Hoids4thApprentice

Glad I'm not going mad and that someone else can hear that there is something else there too lol! Thinking about the process of recording the State of Sanderson (where some of it was recorded before the completion of all the sections) I think that they may have chosen to edit out the mention of this project from the published State of Sanderson after recording this section. I think there are a few possible reasons: This project is something that he has done a bit more work on since recording the segment and decided it won't work (like the Hoid Princess Story or Kingmaker) so asked for it to be removed from the published version. Since recording the YouTube version he has discussed it with Dan, Isaac or another potential co-author and handed it off to them so that it no longer belonged in that section That he is giving more priority to this project since recording the YouTube and is now saving it for a Secret Project announcement. I honestly think option 1 is the most likely, but I really hope it is option 3 and that as you say, this gets announced at some pint in 2027. The reason that I think one additional secret project is likely in the short term (regardless of any other secret project that come up in the long term) is the way Brandon has stated the the Fires of December (when added to tress and Yumi) creates a new series (initially a trilogy, but one that can be added to): Hoid's Travails. The only other two Cosmere based secret projects to date (Sunlit Man and Isles of the Emberdark) were focused on 2 of Hoid's apprentices. Brandon is fond of having symmetry and numerical significance in the way he sequences the Cosmere books. Brandon also told us, when introducing the Sunlit Man during the Kickstarter, that Hoid has 3 apprentices. For me, it seems pretty likely that a book focused on the final apprentice to be introduced would be the next thing he would want to prioritize.

... when you realize you have to read State of the Sanderson AND watch the YouTube video just in case there is a sneaky secret announcement in one and not the other

I listened to the YouTube version of the State of Sanderson after reading the version on his website. The website version says: "The Night Brigade, Dragonsteel, The Silence Divine, the Grand Apparatus, Mythos, the Aether World book series, Free Fall Seven Layer Burrito World, Caveman Heist, Unnamed Other Ashyn Book... My, my. This list keeps growing, doesn’t it?" When listening to the YouTube at 9.37 in, it sounds like there is an extra project inserted between Dragonsteel and the Silence Divine. Sounds like "Cairn"? Does anyone have any ideas on what this might be?

I think Treamayne has done a great job in explaining the potential spoilers and connections between the Stormlight books and the rest of the Cosmere. I would have some differences in the recommended reading order though, based on your wanting to read long series straight through while avoiding spoilers, but also being able to understand connections and what I consider to be an influential extra factor. I started reading Cosmere in 2010. As a result, I devoured Mistoborn era 1, Elantris, Warbreaker, Way of Kings and Alloy of Law in that order within months of each other. All of these books, together with the White Sand Omnibus and the Emperors Soul, are very light in Cosmere connections. So, you are not going to get any spoilers for later work if you read these first (and if you choose to read the chronologically early stories from Arcanum Unbounded: Hope of Elantris (straight after Elantris); and 11th Metal after Mistborn Era 1 ). They will also tee you up for catching later connections in the rest of Mistborn era 2 and Stormlight. (I'll come to my recommendations for reading Sixth of the Dust and Shadows for Silence in the Forest of Hell later). While I understand that your 3 main considerations in forming your reading order are: reading related series in sequence; avoiding spoilers; and understanding connections. I do think that (independent of actual publication order), the nature of Brandon's writing has changed since the early days. Personally, I think you will give yourself the maximum enjoyment if you take this into account as neither the full five book ark of Stormlight nor era 2 of Mistborn read as cleanly in their series order as they do if you account for the changes in how Brandon's conception of the Cosmere evolves while he is writing. As a result I would recommend the following order if you choose to stick to reading a Secret History after the Bands of Mourning: Mistborn Era 1: The Final Empire; The Well of Ascension; The Hero of Ages (and the the 11th Metal). Elantris (and Hope of Elantris) Warbreaker The Emperors Soul White Sand Graphic Novel Omnibus The Alloy of Law (and Allomancer Jack and the Pits of Eltania) Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell The Way of Kings Words of Radiance (followed by Edgedancer) Oathbringer Shadows of Self Bands of Mourning Mistborn a Secret History (Dawnshard preceding) Rhythm of War Wind and Truth The Lost Metal The Secret Projects: Sunlit Man, Tress of the Emerald Sea, Yumi and the Nightmare Paitner, Isles of the Emberdark) Sixth of the Dusk is from a much later time in the Cosmere than any of the others and personally (despite it not having any real spoilers for other books until the Sunlit Man and The Isles of the Emberdark) I wouldn't read this until after Oathbringer and before Dawnshard (if then). I would actually skip this altogether and read Isle of the Emberdark after the Stormlight Archive and Lost Metal (as above) without reading Sixth of the Dusk first. I know you have made a decision to read Mistborn a Secret History after Bands of Morning to avoid the (minor) spoilers contained in Secret History for the former book. For me, I found the Secret History to be hugely confusing when I read it after Bands of Mourning as the whole narrative of a Secret History is interlaced with the events of the original era 1 trilogy. In my re-reads, I have always read it straight after Mistborn Era 1. If you were to reconsider where you read the Secret History, I would recommend: Elantris (and Hope of Elantris) Warbreaker The Emperors Soul White Sand Graphic Novel Omnibus Shadows for Slience in the Forests of Hell Mistborn Era 1: The Final Empire; The Well of Ascension; The Hero of Ages (and the the 11th Metal). Mistborn a Secret History The Way of Kings Words of Radiance (followed by Edgedancer) Oathbringer The Alloy of Law (and Allomancer Jack and the Pits of Eltania); Shadows of Self Bands of Mourning (Dawnshard preceding) Rhythm of War Wind and Truth The Lost Metal The Secret Projects: Sunlit Man, Tress of the Emerald Sea, Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, Isles of the Emberdark Both reading orders take into account 2 internal time jumps within Mistborn era 2 (Between Alloy of Law and Shadows of Self and between Bands of Morning and Lost Metal) and between Oahbringer and (Dawnshard then) the Rhythm of War in Stormlight. Both mine and Treamayne's recommendation for reading the Lost Metal after Wind and Truth is (as you probably know) based on the fact that Wind and Truth takes place before the Lost Metal in the wider Cosmere chronology,

Nope ... Huio is a red herring. The one I have my eye on is Jess. She isn't even listed as an arcanist in the acknwledgments but mysteriously turns up a the University anyway ... suspicious if you ask me!

OMG Argent is a multiple double agent! He signals the Shards to tell them which one he is now willing to work for every time a bell 'accidentally' drops off during shardcast!

I love that Brandon gave Argent a cameo and then trolled him by leaving it open that he might be a traitor.

Just finished it this afternoon. I found it to be a more engaging read than either Frugal Wizard or Yumi and the Nightmare Painter. For me, it is up there with Tress of the Emerald Sea and The Sunlit Man as one of my favourite secret projects. I may be biased because I really liked the original novella and the few chapters of the sequel that Brandon read out years ago. I think the novel really delivered on the promise of that reading. I initially worried that Dusk and Starlings Story were only going to intertwine in a clunky way and the beginning of Part 3 reinforced that worry. However, as it progressed, I personally think that Starling and Dusk's emotional story arcs aligned well even if the story kept their narrative plots fairly separate in parts 3 and 4. For me, it really did create a very satisfying ending when Dusk decided to join the crew of the Dynamic at the end.

Thank you Ripheus23 for the reply. I do see that Brandon's writing is influenced by his religious heritage, and as a person of faith myself (though a Buddhist here) I have a huge amount of respect for anyone who actively practices the tenants of their faith in a world where doing so is not always easy. On the other hand, all of the works I have read (to date) seem to indicate that (in his writing) Brandon is more interested in exploring religion as a mechanism in effecting the motivations and actions of characters, and subsequently, how this can have a knock on effect on a world's politics and history rather than trying to express his own religious belief and tradition within his stories. When I first read the comment, I thought I remembered Branndon and Dan on Intentionally Blank talking about how they preferred Tolkien's ambiguousness in whether his religion was expressed in Middle Earth story rather than C. S. Lewis' conclusion to Narnia where (and I am abridging and simplifying here) everything in the story was all "God's plan" all along and the reader is expected to accept Lewis' religious faith in the Divine Plan as a result. I do not see the same readiness in Brandon to use storytelling to convince his readers of the validity of his own belief system in the way I believe Lewis did (and again, I know I am oversimplifying and that there is a lot of nuance and complexity in Lewis' work that I am not explicitly engaging with, at the end of the day though this is Sanderson forum not a C S Lewis forum). While I did not find the Intentionally Blank conversation, I thought I remembered, I did find the below: Brandon Sanderson So the question is: I use a lot of religion in my books how do I balance that with my own personal beliefs? So, I'm a religious person and what this has done to me in specific is make me really interested in how religion affects people or how the lack of religion affects people. I find that the real fun of reading and writing, raising interesting questions, and approaching a topic from lots of different directions, is a thing that is really fascinating to me. I ascribe to a school of thought that I kind of-- this is a little unfair to these gentlemen but I kind of divide it among the Tolkien and C.S. Lewis line of those two were famously in a writing group together, and if you don't know Tolkien actually converted C.S. Lewis to Christianity, which is very interesting, and they were both deeply religious people, and they approached it very differently in their fiction. C.S. Lewis felt that fiction should be didactic and teach you a lesson and Tolkien repeatedly refused to tell people what he thought the themes in his books were. When they would come up to him and say "It's a metaphor for World War II, isn't it?" he would say "No, it's a story." And I am more a Tolkien than a C.S. Lewis. I like with fiction-- I consider myself a storyteller primarily, and I hope that a good story is going to raise interesting questions but that has to be focused around what the characters are passionate about and what they are thinking about. And so I try to populate my books with people who are asking interesting questions from a variety of different perspectives. I said on a panel I was on yesterday "Nothing bothers me more than when reading a book where someone has my perspective, there's only one person, and they're the idiot. Whatever it is that they are an idiot about that I agree with." And I'm like ahh can't you at least present my side-- I want everyone who reads my books, regardless of their religious affiliation, if they see something like their own belief system in there I want them to say "Yes, he's presenting it correctly." And part of that means that I have to approach my fiction in certain ways, for instance, I like fiction that is ambiguous to the nature of deity, if there is one. I want-- If you can create a book with really cool atheist characters and then go "By the way here's this all powerful, all knowing benevolent god that he's just refusing to acknowledge" that undermines that character completely. And so I create my fiction so that the different people on the sides of the argument, just like in our world, have good arguments on both sides. And I think that if you present characters with interesting choices, making interesting decisions you will-- truth will rise to the top. That's kind of one of the purposes of fiction, is to discuss these issues. So that's kind of a roundabout answer to your question, that as a person of faith how I approach writing my books. I'm not sure if it's the right answer, but it's the answer I've been giving lately. ConQuest 46 (May 22, 2015) I appreciate that this is 10 years old, and that Brandon does change his views and approach over time. It is still my personal opinion that it is unlikely that Brandon will try and resolve the many mysteries that he has created within the Casemore with a simple explanation that Andolosium had a divine plan all along and that no other explanation is needed. I'm not ruling out some kind of element of Andolosium having agency that is played out through the History of the Cosmere, I just think that Brandon would put more thought into it than explaining everything away as Andolosium having planned it that way.

Thanks Roscoe for the response. When I said that: I wasn't ignoring the fact that you had provided a grouping of each Dawnshard with 4 Shards. The point I was trying to make is that the reason I have personally reasoned that there should be some mathematical grouping or relationship between the Dawnshards and the 16 Shards is that I have believed that the 4 Dawnshards together were used to shatter Andalosium and that this effects the nature of the Shards the Shattering left behind. I can see from the part of your original post that mentions fortune: And the follow up: ... that you are saying that the groupings and intents of the Dawnshards would have been part of Andalosiums design all along. You may be right that that is how Brandon ends the Cosmere and explains that the Shards and Dawnshards became what they did and had the relationships they did because Andalosium designed them that way as part of a grand plan. As I say, for me, that is not as compelling as the idea that the Shards came out as they did because of the use of the Dawnshards in shattering Andalosium. Just one point of clarity on where you say: The reason I proposed Join and Divide (but was adding different words to try and clarify what I was getting at) as the remaining Dawnshards is that for me: Exist creates something out of nothing; Change allows something that already exists to become something else. However, it does not (on its own) allow something that exists to change into more than one thing or combine with something else to become something greater than it could change into on its own. So, for me, both Join and Divide enable different elements of creation that change on its own does not. The way I was thinking of Divide was very much in terms allowing for multiple growth rather than singular change and not as a form of destruction or something that is just another form of change.

The idea that the Dawnshards could represent powers to be used in sequence during the progress of the Cosmere is a new idea for me. It was definitely an idea I enjoyed thinking about. Having thought on it though, now that we have two of the Dawnshards confirmed and that all 16 Shardic intents are confirmed, I'm finding it difficult to get behind this theory because (as far as I can see) it requires abandoning the train that the shards are likely to match into groups of 4 that align to 1 of each of the Dawnshards. As I see it, if the Dawnshards were designed (by Andalosium) for use in different periods of the Cosmere, rather than being created by Andalosium for the creation of the Cosmere in one action and later (without Andalosium's design or consent) causing the shattering of Andalosium, this would make much less sense. For one part, the idea of a God's discarded tools being turned against them rather than a God designing its own destruction and resurrection seems to make more sense to me as an authorly construct (that said, I can see that that the sequential theory of Dawnshards matches the Iriali religious beliefs about the One quite well). For me essentially, I think that the idea behind trying to come up with a grouping the shards is based on the idea that the 16 individual intentions are a direct result of the 4 Dawnshard Commands (that were used by Andalosium to create the Cosemere) being turned against Andalosium to split his design (and very being) into its individual parts (something we are increasingly seeing form exposure to the different Shardic intents - including apparently benign and heroic ones, may not have been the best idea!). My own thoughts about the last two Dawnshards based on that would likely be Join (or Unity, Consolidate or something like that) on one side, and Divide (or Multiply or Expand or something like that) at the other.

I agree. I also think Brandon confirmed as much in WoB at DSNX24. I think that as well as 9 and 10 being Odium and Honour. I also think that Yumi and the Nightmare Painter confirmed Vituosity as associated with 13 and that Warbreaker confirmed Endowment as associated with 5. As for Ruin and Preseravation, as Dofurion says above, it maybe that Preservation is 4 rather than 16 based on the WoB he quotes@ It could also mean that the prominence Brandon is giving 4 as well as 16 for that book is to indicate that Ruin is associated with one of those numbers and Preservation with the other. Giving some thought to other potential associations. We understand from the Sel essay that there are three different Empires with different magic systms on Sel, so Domain could be associated with 3? I feel that Autonomy, by definition, should be associated with 1 (but I can also see that Taldain has 2 suns 2 sides so ...?).

I understand that you worry the naming of Kelsier as leader of the Gohstbloods would spoil Mistborn Secret Hostory and Era 2. For me personally though, I am at the opposite end of the spectrum from those who would avoid reading something for mild potential spoilers. For me the greater concern is missing fine details or easter eggs because I didn’t know there were references in previous works (so for me, I would always recommend reading the White Sand Omnibus and Elantris as well as Mistborn Era 1 before Way of Kings to give the reader a fair chance at figuring out the 17th Shard trio, same goes for reading Warbreaker before Words of Radiance to give a chance of identifying Zahel). That said, I also understand why your friends might only want to read the mainline series and read one series at a time. In terms of reading order, Mistborn Era 1 comes first. I do however think there is an alternative to having to choose all of Stormlight front 5 or all of Mistborn Era 2 next without having to follow publication or an alternating books form each serues. I genuinely think there is a different feel to Brandon's writing as he develops the Cosmere further. As a result, I think that Lost Metal feels quite different than the first 3 Era 2 books. There is also a significant time jump from Bands to LM. Similarly, I think Way of Kings, Words of Radiance and Oatbringer have their own feel and arc before the time jump to Rythm of War. My recommended reading order would therefor be: · Mistborn Era 1 · Strmlight 1-3 · Misborn era 2 (1-3) · Finishing off with Rythm of War, Wind and Truth and Lost Metal (in that order) I’m not sure whether that would actually follow Cosmere chronological order when it comes to Stormlight 1-3 and Mistborn Era 2 1-3 but, like a previous poster, I do think getting the end of Wind and Truth before the Lost Metal would make the Lost Metals ending land better (especially as this is where the gloves come off in terms of introducing the scale of the Cosmere by introducing new planets like Datri and Mythos).

My first thought was that Patji (the Avatar of Autonomy who replies to Hoids in one of the letters) was the dead god. The fact that the ones abve laughed when Vathi talked about being able to withstand the challanges of difficult masters made me think they thought or knew Patji was no longer a factor. Either that Patji the individual Avatar gets destroys within the events of the Ghostblood trilogy (Mistborn era 3) or that Autonomy iteslf is splintered as a reult of the events of that trilogy.

Funny I re-listened to the original reading for the Sixth of The Dusk sequel from a few years ago yesterday. I realised then that chapter 3 had stopped about half way through the original reading. It makes sense that the extra chapter would cover that part of the story. As with chapter 3, there are a few changes and extra details in chapter 4, but it essentially takes us to the same place at the end of the original reading.