Returned

No worries, we were all new here once. Welcome! I'd be interested in hearing your views about Adolin, and why you think of him the way you do.

I hadn't really been thinking of Adolin sucking as a narrative character, as opposed to as a person, but this is a position I can get behind a bit more. Since I like Adolin I don't mind his POV sections, but there is definitely an opportunity cost to focusing on him instead of other characters when each book is only so long. If forced to choose, I'd rather read about Szeth than Adolin. Adolin may develop into a character who deserves more of the spotlight, and events might be better illuminated with his POV, but we're not there yet.

Yikes, is your non-Ookla name "Kaladin from WoK and the first half of WoR"? I like Adolin. He's entitled and spoiled, along with some ignorance about the world that comes along with those, but seems pretty decent to other people and is aware of his station and the incredible good fortune that has placed him in it. As a ridiculously wealthy Alethi nobleman who is adjacent to the throne and is also a full Shardbearer, a master swordsman, an excellent soldier, and is well-regarded by his soldiers, he's too big for the rules the Alethi pretend to care about. The non-fallout of the murder of Torol Sadeas is a good example of that. But even so, he tries to follow those nominal rules and spends a lot of time and effort trying to be a good person, often with good results. He also goes out of his way to prevent abuses of others and protest injustice. He cares enough to rehabilitate a deadeye, which people thought was impossible, and was willing to spend the rest of his life in an honorspren prison to spare Maya the distress of being harassed on the witness stand. He's not perfect by any means, and if you don't like him that's obviously a valid position. I might even agree that he's overrated (by whom, exactly?). But if he flatly sucks, then I think you'll have a hard time saying that anyone on Roshar, or even the broader Cosmere, doesn't. A complaint like "he wasn't punished for killing Sadeas" isn't really a thing about Adolin himself (he wouldn't suck if he'd been disinherited, but he wasn't, so he does?). And while he was a player for sure the details on that are a bit thin, and it's not like he hasn't been 100% faithful to Shallan since she came onto the scene.

My unpopular opinion (apologies if it's somewhere upthread, this topic is long!): Sanderson's prolific output is increasingly driven by writing formula and schedule, not inspiration or artistic drive, and it's showing more and more with each release. Quality is subjective, but the books are becoming more simplistic in plotting and structure, less immersive, and more similar to each other. I don't have any problem with more YA-focused books, like the Reckoners, but I'd rather not have that style in Stormlight or Mistborn. There is still a lot to like in everything he writes, and he's still a top writer in the genre. But the scope of the Cosmere isn't well served by more simplistic characters, more simplistic representations, more simplistic plots and scenarios, more lists of magic rules (in a tell-rather-than-show sense), or more catch phrases and fan service. My feeling is that the Cosmere books are tipping ever further in that direction with each release, and that that's largely a result of the packed and punishing schedule he's set for himself. I am concerned for future books, particularly past SA 5. I'd much rather have less frequent releases, even if that means fewer Cosmere releases each year, than get less polished works more often.

I'm on board with this view, too. I do think that a major reason for the heavy-handed feeling is that Lost Metal is the last book in the sequence, so there wasn't any time or space for more setups, while it also would have been hard to work in appropriate setups in the earlier era 2 books. So for broader Cosmere stuff to be added in it really just had to be dumped in. There wasn't time for subtlety in the way that other Cosmere books have used. Other, non-era 2 books in the future will have more structural ability to incorporate these sorts of elements in ways that are less abrupt and more meaningful to the immediate plot. That said, I disagree with IndigoAjah about the goal being Cosmere-naive writing. I'm excited about the series interacting with each other, and with crossover magics and characters. But the plotting and writing comes first for me. Azure (and, better still, Vasher-as-Zahel) are my touchstone examples of this done well: they are meaningful parts of the stories in which they appear and their introduction, development, and actions are about those stories in which they're embedded. They also happen to be worldhoppers, with lots of implications and details that come along. There were subtle indications early on (Zahel's lifesense, sleeping in a dangerous spot during Highstorms, and others), and later on really obvious indications (Awakening sheets during a fight with Kaladin, Azure cutting sailcloth into roughly human shapes to make Awakening them easier). That's not how things played out in Lost Metal. TwinSoul and Shai (both of whom I like!) were just dropped in, had little to no connection to the setting or events of the book, and didn't do much beyond showing off their non-Scadrian powers. There wasn't any setup about why they were on Scadrial or why they'd joined the Ghostbloods-- they mainly showed up suddenly, inserted themselves into events, and used their powers to immediately solve problems that arbitrarily arose. To me, they came off as vehicles for Investiture-ex-machina more than anything else. I want the crossover stuff, but I want it to be interesting and important to the stories where that stuff happens and not just be there (obviously or subtly). Lost Metal gave me some real concern that we're going to get crossovers that are more artless than what Sanderson has given us so far just in service of the crossovers being present. Sanderson is a master at his craft, and given that I felt that Lost Metal had rougher edges than I expect from him.

Congratulations! Good luck on the third book. It's out there somewhere!

I think that the idea that Harmony is balance is an unfounded assumption. Sazed, post-ascension, holds two Shards which are balanced against each other due to their opposed natures-- it's holding Ruin and Preservation at once that forces balance. I don't think that that will change as long as those two Shards are held together without any other. Harmony is Sazed's Intent for those balanced forces: he wants them to to exist in tranquility. So Discord should also be constrained by balance because it has the same components which inherently require it, but the Intent won't be tranquil coexistence. What I think will be different about Discord is that instead of balance enforced largely by restraint or inaction (even when Sazed wants a specific outcome), the balance will be enforced by more activity which cancels itself out but which also heightens instability. I don't think that Sazed will have quite the same scope to prefer an outcome and position agents to pursue it but will instead maneuver people (who might, in the past, have been agents of Preservation, Ruin, or Harmony) with goals into positions where they will be forced to contend against each other. He'll end up promoting instability for its own sake, and the outcome will be determined by whoever is able to deal with that. Direct action will still be balanced, not by restraint and inaction, but by Preserving some groups and Ruining others so that there is always maximum friction between people and groups of consequence. I think that we're already seeing a lot of this, and that it's related. Harmony hasn't suddenly become Discord but has been sliding that way for a long time. We've gone from an idyllic people too content to progress (the Elendel Basin) to multiple political groups constantly at each others' throats and essentially refusing to work together (Elendel vs. the Roughs, all vs. Southern Scadrial), for example. I think we'll also see changes from certain "sides" getting help (Harmony sends Wax to save everyone, and sends nothing to the Set) to sending help to all sides (Wax is dispatched for side A and not-Wax is deployed for side B, both sent by Discord). The defining characteristic won't be capability, as Autonomy favors, or arbitrary conflict, as Odium favors, but will instead be fractiousness and disinterest (or inability) in working with others. Under Discord we'll see more factions bitterly opposed to other factions, more coups, more defectors and double-agents, and more of anything that opposes stability, cooperation, or peace.

I posted in the "problems with Lost Metal" thread, but I don't want my only posts on the forums to be criticisms of it! So I thought this thread would be a good complement, to talk about things we especially liked about the book that might not need a whole thread. I thought the character work was really good. I thought that everyone's motivations were consistent with previous books, Lost Metal gave great contexts for them to do and show what they needed, and their narrative arcs were very satisfying to me. Steris is a particular favorite of mine, and I really appreciated her rising to her challenges and finding acceptance through embracing her compulsions and responses to them. Her superlative abilities just needed to be in the right place to obviously show their worth, just like Wax needed to be in the Roughs for a while. I loved what we saw of Autonomy. Any time a Shard is on screen is significant, but seeing Autonomy in action sharpened a lot of previous thinking and suggested tons of new details. Especially exciting to me is that, just like Odium's nature means that it can't help but promote conflict even against itself, Autonomy can't help promoting self-determination even from Autonomy itself. And as her campaign of domination continues she's going to increasingly become the main force to oppose. Her greatest champion is also going to be her most dedicated opponent. Awesome. I cannot wait to read those stories as they develop. And her preference for avatars seems like more than just the Shard's nature (more self-determining instances of the power) but also a way to deal with conflict like that, which I find fascinating. The new details about the Cosmere were incredibly intriguing. The implications of a general Stamp are stunning, given how Forgery was previously shown as so limited to specific objects in specific places at specific times. Shai being able to Forge an Elantrian identity is similarly huge. It closes the loop on a lot of previous theorycrafting, and along with the reveal of raw Investiture to drive it we have a lot of new details to use when thinking about crossing magic systems. As there is more travel around the Cosmere and more power-mixing, Forgery is going to become easier to do, much more expansive in what it can do, and much more powerful. I'm also fascinated by the Aethers and their home system. I thought that the dual-conflict narrative was well done. Autonomy was going to invade and conquer, unless the Set conquered it in her name first. They had to save Scadrial, which required them to conquer Scadrial now, which meant blowing up a big part of it. It was a great motivation for a group with a doomsday device not just to have developed one in the first place, but also a compelling reason to actually try to use it. It was also a great way to separate out two antagonists at once, where they were on the same side but not quite the same side, and not really working together. The arc for Sazed, as Harmony, as increasingly unable to act (even indirectly) is moving to me, even if I haven't totally loved the pacing. He has virtually infinite divine power, strong moral beliefs, and worthy goals. But he can't bring all of those together. He must be tortured to be so helpless, even as a god, like reliving his struggle in Hero of Ages again but worse and on a larger scale. I don't know how becoming Discord will interact with that but I really want to see more. There was a lot more to like about the book but I'd rather hear what positive things especially stood out for other people.

I felt similarly. It's a good book but not a great one, and I can't shake the feeling that the final evaluation before publishing was essentially that it's good enough. There were issues that felt, to me, like they were balanced on the reservoir of goodwill from dedicated fans more than anything else. And I feel that many of those would have been hard to miss for Sanderson, editors, and advance readers altogether. Too much was teased in BoM which was totally dropped in LM. As I mentioned in another thread, the lack of any specificity at all in explanation for why Metallic Arts medallions are not more widespread or how they work and why they don't work in other ways felt almost insulting to me. Not a huge deal, but it's not like there's a need to keep details hidden for future books. I'm going to read them anyways! The political situation in the Basin was presented as balanced on a knife's edge in SoS and BoM, and remains pretty much the same six years later in LM. That makes protagonists' actions feel less meaningful and hurts my investment in the story and also makes the threats seem less significant. The villains were all back-benchers who were broadly ineffective. Telsin was a letdown compared to BoM, Autonomy was menacing but her army never arrived and she just left. Not-Wax and not-Wayne were interesting enough but their presence felt contrived to me (Autonomy apparently wants a person exactly like you for some reason, so I need to copy you in every possible way? OK, I guess). None of them stacked up to Bleeder or Miles for me in portrayal, motivations, or methods. There was more focus than I would have preferred on Sazed's difficulties holding Preservation and Ruin, given that his difficulty in acting has been a consistent theme for a long time. He's changing, sure, and that matters a lot, sure, but it was kind of a non-factor in this book. I felt like we heard more about Harmony's state in this book than any of the others but also learned less about it, so the focus was unsatisfying. There were too many connections to the broader Cosmere that were there just for the sake of being there. Someone in another thread scolded me (rudely) for not being sufficiently excited about some of those connections and mentioned the Identity safe, for example. The safe is really cool, but didn't interact with the story in any way. It was there just to be there and have its properties described. I might as well have been reading Coppermind about it, not a novel. TwinSoul (a character I really liked!) mattered to the story but mainly in solving an arbitrary problem as soon as it appeared in a way that just happened to showcase his non-Scadrian abilities. Contrast with the potential Skybreakers at the end: they were present, their nature was hinted at but not bluntly blurted out, and they didn't get more attention than their role in the story demands. We're starting to lose the "here's a cool, novel way to apply specific, rules-based magic you know about that makes it useful in addressing problems" approach to "here's an Investiture-ex-machina to resolve any particular problem". Dropped-in magic isn't the crossover magic I've been waiting for. Overall I felt the setup : payoff ratio was way too heavily weighted towards the former for a novel of this length and which caps off a distinct segment of the series. It's obviously incredibly subjective, but I felt this was the weakest Cosmere novel to date. Again, I liked the book, but there was some nontrivial drag.

Thank you for the extra detail! I wasn't aware of this kind of safety. The biggest issue I see with a safety like you describe in Vindication is that the angle of the gun relative to the center of mass of someone using seems variable in a way that the 1911 grip safety would not be. It seems to me that it would be difficult to work a grip-style safety if the angle is off even slightly (the force of the push would not just disengage the safety but would transfer through to the overall gun, ruining aim). That seems like a pretty detrimental feature during a gunfight. Maybe there could be some intervening mechanism that would prevent that, but that strikes me as extremely intricate and maybe even delicate (some cool gimbaling, springs, and/or shock-absorbers maybe?). I'm not a gunsmith, nor an Allomancer, so maybe my gut feelings are just off here. A second issue is that it is described as very, very hard for a Coinshot or Lurcher to mediate the force of a Push or Pull. It's generally full-force, with finer control being accomplished through "pulsing" the Push or Pull rather than maintaining it continuously at some lesser intensity. So in that sense a safety which requires continuous Pushing or Pulling seems disastrously difficult to me. The obvious counterargument to this one is that Wax is a fantastically skilled Coinshot and is observed to have exactly that sort of control. And since both Vindications were clearly made with him in mind, that might just be an additional layer of security: even if someone else takes the gun and knows about the safety, good luck using it effectively!

Interesting theory! I could see it being true; it's very straightforward and doesn't require a ton of speculation beyond what we know. My thinking on the godmetal(s) is a bit different, but I haven't spent much time considering your suggestion so I may need to revise. As to why Wax was able to produce lerasium, my best guess is that most of the people who were trying to split harmonium were much more strongly aligned with Ruin than Preservation, and not really with Harmony at all. The splitting of harmonium is itself inherently Ruinous (splitting Harmony's body into its constituent Shardic manifestations is destructive towards Harmony himself/itself). These two things combined make it unlikely that there is much Preservation-esque character to the splitting process in its nature or in the Intent of the people carrying it out-- it's all drawing on and manifesting Ruin. Wax, on the other hand, is more balanced in his relationship with Harmony. He's Ruinous for sure, especially when he embraces that aspect of himself (the stairwell scene in Lost Metal!), but I'd wager he's a lot more aligned with Preservation than the Set's weapons researchers.

I'm just not seeing the connection you're positing here. Hoid does not care about the survival of Roshar: yes, he says this directly (or, at least, he says that he would sacrifice Roshar to get what he needs). How does that suggest that he's stalling, rather than actively pursuing whatever it is that he needs? Or that Roshar's current war is so central to what he needs? Or that, even if I agree with what you're asserting, once the war ends and Hoid can leave Roshar that means that he's failed? I appreciate that this thread may not be the place to fully lay out all of these cases (and if you've described them elsewhere I haven't seen them, so I may be missing the details you're relying on), but all I see to support these specific ideas is your commitment to them. And they're very specific conclusions, which are then fed back into other speculations. That's not persuasive evidence. Why not? "I'd like some time off to try to start a business." "My brother is sick out in the Roughs town I'm from, I have to go be with my family for now. May I take some time off and return to your service later?" "Your last coachman was also named Hoid? What an odd coincidence! In Elendel, at least. Hoid is a really common name in parts of the Roughs. Parts you're not familiar with." "I know it seems odd to rehire me, but I'm the best horse-calmer and car-driver on Scadrial! If I'm available, you'll want me as your coachman." "Here is some magic you don't know anything about to cause you to rehire me without suspicion." Hoid is a master of misdirection and persuasion who has millennia of experience working people and has access to various arcane magics totally unknown to Wax (and us). He never (as far as we know) operated against Wax in any way, nor supported his opponents in any way, nor did anything at all that was contrary to things that Wax valued or wanted, and likely performed faithful service to Wax while working. It's a good observation that the time skip is a detail Hoid would need to work around, but the idea that he is 100% constrained only to continuous work in his disguise over that period is overdetermined. Your analysis could be correct, but given the setting and the character at issue it's not the only possible way things could have happened.

We don't know this at all. It's obviously a possibility, and as the various Cosmere series develop I think it's increasingly likely that we'll see Hoid fail in various objectives. Maybe this is one of the first consequential ones! But it's only raw speculation that Hoid's unknown, overarching goals were not served at all by his time on Roshar, as is guessing so specifically what the state of the Cosmere is going to be at the end of SA5. It's also absurd to think that Hoid can't place himself where he wants or needs to be on his own. He's managed to get himself positions close to important people and events all across the Cosmere over and over again; there's no reason to think that he needed a Shard's help to be named Elhokar's Wit, for example. But he can't get hired on as a coach driver? There's no way he could persuade, cajole, trick, or magic his way into such a job? A Hoid that could be accurately described this way flat-out doesn't match with what we've seen of him. We'll see what happens as the stories develop, of course. But the conclusion(s) you've asserted seem far, far from definitely true, and then using those conclusions (even if they are true!) to make very strong assumptions about what happened during stretches of time which we explicitly don't see on-screen in any of the books is untenable. I'm open to a lot of possibilities, including the ones you're advancing, but treating them as necessarily true based on the information we have is too far.

It doesn't strike me as that great of an advantage. Even if we agree that a child can learn, in a generic sense, more quickly than an older person, is that increased study efficiency enough to overcome the amount of time you have to dedicate to storing the youth? Like, if it cuts the amount of time you need to learn some concept from 10 hours' study to 5, but you have to spend several days storing youth to gain that advantage, it might be strictly better to spend the extra 5 hours studying over those days and not deal with atium Feruchemy at all. A recurring thing in the Mistborn books is that, while Feruchemist characters tend to have enough stored attributes to do what they need to do in the story, those needs are relatively rare and require a huge amount of time storing attributes to be able to meet them. If the effective rate of youth storage required to service one practical study session is low, it may not be practical to take advantage of such a trick even if it would work well. And all of the other concerns still apply, too: atium is expensive and rare, Keepers were a secretive group focused on staying alive and undetected more than developing neat Feruchemical tricks, they had other methods of working with knowledge, Keepers may not have had the opportunity to observe learning rate differences by age, zinc and copper may simply be superior in this application, obvious Feruchemy was incredibly dangerous to Keepers individually and as a group, and more. We also don't know a whole lot about the specific mechanisms, magical and otherwise, of Feruchemy like this. Atium Feruchemy might work just as you suggest, however beneficial or not it ends up being, or it might not work that way at all. "Kids learn faster" might not apply to Feruchemy any more than "sufficiently increased weight from tapping iron should crush a Feruchemist's own body" does. The reasoning is clear, but the presence of magic can arbitrarily preclude it.

I don't think that the specifics are going to change much. The pattern we've seen thus far on Scadrial is that governance tends to converge towards dictatorial/oligarchic rule and corruption, and that doesn't seem likely to change. Why would it? My specific guesses about how things will develop are below: Most people on Scadrial won't believe or care about the realities of what happened in Lost Metal. Most people, even knowledgeable ones, will have the same worldly concerns as they ever did, and those people will view the events as another political struggle (righteous on the part of the factions they are aligned with) which nearly led to substantial destruction because their own technology wasn't sufficiently advanced. Bilming-aligned folk will wish they'd had an adequate rocket, Elendel-aligned folk will wish they had better military equipment overall (and a lot more of it than they had), and Southerners will become much more tightfisted with their ettmetal, medallions, and related technology. As has been the case on Scadrial nearly 100% of the time, there will not be enough (perceived) common interest in general threats to bring groups together while individuals exploit and expand tensions to secure their own aims (power, wealth, or whatever). I don't see any particular reason for any of the factions in era 2 to change their perspectives or modes of operation at all. They will all likely go all-in on applied research and development, particularly with an eye towards military concerns, so that when those nefarious other Scadrians get out of line their own groups will (they presume) be able to fight them off. New developments will be jealously guarded with as much secrecy as can be managed, and espionage will flourish. Knowledge of Hemalurgy will ineveitably spread as the Set's unity is challenged following the collapse of its initial plans. Northern Scadrian governments are likely to try to push laws which forbid Hemalurgy broadly (to reduce violence towards and murder of suspected metalborn), but also produce and maintain their own stashes of spikes for "emergencies". This will form the core of the North's military contingencies for opposing the Southerners, as abundant metalborn are one of the only major advantages they have. There will be small splinter groups, exactly like the Set and the Ghostbloods, operating in pursuit of more expansive goals, but they will remain in the shadows as much as possible. Some groups will specialize in brokering resources from elsewhere in the Cosmere but these, too, will not be well-known publicly; limiting knowledge about Shadesmar and its potential will help ensure more stringent control over offworld technology and goods. Similarly, governments will try to control transit from offworld but will largely fail, in no small part because of interference from other governments who are seeking a special edge for themselves. The Terris (as a cultural, political, and social group) will rise in importance due to their near-monopoly on Feruchemy and the potential value of large-scale attribute storage and the potential represented by unkeyed metalminds. Their insularity will give them leverage that will be far harder for Allomancers to develop.

We don't know very much about Essence Marks or their implications and consequences, nor exactly what Shai is undertaking on Scadrial or anywhere else. It could be anything. Mainly I would guess that, if she did something like that, it would be to keep the Forgery from fading at an inconvenient time. It seems like it would be hard to guarantee your needs will be met within 24 hours as a being that may be hard to harness to your goals. It also seems hard to ensure that continued stamping happens reliably and regularly but only for a few days; that strikes me as an awkward feature of a personality and general life history. For all we know there are other considerations too. Some weird interaction with Forging an Elantrian identity? Maybe a Forged person (or some specific identities) would react badly to learning that she's an Essence Mark of a different, "real" person, and some cover is required to address the stamp lest the truth be revealed. It's even possible that there is a risk the Elantrian would be able to figure out what's going on and doesn't need any other impulse to stamp beyond self-preservation, so Shai didn't implant such a desire but the outcome could be the same anyways.

I'd be curious to know if the issue is amount of metals created from the process, not just the type. It strikes me that lerasium is more potent than atium (awkwardly phrased, but I couldn't think of anything better). There were always more beads of atium than of lerasium, as far as we know, by a huge margin. And while atium (or its retconned alloy) is pretty amazing in what it can do, lerasium can make anyone into a Mistborn (among other potential uses). Physically we would expect matter split into its components to have physically proportionate amounts of those components. But can we assume that with a godmetal? If lerasium is so potent (more Investiture dense, or something similar), maybe the operative mechanism is just that the most you can produce via the method used in the book and with the amount of harmonium involved is an incredibly tiny amount, generally too little to recover or use in any meaningful way. That wouldn't explain why Wax wound up with a useable amount, but maybe it's a factor. I also wonder if the process of splitting harmonium is just fundamentally a Ruinous activity. You destroy the harmonium by splitting it and cause a large, destructive explosion. Maybe such a destructive and transformative act is just conceptually not something that can generate a physical manifestation of Preservation on its own. Whatever Wax's last attempt did changed the equation (or some changes in Harmony had progressed far enough that new outcomes became possible) to make a tiny bit of lerasium, perhaps.

That's an interesting idea I haven't come across before. Big technological changes have a tendency to cause large displacements of workers, but I can see the angle that more advancements in a short period can lead to fewer periods of displacement. Umm... citation needed. Safer options exist today compared with the 19th century, but they're still more expensive than less safe methods. See circumstances like toxic waste dumping, children getting nicotine poisoning in tobacco fields, companies cut corners on safety requirements, etc. Even when manufacturers do comply with safer practices it's often due to regulations with legal force, and many manufacturers just move their operations to places where those regulations don't exist. I'll agree that improvements in material standards of living have benefited huge numbers of people, and as we stretch our assessments of those improvements into the unlimited future it's easy to say they outweigh abuse and exploitation of people that will live and die in any fixed location and time period. But that "effective altruism"-style argument has an awkward track record at best and is a much harder sell in advance compared with in hindsight. Bringing examples back around to Scadrial, skaa laborers in era 2 are much less likely to be outright murdered by a noble without consequences than in era 1, and they definitely enjoy a better standard of living (in Elendel itself, at least). But they are still frequently exploited by the wealthy and powerful, working frequent 12-hour shifts for less-than-amazing pay at demanding jobs. If people like Edwarn or high-ranking members of the Set had its way those workers would be even more dominated. I don't think that having better technology available would inherently fix that-- if everyone in Elendel had a refrigerator their position would probably still be the same. So in that dimension I agree with you: I don't think that more advanced technology would make the Scadrians any less cruel than they are.

There was also a mention of an old Koloss-blooded woman in one of the Roughs towns, though just a mention and so it doesn't add much! I agree that information on the Koloss were very thin in the era 2 books, and I felt that they were even more one-dimensional than they were in era 1. Though at the same time there weren't any plotlines that intersected with full Koloss or their communities and so it would be odd to give a lot of focus to them. We hear a little bit about Koloss communities which suggests that they are still violent-tempered and very strong, but that they also fit into society largely through their establishing their own communities. Tarson seems like exactly the kind of person that a violent gang would be happy to take on, and one who would do well in that environment. I, too, would like to see more of the Koloss in the future. But only if the story makes use of them. I don't generally like irrelevant detail just for the sake of completeness on everything that came before-- a situation which the Cosmere books have particular risk of reaching. I think that the Koloss are a difficult group to use, narratively, in anything other than a shallow way. I'd rather get less detail than more if the "more" is largely junk that detracts from a story instead of adding to it.

@StormingTexan is almost certainly correct that Wax disengaged the safety before throwing, as he threw, or after he threw the gun to Wayne. If Wax was using Vindication during the fight (I don't recall all the details just now) the safety may not have been on at all. Whether it's explicitly narrated or not this would have been trivial for Wax to do as long as he had steel. The safety Ranette built in can only be used to switch the gun between a state that will fire and one that will not. If the safety is engaged, no one can fire the gun without toggling it. If the safety is not engaged, anyone can fire the gun.

Used bookstores can be a goldmine for audio book CDs. The savings aren't always amazing, but they're generally cheaper than the list price for a new copy.

Question 1: Question 2: Question 3: Question 4:

The new identity can think very differently from the original, and it can be hard to keep a very different identity on track with the original's wishes. Shai may not want to be an Elantrian permanently, but Shai-the-Elantrian-via-stamp doesn't even seem to appreciate that she's a Forgery (though she might, and she'd need some reason to keep stamping herself which would be made easier with some shade of the truth). If the deception Shai placed in her Forged mind is that she needs to stamp herself daily or she'll fall to the Reod, permanently, Shai-the-Elantrian-via-stamp would certainly want to avoid that fate by stamping.

It could be as simple as maintaining as much intrigue and mystery as he can. Kelsier is a theatrical person, and uses those theatrics (as well as others' perceptions of him) very effectively. But more broadly I don't think that Kelsier particularly needs those powers. He's certainly more dangerous as a Mistborn than as a normal person, all else being equal, but he was also incredibly successful and effective long before he Snapped. Most of his biggest successes weren't due to his Allomancy alone. He's (more or less) immortal as a cognitive shadow, pinned into a body or otherwise, which seems useful. Kelsier has always been very capable and effective, particularly when running an organization. As a leader in the Ghostbloods he has tons of resources from across the Cosmere available to him, including rare and valuable ones. He has a lot of valuable information about things going on in places of note, and has good intelligence on people and groups that are important from local scale to galactic. He has highly capable people working under him to carry out his designs, some of them skilled and effective magic users from many different magic systems. Even though he's not Mistborn any more, perhaps permanently, I don't think it's accurate to say that Kelsier is powerless. I think that he's more influential, effective, and dangerous than he's ever been-- he just can't burn metals.

We don't know much about what Hoid wants, and likely won't until much closer to the end of the Cosmere books overall. The things Hoid is pursuing (whatever they are) seem like they can take a long time to develop-- he's working across millennia, and often isn't sure what he's supposed to do in a given location. Something we see Hoid do on screen may not pay off until the very last book in the set. If the time is right to do something somewhere, Hoid will go there, try to figure out what to do, and then do it. As for the duration, worldhopping seems like it can be pretty dangerous. Perhaps especially so for Hoid, as he is known to the Shards and is constantly meddling in their affairs, and can't harm living creatures. Travel is also inconsistently available. Getting to and from Scadrial and Roshar has been shown to be tricky and sometimes more or less impossible (at least by the methods Cosmere-dwellers typically use). If he had to leave Roshar to take care of some 30-minute task on Scadrial, it may be that seven years is the soonest he could return to Roshar even if he didn't have other tasks to take care of elsewhere. It's not the most satisfying answer, and I wouldn't assume that it's the case, but we can't rule it out. "A few days at most" seems unreasonably brief, given that Hoid has to get somewhere to transition to the cognitive realm, actually travel to a section of it that overlaps with his destination in another solar system, transition back to the physical realm, take care of his tasks, and then do the whole thing in reverse. Of course, with his letters to the Shards he may well have had access to other people who could carry his messages, so the timeline might not be especially unforgiving.