Mason Wheeler

Yeah, that one writing provoked a ton of speculation on Shardcast, including the wild, crazy crackpot theory that what the Sleepless were guarding on Akinah was the mysterious Dawnshards, hidden in an undersea cavern. This is why I'm looking forward so much to hearing the Shardcast episode on this book, because the wild theory they clearly came up just to be silly turned out to actually be true!

So basically it's a Cosmere version of this?

The one thing that really threw me out of the story was the fight with the giant hordeling. There are two Windrunners there, and neither one thought to Lash the thing into the sky? We know that Kaladin is familiar with the concept of offensive Lashing because he's seen Szeth do it. I can't recall ever seeing him or another Windrunner do it themselves, though. Can anyone think of an example of when the Windrunners have done this, or a WOB explaining why they haven't? Because it kind of feels like it ought to be a major trump card for them, especially the ones who don't have Shardblades yet!

@Halyo_Alex All right, do you have a citation for that?

We aren't told, but Brandon has said that most of them are going to be generally the same and he's not going to waste our time showing oaths that we've already seen, so when we do see a repeat, it will be a notable variation of some kind. Therefore, we can safely conclude that Huio's 3rd ideal was most likely basically the same as Kaladin's.

Also: the Dawnshards, which have been called "weapons" in the text previously and were generally assumed by the fandom to be some sort of heavily Invested objects, are not physical objects at all, but are some sort of incorporeal something that people bond to similar to a spren bond, but unlike spren, Dawnshards are not sapient.

I noticed something interesting in this book. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Chiri-Chiri has ever been given any form of physical food as sustenance. But Rysn "fed" him a sphere's worth of Stormlight in here. And this reminds me of Lift. Lift eats food and converts it into Stormlight, while Chiri apparently eats Stormlight and converts it into food. Did the Nightwatcher's gift to her turn out to be the same thing that larkins do, only reversed?

Having it be on Scadrial fits well with the ending of BoM, where the "evil Kandra" said that Scadrial had become a liability and was about to be purged of all life. Well... what do we now know of that's capable of doing such a thing?

The thing that really interested me was just how utterly different Huio is from Lopen. Very down-to-earth and even scholarly, a huge contrast from his jovial, goofy cousin. I liked that a lot. But I also really liked seeing Lopen in action. His dive into the sea to save the sailor who went overboard, and then his use of his Surgebinding to help the captain keep a firm footing, it shows that even though he may come across as "the class clown" of Bridge Four, when the pressure's on he's still got the heart and soul of a true Windrunner.

For a while, the Windrunner Honorblade was in possession of Kaladin and the WIndrunners, and the Skybreaker Honorblade is in Nale's hands, who we know is a Radiant in his own right and doesn't need the Honorblade to wield Skybreaker powers. Do we have any WOBs on the subject of whether getting the same Radiant power from two different sources "stacks" or not? Does Nale having the blade and also being a Skybreaker make him more powerful than a Herald or Skybreaker individually?

Let he who hunts monsters beware, lest he become one himself! "The most powerful forms of Surgebinding transcend traditional mortal understanding," Nikli said, referring to the power of the Dawnshards. But he called it "Surgebinding." We've seen various hints elsewhere that mortals with access to the highest levels of Surgebinding have the power to destroy the world. That's what happened in Ashyn, and Nale told Szeth that that's why he's hunting down proto-Radiants: because if one of them were to reach the Fifth Oath, they would command the dangerous power of high-level Surgebinding. But who do we know who actually is a bonded Radiant of the fifth oath? "I'm not just the President of the Bond Club for Spren... I'm also a member!" Oh, and BTW he's also insane. And fighting for the enemy, on the side of the evil god whose followers used high-level Surgebinding to destroy their last world. Which he may remember from personal experience, and possibly even participated in. And he also has his Honorblade, which may or may not further increase his power. (Do we have any WOBs on this subject?) We need to keep a very close eye on Nale. The Sleepless have it wrong; right now the best candidate for world-destroyer that we have is the fallen Herald of Justice!

The word "bind" is strange on Roshar, as exemplified by the term "surgebinding". When Kaladin "binds" the Surge (force) of Gravitation, he causes gravity to change. When Shallan or Jasnah binds the soulcasting Surge, they are definitely changing things. All of the Surges are forces of change in one way or another. It doesn't seem that "binding" means "tie up" or "restrict" or "join together," but rather "direct:" to bind it to their will and cause it to make the specific change that they want to have happen.

Well, maybe not the next one -- I bet that's already recorded -- but... you know what I mean.

Wow. Just... wow. Reading through this, I saw a bunch of little things that have been thrown around on Shardcast through the years, generally by the hosts being silly and tossing around crackpot theories just to be ridiculous... and then they turned out to be right! Ooooh, I can't wait to listen to the episode where they discuss this!

Awesome! Yeah, I just got the campaign update email about that. Excited to see it on the way!

Just got another email. Again, no details whatsoever as to what it is that's shipping this time...

I don't remember who said this, but "just because you're not alone doesn't mean you're not wrong."

Besides the in-world purpose, I think that was there specifically to establish the concept of parallel realities. Brandon already has a shared universe for stories that don't involve Earth: the Cosmere. With this, he can set up a shared multiverse for stories that do involve Earth, with each one having its own Earth to be set in. We've already got Snapshot taking place in a world with the snapshot device said to be powered by something that sounds a lot like a dead Epic. Apocalypse Guard is part of the same overall system, and I think he's said Skyward and Rithmatist are in their own parallel realities (but don't quote me on that one.)

IMO "stretch forth thy hand" worked perfectly, precisely because that's not how people normally talk. It really helped to drive home the point that something really significant was happening.

Really? I was under the impression that Elantris and The Well of Ascension are generally considered his weakest books, from the Cosmere at least. (Outside the Cosmere, Starsight and the third Legion book are both significantly worse than anything he's done in the Cosmere.) I've always rated Warbreaker pretty highly, and since it's available as a free download I've used it to get a lot of people into Brandon's work because it's such a good story.

Not to mention the way she reaches for violence and murder as her go-to solution to every problem. Canonically, every Radiant has some sort of mental issue; it's required as part of making the Nahel bond work. Jasnah's appears to be what's known as pro-social psychopathy, (ie. the type of charismatic psychopath who ends up leading cults or Fortune 500 companies in our world, as opposed to anti-social psychopathy in the model of The Joker,) and having a psychopath at the reins in Alethkar is a very scary prospect!

The ending of Starsight was boring: the "twist" that had been blatantly obvious since the beginning of the book even if you didn't figure it out in the last one, and the confrontation with the hyperspace monsters was the exact same thing we already got at the end of Calamity.

Different take on the same song: (Spoilers for Warbreaker and Oathbringer.)

Nicholas Cage would disagree...

Maybe it's just because I was specifically looking for this, but it sure seems like he's told Jasnah that he's a lightweaver and they're counseling together, but no one else is in on the secret so they are all leaping to a very wrong conclusion...