EvilNuff

The Desolations happened before the Nahel bond existed and yet after the Recreance without the bond there was a much larger gap between the Desolations. Given this, my speculation is something with the Nahel bond & the KR increased the frequency and the Recreance was an attempt on the parts of the KR to slow down/stop the Desolations. I would even go so far as to suggest that possibly their spren agreed to "mass suicide" in an attempt to help. Perhaps this was tied in to an attempt to "cripple" the listeners into only dull & mate form so they could no longer transform into Voidbringers and thus delay/stop the Desolations.

Congrats to Brandon, well deserved!

Emperor's Soul may be his best writing, IMO. I would definitely recommend that.

What? Sympathetic? Good gracious! My dear Feather I applaud your passion for Renarin but please be reasonable. Renarin is far closer to a villain than a sympathetic character. He has undermined his house and his country...repeatedly. Just a few points: He persists in trying to be a warrior when he is unsuited for it physically (talking pre-shards here). That is being a spoiled brat, there is no redeeming reason for him to do this. This is a society where there is constant fighting, the second son of the most important house in the kingdom is a significant asset. For him to just throw away any help he can provide his family is an incredibly selfish thing to do. He is finally presented with shards and while it is admirable that he is trying to learn to use them. He cannot. The right thing to do is to give up this foolishness and let someone who can use them make use of them. They are an incredibly rare and valuable resource. They are wasted on him and the Kholin house was weakened because of Sadeas. Several times he demonstrates his bravery, and each and every time he is like a chain around the feet of his father/brother dragging them down. The fact that he doesn't cause either or both of them to be crippled or killed is quite amazing. So what you have here is a character who absolutely is struggling with his ailments and internal doubts, etc. But he is the opposite of sympathetic, he is actively harmful (through 2 books) to his house and family! If at any point in time through the first two books he stopped being the selfish brat he is, then he would be sympathetic. For example, if he was offered shards and turned them down, actually refused them and did what was right for his family as opposed to his own selfish goals, then he would be sympathetic. I can make a stronger case for calling Sadeas a hero than I can for Renarin being sympathetic.

Think about the culture of Roshar compared to our cultures in our world. In our world being supportive is important for people like Renarin. However, in Roshar he *is* a liability. His family has been *too* supportive of him. They should not have given him shards, they should not have catered to his warrior desires. Yes, absolutely Renarin is incredibly brave! But he should never have been put in that position by his family. Dalinar should have nipped his warrior aspirations in the bud years ago. Renarin being brave is indisputable and yet also each instance was incredibly stupid and probably harmful. The Chasmfiend hunt, he distracted the real warriors and didn't actually help. He wasn't able to help. That isn't his fault but distracting them IS his fault. The duel in WoR, he actively prevented someone else from joining and only his pitiful nature prevented him from being killed or crippled. And yes, it was pity plain and simple that kept him alive. If Renarin were a better person, if he truly wanted to help his family, then he would have long ago given up the warrior aspirations. He would have done something to actually help his family rather than hold them back. Please open your eyes about how harmful he has been to the Kholins. He has been a boat anchor around their necks dragging them down.

So I obviously had a pretty different reaction from most of the forum. I hated this book. Brandon is my favorite living author and I have thoroughly enjoyed everything else he has written. However, WoR just didn't do it for me. Spoilers follow but I won't use the spoiler tag as the first post and subject point that out. First, Jasnah's death. No, not that she "died" but the way that it was written. You don't create and build up a character that important and then just kill her off, almost offhandedly at the start of a book. That death scene belonged at the end of Way of Kings not at the start of WoR. At worst it would have been better later in WoR. The problem with how it was written was it meant that either a) Brandon just did a poor job of writing there or she wasn't really dead. Either way, I hated the way it was written and frankly think it was just poorly done. Next, the characters throughout the first 80% were (for my personal taste) *all* un-likable with the exception of Syl and Adolin. I personally have to like at least one major character to enjoy reading a book. For me, WoR was a chore and I had to force myself to read it because all of the major characters were behaving either like idiots or spoiled brats (and I do not mean the Highlords who are supposed to be acting like brats). Next, Kaladin. Seriously, did he learn nothing from the last book? His journey in this book just felt completely out of character to me! Star Wars original trilogy are my favorite movies yet when the Timothy Zahn books came out I hated them. Why? Because the characters as written did not feel the same to me as they did from the movies. I felt the same thing here with Kaladin, it was almost as if a different author wrote the two books to me. Finally, Shallon. I disliked her in Way of Kings. She was actually my least liked part so going in I knew I would be less interested in her flashbacks than Kaladins. At the end, how did her flashbacks help define her character? Really I felt that she would be exactly the same character without the twist of her being her Mother's killer. That foreshadowed revelation had no impact on the character development. Now with all that whining I did quite enjoy all the battles. I loved finding out more about the Radiants. And I thoroughly enjoyed Sadeas getting what he deserved.

Noooo, I refuse to listen to anyone who tries to deny me multitudes of Lift chapters, a Lift PoV book, and hopefully an entire Lift spinoff series!

I will...patiently wait until March 4th... Oh wait you asked for Ideals for the Knight's Radiant, not ideals for fans of Sanderson!

I don't think the gesture has anything to do with actually listening but it probably refers to the fact that they refer to themselves as listeners.

I think at this point it is pretty widely accepted that Szeth's blade is an honor blade and not a Shardblade. However, with that said, assuming it functions similarly to a Shardblade, Szeth would have to voluntarily relinquish his bond to it or die in order for it to be "taken". As I recall in WoK Szeth explicitly states at one point that he cannot give up his blade.

I agree with the OP. Personally Shallan is my least favorite character and her backstory I have no interest in. I will still eagerly read WoR day of release but yeah I definitely would take literally any other character over Shallan for backstory.

I actually did interpret your comments as joking, sorry if I over-serious-ized it...that was probably my bad!

Side note that this reminded me of...I typically consider the pronunciation of a name in the audio book version to be the "right" way. So sometimes when a series changes pronunciation between books it drives me up the wall!

Peter it is really cool that you stop by and give us details like this, thank you. And Feather, your reactions were awesome thank you for sharing them!

A couple folks have asked if Amaram will recognize Kaladin. I ask, how can he not? Gaining his shards was likely the #1 most important day of Amaram's life. The details of that day must be etched in his memory like words carved in stone by a shard. If he actually does think of himself as honorable he likely still has qualms/thoughts about how he treated Kaladin. Also recall that Kaladin has the glyph branded on his forehead there for Amaram to see.

I see people commenting on Szeth not having a spren. We don't know that he does not. In fact until the WoR chapters we did not know that Jasnah had a spren. Edit: of course shortly after I posted that new chapters went up which address this indirectly...

Enjoyable story, very glad to have read it. However, it was pretty short and left me wanting more!

From the Lift interlude:

Being awesome is a role itself!

How did y'all reach the conclusion that Darkness = Nalan?

At one point near the end of the book the team discusses pushing on without knowing Steelheart's weakness or running: "Either we fight him here, or the Reckoners are finished," Prof said. "We'd spen the rest of our lives running..." Now obviously, Steelheart does not control the world, he cannot hunt down every single person. However, this quote clearly indicates that (at least the Reckoners believe that...) he can and will hunt down individuals who he feels are high enough priority to be worth his time/attention. The original comment that brought this up was do we or do we not have evidence that Steelheart would allow epics to leave his service? From the two quotes I have provided it is patently clear that 1) no he does not allow people to leave his service....and 2) he can and will hunt down some sub-set of those who do. Obviously you are free to read whatever you want into the world but me, I just stick with what the book tells us.

It isn't Serve me or leave or die...it is serve me or die. That is pretty un-ambiguous. I suspect you are just trying to force your opinion on the exiting information despite a rather poor fit.

"That concept - serve me or die - would become the foundation of his rule." I would say that indicates a lack of willingness to let epics leave his service.

I think they are related, Steelheart is perhaps her Father. Their ages are about right for this as Steelheart is just starting to gray and epics age slower than normal people so he could easily be in his 40s or 50s and she is around 18-20 in appearance.

Sorry to go off topic but actually sawdust is highly toxic. Air filtration is very important in woodworking. I know I know not on topic but still thought I would share.