Argent

It's not a bad term, if we need one. Sounds weird to me though. It's thematically appropriate, but I would've preferred erring on the side of what's awesome (to quote this one dude I've met a few times) and breaking the "words that start with S and represent a piece of the whole" convention.

Thanks for getting those questions both asked and transcribed I now move to officially change Brandon's middle name to "Screw you, I'll do three prologues!"

No! Begone, foul beasts! Forfeit your claims on my book immediately!

It's very high likelihood, but not officially confirmed. I could devise a scenario where Darkness does not actually wield an Honorblade, and no evidence in the book could contradict it. It would be an unlikely hypothesis, but a possible one.

I think this is a very reasonable idea.

And some that are not <3

Hullo! Hope we blow your mind often and with vigor.

I think the question has been brought up to Brandon only once (at least to my knowledge), and he RAFO'd it unexpectedly.

Ha, @Stormgate and @Pathfinder, are barely one and two years old! *scoffs* Nothing like the true veterans here, (officially) clocking in at almost five. Seriously though, you are lovely human (presumably) beings <3 On topic now. @jofwu, I don't know if you can forum like a pro. I don't think that's something you can qualify as pro-worthy. There are neat things you can do - format your posts to the extent the forums allows you to (i.e. use all the tags, and use them well), try to source things you are talking about (theories, WoBs, etc.), contribute by posting about new content (but try not to beat me to posting the cool stuff, I like the fame). Outside of those things, I will energetically second @Pagerunner's recommendation of the Unread Content. It is virtually the only way I enter the site these days, and it is all sorts of useful for saving time. Was this the kind of stuff you were looking for?

I may need to scour the art for more faces... There seems to be an awful lot of them.

Can't go wrong with any of those, @Morzathoth. I myself finished The Book of Cain. Which is alright, if you are a fan of the Diablo franchise. Am now (finally) reading Randall Munroe's (the XKCD guy) What If? book. I am mildly disappointed that a large fraction of the content in it comes directly from the respective section on the website (i.e. there isn't as much new content as I had hoped there would be). But it's still something I would recommend unconditionally.

You take your filthy accusations away from Steris-bae!

This is currently one of the highest priority questions in my personal list of questions for Brandon.

I realize it's far from required, but I like seeing how text turns into visual art. I enjoy things more when I can glimpse the process behind the creation, and in the case of drawing characters and scenes from books, a part of the process is translating the textual description into a visual one.

Done with The End of All Things. I found it a really solid book - not necessarily exceptional, but very good at least. The story told through a few novellas with different protagonists is a different way of telling it, but it works. I think I'll jump into Book of Cain now.

Hmm, I guess gems and essences are related to one another. Okay then.

We don't know if Harmony makes an effort to see every soul pass into the Beyond. We do know he has been distracted lately though, so Innate's passing is not something he necessarily knows about.

Wow, that ship sailed to Speculationland so fast, I couldn't even see it leave harbor.

I just realized - we get to tell uninitiated readers that Brandon is writing a series that spans 10k years. That's next level intimidation.

Neato!

Overall I think it looks better. Out of the three black ones, I like the first one the most - the new light color improves readability greatly. I believe the only differences between the three are the white / light grey distributions, yes? If so, I would like to see a version with the Surges' symbols in the old, darker grey, and everything else in the new, lighter one. I don't think I would like it more than the first version here, but I might. As for the last version, my only feedback is my previous comment about the essences and gems being on the same tier. In other words, when you see something like "protecting - leading" on top, it is suggested to you that "protecting" and "leading" belong to the same category, i.e. divine attributes. So when you see the same format on the bottom, e.g. "sapphire - zephyr" you get the same idea - that sapphire and zephyr belong to the same category, but that is not the case. As before, I don't have solutions, just problems Outside of that, I am very much okay with this version. On a different note, as I was looking at this latest batch, an idea for a different layout came to me - see if you like, maybe you want to give it a shot. I am thinking that the most important elements in the entire image are the Herads' heads and the Orders' symbols. So what if we pulled those out of their relatively crowded area (which they currently share with their surges, essences, and gems), and gave them more room on the outside, past their names? This would result in three primary concentric circles - one for the Orders' glyphs, one for all the... things... associated with an Order, and one for the Heralds' faces. Not necessarily in this order. I can't imagine it very well, but I am bad at visualizing things, so no surprise there. Just a thought.

Have we asked Brandon about this? I think there is a reasonable chance he will stop by Chicago for the Arcanum Unbounded tour, and could ask him then.

Aaand done with The Crystal City. I will echo my Goodreads review and say that I finally figured out what my (biggest) problem with the series is - it feels fake. Conversations, interactions between the characters, and the plot, none of those things feel organic. I thought this might be because the language feels odd to me, but no, everything just feels too mechanical. The book itself was alright, it's not like it was unreadable or anything, and I still wish the story would be completed one day, but I wouldn't hold my breath for it. Also finished The Grinning Man, a short story in the Alvin Maker world. It felt better than most of the actual books, probably because it didn't seem to be trying as hard. It was just a fun story. I am now reading the last book in John Scalzi's Old Man's War, The End of All Things. I am trying to wrap up whatever series I have fallen behind before I start new ones (Max Gladstone has been recommended a lot, for example).