Argent

Yea, the whole "sounds almost like 'quote'" didn't work for me. Since day one I decided that the e at the end of it was not silent and that's how I keep saying it in my head. When I talk to other people I will say it "correctly" (kvôTH), but in my head there is that e after TH. Which makes things really weird during the interlude chapters, because I am tempted to turn Kote into something like kot + eh (instead of a name that sounds very much like the word coat), which means "kitty" in my (and half a dozen other Slavic) native language. It is, in fact, how they translated it. Anyway. It doesn't matter. Pat is very much in the same boat as Brandon when it comes to names - you say it like it sounds to you, and as long as others can figure out whom you are talking about, it's all good.

Interesting. It's almost surprising to see how (relatively) much of this belongs to the Shadow.

This might be the most popular introductory thread I have seen here...

She was nervous - concerned, - but nobody saw her. Some people passed her, but they didn't even glance at the shadow.

Which is an obsolete WoB, because (I am pretty sure) he scrapped Navani. Lift, Renarin, and Taln are the three I am 100% sure are confirmed, assuming things don't change. Since we need an Elsecaller, Jasnah will probably hop on the bandwagon too. We still need a Dusbringer here, and if the WoB from above is any indication, we should see Taravangian talking to spren sometime soon (since we, presumably, haven't seen Chana and we have seen all the viewpoint characters of the second arc).

Actually, the "second Herald book" is really really old info, if I recall correctly.

That's why "dead" is in parenthesis - you read the sentence without it, but it's still true if you add it in. It's a weird figure of writing I am unreasonably fond of.

I think he said - in one of the recent signings - that non-Nalthians would have Breath, but wouldn't be able to use it. They could still acquire Nalthian Breaths on top of it and learn how to Awaken using those, but their native one would be "locked." I am over 80% sure about this.

That part, at least, I am pretty sure has to do with the nature of the Shardblades - namely, the fact that they are (dead) spren.

Eh, wouldn't say so. It has its active and inactive periods, but it's never been truly dead.

Santhid eye is pretty rad, I agree. Keep it up!

Do not assume Khriss to be the author of the Ars Arcana.

We know that Hoid has used Shadesmar to worldhop, so Shardpools - if they are, indeed, the mysterious other way of jumping between worlds - are not mandatory, just more efficient.

We should probably be careful in assuming that all the lead characters will be neuro-atypical - Kaladin, Shallan, and Renarin are masterfully handled, and you could probably make a (not very strong) similar case for Dalinar, but handing every major character a psychological disorder undermines the severity of those disorders in our world, I think. Up to one point it's empowering and uplifting. Past that it's comical, if not disrespectful. I doubt this will become a real concern, but it's something we should be aware of when discussing those things - having (had) a difficult life and dealing with issues is not always the same as living with a mental illness.

Not only was my timing off, I had certain expectations too. Hoid: 2, Argent: 0

I came here to report that. I was even excited to do so

Oh, I didn't say why I thought they were Invested, did I? I was thinking about the voices Eshonai hears in her head when she attunes to the new rhythms of power, and how similar they sound to the Well of Ascension's drumming. Or, even more closely, to how an experienced Seeker would be able to hear and identify different metals being burned.

I like the writing style a lot. This counts for much when I read new authors - even if the story leaves something to be desired (which doesn't sound the case with Lynch), style alone can pull me through. For some reason, the other way around doesn't always work for me.

The end of WMF pretty much stated outright that the University arc was almost done. So, /sad

Investiture frequencies sounds like a pretty solid reasoning. I've had a pseud-theory about how Investiture and magic propagate throughout the cosmere, all based on some vague hints Brandon has thrown at us, but it's all but confirmed in my mind. It's essentially the Shardic Lenses theory - all Shardic power behaves kind of like a wave: it has some unique frequency (and presumably wavelength, but there is no reason to separate the two just yet). The more power you use, the "louder" its signature - but it's all unique not only for Shards, but for their individual powers too (so Allomantic iron sounds different from Allomantic steel and Feruchemical iron). So yea, all three Rosharan Shards leave their own Investiture footprints when their power is being used, and different powers leave even more "fine-tuned" signatures. This is a part of the reason I believe the Unmade are pretty heavily Invested, by the way.

I've been wondering about that ever since Kaladin got strung up in The Way of Kings. My best theory (and, boy, am I stretching the definition of this word) is that the Stormfather carries the highstorms, in a way. It's an inaccurate description, but it's how I think about it. He, being a spren or spren-like being, resides in the Cognitive Realm, and so he has to enter the physical realm, at least partially, if he wants to affect it - and nothing affects the physical realm on Roshar more than highstorms. So, instead of fully switching realms, he kind of... blends the two realms around himself, kind of like how Shallan does when she tries to Soulcast the stick. This way he is not as incapacitated as the other "regular" spren are (because he is still partially in the Shadesmar), but gets to influence the physical world. Furthermore, my largely unfounded theory claims that the Stormfather "carries" the highstorms around Roshar - he "pops up" somewhere around where the Origin is, builds a highstorm up around himself (so he is in the eye of the storm), and goes on a field trip around the planet. When he passes over gemstones, he infuses them, because of some kind of Investiture bleedthrough or something that happens because of the blending of the realms around him. When a Radiant, or at least somebody with a Nahel bond, is caught outside during a highstorm, they get a chance to talk briefly with the Stormfather as he passes over them - and they are relatively safe during this time, because the center of the storm is not entirely in the physical realm. Which is why Kaladin reports everything going silent, the wind disappearing, and even the environment changing. Then the eye of the storm, along with the Stormfather and his twisting of the realms, passes and the physical storm comes back. Wow, this is difficult to explain. I might need to come back and clarify a few points...

Started The Lies of Locke Lamora today. It's been on my list for a very long time, but I finally started it. My reading time has been somewhat diminished lately, so I hope I get to finish it before Butcher releases Skin Game.

For some reason I love the University the most.

Mat, perhaps even more than Rand, will only get more and more interesting. Perrin will have his stale moments. Aes Sedai are... an acquired taste.

Honestly, with calendars you can do pretty much whatever you want to. The two big models, however, are: Year number is the number of years since some defining Big Event - the Gregorian calendar most of us use follows this model (e.g. 2014 is "2014 years since the birth of Christ" or "2014 years since the beginning of the Common Era") Year number is the number of years since the last defining Big Event. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings calendar is like this - it uses not only date, month, and year, but age as well You could, of course, do something wonky (I just started reading The Lies of Locke Lamora, and it looks like the calendar there goes through multiple iterations of the same year number, with each iteration being "dedicated" to a different god - e.g. the 77th year of Sendovani comes after the 77th year of Morgante). I've wanted to see a truly decimal system of keeping time for a very long time now (that's a system where the conversion factors between one unit of time and the next are always powers of 10; e.g. 1 year = 10 months, 1 month = 10 or 100 days, 1 day = 10 hours, 1 hour = 10 or 100 minutes, 1 minute = 100 seconds... or something like this).