Mason Wheeler

It was more than one line; it was showing in the entirety of their interactions. (Which admittedly wasn't much because it was pretty early on in the book when Adolin and Dalinar parted ways for their own separate plotlines, but what was there was quite noticeable!)

Remember how in WoR, Pattern classified sarcasm, exaggeration, and figures of speech as very fascinating lies. The imaginations of children would almost certainly prove delicious to them!

Just look at how Dalinar (and to a lesser extent Kaladin) has been able to persuade the Stormfather, a literal force of nature, to change for the better at times. If the Stormfather can change, why not any other sapient spren?

What about Cultivationspren? ...huh? Did you read the same Rhythm of War that I did? Their relationship has very noticeably been impacted by the revelations at the end of the last book!

I finally finished this. It was a very interesting look at what might have been. WOW that book was dark! Stormlight gets dark at some points, but... it's there for contrast. All the darkness that characters have to wade through sets it up so that when they overcome their problems and get to shine, they shine all the brighter because of it. Here, it's just bleak. Everyone just ends up losing and falling apart, and I'm very glad Brandon didn't end up going this way for SA. Also, it was far less epic in scope. Everyone mentions there not being any spren, but it was more than that. You just sort of get the sense that everything is... lesser. The entirety of human history on Roshar was only 4000 years here; in SA that's just how long they've had since the Desolations stopped happening. Windrunners being some sort of second-rate Airbender rather than the awesomeness Bridge Four gets to become. Highstorms being something that would make you miserable if you're caught out in one, rather than being considered a certain death sentence, and so on. The things I did like: Jasnah. She was a much more interesting character in this, having to struggle with real dilemmas and deal with real emotions. In SA, Jasnah is a bizarre blend of Mary Sue and homicidal psychopath that's just really offputting and hard to relate to. I wish this Jasnah had made it into Stormlight. Onyxeers. Oathbringer really threw me for a loop when we found out that Renarin's visions were related to his spren being corrupted. It always felt obvious, from the way the history was discussed in the first book and especially by the end of the second when we found out about Renarin being a Truthwatcher, that the whole "there are no prophecies and foretelling the future is evil" thing came about as a result of the Recreance and the Vorin church's subsequent slide into general corruption and apostasy, so having Renarin's powers in that regard suddenly turn out to be of Odium in the third book was really jarring! It's nice to see a Roshar where future sight was part of the plan all along. Taln. Just... everything about Taln. I really hope therapist!Kaladin can help him in book 5 so we can get this guy in Stormlight, because so far Mr. Cata-talnic has been utterly useless to the plot. Shardblades shaping themselves to suit their wielders. And just the way that they were treated as generally rare, but not epically rare. Ever since that one vision Dalinar has, everyone's been asking, "where are all the Shardblades?!?" Now we have our answer: they're on Roshar Prime! A minor detail, but we finally get an in-universe answer to the question of why they use gemstones rather than gold and silver for money on Roshar: because Awakening/soulcasting can create gold and silver, but it can't create polestones. So yeah. This was an interesting book, but overall I'm glad that we got the Roshar we did, rather than this one.

...you completely missed what I said. There doesn't need to be a shorter project in between Stormlight and the next Wax & Wayne book, because the Wax & Wayne books are the shorter projects! They were explicitly created as such.

That's not what I'm referring to. It may not be in that one specific post you linked, but he said several times that the timeline for writing "Stormlight 4" was fixed, and he planned to write The Lost Metal before that, if he could get Starsight finished soon enough, but if not, he wouldn't be able to push back the start time for Stormlight 4 in order to accommodate it. And while this was never explicitly stated as such, it's kind of reasonable to assume that, once that ended up not working out, The Lost Metal would at least be next in line. So it's a bit galling, after his work on that (ultimately rather disappointing) book ended up leaving him unable to bring us a much-anticipated Cosmere work that we've been anxiously waiting for since even before Oathbringer due to the cliffhanger the last one ended on, to hear that it's being displaced yet again, for another year... by a sequel to the book that blocked it the last time, of all things! I'm well aware of this. I've been around the fandom since pretty much the beginning. (My introduction to Brandon was when my brother got me his entire corpus of books -- all two of them, Elantris and Mistborn -- as a birthday present.) The first time I heard about his practice of writing something shorter as a refresher in between longer books was when he was talking about how The Alloy of Law was one such in-between book, and the entire "Mistborn era 1.5" was going to be books like that, which it certainly has been so far. So that argument doesn't really fly.

Doing a bit of Cosmere theory talk with a friend, who suddenly said to me, "I can't help it. I keep picturing some huge room in Brandon Sanderson's house with writing all over every surface. The whole Cosmere plan!" And now I can't get that image out of my head.

True. If you knew they were always wrong, then you could trust them to be consistently wrong. Untrustworthy means you should not put any credence in the idea that they're consistently ether right or wrong.

Is "grunt writing" even a thing when the fans are paying for a premium product from someone with an established style?

I got into Skyward just fine, but the second one was a disappointment. The "big twist" that was obvious from the very beginning of the book even if you hadn't guessed it already from the end of the last one, and the confrontation with the scary aliens at the end was the exact same resolution we already got at the end of Calamity. So I was like, "we put off The Lost Metal for two years for this?!?" And now it's looking like it could well be another two years! And The Lost Metal is the #1 highest-priority book I want to see from him. After the scene at the end of Bands of Mourning left us all in anticipation, I wanted to see that even more than Rhythm of War! And now it seems to be behind everything in terms of priorities. That just... really bugs me.

Argh! Why? We've been waiting way too long for The Lost Metal already (remember, two Stormlight books have come out since we got Bands of Mourning!) because Starsight displaced the time Brandon would have worked on it... and now that RoW is over, next on deck is yet another Skyward book?!?

More support for my theory that the cause of the Deadeye phenomenon was analogous to the fall of Elantris. On the other hand... "the Heralds are insane. Never trust anything any Herald says."

Probably looks just like Returned reproduction.

The "red chicken" was owned by a Feruchemist who was keeping an eye on Dalinar's household. Syl found Kaladin through his Connection to Tien, because Tien attracted a spren first. Renarin has a crush on someone, and the identity of who it is isn't meant to be particularly hidden or tricky. Confirmation that deadeyes were not a thing that happened before the Recreance, and that the way the deadeye phenomenon started is similar to something else we've seen in the Cosmere. (Can't help but wonder if this is referring to the change that precipitated the fall of Elantris?) Different types of investiture are extremely fungible, and basically any type could be used to power any magic system. This is the primary reason why Thaidakar is interested in Stormlight: it's extremely easy to obtain, and if he could successfully export it from Roshar he could use it to run other magics with. Rosharans would use the term "Surgebinding" to refer to any magic system. Allomancy, for example, would be considered binding the Surges (forces) of the world to the allomancer's will. Many others, including Khriss, would disagree and claim that Surgebinding only means the Radiant magics. (This raises an interesting question: when people on Roshar say that Ashyn was destroyed by unmoderated "surgebinding," what exactly does that mean?) Tien's spren did not become a Deadeye when TIen died, because Tien did not break any oaths. (Never clarified: had Tien actually taken any yet, or was the spren just hanging around him much like Syl was with Kaladin for a long time?) Anyone else catch anything interesting?

I seem to recall that we have a WoB that Lift will be one of the back 5 focus characters. I can't really see her ascending to Shardhood at any point before that book, at the very least, and honestly probably not even then. She's a really bad fit for the power of Cultivation.

It's been... One year since you looked at me, figured out that I'm not so trustworthy. Two weeks since I turned on you. I swear that I was just doing what I had to. One day since you think I died. Boy won't you be shocked at what I now hold inside! And now I have so much to do. It's gonna be nine days till the truth is made known to you. Go ahead and train your powers, train for days and hours, you'll never get to five oaths in time. Talk to Ishar but he won't help you, he thinks you're on my side, it will be delicious when you lose and then you will be mine. I have power to save everyone, in the whole Cosmere, because I'm full of plots and schemes. You think honor should bind men, you try to match wits, you try to hold me but I bust through. I see that loophole Rayse overlooked, now I will win by hook or crook, I want to show you my philosophy is stronger! Gotta see the show, 'cause then you'll know the Bondsmith has to let me go, then when you are my Fused, you'll live on so much longer! Can I help it if I think that you are too naive? trying hard not to smile when I see you grieve. I'm the kind of guy who engineers a funeral for a few to save the rest, and now I shall for the greater whole! I have a history of scheming with my Diagram, I have the power now to take it so much further! t's been one week since you looked at me, asked me why I would turn on you so flagrantly. Three days since Szeth came to me. I gave him a message but he never passed it on for me. One day since Hoid talked to me. He never thought that I could mess with his stored memories. Just now it occurred to me, it's gonna be three years till the fans learn what that means!

Do we have enough information in Rhythm of War to establish a chronology of events? Particularly interested in the timeline of Dalinar's subplot. How much time passed from leaving Urithiru to Taravangian's betrayal, the big battle, finding out about what had happened in Urithiru, the visit to Ishar, Taravangian's fateful final meeting with Odium, etc.

I think this is the true answer. Brandon has been known to troll fans before.

Have fun speculating on the other books that come out during that time. It's not like there won't be any!

As biologists put it, "the does makes the poison."

"I control all things that can be grown, nurtured. That includes the thorns." The various Intents appear to be without inherent moral value. The "good god" Preservation expressed his admiration for how well the Lord Ruler had been preserved and lived for so long, caring more for this than for his centuries of atrocities, while the "evil" Ruin was necessary to enable Preservation create life. Likewise, Taravangian managed to pick up the shard of Odium by being strongly in tune with it when he was at his most compassionate, and the power of Honor that remains in the Stormfather blinds him to the possibility of it being wrong to keep bad promises. (No such thing as a bad oath? Yeaaaaahhh, no.) All of the Shards seem to be unbalanced in some way or another. Some of their Intents are more noble than others, but even the best traits, taken to extremes, become harmful.

Oh hey, I know that one!

Brandon proceeds to point him to The Sword of Truth.

No. The Rhythm produced by the combination of their power is War. Would a person who picks up Honor and Cultivation become the god of Towers?