Aredor

Chapter 32, page 298 Grammar semantics! Hooray! 'Me' and 'Radiant should swap positions, leading to "That kills both Radiant and me, and likely [...]"

Having too much time on my hands does help... But seriously, if you go to http://wob.coppermind.net it's got every recorded wob in there. Here you go

Riino?

Ishar during the time skip (possibly)

Counter to that, I'd say that the end of wind and truth, and to an extent both RoW and OB, are the setback of a greater whole. We need to remember that this is merely book 5 in a 10-book series. Yeah, it's the end of arc 1, but it's a much reduced impact(?) of an arc. Instead of something like Era 1 that ends quite dramatically and finally, this ends in a massive cliffhanger. Regarding this series as a ten-book one rather than two five-book series is something that I think is very important to narritavely understanding this series. Besides this one point, I agree with your quite well stated beliefs.

It's all Wit's fault. If he hadn't used the word of "therapist" in their ONLY conversation in the entire book, then we probably wouldn't be having this conversation to the extent that we are. We wouldn't have gotten the awful line of "I'm his therapist." Kaladin just should never have been depicted as a bona fide therapist- he should have been depicted as someone who is just trying to help in the way that he helped the others in RoW with NATURAL conversation. Every conversation that Kal has with Szeth/Nale/Ishar is incredibly forced for something that was depicted so naturally in RoW. With Nale and Ishar, the problem that people are having is that the story depicts Kal's 'Therapy' as healing them as opposed to what really happened, with the Wind / 5th Ideal healing them. It was once Nale started talking about the days where he knew Wind that he stopped his Herald Madness. Ishar was 'fixed' because of Kal's 5th Ideal that led into Wind/Nightblood removing the Taint that Ishar had brought upon himself by drinking of the Dark One's energy/True Power Perpendicularity. Those are good things to happen to these men- but it's depicted as Kaladin healing them through 'therapy.'

Exactly! Like, imagine if instead of that awful Adin interlude in RoW, we had gotten an interlude about the Vorin Church. Although, don't they all live in Jah Keved? I guess that's the issue: we don't know! I agree that we need more regarding religion in the back half- it's something that we lost out on, with really only Navani thinking about it with any frequency. I think that the main thing that separates these writings from other main fantasy writings is the use of religion in worldbuilding. Wheel of Time/ LoTR both didn't have religion, and I think that having it in the story improves the sense of immersion and of culture that we can get through a world. Definitely something I'd love to see more of!

It must be said.

There's a quote somewhere in TLM where someone says something about "Golden fairy people" in Bilming. That seems to indicate that the Iriali went to Scadrial after leaving Roshar.

I remember a wob somewhere that says something like "I wanted a main character with depression, but I didn't want the story to be about the depression." Well, now that's just a complete lie. The entire Kaladin story has shifted from him trying to do the best he could do into him delivering the worst line in the Cosmere. "I'm his therapist," indeed. The story has become ABOUT his depression, not about him. I feel like RoW did such a good job with this, and then... sigh. I also feel like the series has become sort of a mental health museum. Every character's got to have something, right? They've all got to deal with their mental health! But that happens so often that the story and plot now "has" to revolve around their conditions. Here's to hoping it gets better in the later books.

This is exactly what Dalinar did here. Was it a bad choice? Maybe, but every other option was worse. If he'd killed Gav, the war still would have continued for a thousand years. If he'd let Gav kill him, then that's kind of the same thing. Both options were worse than flipping the board.

Spoilered for size

So in this book, we got both Kal and Szeth (and maybe Shallan??) swearing their fifth ideals. And then Szeth broke his bond and Kal left for the Hyperbolic time chamber. So we still don't know what the Fifth Ideal does. Yet I think I found a clue. Chapter 135 So I'm thinking that the fifth ideal slows the aging process somewhat like whatever happened with the Heralds post-Ashyn and pre-Oathpact. Thoughts? Ideas?