Mason Wheeler

Yeah, my poster arrived yesterday, and just the poster. I talked with @JoyBluand she said the same thing. A bit more clarity from BackerKit as to what was and was not being shipped would have been nice.

I might be wrong, but I don't think we've seen Wit at any point in the previews yet. I have to wonder two things: Has he been back to Urithiru yet? Does anyone know he's now a bonded Lightweaver?

Ooooooohhhhhhh, now that would be interesting! I find it unlikely, though. The Honor version of honor seems to be an extremely narrow definition. Leshwi fights with "honorableness" in combat, but Honor seems to refer only to keeping your word and especially to keeping promises, rather than what you and I would consider "honorable behavior."

The distinguishing mark of a Worldhopper seems to be that the person looking at them can't quite tell what ethnicity they are. We've seen that many times, so it seems like something Brandon is doing deliberately as a bit of a wink and a nod to the fans. It doesn't look like he's done that with Benneh.

I've been thinking about Yunfah lately, the recalcitrant Honorspren who lost his Radiant. Kaladin's been trying to get him to bond Rlain, but Rlain doesn't want a pity-spren... ...but what if he's not destined for someone in Kaladin's WIndrunner corps at all? In Oathbringer and in the preview chapters for Rhythm of War we've seen, with characters like Szeth, the Skybreakers, Venli, and Malata, that the "Radiants vs Odium" divide isn't quite as clear-cut as one might originally think. And now with Yunfah injured from the loss of his Radiant, perhaps not quite in his right mind, look at who we recently found out is about to return to Urithiru, with past experience among the Windrunners but no spren bond! Horrifying thought, isn't it?

Just got this in my email. So exciting!

Yeah, it would be very nice to see this published somewhere. It feels very relevant lately...

Thing is, the concept of "honor" seems to be extremely narrowly focused here: it appears to cover honoring your word (keeping your promises/oaths) and apparently nothing else. (Just look at the Stormfather saying there's no such thing as a bad oath!) It seems like he would have been forced to become more Lawful, (in the D&D sense,) but not more honorable as most readers would understand the term.

Harmony's kind of a special case. He holds two Shards, and they're of opposing Intents to boot, which leaves him very little room to do stuff. Most Shards only have the one they have to deal with.

If chickens are rare and exotic, what does every kind of meat taste vaguely like on Roshar?

I'm a little bit surprised at how low the main goal and the stretch goal thresholds were set. Initially, the signed and numbered tier alone was (almost) 1000 copies at $500 each. Dragonsteel had to know that would sell out almost immediately, and that's (almost) $500,000, double the main goal on that alone! But now they're like "oh noes! We blew through all the stretch goals on the first few hours of day 1 and need to invent more! Who could have ever imagined it?!?"

So much fun stuff in the Rhythm of War excerpt. One disappointing detail, though: apparently The Lost Metal is not next in line after Rhythm of War is finished anymore; it's been pushed back YET AGAIN to after the 3rd Skyward book!

Wow! The numbered copies sold out within 10 minutes! Glad I got one right away before they vanished!

The Elsecaller lore seems a bit odd to me. This line intrigues me, because the one Elsecaller we've seen so far could be best described as a prosocial psychopath. (ie. the charismatic type who ends up as cult leaders or CEOs in our world. On Roshar... well... yeah. Close enough!) This is someone whose response to learning about a failed genocide was disgust at its failure, who used a vigilante murder spree of a handful of criminals as a philosophical object lesson for her apprentice, whose first reaction to learning about the way the Desolation cycle really worked was "we should find some Heralds and kill them to fix this," and whose first thought on learning something was weird about her own brother's spren was to reach for a Shardblade. Murder appears to be her go-to solution to every problem! Thoughtful, careful, cautious and wise does not fit Jasnah particularly well at all! Is this just another case of "you're so different from what your order is supposed to be as to be a mockery of it" a la Nale's derisive dismissal of Lift? Because not all of the Radiants we've seen so far are bad matches for their orders. Kaladin isn't, and Dalinar definitely isn't! (Malata may or may not be; we'd have to see more of her...) But I fear for the future of Alethkar with Jasnah in charge!

I've heard people talk about general points before, even very publicly such as on Shardcast. I'm deliberately trying to keep to the same level of generality here.

Very interesting story! Brandon's said that the Shattered Plains in The Way of Kings was lifted straight out of Dragonsteel. It was, to a surprising degree -- one of the characters becomes a bridgeman in Bridge Four, just for starters -- but he also made a lot of changes. (There's no The Tower, and the counterpart to that scene was done very differently, for example, as was the aftermath.) Frost was in it. As everyone knows, (around the fandom at least,) Frost is a dragon. At no point in this book does it say he's a dragon, though Hoid Cephandrious has some pretty strong suspicions that he's something more than the ordinary human he appears to be. Oh, and speaking of Stormlight, the Shattered Plains isn't the only thing Brandon lifted out of Dragonsteel. Hoid's "Wit" persona is very recognizable in the character of Cephandrious! Also, and this may be a total coincidence, but there's a local god of death and destruction named Xeth, who's associated with a specific color. (Though it's not white.) And speaking of gods, that was probably the most surprising thing of all to me: at no point in the story does it mention Adonalsium! I liked the magic. There's one "big" magic system going on, with different people having access to different aspects of it. (Again, reminiscent of Stormlight's Surgebinding.) And it plays well into the big reveal at the end, which I probably should have seen coming, but totally didn't! Anyway, it was a fun read. I'd recommend it to any other fans who get the opportunity.

Those are perfectly good words!

Oh wow, that's rough! I hope you're able to pull through! Valuing stuff like this is always tricky. Probably your best bet would be to look on ebay and see if any similar items are selling, and at what price.

So my wife recently decided to take a few classes at BYU. Among other things, this means access to the library, home to one of the rarest of all books. And because she's just that great, she checked it out for me! #MyWifeIsAwesome

It came! And it's beautiful! My collection continues to grow...

I'm so sorry. Every single time I've ever had something shipped by UPS, there's been some sort of screwup. Remember on the first Iron Man movie, the scene with Jim Cramer trashing Stark Industries? "This is a weapons company that doesn't make weapons!" This is basically how I view UPS: a package delivery company that doesn't deliver packages! So... hopefully you'll get your book. Eventually.

Just got my notice. It probably won't be here in time for Christmas, but it'll be here soon!

We know there's some level of dark magic in the Jesker Mysteries, though details are a bit light...

I got some interesting answers to questions. Paraphrasing by memory here, especially the last one. Q: So Vasher moved to Roshar to live off the easy Investiture from Stormlight. A: Yeah... Q: Does he know about larkins? A: He's heard of them. Q: How afraid of them is he? A: He's really glad that they're extinct, or so he's heard at least. Because a larkin would kill him. Q: The Double Eye of the Almighty... is that just religious symbolism, or does Tanavast have weird pupils? A: Just religious symbolism. However, if you were to meet Tanavast after that symbolism had gotten enough traction, you might notice he has weird pupils. Q: Sort of a "the god is shaped by the ideas of his believers" thing? A: Yeah. But he wasn't born that way. Q: When you got picked to finish up The Wheel of Time, I remember thinking two very different things. One was "oh cool, he writes good books," but the other was "he's only published a few books; I wonder why they picked him and not someone more experienced." What was that like, the process of you getting chosen to finish the series? A: Well, the main thing was that Harriet had read Mistborn, and she liked it. The other main contender was George R. R. Martin, but they decided not to go with him because it would cause his fans to riot; even back then he had a reputation for taking a long time to publish new books. But a lot of it was that Harriet liked Mistborn, and she wanted someone with a strong understanding of the world of The Wheel of Time, which I had. But also, I think she kind of wanted a writer without much experience, so she could help guide and teach him on the project, rather than someone who was already really established and set in their ways. That's what she did with Robert Jordan afterall; she was the editor who first discovered him. So that was fun! Anyone else get any good WoBs?