Green Hoodie Mistborn

I don't see the issue you're point towards? 

I think you're saying that Windrunner - Truthwatcher appear to have nature spren as their Plate spren vs Lightweaver - Bondsmith should have emotion spren? 

But to me that feels like a false dichotomy of the spren themselves

Well we know that she helped Szeth bury Kaladin the "day after Stormfall", so literally one day after the end of the book and her family lived near the Bondsmith monastery

I'm sure we'll see them in the second half of the archive

We also don't know that she's an Elsecaller, just that she is part of an order headed by Jasnah, which I think is honestly more likely personally. 

On 3/6/2025 at 9:37 AM, sifth said:

Not sure if that sits well with me. I guess the heroes had a lot of wins at the end of the other 4 books, so they needed to be taken down a peg, but dam, I didn't think Sanderon would take them down this much.

Welcome to the Shard!

I'm actually fascinated by this and would love if we could get a good survey of WaT readers, their enjoyment level of WaT, and "how long ago they started reading Sanderson", because I've started to notice (which could 100% just be my observational bias of comments on different platforms) that it seems those who came to Sanderson more recently and have binged SA in the last couple of years are enjoying WaT less than those who have been reading Sanderson longer. I wish I could get good data on that because I'd love to see if my observations are real or not

As to WaT itself and how it ends... WaT is the Empire Strikes Back of the SA, the heroes are supposed to be at their low point right now in the 10 book narrative arc

But it's not all gloom, there are many bright spots and there were wins had in almost every arena, even if they were relatively minor or unexpected ones. 

I don't think he did shortchange the man ultimately, he got 50 from the man and ended up giving 50 back. 

What he really did with all the confusing sleight of hand was get the man to give him the wallet for a flower, thinking he was selling it for 10. 

Similar to how he got the boat ride for free just by changing his accent to imply there was something fishy going on. That was much more of a shortchange than the scene with the actual exchange of different denomination of coins/notes. 

5 hours ago, Gidrons said:

I can't see Brandon writing a god to be so stupid.  Her attempts to keep Todium on the right path were laughable.  I can only assume this is all part of Cultivation's genius master plan, to be revealed 20 years from now and after I've died of old age.

I'm 99% sure that Cultivation has multi-leveled plans in place here

And I don't think that her FIRST plan was to keep TOdium on the right path. I think she told him and did things that were specifically designed to get the Contest to fail, because I think she wanted off of Roshar as her #1 priority, just like Odium did. 

1 hour ago, Roscoe said:

I've been conditioned into thinking RoW was negatively received... seems I was wrong, my mistake

I mean, it's the bottom of my SA tier list personally, but I don't think it's a bad book by any stretch, it and WaT are just very different books from the first three SA books IMO. 

I'm honestly getting tired of "attacking Sanderson because he dominates the market" to be a popular position out there in the booktube/tok & r/fantasy land. 

On 2/15/2025 at 12:18 PM, brycebooks said:

Hello! I’m currently 767 pages into Oathbringer and this has been my least favorite of the Stormlight books. I decided I just want to skip the rest of the book and go onto ROW. Can anyone give me the most important chapters I NEED to read before continuing on in the series? I’m on chapter 75. Thanks in Advance! 

Don't give up now!

On 2/4/2025 at 10:01 AM, DrPhysics said:

If you can think of other scenes where a shard bearer shows their strength, we might be able to come up with some more limits.

In the race with Elohkar up the rock formation, Dalinar starts with a standing vertical leap of 8 feet. Based on what we're discussing here, I have to assume that it's describing 8 ft from the bottom of his feet back down to the ground, which is about just over 2x more than NBA Max vert referenced in the 2024 Draft Combine (Top was 42", Avg was 35.3", Median was 35.5", and Mode was 32"; 77 people were tested). Their standing verticals were lower ranging between 24"-35". So depending on if you consider Dalinar was running when he leapt or it was a standing leap... regardless, it was >2x Max vert and closer to 3x a standing leap

Quote

He ran to the bottom of the rock formation as Elhokar galloped up behind. Dalinar leaped—Plate-assisted legs propelling him up some eight feet—and grabbed a handhold in the stone.

Sanderson, Brandon. The Way of Kings: Book One of the Stormlight Archive (The Stormlight Archive, 1) (p. 198). Tor Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

On 12/25/2024 at 10:07 PM, Leuthie said:

I have to disagree here. Cultivation fled because Retribution would have destroyed everything related to her if she stayed. She was responsible for him having to destroy Kharbranth, after all.

She rolled the dice on Taravangian and it came up craps. His viewpoints were meant to show him vacillating between becoming what Cultivation wanted and becoming worse than Rayse. 

I think she had multiple plans and plays happening at the same time

If she was able to tame Odium through T, then great

I think her ultimate goal was to leave Roshar though and she pushed Dalinar to Honor's power knowing/hoping through her better than average Fortune/Future reading that he'd do what he did and free her. 

I'm on my 1st re-read, but I remember a flashback scene where she says she wants to leave, but Honor says they can't. I think she's been as deparate to leave Roshar as Odium for a long time. 

Are we talking vs normal troops or against Singers/Fused? 

Ultimately I think the smart move is to keep them together because a full bearer is a small army unto themselves and split up there is (to me) too much chance to lose the blade to overwhelming force. 

If against Singers/fused, definitely keep them together. If against another human army I'd be more inclined to split them up. 

Even if I do split them up though, the person wearing the plate is the one I'd have bonded to the blade, so that IF the blade's bearer goes down, the plate wearer can summon it back at any moment

On 1/25/2025 at 2:27 PM, TwinStorm said:

wat spoilers:

  Hide contents

One male, one female, with pale skin that looked like it had never seen the sun. Perhaps it hadn’t, considering they lived in the emptiness between planets. From the look of the delicate metal—ribbed, like rippling waves—the remaining portions of the helmets were less like armor, and more like ornament. (emphasis mine)

this is from the reading. now, we know these people are in shard plate, but they are very pale, but from Roshar, which is historically darker skinned. perhaps these people were born during the Night of Sorrows. just a little tidbit

 

the Ones Above in the readings are almost surely Scadrians or of the Scadrian side of the galactic conflict, so I don't think this interpretation of the description is correct. 

I feel like whatever the related Retirement age might be for Nalthis (roughly)

If many Nalthians retire in their 50s, then 50's. If it's later, then later. I think the breaths would be still strong enough at that point and the person going into retirement would be able to live a more subdued life in retirement anyway

4 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

I won't completely wave away such a possibility, I just don't imagine it being something he'd want to do. He seems far more focused on making the stories themselves to work on canonizing all Resonances. 

He might just be too busy with his 7th secret novel, subconsciously writing it up in his brain where even he isn't aware of its existence yet.

It does seem like a task that he'd give to a team member to work on at some point though. Give them a pile of thoughts/notes or point them to an internal wiki link to start from, even if it's related to the RPG or something and then he'd review it to make sure it jives with his own thoughts. 

I can see it happening eventually, especially for something like Twinborns and maybe the Surges since they are both "somewhat" limited

What probably won't happen is "what is the Resonance between 1000 Breaths and Division" or "Rosharan Lightweaving and Sandmastery"

Like... those are the ones we'll probably never ever get because the # of combinations and permutations are just TOO vast. 

....unless they built an internal Dragonsteel LLM and fed it some parameters and then just vetted the output. Then... maybe, but I'm not going to hold my breath for that. 

I don't see them as "soft magic" so much as each combination of different powers yield different resonances. And there are so many different ones that he just hasn't gotten around to defining each and every one yet. And when he says they're areas of "fun" for him, that he likes coming up with the resonance when those power combinations come up.

I don't think there is a hard and fast rule he could ever define for how the powers interact really. I don't know if that by definition makes it soft or not. I guess that depends on perspective. 

It would be neat to be able to guess or figure out how the twinborn resonances work for all the combos but I just don't see how he could ever define it in a meaningful way

Maybe there will be something in the coming RPG related to it though? 

42 minutes ago, Treamayne said:

I always thought it was implied (but not stated) that some/most of these brightladies were looking for an excuse to "reject" the Kholin name that was rapidly becoming anathema to the Poltical scene of the Shattered Plains (ref: Danlan/Inkima conversation at the winehouse in WoK). At least, the was the only thing that made sense to me as to why so many of them had such extreme reactions to minor grievances (though the sisters' problem might not have been quite as minor). 

 

That's an interesting take on it that I hadn't considered before!

There is maybe a bit more textual support for the state of the Kholin house politically at the start of WoK that might support this idea generally. I'd never considered this side of it before, but it's certainly as plausible but still headcannon as anything else!

2 hours ago, MagicMaggot said:

I don't disagree, but I'd say that takes about as much headcanon as claiming misdeeds by Adolin. It's a way of explaining the situation that requires going beyond the text, and making assumptions about Alethi women and dating practices that aren't really spelled out. Could the women  have been all ego? Sure, but wouldn't they have mothers and fathers that would pressure them to try again for those highprince grandkids and those royal connections? Could the women still have been after Adolin, even when Shallan got her foot in? Sure, but if it is relevant to the characters, one would expect it to be something you would notice while reading, isn't it? 

I personally would assume that Sanderson really, really didn't want to write about all the background girls of the camps having catfights to get some oh-so-desirable man, since that could easily go into very cringey cliches. But I don't think he very convincingly avoided it.  

Don't get me wrong, I am fine with the result. But if one is looking for flaws in the writing of Adolin and his relationship I do think this one is a fair place to look. 

Fair points and I agree about the second note about Sanderson trying to avoid those cliches and maybe failing. At the same time, I think some of this can be attributed to the fact that at the start of writing the series, Adolin was not planned to be a primary character like he became through the course of the first 5 books. 

It could well be that the failings in characterization of Adolin in WoK and how well his relationships of his are/not fleshed out has more to do with a lack of original plan than a failure to execute on Sanderson's behalf. Maybe a good question for Brandon if someone wants to ask that rather than a magic system interaction question some time!

6 hours ago, MagicMaggot said:

I agree that that is most likely the author's intention here. But I also think there is a glaring plausibility issue with so many of the ambitious ladies of a feudal court caring too much that the good-looking, fashionable, sports-champion, Shardbearer, heir to a Highprincedom, and cousin to the King, gave them some minor slights and awkward moments during courtship. And when there is such an implausibility in the world-building, people tend to fill in the blanks themselves, which in this case would likely include some more serious kinds of misbehaviour in Adolin than mere inattentiveness. Since it's not on the page it goes nowhere, but I would put some of that on Sanderson. 

This is a great point in that the ladies of the Court shouldn't have been put off by his inattentiveness/faux pas. 

That said, I can also see it more as a commentary about the women own levels of self-centeredness that they allowed those to put them off of such an eligible bachelor given a couple of facts. First being that he was only "courting" women of eligible rank within the Dahn system for the heir to a Princedom who are therefore highly ranked women in their own rights. Second being that despite all his failures, Shallan was immediately ostracized by the women of the Shattered Plains of Rank because she was in a Causal with Adolin/competition, so they must have still felt him "landable" by one of them even if it was on a round 2 or something. If they were really "done with him" they wouldn't have cared about Shallan's arrival nearly as much. 

Except Danlan, she was a Diagram plant the whole time. 

2 hours ago, RedBlue said:

This is pretty shoddy behaviour by anyone’s standards, not just the Alethi Court. If he’s not serious about dating, he could just not do it. He doesn’t have to waste these women’s time.

I agree with you on what you're saying, though I think here he's doing what is expected of him. He's the young bachelor heir to a Princedom, he's expected to Court women, so he does. He just isn't very good at it because he doesn't care that much about it like he does other things in his life. 

2 hours ago, RedBlue said:

Overall, I think Adolin in WoK was a young man who needed to learn some social graces. Which he proceeded to do. It’s hard to see that as a precursor to cheating.

Much more succinctly put than I managed  

I think my biggest issue is people now assuming Adolin will cheat because he and Shallan are separated because of what I consider to be a complete misreading of his WoK/early WoR interactions with women other than Shallan. 

He MIGHT do something he'll regret in the months/years he and Shallan are apart, we'll have to see where the narrative takes us in the back half. But I don't think it will be because he's been secretly jonesing to do that in his soul because of a monologue about Ideals/Oaths vs promises in WaT and his earlier womanizing. 

I've thought about similar ideas in the past, though with less altruistic concepts. 

I think this would be a natural outflow of the lower economic classes honestly, though perhaps more in the rural areas. You'd have the elders passing their breaths on as they reached certain ages or neared their deaths, which would/could eventually yield a trove of breaths that someone would have access to. The issue is they become an all or nothing proposition unless you're willing to learn Awakening. 

2 hours ago, boonboon said:

I agree that he wasn't a womanizer by definiton, I just didn't like the reasoning. I think it's dishonest to say "he couldn't relate to the Alethi women and their Alethi ways", because he's definitely treated them poorly. 

I'm not sure I see the issue here and I don't see any dishonesty in my statement.

The passage you quote is him admiring a random woman who he had no real interactions with, while I was talking about the many women he courted in the Court. Regardless, neither of them rise to the concept of womanizing. 

He treated the women of the Court poorly not intentionally, based on all the instances we see, but because he does not relate to or seemingly have anything in common with them or the way they acted/related to him. That seemed to have lead him to inaction or forgetfulness or a lack of importance to the relationships on his part, more than malice in his interactions.

We the readers, never get the sense that he ever did anything morally wrong or scandalous, but that the women felt slighted because he didn't engage or follow through enough with them.

Did he treat them "poorly"? I guess according to the social expectations of the Alethi Court and how the women expected him to court them. But to me it wasn't a moral failing on his part and doesn't define how he is going to interact with women in the future or have any meaning for how he might act with women while he and Shallan are in different realms, which is how people seem to be arguing it. 

On 1/11/2025 at 11:47 AM, cvamoca said:

Adolin became one of my favourite characters- because, he is kind. I think about how he became Kaladin's friend, by being kind and treating him honourably.  He loved his Ryshadium Sureblood, he talked to his blade, outside of being a womanizer and justifyingly slaying Sadeas, he has always had a good moral compass. Better than his father's. When he did wrong he admitted to himself at least that he'd done wrong. (I think Sadeas killing, while brutal was absolutely justified given how many times he tried to kill a Kholin family member)

One of my favourite things about him was his fashion sense. It tickled me constantly. I think why he became a favourite is Brandon gave him WAY more personality than say Jasnah or Renarin.  I didn't know anything about Jasnah's personal life until she had a relationship with Hoid. I knew much more about Adolin...I'm glad he survived this first 5 novels.

Agree with all of that except calling him a womanizer he had many women who he courted, but none he's never been depicted as someone who was using women for sex or taking advantage of women for sex and then dropping them... he just couldn't relate to any of the women in the Alethi court and their Alethi ways

15 hours ago, boonboon said:

And I, personally, wouldn't trust Unoathed Adolin with anything.

There's one particular character though..

  Reveal hidden contents

Shallan lingered a moment, then poked Kaladin in the side. “I refuse,” she told him, “to say goodbye.”

“I’m … um, leaving anyway, Shallan.”

“Leave, then,” she said. “But we started this. You and I. Radiants before anyone else.”

“Except Jasnah. And maybe Lift. And perhaps—”

“You and I,” she said, “were there at the start. We meet at the end, like Adolin said. When the world is safe, and Dalinar’s done what he needs to do, we can all laugh and joke again.”

“Shallan, you have to—”

“Promise.”

He sighed. “I can’t promise what the future will be.”

“Reality warps around you, Kaladin. It always has. Promise me. If there’s a promise, then we can make it happen.”

He met her eyes, then nodded. “Drinks. Jokes. Laughter. At the end. I promise.”

Frustrating that it's hard to properly analyze anything, because BS has proven in RoW/WaT that he's willing to butcher his books/ideas/characters sacrificing all the consistency

I'm not sure how we're all reading the same book. Adolin has proven himself THE most trustworthy and loyal character in the entire series thus far

And this book is NOT the end, so no one has even begun to break that promise yet. Why are people treating things that happen in WaT as if there aren't 5 more books with almost all the same characters present still to come? 

On 1/7/2025 at 10:12 AM, Leuthie said:

He'll still make anti-light to provide weapons against spren.

I wonder still if he'll be able to do that or not. Maybe, or maybe Warlight will become more "fused" because the Shards are not in opposition, and thus impossible to split apart. I doubt you can make a pure anti-light of Stormlight w/o the base Stormlight. 

If this was Cosmere boards I'd say more about other series/readings but SA only this is all I've got here

15 hours ago, Raven Wilder said:

And with Taravangian often focusing on cosmic matters (or on chilling in Spiritual Kharbranth), they can't afford to have their people run out of Warlight because their god's attention was elsewhere, so the distribution of Warlight will probably need to be a mostly autopilot process. 

I tend to agree with this, though that isn't the picture he paints toward the end of WaT with the Listeners having to Sing/Pray for it at night. That will be hard for human kingdoms to do and keep track of without Listener/Singer help

7 hours ago, Sedside said:

Anyways, I'm tired of Adolin discussion, I'm totally aware now that Brandon prefers vanilla mary sue story in regards of him to a good tension, conflict, drama etc, so nothing will happen, Adolin will keep crushing enemies with one little finger of his safeleft hand and everyone will keep praising him for that, it's ok. I'll just be skipping his chapters, if I ever read SA6 

You didn't actually answer Treamayne's question about what you mean when you use that term.

Regardless of the gender of the term... are you serious with this statement or just trolling at this point? Adolin is the least Mary/Gary character that ever Stu'd. 

He never crushes anyone with ease...anywhere. He constantly loses or barely wins most of the things he tries to do

Does he survive them? Yes. As do most of the main characters in Sanderson books. That doesn't leave his chapters devoid of tension/conflict/drama. 

He's good at two things, fighting/combat and fashion. The first, he has spent literally his entire life training to do with the best teachers money could buy and natural talent as well. The second is what he's most passionate about and spends much of his free time thinking about and doing whenever we see him. 

Outside of that, he is essentially useless... which is the opposite of what a Mary/Gary Stu are supposed to be in literature. 

Hi there!

I don't think the connection of Radiants and the Spren will be effected in the slightest. I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that the bond is sustained through Stormlight? I don't think that is the case. 

Stormlight powers surgebinding, but the bond itself shouldn't be effected. Those Radiants who had advanced to the 3rd and 4th Ideals can also still summon their Blades and/or Plate without any use of Stormlight as well: 

Quote

Somehow, their armor and swords worked without Stormlight. In contrast to those of ordinary Shardbearers—whose Blades could not be bonded and Plate could not be repaired—the armaments of the Unoathed still functioned. Maya said something had been done at the end by the Heralds to shield and protect the spren—and this was a side effect. Radiants could still summon Blades and Plate too,

Sanderson, Brandon. Wind and Truth: Book Five of the Stormlight Archive (The Stormlight Archive, 5) (p. 1314). Tor Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Emphasis mine

I'll be interested to see if Radiants can still advance in their oaths or not in this interregnum period while Retribution exists. If that is what you mean by the bond is powered by this energy... that might be where I could see it. I could also see that the new oath pact still grants access to Radiants advancing in their oaths and gaining a power dump of Spiritual Realm energy for a short time as well. 

On 12/30/2024 at 7:56 AM, Soccorro said:

It was also stated that by Alethi’s law killing a high prince = killing a king and punishment is either execution or exile. It was such a huge problem in book 2 but it disappeared in book 3 completely.

Sorry for the late reply on this one, but Adolin is very much in a state of exile from his family and kingdom at the end of WaT with no real idea on when or how he'll ever be able to get back to anyone. For all intents and purposes he's stuck in Azir. 

17 hours ago, Isilel said:

Aren't you forgetting that while Adolin was a flirt, he didn't have sex with these women back in WoK? And the idea that only reverence towards oaths could prevent an otherwise loving spouse from cheating during a lengthy separation is quite a take

Exactly, Adolin was never a "womanizer" in the common usage of that word. He dated many women casually, but there is never any indication that he took advantage of any of them sexually.

Also true about the take being quite one.

There might be a misunderstanding with some woman in Azir who adores Adolin in the back half of SA that might lead to some IC drama or something, but I don't think for a second just because Adolin was bad at relationships before it's indicative of his willingness to cheat on Shallan. 

31 minutes ago, Mason Wheeler said:

Here's a point I don't think I've seen anyone mention so far: just because it was wrong to imprison BAM back in the day, does not mean it was right to release her now.

We've clearly seen that the millennia of isolation have driven her homicidally insane.  Renarin and Rlain and Shallan clearly saw this as well, and understood it.  So why in the world would they free her, knowing that?  Unjustly imprisoned or not, they just loosed a monster on the world, one who's always had the capacity to commit atrocities and now has the inclination and desire to do so without reservation.

That was one of the biggest "facepalm" moments of the book.  The atrocities that she goes on to commit now are at least partially on their heads.

It feels like to me is a lot of projection about what BAM might do wrapped up in this response

Prior to her imprisonment, BAM was trying to save the small portion that was left of the Singers. Humans were on the verge of actual genocide and taking the world of Roshar entirely for themselves before she Connected with the Singers to provide them forms of Power. She was trying to save her people from Extinction, she wasn't "committing atrocities". 

Even within that concept/war, BAM was willing to and in favor of brokering peace between the Singers and the Humans, it was only Honor's interference that ruined the peace between Humans and Singers. Not Odiums, Honor's.

Moving forward, she has to hide in the CR from Retribution for the foreseeable future and won't be able to do much without drawing his attention. Also, her rage was to a large degree abated on screen as she saw Rlain/Renarin's relationship, by Rlain standing in front of Renarin to protect him and argue for him and attune Love. To the point that she delivered them all from the Spiritual Realm into the Cognitive with her as she fled to hide from Odium/Retribution. 

The book itself tells us that it was right for her to be released: 

Quote

"A long-lasting discordant note, vibrating the soul of Roshar in the most terrible of ways, was finally extinguished. 

Something that had been broken - for so very long - righted." - Wind and Truth, Page 1264

To have kept BAM trapped because of fear of what she might do is just that, living in fear. Freeing her was a virtuous act, and it inspired Dalinar in the moment, showing him "true honor". Taking the right action, even though it might be detrimental to you is what we talked about with Wit earlier in the book, it is still right to do so. 

Personally, I can't wait for Retribution to split, BAM to take up Odium and Adolin to take up Honor after Honor has learned the lessons Dalinar set for it and it meshes much better with Adolin's character than Dalinar's anyway. 

I feel like people's biggest issues so far that I've seen with WaT boil down to two things: 

• It didn't meet their expectations of how the story would go, which is bad somehow
• Even though it is an ending, it is not THE ending, but people seem to be treating it as such. Their interpretation of moments in WaT are as if those moments are in any way final for those characters. 

We don't know where Jasnah's story is going to go from here. We don't know where BAM's story is going to go from here. 

There were pieces (Szeth's own oath breaking especially) that didn't jive with me, but I'm going to reserve judgement until we see the rest of the story. 

There were theories out there that actually came true (child champion, mostly) that I thought would be the worst possible way to take the story, but Brandon did it in a way that I liked and accept.