WasingtheWhy

I think the numbers aren't really surprising, myself. I mean, think about it. You think that only a small number of the population of any country isn't broken emotionally in some way? We are all broken, at least a little bit. Not to get too philosophical here, but aren't we all searching for something? Trying to fill a hole in our hearts? I think that is the point that Brandon is trying to make, if he is even trying to make one at all. Everyone has gaps. We are all Radiant. Nobody is perfect.

Totally a big deal. And the fact that it was so casually passed over and hasn't been mentioned just made me think it was the start of something much bigger for Adolin than just becoming another Radiant. I was thinking about this recently. The whole bonding process begins with a spren basically taking interest in a human (or singer, let's be inclusive). Then the potential Radiant has to say the Words. That's two halves coming together. Reciprocated on both sides. Equal, right? But Maya is a deadeye. It started the opposite way, human choosing a spren. And she is regaining capacity. Slowly, yes, but still regaining it. Now, the honorspren are all slivers of Honor, essentially, right? But all the Radiants use Stormlight, which is Honor's Investiture. But in RoW, we learn of different types of light. We knew of Voidlight already, but then we have Lifelight, Towerlight, and the Rhythm of War. Maya is a cultivationspren. Which are Cultivation's children, kind of like the honorspren with Honor. (None of it is exact, as of course the Stormfather made some honorspren, too, but that part isn't what I am grabbing at here.) And now we know that Lift doesn't use Stormlight, she uses Lifelight directly. As far as any of us know, she can't breathe in Stormlight the way that the other Radiants do. It's never been spoken of directly, that I know of, but she always just eats and metabolizes Lifelight directly. I guess the point I am trying to figure out is what if Adolin is indeed already a Radiant, and just doesn't know it. He can't breathe in Stormlight, because that's not what he is. Maybe, just maybe, Lifelight is his jam, and his learning to use that Investiture is the real key to "healing" Maya? Adolin and Lift could be Radiants, but really something more. Something that they hadn't seen before. And because of Adolin's relationship to Maya and how he is "cultivating" it (see what I did, there?), at some point he will probably gain Cultivation's attention. Perhaps it is the first step is getting Cultivation to take a more direct hand in the events happening on Roshar. As it stand right now, she has just been a silent-silent partner. Being involved without being really involved. Anyway, I am rambling, but the whole Adolin thing really is one of my favorite parts about the story, and I love the implications involved with how Maya is changing.

I think you're probably onto something. The Shards need a Vessel to fully implement their power. But power corrupts, only not in a typical fashion here. The Shards influence their Vessels, but honestly we don't really know to what extent that is. I mean, most of the Vessels have been active for a not fully understood measure of time. After however many millennia with this mantle of power weighing you down, you're bound to change. In Brandon's Cosmere though, the power has rules, and breaking those rules seems very detrimental to the Vessel and the Shard itself. I don't consider the Shards themselves to have any kind of sentience, personally. Each time (that we have seen, anyway) that a Shard has been without a Vessel, someone has been right there to snatch it up. We don't really know firsthand what happens when the power is just... abandoned. Splintering, one would assume, because a few Shards have been Splintered. The Shards don't seem to act on their own though. It's like a symbiotic relationship. But I can see that if a Shard's nature were ignored or misused, then it would push its Vessel to do what it's nature demanded.

Oh good lord. I can't believe I mixed that up. Talk about a gaff. I have literally been reading Oathbringer recently, too. Still, the theory seems sound, as long as you take out my massive oops in terms of timeline.

It has been said before, though, that Cultivation sees the future better than the other Shards, though. It's true that Renarin is probably a blind spot for anyone with future sight, but she has been playing the long game for a while now. I think Brandon is considering Cultivation to have 3 plans. A plan, a backup plan, and an ace in the hole. Dalinar was plan one. She changed him first, before Gavilar's death. Taravangian was the backup plan. He was after Gavilar's death. Lift is the ace in the hole. We don't know exactly what her reasoning for changing Lift is, yet. It involves the fact that she metabolizes Lifelight directly from food, and doesn't actually use Stormlight to fuel her powers like we initially thought. Besides, you can't tell me that she didn't know what a piece of crap Taravangian was when she changed him. He made his motivations very clear. And we all know that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. She knew what kind of person Dalinar was when he went to her. She pretty much saw right through him. There is no way she didn't know how arrogant and narcissistic he was when he went to her and asked for the capacity to save the world. How arrogant a statement is that anyway? "Hi, give me the capacity to save the world." How do we know that her idea of the capacity to save the world isn't giving making him the direct enemy of Dalinar and the Radiants? Also, because of Odium's history with the other Shards, she just made him an enemy of any other Shards that may have a beef with Odium. Definitely genius. I don't disagree with the fact that Taravangian is a more dangerous vessel for the Shard. But the Shards influence their vessels, and we don't know how the Shard of Odium will change Taravangian. Cultivation is playing the long game. But like Hoid says, be wary of anyone who claims to be able to see the future.

Hard to say whether Nale would straight up commit murder to get his blade back, considering his whole Judge Dredd thing of "I am the law!". But it does make one wonder whether he would sneak in and steal it either. And it's been alluded to (I can't recall where, but I SWEAR I remember reading it somewhere) that the Honorblades have a lot more power than people think. So it's also possible that Nale was just able to summon it back to himself because it was gifted to him by Honor. The Shin also had Radiants in the past. But again, it's hard to say whether those were anomalies in the Shin culture. They could have bonded with spren against the wishes of their elders, or whoever, and then left. If it was okay to bond spren, though, then there might be Radiants in Shinovar already. Which will make it tougher on Szeth if he plans on going in there in a nerd rage. Which brings me to the stone shamans. How awesome must this group be? They've gotta be like trained from the get-go to be like if Jackie Chan and John Wick had a baby that was trained by Yoda on the edge of a volcano or something. Szeth, I am sure, is aware of their capabilities, but anyone he might bring with him won't be. As capable as Kaladin is, he will straight up underestimate the Shin, and get his tail handed to him. It should make for an interesting section of the book, to say the least.

Fair point. Like I said, I was a bit rusty on my Mistborn. Need to read those again once I finish my re-read of Stormlight. I guess my cackling Mistborn dreams must die unfulfilled.

Does anyone else think that Brandon might have watched that season 4 episode of Futurama Godfellas? Because Harmony kind of talks like the God in that episode, using a light touch, like a safecracker or pickpocket. That sounds like the kind of thing Kelsier would have said to Sazed.

I haven't done a reread of the Mistborn books in a while, so my remembrance of fine details is admittedly sketchy. But is it weird that they don't come across any full Mistborn during this era, or is that just me? You would think with the way the Set operates that there would be a couple of them, hemalurgically or not, that are full Mistborn. Or perhaps society at large tries to keep them secret, like the noble families did in Era 1? And with Twinborn out there, the possibilities of a full Mistborn with Feruchemical powers is a little bit terrifying. Or worse yet, a full Mistborn/Full Feruchemist like the Lord Ruler was. And with the newer metals like bendalloy, Mistborn are even more dangerous. It's something to expect for the final Wax and Wayne book, I suppose. I guess I am just picturing a crazed dual aluminum pistol wielding sociopath hopping through the streets of Elendel cursing Harmony's name while cackling like Vincent Price on a sugar high. But we all have dreams.

We know that Szeth wants to "cleanse" the Shin leaders, who falsely named him Truthless. (What a weird group of words) That's his Skybreaker quest. I guess my thoughts immediately go to, how many of the Honorblades do they still have? We know that they don't have Jezrien's, Nale's, or Ishar's for sure. Taln's could literally be anywhere. There are still a few Heralds unaccounted for. So if we assume that the Shin still have 6 Honorblades, Szeth might be in for a lot of trouble if he goes in there like a tempest. Granted, Nightblood gives him a huge advantage, and he will possibly have Kaladin with him, since Dalinar wants Kal to go meet with Ishar in Shinovar, but that could still mean a lot of trouble for our troubled heroes. Also, the Shin stone shamans are apparently hard cases of the highest order. Szeth mentioned that if he died wielding Jezrien's Honorblade, that the stone shamans would take it back. He seemed pretty confident about that. So we are talking, theoretically, that there is an entire order of people as martially capable as Szeth, trained in Surges (even if they don't have any, which they might), that are competent enough to possibly take on Radiants toe-to-toe. That is a very interesting concept. Am I alone in being suddenly very interested in Shinovar and what is going on with the Shin people?

When I read the sample chapters before RoW's release, I expected things to happen a little differently with Kaladin. After he was removed from the field and decided to work with his father again, I thought there might me an interlude or a few short chapters with Laral. Especially after hearing he had a short but doomed relationship with Lyn, I fully expected Kaladin to kind of reconnect with this girl of his youth and if not have a romantic relationship, at least a friendship that could help him learn to move forward. He reconnected with his family instead, most notably his father. That being said, I was very surprised that Laral was barely even mentioned in passing. I'm not disappointed, or pleased, but with the way that it seems (to me anyways) that Kaladin is at least in the market for a lady friend, I thought that this latest installment would have something of that for him. What did you expect? Were you right or wrong?

I personally think Adolin might go a long while without becoming a Radiant, if he ever does. Of all the characters, I think he would do the best as the lone figure without a nahel bond. He is a very important POV character, and his view of events without a spren I think will be important moving forward. I think there might be some kind of strange reverse-bond happening between him and Maya, which I have seen other people post about before, so it's not a new theory. But Adolin I think will fill a different role through the rest of the story as opposed to being another Radiant. I first started The Wheel of Time in 1994, when I was about 9. I remember reading those books and waiting eagerly for Jordan to release the next one. That was before I could troll the internet every day looking for news about release dates. Took me 20 years to finally reach the end of that one. As a side note, I actually had never heard of Brandon Sanderson until I found out he was going to finish The Wheel of Time. Then I read Mistborn. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Thaidakar was always a jerk. Even when he was trying to be a good guy he was hard to like. Not even really an anti-hero, more like just the hero of his own story. Even his motivations now are selfish. Granted, we don't know exactly what his master plan is (he always seems to have a contingency), but his obvious motivations and the fact that he runs the Ghostbloods as a shadowy group of killers really doesn't paint a very flattering picture. And the fact that he likes that people worship him... what an ego.

I think you could be right, in a way. Roshar is really the centerpiece of the cosmere at this point. The Shards have taken the heaviest hand in affecting the ecosystem, and investiture rides the very winds! They are so spoiled for investiture they use it for light! I honestly can't help but think that's the biggest reason that all worldhoppers are so interested in it. That being said, the technology difference would make for an interesting conflict. But I can't help but think about someone attempting to burn steel and Push on a Shardblade. They talk about Shardblades like they are metal, but are they really a metal that can be manipulated like that? Though, I do think that if the any peoples of Scadrial make any large-scale attempts to interfere that Harmony would be opposed to it. Plus that kind of conflict might be a long way down the road, considering Harmony has another god (Shard?) currently breathing down his neck. In terms of characters from Mistborn that I could see winding up on Roshar.. I want to say old Ironeyes could do it. Or perhaps TenSoon. Simply because they are pretty much immortal, and I personally am unsure of how the books line up chronologically. Scadrians are troublemakers, and boy would it be fun to see them make more trouble on Roshar. I can't picture a conversation between Kaladin and Kelsier without it ending it a bar room brawl. Edit: I just realized that you said Era 4, and that of course if a good ways off, so you didn't really need me repeating it like a dope.

I always kind of picture Rock as Conan O'Brien with mutton chops. But I think it's just because it makes me giggle.