Jaconis

I disagree on both the writing being any worse than previous works, and on Dalinar acting any differently. Firstly, the heavy exposition is something that happened at the beginning of WoR too, which I find to not be uncommon for sequels in general, and not just from Sanderson. It's frustrating for the more in depth fans like us who don't need reminding of previous events or the state of the world, but for the people who read WoR once - and three years ago at that - it's necessary. Secondly, Dalinar has more or less ignored Elhokar's rule since the end of WoK/beginning of WoR. Kaladin mentions it several times throughout WoR. Ever since he made himself Highprince of War, he has pretty much been king, and everyone, including the other highprinces, have acted that way (at the meeting after the assassin's first attempt on his life, for instance).

Yeah, I agree. I think it's pretty certain that we'll get Kaladin and likely Shallan. IMO, in order of likelihood, the third may be another Dalinar, another flashback, or Jasnah. The prologue has got me more much more interested in Amaram. I've been considering him as nothing more than a delusional bad guy, but his motivations seem to have come from Gavilar now. I can't fully explain why that changes things significantly for me in terms of interest level, but it somehow made him more interesting as a character to me. Also, while on the subject of possible Odium champions, Amaram certainly would be on the list. Another I've been thinking of is Moash, though these both seem a bit too obvious. I know I've heard Brandon say on his writing excuses podcast that in terms of plot twists, he has general rule when coming up with them. He says he thinks of the first thing people will likely think is the twist, then throws that out. Then thinks of the second thing people will think is the twist, and throws that one out too. Not until the third option does he start to consider it as a good twist. EDIT: Also, I haven't seen this brought up, so maybe I'm just confused. Do we know if this is before, after, or during the events of Edgedancer? I assume they are sort of happening concurrently based on the above statement. The main thing I'm confused about though is how in the world did the monarch of Azir see "that a strange storm had appeared in the east"? (I'm assuming that this isn't referring to the storm they see at the end Edgedancer, because that was coming from the west). Looking at the map, Azir is literally on the other side of the planet from the Shattered Plains. Are we to believe that the Everstorm was visible from that far away? If so, why in the world wasn't everyone freaking the bleep out that this new, massive (red!) storm was being created? Something seems off to me, though I could be missing something. Anyone else see see what it is?

Yes, I agree. It seems completely reasonable to me. Lots of things seem to be fading with time here. Stormlight from gemstones, Kaladin's light eyes after the Third Ideal, just to name a couple.

Does anyone else like the idea of Aladar (EDIT: and/or Sebarial!) becoming a squire for Dalinar? He seems to be 100% devoted to the cause now, and it may be interesting politically with regard to the other Highprinces.

Huge major plot twist with no real basis - what if Odium IS Honor?! Or are least they are one being now. All this time we've been talking about the Heralds being traitors...what if Odium somehow made Honor a traitor? Maybe this is what caused Recreance, when the Knights learned this? /tin-foil hat off

Maybe Taleb? His name appears to have been taken out of the flashback, but wasn't he the archer? From that chapter alone and what else was added, he's got reason enough to not like Dalinar I would think, or at least to have lingering feelings of hatred that could be manipulated. He supposedly died in the Battle of Narak, but the way these things go, you can never believe a death until you see the body on screen...

You make good points, and I agree that this doesn't indicate that the champion is the bringer of the destruction. However, I feel as though it can't be ENTIRELY a creation from Honor's own mind. Why else the emphasis, on multiple occasions, of the eyes being familiar? On the subject on why they are familiar, there's a whole list of people it could be. Eshonai seems unlikely, as the familiarity Dalinar indicates seems intimate to me, showing close familiarity. He knows who Eshonai is, but he doesn't really KNOW her. That list is smaller. In no particular order: Adolin, Sadeas, Kaladin somehow? Dalinar himself? I could see it being Dalinar only really if the above theory is correct, that it's not the actual champion, just Honor's idea for him, and Honor sort of inserts whoever is having the vision into that spot. I'm not sure if this is an argument for or against some of these but (mistborn spoilers). I could either see something similar happening here OR definitely not to not repeat that plot line. Other thoughts. Lopen already with the two arms? That would have been awesome to see more of, or at least the others reaction to it, which we will likely still get. Also, so much information about squires so quickly, after years of specuating about them. Controlling the visions and more open communication with Stormfather. I expect that to bring us a wealth of new information pretty quickly as well, as it will be hard to have a good in world rationale for not explaining some of the obvious questions Dalinar should be asking. Things like: what are the voidbringers capabilities? What are the Knights capabilities and how do you access them? Who are the other people the Soren are choosing? And we knew this from most of this flashback chapter being released, but man was Dalinar a terrible person before. I'm not sure why, after having seen the errors of his ways, he is the least bit surprised by any horrible or heinous thing Sadeas would pull. Also not sure why he still revers his brother, who we now know to have been a crazy person, but was also a terrible considering he orchestrated all this.

Well, I think it's because he's working under the misguided assumption that they want their Gods back. The treaty is there so that they can more easily work together to achieve this goal. Theres not much logic behind the idea, because as you imply he seems to understand this would bring war between their peoples, voiding the treaty at that point. Then again, there's not a lot of logic behind much of anything he says in this prologue.

I'm terrible at searching through the WoBs so I will ask the class, as it were; what do we know about the Lighteyes to whom Teft turned in the Envisagers? I've had this crazy idea, with absolutely no supporting evidence, that it was Amaram. After this prologue, I'm beginning to wonder if maybe it was Gavilar way back before conquest. What he's trying to do to the world seems similar to what they were doing to themselves, i.e. putting people in near death scenarios to unlock surgebinding. I bring this up because, according to Teft, they knew more than they should. Gavilar also it would seem knows more than he should. Perhaps they told him about voidbringers and parshmen?

Completely agree that he has information from something/someone that we have not experienced yet. I like someone's suggestion from above that perhaps he interacted with the visions differently than Dalinar and so got more information. That doesn't really explain how he got some of this information, such as details about the everstorm, but it could have given info on the listeners. Dalinar could have too. If he simply asked, "What are Voidbringers?" during just about any of his visions (before the prerecorded portions), he would have found out nearly as much as Gavilar seemed to know. That being said, we don't really have enough info to know how Gavilar learned what he did. It could have been visions, which could have been the same or different from Dalinar's, or something completely different. My money is on something different, mostly because it would make sense to me that however he gained this extra knowledge is similar to how he came into possession of (at least) two voidlight spheres. Those, at least, we can say with fairly high confidence he did not get in a vision (though who knows...).

That is an assumption on my part, but a valid one, or at least is the conclusion that Gavilar seems to have come to as well. The visions use the Everstorm and the True Desolation more or less interchangeably. Or rather, they always speak of the two together. If we assume Gavilar heard that as well, which again assumes Dalinar and Gavilar to have the same visions, then this quote from the prologue seems to indicate Gavilar knows exactly what returning the forms of power to the listeners will do. It's a pretty safe assumption that "the storm" above is the Everstorm, IMO (you may disagree, interpreting that as to simply mean chaos). It's yet unknown how exactly he knew these things. As you say, Dalinar's visions seem to not indicate any of this, but IMO this indicates Gavilar knew exactly what his actions would cause.

Oh it would work. Unquestionably it would unite his people. I just said it wasn't a good idea. It's the kind of idea that, as you say, ignores all logical consequences. Its like he heard the first part of a vision, a part that says to unite, and then stopped listening.

That works as a "good" idea only when you can decimate the common enemy, when the damage to your people fighting the common enemy is less than that they are causing to each other. In this case, he is substituting infighting that, while significant and should not be minimized, is fairly limited in scope, with a war whose equal once caused 90% of the entire worlds population to be killed. In this case, while not ideal, it should be obvious that the infighting is preferable, and a different method of uniting should be found. Unless you're a crazy person. Again, if his visions were the same as Dalinar's, there are some absurd leaps in "logic" to get to Gavilar's conclusion. Dalinar's visions tell him to unite BECAUSE of the Everstorm, that a threat is coming and a united people are all that have a hope of surviving it. The visions are warnings that he must act to unite because otherwise they will be destroyed. Gavilar interprets this to mean he needs to hasten the threat. It makes no sense. Also, I'm talking about the meeting between Gavilar and Amaram in WoR prologue. Jasnah walks in on them discussing something in private, and she thinks Gavilar gave Amaram some task.

This was the first time I read this, as I wanted it to be in its final version before I did. I say this to excuse if these things have been discussed at length already The biggest thing I'm left with is how skillfully (and a little annoying, haha) Brandon is at steadily giving us new information and yet still leaving so many questions unanswered. Some other thoughts: Not really important, but I wonder if Eshonai's meeting with Gavilar happens before or after his meeting with Amaram. This also puts that meeting in a new light, as it now seems to me as though Gavilar was reinforcing Amaram that their path was the correct one. Obviously this could be completely off, but it would be interesting if Amaram is the way he is because of Gavilar. I'm a little disappointed we seemingly didn't get any new information with regard to the Heralds who were there that night. Sneaky Venli knows SO much more than she has revealed. Do we know anything about whether she lived through the Battle of Narak? I think we have to assume she did until we get the body on screen. Finally, if the visions Gavilar received are the same as Dalinar's, then Gavilar really was a nutty crazy nutjob of a crazy person. Correct me if I'm wrong, but his bottom line (I can't bring myself to call it logic) is essentially this: My people fight too much, so I will throw the ENTIRE world into war to save them!

I've been thinking Kaladin's next ideal will deal with leadership and protection. He has expressed several times the idea that he should make his men go home to keep them safe, and Syl has responded each time saying they made their choice. His ideal will be something about letting people make their own choice, even if it puts them in danger.

The members of bridge 4 are the most likely candidates in my opinion. Teft and Lopen are good guesses, but I'd like to add Skar in as well. We haven't seen much of his personality yet or dealt with any of his issues, so there's not really much evidence to support it. The main thing that keeps him in mind is that for two books he has been mentioned in the same breathe as Moash when talking about skill with a spear, and there has to be some significance to that. (I guess there doesn't need to be, but it would feel like a weird thing to mention, several times across two books, for it to be meaningless).

Wow. This is a great theory. You could make an argument there is a transformation that the mountain gave. They are all big, tall, broad-shouldered...quite mountainous.

That is a good point, though the fact that it survived a burning has absolutely nothing to do with whether it was tampered with. Here's the description. We don't know when this fire occurred. It could have been before or after the Hierocracy. There's no reason this page couldn't have been tampered with either before or after fire, regardless. It may have been untampered, and thus some proof that the Radiants were indeed corrupted. We have no way of knowing one way or the other, however.

It was unanimous among a given order, which especially among the two I mentioned above I have difficulty believing this is the reason. Which personal autobiography? Can you point me to the quote? Regardless, the subject of the book doesn't really matter; nearly everything was modified during the Hierocracy. I thought of that. This is an admittedly weak counter argument, but we know that it was the sight of Kaladin surgebinding that caused the Parshendi to accept stormform. Perhaps this is what Mr T was trying to avoid? Again, it's weak, but it's the best I got at the moment. The rest of your post makes good arguments; looking mostly through Kaladin at all this makes it easy to forget that the other orders don't prioritize the same things, and that what's "right", even by these virtuous knights, isn't always easy to define. An argument against the point that this was the spren's request; in his vision, Dalinar feels an immense sense of betrayal as he walks amongst the abandoned shards. This may be the Stormfather uncontrollably projecting his thoughts on the matter, but I got the sense it came from the spren themselves. If so, I think it unlikely the spren were behind this. I should point out, I don't actually think we have enough information to know one way or another what the reason for the Recreance was, and the above were just the ideas I found most plausible.

We can't really trust the histories that say they became corrupt. Everything about that was modified in the Hierocracy. What makes you say the Listeners became sprenless at the end of the Last Desolation? Something in book or your gut feeling? Not trying to contradict you, I'm just wondering if there's something I missed. I don't disagree that there would definitely be at least some that endless torture would make them lose devotion. I just don't think it would be as unanimous as it appears to have been. That in particular is true when you consider the two orders we have seen abandon their oaths: the Windrunners, who's primary objective is to protect others even at their own expense, and the Stonewards, whose Second Ideal is about standing when others fall. Both of these orders are utterly devoted to self-sacrifice for the good of others. The Heralds aren't really a fair comparison. They knew what they were in for with the torture; they'd experienced it several times. He Radiants didn't have this experience to dread and eat at them the same way the Heralds did.

It does, but we are talking about a group who have completely devoted their lives to protecting, to caring, and to watching over their fellow human beings. For hundreds of utterly devoted knights to unanimously decide this for the sole reason that they will have extra sacrifice? It doesn't fit. As hwiles says, I think it's more likely that something about their bond, in the big picture, is causing more harm than good. To me, the most likely canditiates for the Recreance cause in no particular order: 1. The Radiants find out the Heralds lied to them and broke the Oathpact, so they got pissed and quit. Again, this doesn't jive with the whole unanimous decision thing. Even if this happened, surely some Radiants would see that their cause was still good and shouldn't be abandoned? 2. The nahel bond, by its nature, opens the door for Voidbringers to exist on Roshar. I'm not sure on this, because there were Voidbringers before Radiants existed. What changed once the orders were established that made Voidbringers only exist when Radiants were around? 3. A deal was made between the Radiants and the Voidbringers/Listeners ("...the devils on the front line"). In exchange for the Voidbringers returning the Listeners to their sprenless forms, the Radiants would give up their Oaths, and abandon their shards. Odium of course orchestrated this, with his precognition abilities telling him that normal people would use the shards to war amongst themselves, opening themselves up to the Thrill and presumably his influence.

I was going to come in and suggest this very thing. Perhaps under the "stone" the entire planet is like Shinovar. Over thousands and thousands of years, highstorms deposited enough crem to cover all of it except where the storms are at their weakest, i.e. Shinovar. Urithiru, built in mountains high above the storms, never saw any crem, and is therefore the stone in its "natural" continent form. This may even help the op theory, given that we have an epigraph stating that Urithiru had to be built "close to Honor." Close to honor and/or far from Odium?

I agree it will likely be a (relatively) minor character. We haven't seen much of his personality, but I've wondered what's up with Skar for awhile now. He's always mentioned in the same breathe as Moash for being the best fighter amount Bridge 4, so he likely has some significance. Maybe he'd be up for it? This could also serve to show a squire rise to knighthood.

Whatever they are, if Brandon's previous works are any indication, we'll be left with a dozen new questions for every answer we get.

Do we have any explanation as to why shardblades are summoned with moisture dripping from them? Or why, when a lot of Stormlight is used or condensed, frost forms? An idea came to me while rereading WoK, though someone with a better understanding of realmatic theory might be able refute this easily. Does this condensation have to do with the nature of Shadesmar, that land in the physical is sea there? Does a shardblade still drip with moisture when summoned on a boat for instance? Another thought, do living shardblades still have moisture when summoned? If not I could see the reasoning that they are not coming from the Cognitive Realm any longer, as they have transitioned.