Cheese Ninja

That's certainly the way that it's presented in the book. But I think it might be tricksier than that.

What about Bondsmiths? They seemed to be the most rare Order, and are said to have unique abilities. If anyone might be able to restore life to a mostly dead spren stuck in Blade form, "Bondsmith" certainly fits for the name. Being kinda forcefully bonded to a physical thing and all.

Did any of you notice that Taravangian asked for two different things from Nightwatcher, and was in turn granted two different things? And he received intelligence for the first and compassion for the second, presumably.

Epigraphs to chapters 32 and 33. The first one was already mentioned, but the second one is even more relevant to this discussion. The spren that once bonded with humans could give their Surges to the Listeners.

WoK Ch. 54 Gibletish Mraize was probably talking Tezim. There's nothing else in either book about Tukar or Tezim.

I hadn't even noticed that he was Vasher. I feel a bit foolish. I got the impression that the Nightblood book would take place shortly after Warbreaker, Way of Kings could be pretty much any amount of time after that, from a few months, to hundreds of years.

Since I don't want to get accidentally spoiled on the 17thshard forums, I'll put my reactions here on a text document. I was happy to see that the anticipated Adolin/Shallan/Renarin love triangle never happened, but then there was some Kaladin/Shallan stuff that bothered me. At least the first triangle would harken back to Gavilar and Dalinar's relationship with Navani. Edit: And almost 2 weeks after the initial post, I've decided to spoiler tag, because it really was too long for anyone just trying to quickly browse through the thread. Still, I appreciate any feedback to the comments.

If Kaladin had been on roughly two dozen bridge runs by Chapter 30 of Way of Kings, and we only see 2 or 3 and are told about another 2, then he must have been on almost 20 runs between Chapters 6 and 9. Bridge crews are sent on runs only ever alternate day at the most, so at the bare minimum there should be 8 weeks (40 days) between chapters 6 and 9. That seems way too long, so maybe Kaladin is overestimating the amount of runs he'd gone on, but I think 2-3 weeks is also too short.

Enough time passed and Bridge runs occurred that all of the Bridge 4 members from chapter 6 had died by the end of chapter 9 (except Kaladin, obviously). So 2-3 weeks is far too short. Teft can't have been on Bridge 4 when Kaladin joined either, and since Teft had been with Bridge 4 for a few weeks by chapter 9, you should up your estimate by at least another week or two there. I think chapter 27 of WoK is actually three days after 23, and that the "two days" mentioned were the days between. Somehow I never noticed the "two dozen bridgeruns" that Kaladin had been on when he mentioned it in chapter 30. Chapter 6-9 must have been longer than I thought, since Bridge crews normally alternate active and inactive days, and even on active days, they might not have a run.

I've seen it mentioned on here before. But I don't think it would fix any underlying causes of anemia, so he'd have to endure a fairly painful process on a semi-regular basis. Notably, there are 8 common blood types for humans, and several more rare types. A-, AB-, B-, O-, A+, AB+, B+, O+

I thought it was anemia. Possibly with added conditions, and no idea what the cause would be. Renarin might need his blood Soulcast on occasion to function in a physically strenuous manner.

Oh, when Jasnah puts down the envelope on the table next to Liss in the prologue, she then changes her mind and takes a different one from her safepouch and puts it down instead. It doesn't say what Jasnah did with the first envelope, I assume she picked it back up and put in the safepouch. I thought that was a minor editing miss that would be fixed. I'll probably just start at chapter 7 then.

I'll probably skim the first few chapters just to make sure there hasn't been any changes, and start reading at my normal, slower pace once I get to chapter 7. I also have a strong desire to skip to the epilogue to see if I'm right about Hoid delivering a beatdown to a Shardbearer while Hoid is wielding an Awakened sword, but I figure I can wait the day or two it takes to read the whole book instead of skipping to the very end.

It's one of the minor mysteries of Bridge 4 that we were left with, along with "who does Moash want to kill?", "how did Rock become so proficient with a bow?", and "what's Teft's backstory with the Envisagers and his betrayal of them?" That's the scene where he tells Kaladin about it. We also know that whoever it was he tried to kill, it wasn't a lighteyes, and it wasn't Hoid, and that person was a lot more resistant to dying than Sigzil expected. This quote is more about Sigzil's character. He can't resist the ladies. "rescue him again" - How often did Hoid have to get him out of some prison or other? Despite seeming pretty mild and scholarly, Sigzil seems to get into trouble a lot. Also, how did Hoid ever end up losing track of him?

If you read the exchange between Eshonai and her sister again, they're clearly more worried about the return of Surgebinders than the Alethi having an Honorblade. Eshonai is trying to use an Honorblade as an excuse to avoid stormform being adopted. Basically, the return of Surgebinders has much greater implications for them than the presence of an Honorblade among enemy forces. The fear is that if they start using Stormform, they'll fall back under the domain of their "gods" (the Unmade?), which would rob them of their own freedom.

I'm listening to this Feather reaction thing now. Yeah, it's pretty damnation cute. Oh, she just got to the Amaram bit... She's a lot bigger Adolin fan than most of us here, isn't she? Also, that "squee" she made when Adolin gave Renarin the Shardblade. On the topic of name pronunciation, I have a friend who's starting reading Wheel of Time recently, and just finished The Great Hunt. It's odd to hear him try and pronounce things, especially since I'm not always sure myself, and have forgotten the ones I actually did know. I related him to the story Brandon told about how Maria and Harriet once had an argument about how a name was actually pronounced. Earlier in the thread they were discussing Szeth's martial prowess. I assume that he was proficient in kamar (that Shin aikido thing) before becoming Truthless. It's been stated that he was a prestigious member of Shin society before, and I think that the Shin approach to hand-to-hand combat was more a self-improvement thing and less of a means of violence thing. From the wiki for aikido: "Ueshiba's goal was to create an art that practitioners could use to defend themselves while also protecting their attacker from injury." Obviously he couldn't have become proficient in the Lashings until after he took up the Honorblade, and he does seem to be incredibly proficient with them, even at the time of Gavilar's assassination, when he'd only been Truthless for two years... most of which he had hidden the possession of the Honorblade and its powers from his various masters. Which makes me wonder if he was the caretaker of the Blade even before becoming Truthless? He could have been a Stone Shaman himself, since he states that they'll be the ones to collect the Blade in the event of his death. Well, we won't be getting much backstory from him until the next book, so I'm not going to dwell on that quite yet.

The Dayton stop is a bit over a hour away from me, maybe I should go there. The Kentucky stop is almost two hours from me. I still think I'm pretty fortunate to have two possible options to me.

I am really, really looking forward to the Amaram and Kaladin interaction. They can't ignore each other, and neither of them can reveal the whole truth to the world at large. In Kaladin's case, because he would be considered a liar and thus lose any degree of respectability, and in Amaram's case, because even by Alethi standards, that degree of dastardly behavior would be enough to get him ostracized at the very least. Amaram knows he's done Kaladin a great wrong though, so any private interaction should really involve some degree of diffidence on Amaram's part. On the other hand, if he doesn't give Kaladin any respect, it would be a lot of fun to see Kaladin beating the crap out of him. So much fun. I'm kinda hoping it happens no matter what. Main topic: I'll go with a possible redemption for Amaram. I don't think Kaladin will forgive him, but I think Kaladin will have to let go of his hatred toward him in order to do what needs to be done for the coming battles. I wonder if this will be about Kaladin and Amaram, and if we'll see it in Words of Radiance.

I wouldn't consider Awakened blades to be the same thing as Shardblades, even if does make the "3 types of Shardblade" a lot easier to deal with. I really want to know what Command Yesteel used to Awaken his blades, Hoid's sword in Way of Kings doesn't seem to be anything special, so either that is not the Awakened sword, or Hoid somehow is shielding its effects, or it simply doesn't have the additional abilities that Nightblood has, like its own Biochroma, sentience, or tendency to draw evil people to it. Plus, there's my somewhat crazy theory that Yesteel harvested Divine Breaths to Awaken his swords. Possibly by running a Returned baby mill. I hope Hoid explains at least a bit when he beats up Sadeas(?) in the epilogue in of Words of Radiance. (slight speculation) On the other hand, if he explains too much, it would kind of ruin any big twists we might see in Nightblood.(the novel)

Clay sounds pretty good. What about mostly a slushy water/ice blend, that would would let them stick the gem in the middle, then they could Soulcast the water/ice? That might also account for the air bubbles. The problem with with encasing the gems in molten glass isn't just them shattering or breaking. (Which a brief web search shows to be an overwhelming issue for most people, regardless of the type of gem or glass used.) Heat treatment can change the color of gemstones in the real world, and I'm not sure how that applies to Roshar. I'm also not entirely familiar with how heat treatment works in the real world.

Another somewhat applicable quote to this current discussion. It's not entirely clear, I'm not even entirely sure if he's saying that an ordinary non-Nalthis human that's been given plenty of Breaths can use those Breaths to Awaken or not. I think he's just saying they wouldn't be able to give away their own bit of soul that's a Breath equivalent, so they could never be a drab, but that they could still use Breaths given to them to Awaken. That may require additional Investiture outside of the Breaths. On the topic of Hoid, I wouldn't include his own possible magic abilities, I think he can break most of the rules that exist for normal humans.

When I first read WoK, I thought that the Dawnshards might be another name for the Honorblades, but the impressions I got from subsequent Q&As and interviews was that they weren't weapons at all. Now that we can be pretty sure Szeth's Blade is Jezrien's Honorblade, what differentiates the two other types of Shardblade we saw in WoK that BS mentioned? I wasn't a fan of it before, but this gives some credence to the idea that modern day Shardblades are somehow different than the Shardblades in Dalinar's highstorm vision.

The Drunk Guy as Ishar is just my slightly crackpot theory, along with him also being Thaidakar, leader of the Ghostbloods. Partially because it would be funny. I know the beard fits, but let's not place too much value on the length and style of an immortal character's beard. On the main topic, I'm tending towards Nalan's friend being another Herald, for the reasons already mentioned in this thread. He seems a bit too familiar with Nalan, and makes references to "Ash" and "We".

Ah, let's see, Kaladin was made a slave 8 months before he arrived on the Shattered Plains (Chapter 6 and others). In Chapter 9 he makes a reference to the "past nine months". In Chapter 47 (Stormblessings, 1 year ago) Kaladin says that his enlistment will be up in a few weeks, that it's been nearly 4 years since he joined Amaram's army. That's the same day he becomes a slave. Kaladin and Tien joined the army during a Weeping, prior to Lightday (Chapter 44, 5 years ago). I assume Lightday is another term for Jeseses. Putting those together would mean that Kaladin arrived on the Plains in month 7 or 8, depending on how stuff was rounded... But the Weeping hasn't started yet by the end of Way of Kings, and no one has even mentioned it. Hmmm. Enough time passed and Bridge runs occurred that all of the Bridge 4 members from chapter 6 had died by the end of chapter 9 (except Kaladin, obviously). If new Bridgemen are only added on Chachel, that means there were either 15 or 20 days between chapters 9 (Kid that reminds him of Tien joins and immediately dies) and 32 (Lopen joins, Side Carry), and another 15 days between 32 and 46 (Shen joins). Then maybe another few weeks between 46 and 55, then maybe another week or two before 61, and then 10 days between 62 and 63 (Everything from 63 to the end of the book is the same day for Kaladin). (Period of time during which all the other Bridge 4 members die, arbitrary minimum of 3 weeks, max of 5 weeks)+(15 to 20)+15+(10 to 20)+(5 to 10)+10 = 70 to 100 days. That puts us almost to the end of 1173, into month 9 at the least. Am I missing something or are we really that close to the end of the year?

On one hand, I'm a bit let down with how far away my guesses were about judging the dates from the epigraphs were from being correct, on the other hand, I really didn't have much to work with in the first place. Also, I mentioned every time that they were guesses, so I don't know how anyone could have accepted that as fact. (The thing I mentioned Peter confirming in the TWG thread was the length of the year: 500 days, with 20 hour days, with hours being a minute or two shorter than ours.) And we've finally got confirmation that certain things do not match up now from Peter, which is something. But we're back to the beginning as far as trying to figure out the timeline of the events in Way of Kings. So when would Kaladin have arrived on the Shattered Plains? It really didn't seem like he was there for more than 2 or 3 Roshar months, if you try and add up all the time that elapses. I have no good guesses for when Way of Kings ended anymore, without making more huge assumptions and counting backwards from the one given date in the Words of Radiances spoiler excerpt epigraphs. Also, what are our current guesses for the start of the modern-day Alethi calender?