drunkenbotanist

Omg Cultivation took a cutting and now we have The Blackthorn and Cultivation's Thorn as opposite spren copies of Dalinar

And importantly, Nale was always semi-functional if not in a good way. He led a secret society of powerful people across the entire continent for thousands of years

The plot of the book would have been helped by another page of dialogue about Kaladin at the very end realizing that he did a poor job when he tried to be a therapist, but helped/inspired people whenever he acted as an example. And then some of the on the nose joking could have been saved for "herald of second chances" being a little more ironic because he was going to need a do-over on the therapy. But that's because Kaladin was a bad therapist came through as part of the plot to me. And I do think Brandon has an understanding that improvement is not based on sudden revelations. I agree with previous comments that there is no reason to think that Szeth, Nale, Ishar are "fixed"

I swear I think this explains 90% of my feelings about this book and TLM, both of which I enjoyed. I haven't seen this pointed out yet and it makes so much sense, thank you. Also, regarding the first post here, pandering I feel is a useless term for Brandon's behavior, which I do not believe has changed, only that the size of the audience has grown. Brandon has a great track record for the motives of his writing if not always the execution. He talks about his thoughts and goals years in advance publicly and in detail. Even the most cynical reading of his motives I wouldn't call pandering. Even if he doesn't actually care about the different types of people and stories he brings into the fold, he's been very clear that he approaches his job differently than a lot of authors... "here is the timeline for YOUR book", and because he has a huge audience with a large reach, and he has growing number of constituencies to please. I don't think it's cynical. But I think if you were to approach it cynically, him including xyz characters in his books is no more pandering than any other action he's taken throughout his career, which has always had an oversized amount of "author as service" instead of "book as product".

Also, it's relevant here I think that we find out that honor was about the negative emotional aspects...such as the pride of not breaking an oath. The Honor shard intent wasn't just that it was about oaths free of the actual content of the oath, but that honor/pride wrapped up into it as well "The power accepted those definitions of it. It was the power of oaths and the pride that men bore at being thought of as men of oaths. As Dalinar had witnessed: thousands of years of warfare to prove who was right, and who deserved this land. The power didn’t care about self-improvement, but it cared deeply about being right." -chapter 142 And this I think was well earned from the text. Adolin's whole arc fit into this. Szeth also breaks his bond to save his spren's life. The honorspren exemplify this misplaced pride very well during RoW. So many of them cannot accept the Recreance. We knew that Maya and the recreance knights broke their bonds on purpose, to do something good. The Honor intent being actually potentially harmful wasn't a retcon, it was the direct implication of the plot twist of the Recreance that we had four books to build up to.

Nightblood has also absorbed a great deal of investiture since Warbreaker. Killing Rayse alone. It does seem like the more investigated nightblood gets, the more likely it should be able to grow and adapt, as investiture is basically always reaching towards consciousness

Also at the end of RoW it's said that voidspren weren't actually controlling cremlings, it was Tumi and the other Enlightened mistspren

"It was difficult to even speak. Kaladin wasn’t lying; he had felt this before—but whatever Ishar had done to him was worse than most of his days. It was like all of the worst days Kaladin had known distilled into 200 proof awfulness. The Horneater white of misery." This completely threw me out of a really dramatic scene. If he just left out "200 proof awfulness" it would have worked. "...worst days Kaladin had known distilled. The Horneater white of misery." It failed for me by failing the worldbuilding (we had a chart of all the different wines in book one, and never did it discuss proof) It failed because of the tone stuff and less formal language This bit has stuck with me since the end of the book because it's a really simple fix. I feel like either it becomes impossible to edit a book this size, or less people are willing to tell him no? Largely I didn't have a problem with the language in the book, and I don't feel like this is the harbinger of something terrible. But dang this part bothered me.

If the numbers were or were not on purpose, the name probably comes from "you become an auxiliary to his will"

Also Ishar's men in shadesmar in RoW

The soldiers influenced by unmade in Kholinar have shadowed eyes

To me I'm actually super convinced by Shallan as a spy, spy kind of things have been all that she's done throughout the books. She's naturally gifted at it I think to a similar to degree as Kaladin is with the spear. The Veil is the entrance to the library in Karbranth, which has always been where I thought Veil as a name came from. Because she entered there under false pretenses to steal Jasnah's soulcaster...and succeeded. However, she was conflicted because she really fell in love with scholarship. What felt like more of a character shift to me was Shallan deciding not to run for backup and summoning Testament as a shield and going to confront them.

It's up in the air somewhere 10,000 years or maybe 11 or 12... Exact timeline isn't clear but it's basically been ~10,000 years ago from any book we've gotten I believe

I do think things like dalinar creating the map with shallan is his version of this. He probably could access that information in his head without shallan also with practice.

The current would describe the sun in TSM well