Ewery1

You cannot have my pain is probably #1 for me. favorite in this book was “He wasn’t Kaladin. He was Tien.”

This is a genius idea. No clue!

Personally doubt that Odium will be satisfied till he is free of Roshar. I would very surprised if there wasn’t more we are missing but I could be wrong!

This is a loophole in the agreement but not in the contest. There’s definitely another secret here.

New crackpot theory: Dalinar will learn from Ba-Ado-Mishram’s ability to Connect with all the Singers to Connect all of the disparate Radiants with each other - becoming Unity. In that moment in OB he was connecting with himself.

I think this is going to come to pass in this book. ”Illuminate the silence above” to me reads as Dalinar’s grapple with the true nature of Honor and the God Beyond. I think many of us feel that Dalinar will not be making it out of this book (perhaps as Odium’s tool this moment could still happen) but to me this reads as a moment of reckoning. At Dalinar’s darkest moment, a moment of silence and loss, he will look up at Odium & Honor’s storms - for some reason dying/ending, and think that there is no great being that could have allowed what has come to pass to happen. This is pretty unformed/conjecture based - but this seems like the book in which a moment such as this is most likely to occur.

This is a very cool theory. I would love this.

This is so clearly true now… it’s even the 10th name, just like how El is an addition/counterpart to the Nine.

I was wondering this too - is it to do with features of the Dawncities that we accept as fundamental/to stop the Highstorms?

Feeling El at this moment.

Yeah… this is a good observation. Eek.

Yeahhhhhhhh this is right

I’m hoping El survives into the back half and I have a feeling he might. Alternatively I agree that he’s going to gain control of all the humans and then die, putting one of them as a successor. It seems like he & Raboniel are aligned in that they want the unending to end and return rule to the now.

That El chapter was so insanely cool. I think the oath made to let him rule over human lands will be a surprise shocker - it seemed to me at least like perhaps he wants to then set them free. Also, what’s in the Shattered Plains? Is it Honor? Are the plains shattered like his psyche? Is that why his perpendicularity is so unstable?

Not my theory but I’m still super into the Bells of Kharbranth are Pure Tones which repel Voidlight when rung at the proper rhythms and repel Odium’s armies.

I guess I just personally haven’t felt them to be used that way - though I agree that the ending of Lost Metal was wanting. I’d chalk that up to it being formulaic myself though. None of the problems the Ghostbloods solved felt especially important to me.

I mean I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree here but I think Brandon has done a good job establishing all of the plot relevant mechanics of everything you’ve listed here. You don’t need to know that the sand has microbes in it that feed off of investiture and change its color in order to understand that the sand changes color when it’s near investiture. The power was well established in Navani’s experiments before it was used to kill Phrenadora. Same with Nightblood, I don’t need to know where he’s from to understand his plot-relevant ability of eating investiture. Heck, we still don’t actually know that much about how Nightblood exists at all. There have always been plenty of questions like this in Brandon’s books (how does the Nightwatcher do its boons? Is Old Magic a surgebinding this or?? Why do people get turned into smoke when they soulcast too much?). Some get answered, some don’t. I’m curious why the introduction of aliens changes it so much for you?

He’s said that since The Lost Metal the gloves are coming off. I don’t think this applies anymore.

In my view the driving theme of the Cosmere is how each of the Shards alone without the context of their 15 counterparts are bad. Context is what allows you to make well informed & considered decisions. Ruin & Odium without moderation are clearly bad - but so is Preservation, who supported the Lord Ruler because he engineered an autocracy which kept things stagnant and unchanging for a thousand years. And thus, I think this book is about how the divine command of Honor - to make and keep bonds - by itself is also bad. Freedom is important and the ability to end a bond if it was made in an ill considered manner is a right I believe we should all have access to. I definitely think you have the right idea - but I think it goes further than this. What is Cultivation without moral understanding? The will to grow and change is not a good in and of itself. These attributes are not meant to be alone, though neither are they evil when considered in context and with moderation. Odium is Passion, and I believe him when he says as much. It can be good to be angry when it is righteous. It is what makes us change.

This is super interesting - wondering if Ashertmarn works in a similar way? He's described as beating with a strange, irregular rhythm. It would line up.

It’s probably nothing but a weird coincidence that Shallan’s nickname by Mraize is Little Knife.

Oh this is interesting… The Listeners/Singers aren’t the children of Honor & Cultivation, they’d be the children of Adonalsium, right? Who could it be other than the True Spren?

Very curious about this big shocker point. Why couldn’t the Destruction of Roshar stuff be about the Destruction of Ashyn?

Dead people don’t go to the spiritual realm, they go Beyond (or nowhere). The spiritual realm is where living souls (spiritwebs) are.

Agree with this - it also occurs to me that Honor & Cultivation actually seem to be diametrically opposed. Honor is all about permanently binding things up and Cultivation is all about letting things change and evolve and become greater than. Too many oaths makes that impossible & stagnant.