Thaidakar the Ghostblood

@Ookla the Yellow Sock Delilah.

urm. So Platypus hadn't actually entered the room? The room's door was gone at this point... but okay. The shadows, quite simply, were not completely blasted away. One could not destroy Darkness' essence that easily. The darkness came back quite instantly, oppressively pushing on the light in the room. The sword parried the attack. The shadows pressed in on the room, pushing the light directly into a small pocket where Platypus was. Thaidakar's corpse moved suddenly, convulsing. It fell to the ground. An oozy, horrible smell permeated the air as something horrific occurred on the ground that defied description, leaving Thaidakar's bones upon the ground. Those were swiftly consumed by the shadows "I do not need a body any longer, Platypus. There is a purpose to everything I do. I needed the time away from excessive narration to gain my abilities again." Dozens of shadowy swords formed in the air, crafted with Narration and a small bit of Plot threading. They all charged at Platypus at once, not going one at a time like in the movies. They moved fluidly, all as one, making attacks at all different places. In the back of the room, formed from darkness and what appeared to be some flesh, was a creature. The voice it spoke with was not Darkness'. "Die, Platypus," spoke Thaidakar's voice, sounding more alien than ever before. The creature attacked Platypus, wielding a great sword.

The Stormfather Between Us The Worldhopper on the Table. Monday's With Kaladin (the perfect sequel to Tuesday's with Marsh) When Odium met Dalinar. My Fair Radiant. Eye Color and Prejudice. (Rename for Words of Radiance.) The Stormfather Above. The Return Between Us (Warbreaker sequel-)

Thank you, Eddie. I may tone down specific parts of the chapter, definitely rewrite a lot of the first half of it, but... that's the general gist of what it is going to be. I'll put the first two chapters on here at one point.

Or me talking about 2021.

I liked it. It was a nice punch of story that wasn't too much. If it was a novel, the style of narration would've gotten too annoying. It got a little annoying around the middle, but it evened out nicely. I wished it played more into the humor of the narration earlier on than when it really did it. I also wish it did more with the police. The last confrontation was really fun and reminded me faintly of that one moment in Foundation with the forcefield, one of my favorite scenes ever. It was smart and made use of things that it set up naturally. The story altogether played into the tropes of a noir detective story, and that works in its favor. I like the twists and how it all runs together. It's a story I can recommend to people who don't want to read one of Sanderson's novels, but wants a small taste. This, Emperor's Soul and Legion are what I'll recommend in that category now. However, in recommending it to people I think it is best that we should make clear that this is one of his earlier stories. In fact, as one of his earlier stories, it also has its faults where other Sanderson stories don't. For one thing, things in this story have been used elsewhere. Jack's and Alici's relationship reminded me of various relationships that Stephen Leeds had in the Legion series. For another, I think that the way elements are handled are in a vastly different style than used in other stories. That, as evidenced by what I've said above, does not mean it is bad. It's a good taste of Brandon's writing, but it is not fully representative of what we have now or what we will see in the future. Anyways, I've rambled for a good while now. It was a good book. I give it 7.5/10

Hey! I check in every time I see a post of yours and skim your recent SUs. I find them really interesting. I don't often reply to them ever because I never know how to reply beyond something completely generic or boring. Don't stop posting them!

Exactly. So if the country's free, then I now own it! I can't believe no-one took advantage of that fact earlier... It is free.

True, but the country's still free, even if I'm not-

.... No, no, I actually see your point.

@TheOokla929 @myself

Lol. It's a free country!

Why? For the fact that I definitely don't know Sasha or because I like to eat KitKats like other candy bars?

True. I think it's too early to say if it is Senna. However... it could be really fun if it was. I hope we get more info from the other entries.

It says in the description what her name is. This means we now know two of Hoid's three apprentices.

Defiant. Over all, a good story. Am I going to read it again? Maybe. I may be rereading Skyward, Starsight or the novellas and decide "I wanna see how it works fluidly together." Before I go on about the stuff I did not like, I'll list what I did like. I loved Hesho in this. Hesho is just amazing. I will always love him. I loved all of the Taynix stuff. if there. They were amazing. Spensa the slug. I want plushies of skyward flight as giant slugs. That would just be amazing, please and thank you. I adored the delvers parts in this. Especially at the end. (even if it was hindered a little by how Spensa's arc was handled there.) "THEY'RE HURTING THE LITTLE DELVERS!" Jorgen is one of my faves, so any time he was on screen was something I liked. Okay, I know, I know. But my favorite thing probably was Jorgen's and Spensa's relationship. I loved every bit of it. However, it did feel a little rushed, especially with where they left off in the other books. It needed a smidgeon more set up or a line saying that they'd started actually dating before. Or maybe I missed something last time I read Starsight. Rig was awesome. Nuff said. SKWARD FLIGHT! Oh, I loved them. I wish we had more of them. Ned was a highlight. The Shakespeare conversation was too. Hoid's cameo was too! and- No, I'm joking lol. One last thing: Luna was fun. EDIT: GRAN GRAN WAS AMAZING. I'M SORRY, HOW DID I FORGET? GRAN GRAN IS THE BEST!!! Now for the stuff I did not like (sneak attack, it starts with something I did like.) I think the first half was brilliant, amazing, and I loved it so much. However. I feel like the last half did the safe option. It felt like what he was building to in the previous books, but it just... felt off. That was, in part, to the fact that, lately, Brandon has been removing the "Sanderlanche" from his novels. He's been pacing it out more. That is the one thing I absolutely despise about his latest books. The sanderlanche was his signature, they were amazing, I loved them so much. But now that he's been pacing them out, it feels way more specifically paced out when it could have been nicely put in together. This one had more of one than, say, the Lost Metal (which had other issues, but ya know.) However, the previous thing extends into my next point. Spensa's arc. I feel like her arc at the beginning was phenomenal. It was working well, it was setting up some big realizations. The way the rest of her arc went was fine. It wasn't anything special imo. It was kinda like that last bit of leftovers from an amazing meal that wasn't what it was before, but it was still fairly good. What I mainly wanted was her to make more decisions. I wanted more of a resolution to what she'd done rather than giving her the tools to resolve it and half resolving it. It was like she was given a bunch of ingredients to make a pie and used half of them, making a good pie, but not the fantastic, universally loved pie it could've been. I think she needed something more that gave her more of the ability to say at the end "I'm not all the way better, but I'm getting better by each step." Basically, I want her to do (Oathbringer spoilers) She just needed something that wrapped her story up more than what she got. It also kinda felt like she wasn't given as much of the reasons she needed for what she did, despite having different reasons to do things she didn't do. It felt like the motivations and outcomes were mismatched, ig. Another thing. BRADE BEING THE MAIN VILLAIN. AHHHH. I'm not against Brade winding up as the main antagonist at the end, but the way it was handled just... What I wanted was Winzik to be more of a presence in the book. I would've liked it better if there was some sort of actual fight between Winzik and Brade. Then again, there would've needed to be more set up for that ending. Brandon outlined himself into a box here and couldn't really do anything else, is what it looks like to me. I wanted Winzik to do more things before trade took over. If Brade killed him after there was some set up and foreshadowing for that before, I would've liked that better, but there wasn't really. I think there should've been some of that in this book, more than we got at least. It would've felt rough, but it would've worked for me better than what we got in the end. Oh, and I feel like I have to mention this. Idk if I'm just noticing it now, but the prose in this book was the worst Sanderson prose I've ever read. There was little to no description whatsoever. I get having it like a movie and not wanting to have like Robert Jordan or Patrick Rothfuss style prose, but that doesn't mean throw away the idea of description being included. I just wanted more of that. Alright. I think that's all of it. I have no idea where I put this in my rank of the skyward books. It's so much of a roller coaster of quality that I can never actually find a good place for it, I think. My rating for it, though, is... hmm.. 7/10? That feels a bit high, but 6 feels wrong. Maybe 6.5/10? 6.7/10? I would recommend this book. I'm looking forward to what Janci has in store for us in the sequels!

Darkness sighed, "I assume I will have to put in some actual effort into this?" Before Platypus answered, the entity said, "Fine, then." Y'all ready for this? this about to go crazy. Hands constructed of what appeared to be shadow reached for Platypus from all sides. In the air around them, they appeared, reaching for him. When they touched him, it seemed to start to sear him a bit. Being a luxsprite helped a bit, most likely, but it still would hurt. A dark sword formed in front of Thaidakar's corpse, lunging into the light. It didn't destroy the light, nor was it destroyed by the light. It merely pushed the light forward away where it was taken by the darkness and fenced off into millions of small areas, thus creating small sparkling bits of light throughout the room. The hands attempted to rip Platypus limb from limb, dragging him to the ground and up into the air all at once.

A shimmering barrier formed between the light and Thaidakar, reflecting it back at Platypus. "Of course, Platypus, of course..." Darkness said, "even if I did, it wouldn't be merely for your Narration. Everything I do is in the service of my larger goals." I'm staling kinda because I'm trying to figure out how op Darkness should be...

*shrug* Tbh, you could be right from what I remember from Forgotten. I've forgotten (lol) a lot of the minor details by now. though, as I said, I do remember finding inconsistencies. I'll relisten to Forgotten sometime and mention it on here.

Really? I didn't know that.

have a good writing session!