deddinty

So excited for this! I loved the Way of King's narration. There was only one minor blip on it for me, and that was Kate and Michael's different pronunciations of "Sadeas". Threw me off a little, so I hope they've got it standardized. I'm planning to get the kindle as well, for whispersync but chances are I'll be reading it the first time through, since I won't have the patience even on 1.5x speed.

We tend to call it a shardspear but I think most of us are picturing something more glaive like. Personally I always picture a double bladed glaive just to up the awesome factor.

There are two quotes from WoK that imply the rock is brown, however both are referring to soul cast rock, so take that as you will. The second is less direct, but I take it as referring to the barrack as Kaladin is stuck in the barrack staring at spheres all day: There's also references to Tien's rocks as brown, black and white strata, which would imply a lot of Roshar is also brown. That being said, I think it's best left to however you view it in your own imagination.

I really would have loved this for the cover! Especially if the war scene is ever added. It's almost perfectly how I see Shallan too. Beautiful work, and it's finally convinced me to buy a hardcover when it comes out.

Actually Lightweavers are garnet, which is more red than purple. Kalek is amythest which would be true purple from the ten essences tables source. I'd have to see the shade though, since a lot of people think garnet is rather purple.

It's a common assumption, but Herald's blades work differently from regular blades, they only disappear when the herald dies. So Taln is quite alive and confirmed to be a future viewpoint character though given the Word of Brandon that flashbacks can happen after death I guess that's not a guarantee. And I suppose viewpoints are different from book focus characters as well.

I've always thought that was a distinct possibility as well Argent, reading hints between the lines. I've always been curious though, if something big fell in the middle, why would there be ten conveniently located craters on one side of it? The ten thrones perhaps? My big problem with it, I would hope that some hints would have come through history if an entire city fell from the sky! Urithiru fell no pun intended after the shadow days but before the recreance, if I recall correctly (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, I didn't double check that) so it seems there would be some sort of history involved in that. At the very least, one of the references to Urithiru references "Vedan" and "Kholinar" which seem like they would be slightly more modern terms, but that's an assumption on my part. Of course I could speculate the firing of the Palaneum, or the ardents specifically hiding this type of information. On the other hand there's Nohadon's account of "walking" to Urithiru. This implies it was at a fixed location to me, as opposed to moving around which goes against the "built in the west" part of it. I suppose it could just be a slow moving floating city, or only moved when needed, or Nohadon could have been following it for quite a while as he walked...I'm getting side tracked here. I'm basically agreeing that it seems possible for Urithiru to be a floating city and the cause of the plains shattering.

I always associated the stormlight with the idea of qi (chi or ki), especially as the literal translation is "breath".

I think I need to get more into the tumblr fandom as I felt the same way for every little tidbit Feather I'm going to die when reading the actual book. I wonder if the final code reveal will be the final version of the "Rambo-Kaladin"less cover. As for Syl he often mentions she looks like she's wearing a young girl's dress, which to me always implied the safe hand wasn't covered as well. But I'd be interested to know for sure. I was quite surprised that Shen got the tattoo as well, I really wouldn't have expected him to do that without being ordered. It's almost like Kaladin is getting through to him in some way, definitely going to be interesting to follow his plot.

Heh, I didn't expect my minor comment to be so called out. I've just heard about ink rejection before, I would never have claimed it's a common occurrence, compared to something like ink allergies. Ask any tattoo artist and they'd tell you ink rejection happens, but it's usually the result of people making very unintelligent decisions about getting tons and tons of ink within a short amount of time, which obviously isn't what's going on in Kaladin's case. I did make my point that it's more likely the skin is just healing too quickly and pushing the ink out. I personally think stormlight is between the two as well. I doubt it could regrow a limb as Kaladin uses it (Lift is another matter...), and I don't feel we know enough to speculate about shardblade damaged bodies whether it would heal one way or the other. It certainly seems like it's more towards accelerating what the body can do (Allomantic pewter), rather than returning it to an ideal state (Feruchemical gold) as we've seen it work so far for Kaladin. But it does seem to be more powerful than regular Allomantic pewter, and more like Vin on mists Pewter. I'm not as comfortable arguing in Mistborn terms though, as I've only made it through once. It's not my favorite...don't kill me.

I'm not a big fan of that particular theory Gloom (Sadeas being allied with Taravangian), but I suppose you can use the fact that Elokhar's main scribe is Sadeas' cousin to support it. I just hope this "hiding powers" thing doesn't go on for much longer than this book. I expected something of the sort, but as long as it makes sense, and Kaladin's reasons do right now, I can't expect them to be so open. From what he's gone through, it's a very human reaction to guard any advantage or anything precious to him. I'm more concerned with how Dalinar and Jasnah open up to each other, or if they're going to drag it out for books on end.

Mostly an aside, but some people's bodies do reject ink. It happens occasionally when they've gotten too many tattoos in a short period of time, so his body rejecting the ink is just an enhancement of a natural process (you can search for "ink rejection" if you want to learn about that). Tattoos require the skin to heal slowly, essentially trapping the ink below the outer layer of skin, and I'm guessing in Kaladin's case it's just healing too quickly so the ink is being forced out rather than the skin healing over it. I liked the insight into Kaladin's fears about his powers and lighteyes, and the fact Teft knows enough to call it "surgebinding". Anyone else want to just lock all the main characters in a room until they all talk to each other about their abilities/knowledge/goals and then start the actual work of saving Roshar?

It suffered a bit from "middle book syndrome", a book that feels like it's introducing the larger enemy and conflict to come in subsequent releases. I did enjoying seeing Sabetha, but I hope she's not as prominent in the future. I prefer Locke's whining about her than, well, having her around. That's not to say I didn't thoroughly enjoy it of course.

What I'm most excited about from this quote is the suggestion that we'll be seeing more of Renarin in the future and probably even in a bigger role. I'm ok with that. I may have squealed a bit in excitement on reading this as well.

I so want Kaladin with a shard polearm of some sort, be it a spear or a glaive or anything like that. It would just seem wrong to me if he suddenly gets a blade or learns how to use a sword with the same prowess as his spear. Unfortunately it almost feels sort of like fanfiction level, him getting a shardspear. I can see a shardspear being useful in battle, just as a real spear is useful in different ways to a normal sword. But I don't imagine a simple spear if it's a shardweapon. I imagine something more like this (I'm not an artist, these are just rough ideas). What I see a shardblade as on the right (with Mr. Person for perspective) and how I would picture a shardspear on the left.

That's a very interesting point. I always immediately go to physically "cultivating" land when I think of cultivation but it's so much more than that. We "cultivate the mind", "cultivate friendships", "cultivate talents". It's not only about growing things, but growing ourselves, and helping other people grow. I could see this original "pure" intention becoming slightly twisted and bitter which could result in the curses becoming less about improving and more about punishing individuals.

http://www.reddit.com/r/fantasywriters/comments/1pi2r4/quotes_from_your_book/cd2ovai Not exactly a reading, more like a page or two, but for anyone who missed it, this was on reddit a few days ago. Edit: Whoops! Just saw this was posted elsewhere in the forum

Audiobooks and ebooks for me. I love to collect hardcovers, but my current living arrangements don't allow for much space and eventually moving would cost too much, so for now that's on hold. I love audiobooks, but I've always been the kind of person who enjoys "background noise" at all times, and I much prefer audiobooks to TV. I find that I catch many more details listening to audiobooks than I do while reading, though I like to read books as well. I can listen to audiobooks while working, driving, exercising, cleaning, cooking, etc. Lately I find my time to just sit and read is non-existent, so audiobooks are my salvation. However, they will never replace being able to read the words, see how they were written, and especially for Sanderson works, in world art.

I wonder if it isn't a combination though. Looking into Shadesmar or traveling to it may require some sort of stormlight, like a very low continuous drain, which is used not to just look into it but also to give one power there, thus Jasnah's comment. The soulcasting requires a great deal more stormlight used quickly, which results in the cold feeling. So she needs the stormlight to access, exist in/look in, and exit shadesmar, but the soulcasting required the majority of the stormlight. If I wanted to compare it to Kaladin, her looking into shadesmar is like the stormlight he consumes that makes him stronger/faster as opposed to the stormlight he uses for the actual lashings. He can consume it all at once or have access to it's power for several minutes, but it's still being slowly consumed.

In my books (ebooks and audiobook versions) her eyes are always violet. I'm guessing its a typo that says green eyes.

I have to disagree with you Gloom and agree with Alterodent on this one. Just preceding this he says his purpose in sending Szeth out is to create stability. To quote Taravangian: So unless you're saying the Taravangian was just lying to Szeth here, he truly seems to want to destroy the current regimes and powers to create a power vacuum. The question is, what or how is he planning to fill it. Will he himself fill it? Or is he working with someone else, Alethi or otherwise, to fill it.

There are several possibilities I can see, some are much more plausible than others. 1) Jezrien -> Plausible, my personal opinion leans this way. It makes the most sense, and I can imagine it would be possible for a herald to have this type of power. He may even "ride" the storms in the way Kaladin did. 2) Honor/Tanavast -> An imprint of some sort perhaps, not very high on my plausible list. 3) Odium -> Plausible, but I don't really see Odium bothering to warn a future Radiant about the Everstorm. Still possible though. 4) Cultivation -> Possible, but unlikely. Besides being female, I don't really see anything Cultivation like in the message or the storms themselves. Still possible as she is a Shard and could potentially have the power to make an illusion or control the storms. 5) Adolnasium -> well we know he left some power there (as seen in the spren quote), he may even have something to do with the creation of highstorms. Not likely, but a possibility. 6) Hoid -> what can he do with lightweaving/all his powers ;p ? Highly unlikely, he had his part in WoK elsewhere.

I don't think it will be in this book certainly, but I can see a future where they find and train those with Radiant abilities to truly rebuild the orders as they once were. I doubt she'd ever be a main character of course, but because of her abilities and the fact she has Darkness' attention, I wouldn't be surprised to see her in another interlude.

He mentions he's spent several months doing all of this killing. It stands to reason he'd be pretty adept at getting the heck out of places pretty quickly, and if the list is ordered in such a way that he'd be going from neighboring kingdom to neighboring kingdom I don't think it's beyond imagining that he'd be able to cover a good portion of Roshar within a few months (something like half a year maybe?). Counting a few days to get access to his victims without too much suspicion, as we see when he confronts Taravagian, maybe two to three weeks per kingdom, with multiple targets in each kingdom would be a good assumption.

I just hope we get to see more of Lift in future books or more interludes. I want to see her meet Kaladin for some reason, the super serious Radiant leader and the hyperactive little Radiant.