes, I may grow to like her. 

What I like about Lift is that while she acts like she doesn't take anything seriously, when it comes to doing things she actually does a lot. Saves Gawx and Stump, is influential in getting Gawx and the Azish to listen to Dalinar, works together with Szeth to steal back the ruby that imprisoned Nergaoul. That said, I totally understand people finding her annoying.

The character I hate most is Taravangian, and it seems like I'm a minority here. I think he'll well written, but I find him loathsome. He excuses his crimes with the perfect excuse of "oh, I'm just doing all this to save the world", but meanwhile he's responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of people (the hospitals, the Veden civil war and the other massacres), and he has no guarantee that his plan will actually work. 

Taravangian goes on and on about how he's sacrificing his own morality for a greater good, but his doubts of the morality of his actions never stop him or even make him hesitate. And in actual fact the sacrifices are done by other people - innocent people who have done nothing to deserve their fate, and are killed because Taravangian thinks he can profit from their death. This is basically Elhokar's or Amaram's crimes, times a hundred.

Taravangian puts his faith in the Diagram as the means of saving the world, despite two issues: the first, that the diagram (or his interpretation of it) has been wrong - but no, he has to keep his trust in the almighty diagram, and the second issue, that because his intelligence and empathy are proportioned inversely, that on his genius day his mindset was the most un-empathetic, and likely extremely cruel. In other words, the diagram is the product of a genius but malicious brain.

Honestly, I hope Taravangian lives just long enough for all of his plans to fail, and for him to die full of pain and regret.

It's very hard for me to believe Kaladin will die this book. If he dies, it'll be in book 5. 

Here Kaladin is at a very low point emotionally. Killing Kaladin off when he's severely depressed will be too grimdark and pointless, and besides that if Kaladin hasn't made progress with his core conflicts of "how can I protect if it means killing people" and "how can I be okay with my fellow protectors being killed themselves", will be an unsatisfying narrative. 

I don't see Kaladin solving both of these issues this book, though he'll probably make progress with them. But until he does, killing Kaladin will not make a good story, imo.

21 minutes ago, Innovation said:

 

Singer bonded to a Truespren: Voidlight and Stormlight. 

 

I think this only applies to Regals like Venli who are bonded to a voidspren. A regular singer in forms like wrokform don't have access to voidlight.

Good to get confirmation that Venli is on her first oath and didn't say any words off screen. I'm pretty sure that she'll be saying the second oath of the Willshapers in some climactic moment, I wonder if that';; be in part 5 or if it'll be earlier in the book.

20 minutes ago, USS bridge four said:

What does Sylpel mean?

I assume Syl+scalpel (like Sylspear)

5 minutes ago, SanderFan69 said:

From Brandon's annotation on reddit saying that the next chapter is from somebody we haven't seen yet, I'm guessing that it is going to be Venli. The only other option would be Lirin.

I'm think it's Venli, and as we've had a Lirin pov in chapter one.  From what Brandon is saying here, I think next chapter will be great:

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This chapter is the unmarked "end" of what I imagined being the cold open lead-in to the novel. (The kind of "climax to a book between the two novels you didn't see" that I've been talking about in these annotations.) With the next chapter, we'll go to a character we haven't seen yet this book, and begin into the core plot of the novel.

Although Kaladin is trying to support Rlain, Rlain deserves a spren that sees how incredible he is, not one that sees him as an enemy.

I hope this goes in one of these two ways: either Rlain ending up with a different spren, or Yunfah and Rlain having an arc together, where Yunfah gets over his prejudices. I'm hoping we get some Rlain povs after part 1.

They could have also started from Silverlight, and then recruited people from various planets. Although the population of Silverlight is small, practicallly everybody there is cosmere aware in a fairly detailed way.

2 hours ago, paperstones said:

I don't think Venli will be in part 1 at all. IIRC, Brandon said part one is the "end" of what happened in the in-between time. I bet the first chapter of Part 2 is Venli. It doesn't really make sense to bring her in now with the arc that is happening. 

Venli is in part one. Back in the first post of Rhythm of War on Tor, in between the Prologue and Chapter one, it gave the POV characters for part 1:

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Part One

Kaladin * Shallan * Navani * Venli * Lirin

I assume Brandon meant that these first few chapters are the climax to the timeskip, but as we see here, it's already winding down. I expect Venli to get her first chapter either next chapter, or the one after that.

1 hour ago, Harrycrapper said:

That is kinda odd how we've had no Venli chapters or any flashbacks. I'm pretty sure there were flashback chapters in the part ones of the other books.

I think we'll get a Venli chapter soon, either next chapter, or the one after that at the latest, since we have winded down from the "climax". However, it seems like there won't be any flashbacks in part 1. Brandon recently said this over at Reddit:

Quote

Kinolee

It's surprising me to me that we haven't heard from Venli yet. Considering this is her book, I would have expected her to take more of a center stage. But we haven't even seen or heard from her yet, let alone had a flashback. I wonder why /u/mistborn decided to start elsewhere.

I suppose it's important to establish the time skip early on, but I wonder why that couldn't have been done from the perspective of Odium's forces so that Venli could take the lead.

Brandon Sanderson

Basically, this part you're reading is the "end" of the in-between book, and Venli's book hasn't started yet. Her first chapter is what you might consider the "true" beginning of the novel.

As a note, though, I decided her flashbacks worked better when spread across a shorter reading space--so I don't introduce them until later in the book than the others started.

I think if Shallan and Adolin will have children, it'll happen during the timeskip between Stormlight 5 and 6 (this is of course assuming both of them survive past Stormlight 5). They are both young, and Shallan is not in the right head space at all to have children.

Even being in a romantic relationship, being married, is a potential problem (I personally think her relationship with Adolin seems to be good for her mental health, but I can appreciate the opinion some have that Shallan should have focused on getting better before entering a committed relationship). Children, however, are a completely new level of trigger. Shallan's trauma stems in a large degree from what happened with her mother and father, and she'll need to be in a better place to become a parent, because that is guaranteed to bring back her experiences of being threatened and abused by her own parents. 

I'm also pretty sure that even though it's never explicitly said in book, Roshar (like Scadrial per a WoB) has some forms of birth control that allow a certain measure of family planning. 

On 8/6/2020 at 2:49 AM, MacThorstenson said:

 

I think that you can compare Dalinar and Gavilar, but not in the sense that one can be redeemed and another cannot. They both could be redeemed, but one is significantly less likely to be redeemed then the other. In fact, at this point in the timeline, it is interesting to note that dalinar and gavilar are probably about equal in the Evil-o-meter. Where their redemption arcs diverge is that G is killed tonight, and Dalinar starts trying to atone. 

I will say here that while the answers to the "why" and "hows" don't change what he did they are extremely important to understanding his character and thus the story, his relationship with the larger events of the world, and its ramifications and impacts on the story.

Furthermore, the why's and hows do change how responsible he is for his actions. They don't redeem him, because justification isn't redemption, but if he is being 100% mind controlled by Odium, then it wouldn't make sense to place blame on Gavilar for these actions. On the other hand, the why's and how's can lend support to him being 100% in control and being an abuser.
 

I think these points are really important when judging Gavilar.

The interesting thing about redemption arcs is that life isn't fair. A person can do bad things and die before they have chances to attempt amends, and that's that. If Dalinar, for example, would have died on the same night as Gavilar, then he would have been a person that was a warmonger, a drunk, a bad father. Because he had more time, he had the opportunity to make different choices: to study the way of kings to try and find a better path, to stop drinking and live by the codes, to actually be present in his sons lives, to try and solve issues through diplomacy instead of fighting.

If Gavilar would have lived, he might have chosen a different path, and depending on the amends he made, he might have started to redeem himself. But he didn't, so it's all about his actions up to the point of his death.

Whether Gavilar was influenced by anything supernatural remains to be seen, but even if he was that doesn't, in my opinion, absolve him. Just as Dalinar was responsible for his actions even when influenced by the thrill, and just as Lin Davar was responsible.