Aldric

3 minutes ago, CognitiveShadow said:

Yeah I think you make some great points. I guess for me at this point I highly doubt there will be any books coming out in the future that are truly good standalone / entry into the cosmere books. Best entry points have already been written I think. From here on out Brandon is racing to get to the end of the cosmere story before the sun dies

Oh I agree with you in general. I mean he's specifically said the comment about the gloves being off from now on with Cosmere tie-ins.

I just personally felt that this story is a reasonable starting point because of it's relative brevity, fairytale feel, and while there are plenty of Easter-eggs, I didn't feel the reader noticing them was very necessary for the story. The fact that the "Evil Sorceress" was an ancient Ire Elantrian wasn't that necessary to the story, I didn't think. I could fully see somebody disagreeing with that though, seeing as how one of the meta-points of the story was Hoid getting his Elantrian Groove On. But a first time Cosmere reader wouldn't really notice or care that much about that final point, at least theoretically.

Similarly I don't really see knowing that the tablet that translates spoken words was an advanced Awakening application is really necessary for the story. Stuff like that.

When they're quite minor characters from existing stories, I don't really care. I usually have to look them up anyway to have remembered them. I certainly didn't remember a specific Ire from SH, I didn't remember one of the kids from Elantris in TLM, without looking her up. Based on some of the things she mentioned, I vaguely thought it might be her, but yeah.

I'm basically saying I personally don't think the original poster has to worry about Cosmere tie-ins in this book putting off new readers. But that's totally just an opinion, obviously. I don't think many of these things "matter" for the story at hand. If you're not SUPER into doing Cosmere studies, you usually have to look up things online to be sure of XYZ anyway.

Though I suppose if people feel they are "missing" something by missing various Easter Eggs, then for their personality, they'd need to have read the entire Cosmere.

4 hours ago, Frustration said:

Technically we met one in Oathbringer. Though, I suppose she was in human form at the time.

Does it even count when it's a shard? Their body dissolves when they become a shard, though I forget the term that is used when that happens.

5 hours ago, Elbertohokie said:

Finished the book last night and this is going to come off a bit negative, but the book needs to be about 300 pages shorter than it is.  My other large issue with the Stormlight archive that gets worse and worse with each passing novel is the involvement in the Cosmere.  More easter eggs are being introduced with each book and while people that have read all of his Cosmere novels and series multiple times will be able to pick it up, to a more casual reader(me) it feels like we're being left in behind because I just don't remember a lot of these characters.  He honestly needs to come out with a reference book and glossary that helps someone like me that only read Elantris once, or Mistborn twice and haven't read all of the novellas.  Heck even just a full explanation of the implications would help after each novel.  

I also understand where you're coming from.  The coppermind (wiki about Sanderson's stuff) now has a time machine feature, that you can see what the wiki was prior to X book comes out.  So you can now use the coppermind instead of reference book you want.  It's never going to be perfect, but would let you look up whatever you want without ruining the current book you're reading.  Try it out at: https://coppermind.net/wiki/Special:TimeMachine.

By using it a bit just now, it appears that once you do a search using it, you need to either hit back on browser, or go back to the time machine page for your next search.

I agree seeing various internal politics for Radiants would be cool.  Hopefully we'll get it more in the future.  It would especially be more of a forefront thing if they weren't directly at war with Odium/Fused.  So I expect to see more of it in the latter 5 books.

I don't really think Radiants directly followed off how Heralds did it, because you're totally right about Jeziren being in charge of them, but the Bondsmiths' were in charge in ancient times.  It's totally valid to say they don't have to follow ancient rules about this and that, but I think Dalinar will remain in charge until during/after book 5, where he'll either die and become a fused, die and get vaporized by Nightblood, ascent fully to honor/unity, or maybe just retire by the time book 6 happens. 

16 hours ago, apepi said:

Dalinar being able to relieve Kaladin does not make any sense to me. Like, why does he think he had the power? He might be the king of Urithiru(oh god, that part about what he is was a fn mess), I don't think he has earned the title to be the leader of all the Knights Radiant. Like if Kaladin would have told Dalinar to stuff it, what would Dalinar do? The Windrunners are the biggest Knight Radiant order, and the would follow Kaladin. I liked the fact that in the earlier books that the Knights Radiant had a wierd structure in terms with the Alethi 'government', and they were oddly placed in the society. But if Dalinar can just relieve Kaladin, it just throws that all off. I would love it if an order(or Kaladin) just told Dalinar to suck it, and him not being able to do anything about it. Dalinar is getting a big head, and it would be better for him if it was deflated.

I think historically Bondsmiths were supposed to be in charge.  Dalinar is basically in charge of the Radiants. The dustbringers don't seem to be paying much attention to what he is telling them to, nor obviously are the Skybreakers, but most everybody else seems to accept him as the Radiant leader.

Granted, I think Kaladin could have told Dalinar to stuff it, and it would have caused all kinds of issues in all directions.  The truth was, Kaladin was freezing up all the time, both in the text of the book, and we were told he had been doing so over the past year, so something had to happen.

I saw you responding to another person on this welcome thread about Era 2.  I think that person liked AoL best, and you commented on your love of Era 2.  I can totally see that when you comment on the heart/humor.  I do like Era 2 a lot, I just love the "epic feel" of Era 1 so much.  Also I think I got feeling a bit disjointed on the series because of the long delays in the final book.  I imagine once Lost Metal is out, and I reread the entire series again I'll enjoy it even more.  I'm super looking forward to Era 3, I'm interested in seeing how the society with more (normal) tech and magic-tech will work with together.  I also love that BS has said something about the newspaper/broadsheets (where in Era 2 we get things like Allomancer Jak) will be stories about Wax and Wayne.

WoR is definitely my second favorite SA.  The ending is Oathbringer is just so utterly epic to me, and all the threads seem to come together so well.  I realize a lot of people think Oathbringer was draggy/boring at parts, but somehow I never really felt that way.  I was pretty invested in all parts of the book.

9 hours ago, AquaRegia said:

Welcome (back)!

Do you have a favorite (book or series)?

Favorite book is kind of hard.  I think I might say Oathbringer (which I know is utterly not in the running for the average person's favorite Stormlight, much less favorite book).  I totally love Mistborn Era 1, we'll say that as a series, since it's done.  I imagine Stormlight (first 5) will probably really be my favorite when book 5 is done.  My listing of Stormlight is probably: 1) Oathbringer 2) WoR 3) RoW 4) tWoK.  That's largely a rating based on how much I loved them the first time I read them.  tWoK had so much worldbuilding and less focused plot, that the first time I read it I (only) liked it a lot, instead of loving it.

I still like Mistborn Era 2, but not nearly to the degree I liked Era 1.  Warbreaker is great fun for a standalone.  I didn't like Elantris as much as anything else Cosmere, even if I still enjoy it when I do rereads.

What was your favorite book or series?

I signed up to this site in 2011, but mostly just lurked off and on over the years.  I'm an avid shardcast follower for the past 6 months, and have been an avid Sanderson fan since 2008 or '09.  I've read everything (written word) he's published barring the last 3 Alcatraz books.  I never got back to the middle grade stuff, after initially reading Sanderson had published at some earlier point.  Also I haven't read the graphic novels (though I read the prose White Sand).  I also haven't listened to Dark One, as I only really do ebooks, at least thus far.

Greetings to all, and I've enjoyed reading various theories and memes and misc of lots of what this site has to offer.

Yes, but their abilities weren't quite as powerful, due to Hemalurgic decay.

I don't think Hemalurgic decay would screw up compounding very much. "Oh no, I only get 5x what I should get instead of 10x or 100x." Anything more than significantly more than 1:1 would allow for huge power.

I've been assuming that inquisitors were intentionally not given gold allomancy, to keep them more manageable by The Lord Ruler. Remember that the inquisitors weren't natural mistborn, so you could easily leave out something like gold allomancy on purpose.

Did the "default" inquisitor setup, during TLR's time, include any feruchemy beyond gold?

I'm pretty sure that we never see Miles actually burning his Feruchemical storages. He's tapping healing constantly from his metalminds but I'm not sure that on camera he's ever shown ingesting/burning them.

I don't understand this. I guess after posting this I'll go reread some of the earlier parts of this thread, but: I thought to get compounding, you have to burn your storages? Unless you're saying at an earlier time he burned the storage then, got the 10x multiplier, or whatever it exactly is, used that to fill lots of metalminds, and then coasts along using that until he has to rinse and repeat?

But if that is the case, why do they talk about Miles constantly needing new sources of gold?

Holy crap! The absolute best title ever is Wafflebringer.

That so totally owns Worldbringer from HoA. At least I think they were called that Back In The Day.

Regardless... The Wafflebringer is now my favorite title ever. I can only aspire to one day be known as one.

I really thought that Brandon had said before that Hemalurgy can be used throughout the cosmere, not just on Scadrial. I have no quote handy, though.

I guess that could mean only that you could transfer the Metallic Arts to people on other worlds, but I always assumed that meant that this thread was correct. That it could be used to steal other magics.

It's possible that something other than Atium allowed him to do so, or he may have just been good enough at reading Wax to anticipate when he would fire, but let's not pretend that it was completely ordinary.

Possibilities:

Atium. (Deficiency: there shouldn't be any)

Speed bubble. (Deficiency: should have been noticed, should have deflected bullet)

Iron ferring/stored speed (Deficiency: the text does say that he moved "in the same instant," and ferrings are rare)

Zinc allomancy(or just psychology) - Tan rioted Wax, manipulating him into shooting, so he knew when he would shoot. (Deficiency: the timing is still extraordinary)

I totally thought the bullet deflection only happened on its way out of the bubble. Otherwise the entire idea of dodging bullets via the field kind of goes out the window. You dodge away from where the bullet would go, and suddenly it goes random upon entering the field. That isn't what happened as far as I recall in the book.

It only deflects when leaving the field that I recall. So since the bullet hit her in the head, and she would have been in the field, there would have been no deflection, the bullet never left the field.

I just wanted to make that point, though. Because I don't at all think Bloody Tan was that type of allomancer.

There was one thing I didn't really understand. If you're a twinborn and you are burning your feruchemical metal allomantically, will you get the allomantic effect also? That makes the most sense to me, but that isn't what Miles seemed to do. He didn't get the allomantic-gold effect all the time when he was healing himself. At least he didn't seem to.

Also: I loved the the aluminum-foil hats also. It was the first thing I thought of, but somebody else earlier on this thread already said it, heh.

I wanted to ask a clarifying question. All of these non-published books, including his master's thesis -- none of them are canon, right? I can totally see people wanting to read them, but you can't utilize stuff from them to try to modify existing, or create new theories... Is that correct?

I'm going to have to go with book 1. Book 3 was right behind it for me, but book 2 was pretty easily the weakest of the 3, I feel.

Everything was so much more of a surprise in book 1. That is probably what makes it edge out 3 for me. The hidden demon in book 3 was awesome, though.

Wait, WOW! You guys haven't read ten things on that list? I've read at least a quarter of that list, and I think more like a third. I found it almost impossible to decide on only 10 to pick.

Do you guys largely not read sci-fi/fantasy, and are more into other genres?