Display-Names-Are-Stupid

Saying he died easily from some spears is a massive disservice to the feat he and Ash accomplished. They absolutely destroyed numbers of Fused that would have given an army trouble, and I believe it was something like a dozen or more spears (can't check as I don't have my book on my currently).

An interesting theory! I wondered if the Iriali might be some aspect of Adonalsium spawned post-Shattering to go forth and learn, and then come back together. In chapter 50 Hoid says "I'm a puppet for raw Investiture, propped up and speaking like the sock on a child's hand. Damn. Is this how the Iriali feel all the time? No wonder they're so storming odd." He basically insinuates the Iriali are puppets of raw investiture, and they have their big world-hopping quest for the One. Are the Iriali the result of leftover bits of the Shattering? Are they little fragments of Adonalisium that didn't make it into the Shards? And their quest for learning and their journeys to multiple worlds is part of learning how to be a better god?

Also if he was off Roshar when he swore his Plate oaths, how did the Spren reach him? I thought there was a WoB that you could take them with you if you swore on Roshar, but if you swore with none of them there they would be unable to form. Maybe this is changed with the end of SA5 being a protection of the Spren.

In chapter 50 Hoid says "I'm a puppet for raw Investiture, propped up and speaking like the sock on a child's hand. Damn. Is this how the Iriali feel all the time? No wonder they're so storming odd." Several curious things here. 1. The Iriali hadn't arrived on Roshar at the time of the Ashynite's migration, they arrived later, but Hoid already knows about them. Not surprising due to his age, but still and interesting tidbit. 2. He uses the phrase 'storming', which I thought was specific to Roshar due to the highstorm, I wouldn't have thought it would come from Ashyn. 3. He basically insinuates the Iriali are puppets of raw investiture, and they have their big world-hopping quest for the One. Are the Iriali the result of leftover bits of the Shattering? Are they little fragments of Adonalisium that didn't make it into the Shards?

Red is corrupted Investiture, Black is kind of like excess waste of Investiture. Nightblood consumes so much that he leaks off the excess,

I'd agree with this. I believe there was a WoB where it stated that Cultivation caused Lift to exist partially in the Cognitive Realm, which is why she can touch Wyndle and use him to climb when he is in vine form. It could be that to make her that way Cultivation just gave her a tonne of Investiture. Or something else entirely.

TLM takes place after Stormlight 5, so we will find out whatever has blocked them from Roshar/happened to Iyatil in this book

It's an interesting theory, but my main question is how did Nohadon live so long? Unless their brief switch happened long before Tanavast's actual death. Because Nohadon was around at the formation of the Radients, hundreds of years before the Recreance, and Tanavast was still alive at the Recreance.

Humanity has never been in a better position for a Desolation in terms of advancement, that's something that Taln thanks Ash for in his moment of lucidity. The big disadvantage humanity faced was that there was so little time between Desolations to recover and prepare, less than a year between the final 2 I believe. So back in the day Desolations were very effective because humanity was eventually worn down to a horrible starting point, but this time around they were a lot more solid.

And one of them was Sho-Del I believe.

It's almost like Mistborn and early Stormlight catfished us into thinking Brandon was like Tolkien or Jordan XD I agree with you on the merch. It works for movies and TV shows which are cheaper than books to consume, but we already pay a lot for books, and the physical books themselves are the best merch in my opinion I loved Wayne in books 1 and 2, but in 3 and 4 it was like Brandon didn't know how to stop himself from leaning into ridiculousness.

Exactly! I know Kaladin still beats himself up about how he handled Moash, but never frames it from this angle. I think the biggest issue Dalinar and co have with Adolin murdering Sadeas isn't that he did it, but how he did it. If it had been in a duel with the exact same result it would have been fine, but because it was a 'back alley' stabbing they're a bit squirrelly about it. But Sadeas was too crafty to ever get pinned into a formal duel, and could wreak so much damage in the interim. Haha, thanks! I wanted to start posting on the forums, and was stuck for a name, but had just finished The Lost Metal XD

Not to mention what Kaladin did set up Moash to run off and then all the trouble that has led to. I'd be interested to see how Moash would have gone down without having to run away like he did.

100% agree with the cartoon-y feel you describe. Leans more into an anime feel than serious prose, which I suppose was what he was going for, but I feel it's executed quite in a clunky way when you think about his earlier works. Not that authors can't try new things, but that doesn't mean they will be good at them. I think Sanderson is trying to appeal to everyone, and it comes off feeling like a patchwork quilt.

Thanks for the WoB! So the anti-stormlight baggers/weapons wouldn't be much use in a battle where spren manifest more physically, more as a spy/sneak attack weapon.

Would anti-stormlight work on a spren in blade/shield/whatever weapon they form mode? Or does it only work if you stab the spren in it's 'natural' form? Would be interesting to have a weapon that you can't use a shard-shield or shardblade to block.

I'm fairly certain there are passages where the Stormfather talks about when he was just the spren of the highstorm, which from the way he talks makes me think he wasn't a fully sapient spren until the ideas of human perspective changed and also Honor remade him into a Bondsmith spren and later left his cognitive shadow to this newly formed spren. So I believe that the highstorm was before/adjacent to the Singers, but the Stormfather himself came after.

Tanavast is confirmed dead, but Honor is confirmed to still be around as a vacant Shard. Maybe further evidence that Tanavast and Honor were at odds towards the end?

That's fair, and I definitely can see it in older characters like Dalinar and Navani, but while Kaladin and Shallan have undoubtedly changed, they subsequently feel quite one note and there is almost always a reference to how 'different' they feel etc. As if he needs to keep telling us about it rather than showing. But that's just my personal feels

Fingers crossed! But seeing how Sanderson's dialogue overall has shifted to a more informal style, I'm not holding out too much hope. And I'm not convinced he's good at charting character growth in Stormlight. He does it well in some characters, but I feel drops it a little in others. Almost like he doesn't know how their personalities work after their growth.

Ah, thanks! Been a while since I read the trilogy. I'd had in in my head that the Lord Ruler was unaware of feruchemy lasting. I remember not all Inquisitors had the same spikes even in the LR's time, but I just stumped myself on how they got the feruchamy. I didn't realise they reused the spikes, I thought there was a scene in Secret History where they put them into the Well of Ascension to dissolve? But my brain may have made that up.

I've gotten myself confused, and I hope someone has a simple answer out there. Inquisitors during the Lord Ruler's time would sometimes have a gold spike for Feruchemical gold, but where did the Lord Ruler get a feruchemist to create these spikes? It was my understanding that the Terris people had hidden the fact that ferchemy remained from the Lord Ruler, is that incorrect and he did know about it and they only hid some members? After Ruin took over they got more feruchemical powers, I'm assuming from kidnapping terris feruchemists, but is that ever addressed by the Terris people in the books? Surely they'd have mentioned if Inquisitors were picking them off?

Agreed, WoK I found difficult to put down, same with WoR. Started to slow a bit on Oathbringer, but still a page turner. RoW however I had multiple breaks just because I wasn't as engaged as I had been previously. I suppose we could compare it to the Wheel of Time infamous slog. WoT is my all time favourite book series ever, but I can't deny there's a bit of a slump around books 8 and 9. This could be Sanderson's slog, just coming in the series a little earlier. That being said, I'm already not looking forward to book 6 with Lift as a main POV, just because I personally find her way of speaking/thinking a little un-fitting of a fantasy series, it has a similar feel to Spensa from Skyward, and I find that jarring. People out there love Lift however, so book 6 will be a win for them

I'm leaning towards the chance that Nohadon was the first and literal Son of Tanavast with a human as per the 3 moons story.

That's right, he was definitely around before the Recreance, I'd forgotten that detail. Maybe Nohadon was a literal 'Child of tanavast' and Kaladin is his descendant? I've recently discovered I like the theory that the story about Mishim (the moon) sneaking down to earth and a human Queen taking her place for a night which leads to a child with the blue moon is about Honor having a child with a human woman. Mishim = Cultivation, Nomon = Honor, Salas = Odium