Mason Wheeler

OK, got the new Stormcast recorded. It'll probably be up tonight or tomorrow morning, once I've had time to edit it. But this was fun! We get to see Dalinar and Navani married, with the Stormfather himself officiating, and two chapters of Kaladin POV, with him returning to an Everstorm-ravaged Hearthstone and being reunited with his parents... and with Brightlord Roshone. Nothing good can possibly come of that last bit.

...and of course, immediately after I post that, the chapters show up!

Anyone know when the next chapters come up? I thought it was this time last Tuesday.

That's essentially the same as what I wrote, just different phonetics.

I haven't heard Brandon say it, but the Graphic Audio narrators pronounce it "you-wreath-EE-roo".

WRT a main character in Warbreaker being named Siri, remember that Warbreaker came out 2 years before the iPhone's voice assistant. There's always another secret. (You were just talking about Mistborn right before discussing this part; how did no one mention this?!?)

Sounds fun! I think I'll give it a listen. See if there are any interesting points to remember for when I'm responding to the new material on Stormcast.

I have a friend (named Brandon, ironically enough) who's a huge fantasy fan but hates Sanderson's work. He's never been able to give a good explanation of why; just "I don't like it" or "he's just not a good writer." Somehow, we are still friends.

(You realize I was being facetious there, not serious... right?)

Glad you enjoyed it!

1 hour of processing is bad enough, but 2 is ridiculous. I re-uploaded it and had it working within 2 minutes this time. Not sure what went wrong, but... it's up now.

So this episode is all about Dalinar. There's a brief interlude with an Adolin POV, but for the most part it's the Dalinar Kholin Show. In today's Stormcast, Dalinar hacks a vision from the Almighty, I get frustrated at him for being an idiot who doesn't understand basic military concepts like "betrayal," and we get a flashback chapter where we see the Blackthorn in his early years. EDIT: Argh, I thought it would be ready by now, but SoundCloud is still processing it. The last one didn't take nearly this long to crunch through. If you can't see it yet, please be patient.

People have tried. Several times. It's just really weird.

Hi Shard Traveler! That's pretty cool, but you should be aware that The Wheel of Time is not a cosmere story. Brandon's involvement in it consisted solely of finishing up the ending after the original author died. It exists in its own world, strongly implied to be a magical alternate version of Earth.

OK, I'm calling it right here. Several people (including myself) have noted that the events taking place on Roshar seem to be a bigger, more epic version of what happened on Scadrial. (Evil god of destruction is trapped by the power of a more benevolent Shard, he has a plan to break free and destroy the world, he's using a race of magical beings that want nothing to do with him, etc...) Well, that all ended with Vin taking ahold of the power of Preservation and, fueled by unbearable wrath over the death of Elend, smashing it into Ruin hard enough to kill him. Therefore... this is how the Stormlight Archive Arc 1 will end: Syl somehow teaches Kaladin to access the left-over power of Honor, and he and Szeth confront Odium together, smacking him around with Nightblood enough to get him off-guard so Kal can finish him off. Then Nightblood absorbs the power, ascends, and becomes the new Odium, driven by "the pure wrath of God" and a still-not-quite-understood directive to Destroy Evil. Kal is able to become the new Honor, watching over the people and keeping Odium in check. (Poor Cultivation won't quite know what to make of all this, of course!) Then it takes some time for the newly-forged gods to truly grow into their powers. About 15 years worth of time...

Tried to edit this during my lunch hour. It took the better part of an hour to edit 10 minutes of audio and cut out about another 10 minutes of silence, so I'm about 1/3 of the way through. This is more work than I thought!

...and I've got a Stormcast episode recorded for this. It'll take time to edit, though, time that I don't have right now because it's almost time to leave for work. It'll probably be up either this evening or tomorrow morning.

All right. Got the next one recorded, but it was nearly an hour of raw audio, because this new update is 3 chapters. A fair amount of that is silence while I'm just reading, but it'll take a while to get it edited and cleaned up, and I'm busy this evening so I may or may not get this posted before tomorrow.

I think that was actually the whole point of it: while the assassination of Gavilar was "the main point," there was also other significant stuff going on at the same time, in the same place.

Sure, I definitely understand all that. I don't think she's evil or anything; I think she's tragic, in the classical Greek sense. She's caught up in things beyond her control, and the Ghostbloods are going to try to use her for evil. I'm just remembering this: With Szeth's recent developments, it seems like Shallan is the best candidate for the role of the destroyer.

Has anyone asked Brandon this yet? Is the Everstorm something that comes up for every new Desolation, or is it something new for this latest one, the Night of Sorrows, the True Desolation?

Try telling that to the people being spied on.

To tell the difference between what very easily? That's kind of crucial to the point here, and it makes this answer from Brandon difficult to understand.

Waitasec. We've got a Radiant who's a thief and a spy, whose power literally runs on lies, who is highly-placed in the royal family of Alethkar and among the organization of the new Knights Radiant, and spent the whole second book learning to use her powers to deceive people and be a more effective spy. This person is being blackmailed by an evil group whose interests are very much not aligned with Dalinar's mission to unite humanity and save them from the desolation to come... ...and you're worried about Lift?!?

Yes, that's exactly what I meant by that: unscrupulous Radiants have been a problem for a very long time.