Ookla

When I check on the price for WaT on Amazon and find out it's cheaper than the $25 gift card I have on my account, so all I have to pay is shipping, and it's due to arrive the day finals week is done! I'm so excited guys; I get to spend my whole Christmas break devouring that book!!!

Well said! As someone who only remebers to catch up on sample chapters every few weeks, I don't think I would have noticed any problems for this exact reason. Thanks for articulating it so well!

Aye. Obsidian is hard, and so it's difficult to scratch, but it's basically just glass so it'll shatter fairly easily. If you want something tough and difficult to break, the research I've done says jade is a better option. So... it might be possible to break it? And if it is breakable, and it isn't infinitely thick, I'm tossing my vote in for the underneath being some Hidden-World-esque birthplace of spren. I mean, it's the Cognitive Realm, so if we're going deeper down into the realm of thought itself...?

I intentionally avoid dedicated romance, because I find romance tropes inherently distasteful. In that way, I think Sanderson does romance better than most other authors I've read (except for Shannon Hale in The Books of Bayern and Jill Bearup with Just Stab Me Now). Now, how much of that is a result of having watched far too many Hallmark movies against my will, I don't know, so objectively you may be right about him not being the best at romance, but subjectively from my point of view, he does a pretty effective job (I love the relationships between Vin and Elend, Siri and Susebron, and Shallan and Adolin! Yumi and Painter are no slouches, either, but I do find their relationship a little more teenager-y and cringe. Not crazy so, but their story definitely carries more of the typical romance tropes.). Of course, it's possible that I just dislike romance tropes, and so I might dislike "good" or "great" romances sheerly because of that. (shrug)

Good point! I hadn't thought of that; that makes way more sense.

Hello and welcome to the Shard! If you could have any Cosmere character to be your room mate, who would you choose and why?

While I mostly disagree, I did think Shallan swearing her next oath so soon after Veil re-incorporated felt a little rushed.

Hmm... I hadn't thought of that. Syl is as hilarious as ever, though, and I'm honestly a bit excited!

I don't think I've ever thought about this before. I just... read. I do know that I dislike audiobooks, because audiobook narrators (even the greats like Michael Kramer and Kate Reading) never get the characters' voices right, like I have them in my head. For example, I hate Kate Reading's interpretation of Lift, not because it's bad, but because the Lift I imagine sounds way less whiny and way more me. Often, if I can see myself in a character's position, or really like a character, it's because that character's voice in my head sounds very similar to my own voice. The rest of the time, the characters don't really have voices (love ya, Dalinar, but you're basically just words on a page to me, unlike Lift, Shallan, and Jasnah, who have my voice in my head, but with different intonations). I do read quite fast, which does mean I occasionally miss details of the story, but I feel like it's the sort of fast that is like eating a bowl of your favorite dessert. Some people savor it, I chow it down as fast as I can because I want to get as much as I can as fast as possible. Ice cream doesn't linger in my bowl, it disappears within a few minutes. Maybe I'm missing part of the experience, but I'm usually so excited to consume the story that I don't care--anything I miss the first time 'round, I can pick up on the rereads.

Ah, I see. Sorry for misunderstanding; it's been a long day. Thanks for clarifying!

I think you're right about the representation aspect, but I'm not sure about Shalladin. Shallan is already married, after all. Then again, if Adolin were to die... But even then I'm not sure it would work. There may be other plans for Kaladin and Syl.

I think you're right. I also think that if Brandon wanted to put more emphasis on Radiant this way for writing reasons (AKA readers who don't know much about DID and would instinctively assign plot-relevance where it doesn't belong [like me, hi]), there are ways to handle it that might be a little plot-convenient, but otherwise not a huge issue. At the same time, if the "Chana-is-Shallan's-Mom" theory is accurate, Radiant might not be any more than Veil was--both are disguising truths so Shallan can function, and even if one truth is vastly more world-impacting than the other, why would the shield-personalities function all that differently from one another? They serve the same essential purpose of disguising the past for Shallan's benefit. If that can be made clear in the text, then Radiant being harder to merge then becomes a part of Shallan's DID, allowing Brandon to stay true to how things actually work like you've said. Finally, I also feel like I've heard (read?) someone mention Brandon saying that Radiant might not merge, and that Shallan may "hang on" (for lack of a better term) to that identity semi-permanently to permanently. (If there's a WoB for this, I'm not sure how best to go about finding it because I don't often theorize.) Whether this means Shallan won't complete her oaths or that Radiant is, indeed, something different than Veil, I have no idea.

I got my black belt in a nontraditional style called Bushi Kai, then did a few months of more traditional Shotokan, and then moved on to Irish dance, and now am doing parkour. So far, they've all been pretty cool. (Shrug)

Ah, thank you. A summons was just what I wanted on this fine day.

Me too. But it is a good running gag... Hello and welcome, @Cerulean! If you could have any Cosmere character (that you know of) to be your room mate, who would you choose and why?

I put fairly rated because I had to take an average between the two: I think Harry Potter is overrated. I've read the books, I've seen the movies. I just don't like it that much. I'd say the best movie is #3, and as for best book? Don't really have strong opinions about them. I think Lord of the Rings is underrated. I've only read it once, and will probably not read it again for quite a long time, because it is very slow, but it inspired (what I think is) the best set of films to exist, and the worldbuilding is deeper than probably any other worldbuilding to exist, and the female characters are just about the coolest female characters I think I've ever read. (Eowyn, anybody? Awesome in the movies, of course... but still absolutely fantastic in the book! I dreamed of being her when I was a kid watching the movies.) All my opinions, of course. No judgment if you hate LoTR and love Harry Potter. Or, well... maybe a little judgment. But not enough to affect my opinions of you.

Mistborn, naturally.

Welcome, welcome! Glad to have you amongst us! To add to the pineapple/pizza discussion, I've never seriously tried pineapple on pizza, but I think I'd like it if it was my mom's homemade pizza. Pizza from a pizza place... I mean, it's fine, but it doesn't top homemade. Now for the serious question. () If you could have any Cosmere character (that you know of, since you've only read Mistborn so far) to be your college room-mate, who would you choose and why?

Oh, good!

I imagine you as a silver fish. I guess "Silvereye" sounded like the name of a fish species in my brain.

Leave it to Brandon to invent something that can't even be replicated in Minecraft! You may have gotten yourself into some seriously huge building assignments.

Build a to-scale Minecraft Urithiru. (Just kidding. That, I think, would be a project of unusual size even for someone on the Hermitcraft server, and may not even be possible with the current build height limit.) More seriously, I think it'd be super cool if you could build a flight of dragons.

I did, but I've only read it once and can only remember so much at a time. Also, I was a bit busy having my breath taken away by the artwork...

I'm on PC and have the update, but I haven't gone to the Desert Festival yet. Mostly because the Skull Cavern is the last place in the game that can give me an adrenaline rush. (I finished most of Ginger Island before I entered Skull Cavern seriously, even though most people seem to think it's a tougher challenge. It's not. Not really. And the music is better. [I'm using intentionally oblique phrasing to avoid spoiling the endgame to anyone who hasn't made it yet, sorry if it's weird.])

I do want to note that inheritable diseases aren't always inherited. I know someone who does research into the genome and how certain genes can be turned on or off based on environmental stimuli; just because someone has a genetic predisposition for an illness doesn't mean they'll contract it, because if their environment has the correct stimuli (or lacks the "dangerous" ones), those genes won't get turned on. But that's all I know. I don't really understand how it works; just the basic concept of it. Who knows, though? Maybe Spiritwebs work in a similar way--if Shallan did get some of her quirks by inheriting Spiritweb shenanigans from a Heraldic parent, maybe the tells wouldn't have shown up if she'd been raised in a different environment.