Cheese Ninja

Lately I've been on a bit of a fantasy light novel(LN)/web novel(WN) reading spree. The quality is often quite a bit lower, but there are a few standouts which are on par with the good English language fantasy, and the settings are often interesting as well. The web novels don't even have editors, and some of the authors really need someone to rein them in when it comes to writing a cohesive story. That said, there are a number of WN that got picked up by publishers and are doing well in print. It doesn't help the translators are usually amateurs as well, often without the best grasp of the English language. baka-tsuki.org is generally the best place to find series that haven't been licensed in the United States. Some of my personal favorites: To Aru Majutsu/To Aru Majutsu New Testament There's been a few seasons of anime based of this series and its companion manga To Aru Railgun. Anything by Ryohgo Narita, the anime Baccano! and Durarara! were derived from his LN of the same names, and Vamp! is a refreshing and enjoyable twist on the vampire genre. As a side note, all his major series take place in the same world, albeit with almost no interaction between the characters. Mushoku Tensei - A web novel that seems at first glance to be a typical otaku wish fulfillment series, but turned out to be a much deeper character study and better planned out than most of what I've seen from the fantasy adventure LN series.

Probably not the Aimians then, they were barely mentioned in the Words of Radiance Interludes. I get the impression that the humans immigrated from Braize, but I'm not sure if the Parshendi started out on Roshar or not. Or is the part about it being from the Interludes incorrect as well? And all the humans and Shards originated on Yolen, right? Except Scadrians, who were "made" by Preservation and Ruin. (I still don't get how that worked. Seems like it would have been easier to get the genetic diversity for a breeding population by modifying Yolen humans instead of making them all from scratch.)

That Taravangian thing... I got the impression from his Interlude that he was incorrectly interpreting his boon and curse. My interpretation: Intelligence being the capacity to stop what was coming, compassion being the capacity to save humankind. Curse is that they can only exist in inversely proportional amounts at the same time. Aluminum sheath for Nightblood... that would be interesting, but maybe an alloy or something? Since Aluminum as a metal doesn't seem quite strong enough for all the hitting and stabbing that is done with that sheath. Or the sheath might have multiple layers to it, one of them being aluminum. Could it be that the Scouring of Aimia isn't simply the killing of the Aimians, but rather most of them deciding to leave Roshar entirely? Reminds me of the person after me in line's question about the Aimians back at the Dayton signing. Something about them being refugees.

Could Helaran have had dual, triple, or even quadruple membership in secret societies? They aren't all at odds with each other about everything, I'm sure that there's common ground between them, and he could also have been a double agent or simply left one for another. note: Ookla's autocorrect (probably) changed "Raison d'être" into "raisin of the day". There's a bunch of stuff to indicate that he wasn't a Radiant either at the time of his death or when he first pulled the Shardblade on his father, so I'd take Taravangian's comment about him possibly training Shallan with a bit of skepticism. It might have been simply that he could communicate basic concepts about Radiants to her that were not known to the masses.

Or alternatively, the key events leading up to the Everstorm occur 229 days before the actual summoning of the Everstorm. Someone had to have given Venli information about Stormform and the spren necessary for it, after all. I wouldn't say that 229 days is "remarkably close", it's off by about 25%.

Where are you gettting 10 years for Vasher from? That quote is only talking about the time between when Brandon first wrote Vasher into Way of Kings Prime and when Words of Radiance came out. 12 years difference. It doesn't tell us anything about the time inside the series, Vasher could have been there for 5 years or 500.

I changed the title of the thread to better reflect what it was that I was really interested in. Let's start with Adonalsium, I'm not sure whether to interpret Hoid's and Brandon's comments to mean that Adonalsium had some sort of direct influence on Roshar, or merely influenced it indirectly. Could the Parshendi have been the result of the Adonalsium touching Roshar too strongly before the Shattering? It seems unlikely that a race so humanlike could have developed under such alien conditions without any outside influence. Possibly as either a side-effect or resulting from the same event that caused Adonalsium-type spren to develop on Roshar. In this case, the Parshendi would have been more or less alone on Roshar until Cultivation and Honor came. Would the Shards have brought either humans or Aimians with them? I still think the majority of humans were forced by Odium to emigrate from Braize (then the Tranquiline Halls, currently Damnation) to Roshar, at which point the Heralds would have formed the Oathpact with Honor. In summary, I think the order was: Parshendi develop on Roshar >> Honor and Cultivation settle there >> Odium kicks the humans off Braize and they move to Roshar >> Odium visits by means of the Desolations I have no idea about the Aimians.

Note: WeiryWriter meant to write "would not use" instead of "would uses". I hope Vivi is still around somewhere, and the requisite amount of Breaths would have been enough to make her immortal. I was wondering if her and Vasher might have ending up having a kid though. Maybe Vasher got her preggers and freaked out and Worldhopped away, and she'll show up in the SA wanting a hundred-something years of child support money.

I was thinking, maybe it was just Honor and Cultivation relaxing and playing house with the spren, Parshendi, and possibly Aimians as well. And then Odium destroyed/captured the original homeworld of Roshar's humans (the Tranquiline Halls), and brought them to Roshar to use as leverage against Honor and Cultivation, towards his goal of their eventual deaths and Splintering. It probably wouldn't have mattered if H&C didn't want humans on Roshar, if it went against the Intent of their shards to abandon/ignore the humans. In a way, the humans are more the villains of the story than the Parshendi. Also, I feel like I saw a direct quote saying that Odium came to Roshar a while after H&P, but all I could find just now were secondary implications. There was also some talk about how Braize is where Odium has currently settled, so does that make Braize the Tranquiline Halls? Edit: Changed the topic title to be more in line with what I was really wondering.

Pretty sure he uses Stormlight, the WoB is: Q: How long has Zahel been slumming it on Roshar? A: For quite a long time, on this planet he can get something quite easily that is much harder to get where he came from. The question is, how often does he need it?

I'm inclined to agree that a normal Awakener would be either incapable of using Stormlight, or have go to great lengths to achieve a workaround in order to use it, but that a Returned could simply breathe it in. There was a line in WoR that made me think that Vasher might need to inhale Stormlight on a daily basis to survive, instead of Breaths on a weekly basis. Kaladin: “Have you ever had to choose between two equally distasteful choices?” Vasher: “Every day I choose to keep breathing.” Of course, he might just been making a little joke, but I think he's also implying that it's necessary for him to survive. Of course, this would also require him to be holding on to a few large, well-cut gemstones as the year approaches the Weeping, otherwise he keel over. Here's another thing I'm wondering, will Vasher be able to use Stormlight to Awaken? I imagine it would drain from the stuff, unlike Breaths, but sometimes you only need something to be Awakened for a few seconds or minutes.

I think by the end of book 5 And then an even greater danger will surface. Most likely still Odium related. We'll have the Herald's (Taln and the other) flashback books in the 2nd half, so I imagine we will see a lot of all this how started. There's a WoB that says that Honor and Cultivation were on Roshar for quite a while before Odium arrived. So I wouldn't be surprised if there is stuff from before the Cycle of Desolations and the Oathpact began, and why those were necessary sacrifices to begun with.

Obviously, this is an old thread from when just had spoiler chapters.

Ah, what you is this then:

Mraize seems to collect stuff from other Cosmere worlds, and is quite possibly a Worldhopper himself. Which makes him being "a student" of Iyatil even more interesting. WoK Ch. 54 Gibletish Quote Mraize was probably talking about Tezim. There's nothing else in either book about Tukar or Tezim. He seems be implying that Tezim is a Worldhopper as well with the "not of a local species" comment. Is anyone else still uncertain about whether or not Helaran was a Ghostblood or a Skybreaker? Amaram assumed Ghostblood, Shallan assumed Ghostblood, Mraize said he "sought the Skybreakers", Taravangian wondered if Helaran had given Shallan some sort of training. Could he have had dual membership? Just to be clear, I don't think Helaran himself was a Surgebinder, since he was clearly using a dead spren Shardblade, which would be extremely unpleasant for anyone with a Nahel bond. I think Gavilar might have even had triple or quadruple membership. (Contact with Taravangian pre-Nightwatcher and Diagram, with makes him the ultimate hipster Diagrammist, confided in Amaram to some degree, so some association with the Sons of Honor, had at least 3 different Heralds visiting his palace shortly before his assassination (Ash, Nalan(Head of the Skybreakers), and Nalan's friend), suspected either Thaidakar(Ghostbloods) or Restares(Sons of Honor) would want to kill him.)

I kinda like it, just because I can make it work with my crackpot theory that Ishar is Thaidakar. We have that vague comment from Mraize about "Helaran seeking out the Skybreakers", so there's already some link between the Ghostbloods and the Skybreakers. What interesting is, we and Amaram all assumed that Helaran was a Ghostblood, and I'm still not sure if we were wrong or not. Did he successfully join up with the Skybreakers (nonSurgebinders) or are they considered a subset of the Ghostbloods? I've also never been a huge fan of the whole "corrupted Heralds" thing, which implies some supernatural cast to their current demeanor. I think that any twisting of their personalities is solely the result of living with a particularly harmful lie for 4500 years. Another thing I'm really curious about now is Szeth's relationship with Nalan, will he follow him without question, or will they be in conflict by the end of the third book?

What if shortly after his epilogue in WoK, Hoid got Taln lucid enough to unsummon his Honorblade? And then Hoid or someone else supplied him with a normal Shardblade, possibly one that Hoid himself had secreted away. Any discrepancies between the gate guard's descriptions of the Blade and the one that is eventually delivered could be disregarded simply as eyewitness failure. It might even work with the WoB "Hoid did not switch out the blades, but good question." because no one would have actually taken away Taln's Honorblade in that case, he just has it currently dismissed. It depends how crafty Brandon felt like being with his wording.

I don't know about "murdered" but I do think another Herald was responsible for Taln's death back then, either directly or indirectly. That only one Herald died despite Kalak's comment that "Had the other eight all died? It was possible. The battle had been so furious this time, one of the worst." seems suspicious, and that it was the one with reputation for hopeless stands seems like someone why trying to justify his particular death. I too feel like there was some Sanderson interview or Q&A where he said there was more going on behind the scenes than was obvious from the prelude, but I can't find any trace of such a thing. It could have been my imagination, turned into a false memory at this point. The only other thing I could find was another post of mine from back in October on here saying the same thing.

10 lines radiating out from it, I don't think that's a coincidence. Could represent anything.

I'm still fairly proud of myself that I got the epigraph mostly right on the first page of this thread, back in September 2012. I think I may have said it even earlier as well on a timewastersguide thread, but I'm not entirely sure about that. Also, pretty much all the events of Way of Kings occur after the "1000 days, the Everstorm comes" of the very first epigraph, so I'm curious as to whether that epigraph is even related to a particular event, or if it is just wildly inaccurate.

Cool, 9 is the same day as 12 too. There aren't too many gaps left, and all the major non-flashback, non-interlude chapters seem to be listed now. 29 uses "2 weeks" since the assassination attempt on Elhokar, but that still has the issue of all the "week" statements, it might be rounded.

I'm in the "they all bond to the Stormfather" camp at the moment. The phrasing doesn't make me think that three is the upper limit, just that it was rare for them to exceed that number. I think the Stormfather protects himself partially through not allowing Dalinar (or perhaps any Bondsmiths at all) to use him as a Shardblade. As to why it might be "seditious" to have too many: The Bondsmiths seem to be unique in that they can alter the nature of bonds (namely Nahel bonds) themselves. If you had several Bondsmiths, they could disrupt the current order either by a shared intent, or even by the opposite (multiple Bondsmiths at cross-purposes). After rereading the Nohadon scene in WoK, I don't think Nohadon himself was a Bondsmith, but I do think he put forth the Ideals. And when Ishi returned during the next Desolation, he created the Knights Radiant SystemTM for Surgebinders. The Bondsmiths exist to make edits to the system. Another interesting few quotes: I think the Dawnshards were instrumental to the Bondsmiths. It goes counter to my own opinion, but perhaps the Dawnshards are the super-spren? They might be something else entirely.

"3 races on Yolen. Human Shodel Dragon" In Liar of Partinel sample chapters, Hoid meets a smaller vaguely humanoid being with a tail that is referred to as an "Eddau". I've been wondering if those beings turn into dragons between LoP and Dragonsteel. Or now that we know the name of another race, it could just be a different name for the Shodel. Or he could have written the Eddau out of Yolen entirely at this point. The readers of Dragonsteel probably know more, but they're forbidden to speak of the things that they have seen.

I had a lot of fun with my brother. I ended up asking not very good questions though when I got up to him at the signing. Q:"How do Bondsmiths use the Dawnshards?" really should have just been "Are Bondsmith's abilities related to the Dawnshards?" A:RAFO Q:"Do the Aimians predate humanity like the Parshendi do?" (I'm not sure if I included "on Roshar" or not.) A:"You're assuming that the Parshendi predate humanity." The next guy in line also had a Aimian question, I dragged my feet a little to try and hear Brandon's answer. Basic stuff about the 2 types of Aimians, both of which have extended control of their own biology, both of which more or less refugees. He also said that they have Cosmere significance, which sounded new to me. I'm not sure whether the refugees thing means from Aimia or from elsewhere. Also: It might have been in one of the other signing threads, but Brandon did say he was planning to use Lift as the main character of the one of the back 5 of the Stormlight Archive books.

When was the last time a (major) fictional character died from falling off a cliff?