Chrono

Dang that looks awesome! I really love how Kaladin looks more like in his twenties, yet he still has that worn out look: bags under the eyes, slight wrinkles, etc. It makes him look so much more lifelike. I had never seen the second cover. Um, uh... I just won't say anything. Michael Whelan is a great artist, but those first two drafts... O.o. But, yes, a remarkable improvement! Congrats to all those who contributed to the beautiful cover! You did a smashing job, and I'm more excited than ever to get my shiny copy on March 4th. Right after I take the ACT. A welcome break from that ordeal.

My feelings about Amaram are complex, as is the moral dilemma he's in. I voted that he is okay, although I'd like to clarify. First of all, I really hate what he did to Kaladin and his men. In fact, I nearly cried when I read that section of the book. I wanted him dead, preferably by Kaladin's hand. But now, I'm mostly curious. Why does the "honorable" lighteyes decide to slaughter four men and send the man who is his savior into slavery? It again comes down to that basic phrase: Journey before Destination. Amaram is clearly setting his destination above the journey, as most lighteyes do. In his mind, he's trying to do the right thing. However, Amaram gets into some deep doo doo here, as he apparently decides that murder is the best option. He tries to rationalize it by saying "But I can use the Plate and Blade for the most good." And maybe he can. In fact, he probably has. That's the difficult part: Amaram may have saved more lives by taking the blade than giving it to Kaladin's men. However, does this justify slaughtering four men in cold blood? I don't think so. These are four men who have done nothing wrong, and Amaram knows it. He feels guilt, if only for a split second. It's also suggested that he had to be guided to this decision by Restares. Does this guilt and pressure acquit him? No. In the end, after he'd weighed the odds for hours, he decides that killing Kaladin's men is still the best option. No matter what guilt he feels about it, he still did it. That itself is unforgivable. However, I'm very much a "walk in someone's shoes" type of person. In the end, we'd have to see the dilemma from Amaram's own eyes to see whether he deserves mercy or not. But for now, I peg him as the Well-Intentioned Extremist. EDIT: Wow, hello there, wall of text. Whoops.

Yeah. I was hesitant about posting that theory, but it was the only one I could think of to explain. The only thing that I'm positive of is that Jezrien is probably not the Stormfather. Sigzil mentions that the Vorin peoples refer to Jezrien as the Stormfather, but that could just be another doctrine kerfuffle that happened as a result of the Hiereocracy. I'm banking on the Stormfather either being a powerful spren or a Splinter of Honor. To be honest, though, I'm waiting for Word of Brandon on this one.

I thought that Jezrien was the Stormfather as well, but I highly doubt it now. I'm willing to guess that the face that Kaladin saw -- The Stormfather -- was a fragment of Honor left over from his Splintering, similar to how Preservation left the mists even though his mind was kabloomers. From the theory that Darkness is Nalan and Baxil's Mistress is Shalash, the Heralds seem to be rather fixed in the Physical Realm, just like regular humans. We have no idea what Jezrien is up to, but if we can run off of those two as a guide, he's probably still wandering around, doing crazy stuff.

I rejoiced exceedingly when I saw that. It confirmed that I actually pronounced something correct in the Cosmere for once in my life!

Ah, don't feel bad. I'm from the south, so I already have a tendency to pronounce things weird. Some words I'll say with something that others might describe as a thick American accent, and other things I say with a much foreigner feel to it, ie. Rai-oh-den instead of Ray-oh-den. It's just my weird quirk.

I didn't know that Jasnah was pronounced with a "y". Dang it, now I'll have five more names to relearn. Humorous story: Due to my habit of reading too fast for my brain to process, I thought that Gavilar was spelled Galivar. Unfortunately, I was reading the book aloud to my mother and actually looked at the name clearly when I read it. My brain shut down for five minutes as I tried to reason through what just happened. My list of pronunciations: Kaladin: KAL-a-din (similar to Aladdin, but with more stress on the first syllable.) Shallan: Shall (as in "shall we?")- en Jah Keved: Jah Ke-VED (I pronounce all Js with a hard sound, ie. f-JOR-den. I know this is incorrect, but my brain is stupid) Szeth: This one was a doozy. I settled on a tzzz sound. Or, if I'm lazy, hard Z sound. So, Zeth. Aimia: Ay-me-uh Sadeas: Say-de-us Rock's impossible name: Noo-moo-hoo-koo-mah-key-ah-key-ay-uh-loo-man-or. Jasnah: Jazz-nuh. Now that I know that most of these are incorrect, I shall spend a day in mourning, then try and memorize the new pronunciations.

With regards to permanent bridges, in the book it seemed that there never was a problem with them being, well... not permanent. Kaladin notes once, in all of his bridge run narratives, that a permanent bridge is blown out, but other than that, there is no big problem mentioned. Adolin and Sadeas both stress that the warcamps are completely safe: the Parshendi rarely attack the Alethi side any more, and acts of sabotage are so infrequent that it'd be a waste of time and money to soulcast a new permanent bridge. Most likely, the reason the Highprinces don't bother with permanent permanent bridges is that it'd just be too much work for too little hassle. I also agree with you, Inkthinker, that it'd be a lot of money. There is, after all, the talk in one of Dalinar's beginning chapters about how Soulcasters cost tons of money and how highprinces often fall behind on their fees. I wouldn't be surprised if one of the more financially deficit highprinces is accumulating massive debt just from Soulcasting fees alone.

I don't know why, but I always thought that the Stoneward Radiant was using a fabrial. Huh. Anyway, I think Natans is right- if mankind were to use the sentient spren in fabrials, I think all of them would just give up on humanity altogether and refuse to bond with humans. Although, since Jasnah in the new Words of Radiance Chapters suggests that Ivory -- her spren -- is an outlier and most spren wouldn't bother to bond with a human, I might be completely wrong. It'll be very interesting indeed to see how sentient spren interact with each other. I could easily see Syl getting into an argument with another unbonded spren about how "reckless and wild" she was in bonding with Kaladin. Not to mention that Shallan and Jasnah's spren are both going to be in considerably close proximity with Syl and Kaladin.

This model is great! I honestly imagined the bridge as more curved, but now that I think about it, your design makes a lot more sense. Although, my question is, how does a bridge crew actually push a bridge across a chasm? The only way I could think was that most of the men on the sides would push while the guys in the middle and back would push down on the back of the bridge so that it doesn't topple over. Any ideas?

The main thing that I was interested in gender roles was the different food that the genders ate. Nearly everything else I was familiar with: dining separation, different ideas about modesty, intellectual female genders roles, etc. However, the fact that the food is different is a very interesting twist. I think I'd have to become a heretic just to eat my salty food.

The problem I have with Szeth writing the message on the wall is twofold. 1. If he was in Dalinar's room, why on earth did he not just kill him? Now, granted, Szeth is under some huge emotional and moral strain at this point. Heck, in his last chapter in tWoK, he nearly stops Mr. T from killing that poor kid in the secret hospital. But still, at this point, I think that he would still kill Dalinar instead of writing some cryptic message on the wall. I admit, this argument is weak. Edit: And it's been ninja'd. Dangit. 2. When Dalinar tells Adolin about Gavilar's final words, he mentions that Gavilar wrote them; he made no mention of glyphs, which are barely acceptable for a man to write. This implies that Szeth is perfectly fluent in written Alethi (which is why it was so controversial for Dalinar and co. to discover the message). Szeth would probably not bother to write in glyphs, and if he did, he would most certainly get them perfect instead of sloppily written.

It's stated in the first Szeth Interlude. I always figured that the baldness and huge eyes meant that they looked like babies. Because, you know, babies have no hair. Either way, it does seem an odd way to describe a child. Maybe the rest of Roshar watches too much Caillou and assumes that kids all look like that.

If the end of tWoK where Jasnah saves Shallan from Shadesmar is anything to go by, your physical body is left behind when you go to Shadesmar. I think of it as rather similar to going to the Spirit World in Avatar: The Last Airbender. Your body is still here in the physical world, but your spirit or consciousness is wandering around Shadesmar or what have you. Which makes me think: if Gaz did go into Shadesmar and not come out, would his body die? Or would he be a vegetable? Either way, he's pretty much dead and gone. I still think that Gaz is lurking around somewhere, but not necessarily in a bridge crew. He could have tried to escape the camp once he realized that his debts weren't forgiven, and gotten killed or something when people tried to find him. Or he could have been jacked into a bridge crew and made to run the deathpoint, then died.

There is another quote in Way of Kings that suggests that Urithiru is to the west. However, it has been theorized on other threads that this quote could be mistranslated. I'm not sure whether the Shattered Plains is Urithiru, but I'm willing to guess that finding Urithiru is not going to be that simple. Haha, F-bomb! I'm really hoping that we figure out what happened to the Shattered Plains sometime soon.

Well, apparently Shallash is Jezrien's daughter (can't find source), so either they became Heralds after she was conceived, or Jezrien can have kids and still be a Herald.

Primary power: time manipulation. Specifically, I can compress or stretch time, similar to cadmium or bendalloy in Alloy of Law. However, I'm not limited at all by this, so I could theoretically blink and end up stopping time or fast forwarding hundreds of years. My max range for this power is fifty feet around me, so I could probably bring a whole room with me, but definitely not the entire planet. I'd be nearly invincible, because I can just pause time and walk around the attack. Of course, this doesn't work when I'm startled, so I'd have to know that the attack was coming. Secondary power: manipulation of my age. Since it would suck if I decided to compress time to fast forward to the future and I aged accordingly, this way I would be forever young (cue the song...). I can't de-age to heal from wounds or injuries, though. It's almost purely for cosmetic and comfort purposes. No arthritis or osteoporosis, yay! Weakness: My powers vanish when I come into proximity with a broken clock. The perception of "time" is broken, so my powers disappear. My powers will weaken if the clock is merely faster or slower than actual time. How much I will weaken depends on how off the clock is: being off by only a few seconds or minutes is negligible, while being off by hours is very bad. Cheesy name: Timeshift Villainous Tendencies: Because of my ability to never grow old, I would make old people's lives suck. This would extend to killing them, making them live in slums, and just being plain bratty to them. Also, I would troll people by making them age rapidly and de-aging myself, then laughing at them. I would also insist that clocks be established in every home, to remind people of my power. Costume would be a dark blue longcoat with brown leather boots. I'd have a clock pendant on a gold chain, used to tell the time from my perspective. Given my weakness, it would have to function perfectly and be precisely on time.

Taln is actually speculated to be alive, because his Shardblade works differently from a normal one. As Taln is a herald, and his blade does not vanish at the end of TWoK, it's pretty much confirmed that he's alive. Whether he's in a lucid state of mind is a whole 'nother story.

Not only does Dalinar feel sickened at the deaths of the Parshendi, he also gives ideas about how to stop or compress the length the war. For instance, he suggests that they begin communications and negotiations with the Parshendi to determine their motive for murdering Gavilar. (Chapter 58, "The Journey", pg. 825) He also seems to be the highprince most willing to try and end the war through negotiation. The other highprinces really just care about the gemhearts and the massive wealth they gain from them; the War of Vengeance has lost the "vengeance" part in their eyes. Dalinar not only seems to be the only highprince who actually cares about winning and ending the war, he's the only one that is looking for peaceful ways to end it.

It's all a giant conspiracy. The bunnies and hot women secretly live underground and send false data back to Earth to hide their existence. This sort of stuff has been going on since the Apollo Invasion.

Here are some of my things I definitely want to see. 1. Shallan backstory. All of it. She was one of my favorite characters and I want to see what happened to her in the past. 2. The inevitable confrontation with Kaladin and Amaram. I'm willing to be surprised on what the outcome is. 3. The even more inevitable confrontation between Kaladin and Szeth. Same as 2. 4. More Shadesmar, more Ghostbloods, and more Taravangian. 5. Reading Lift's Interlude again. It was awesome.

If Adolin died in this book, it'd stink too much of Elantris and the whole "Wo is me, I'm a widow before I got married" subplot with Sarene. Brandon's been really good at avoiding repeats of his plot points so far as I've been able to tell. I really think he wouldn't do that with WoR.

I generally forgo New Year's Resolutions, but this one seems all right. My numerous wishes: 1. The WoR release date gets pushed up (yeah right). 2. Kaladin faces Szeth in an epic duel... As for the outcome, I'm willing to be surprised. 3. Shallan learns more about those mystifying Cryptics and becomes an epic Soulcaster. 4. We learn more about Darkness. As for the resolution, I solemnly resolve to receive a copy at some time and not obsess over it. School will probably be bonkers at that time, and I need to focus more on the schoolwork and projects. Then I will binge on weekends!

Holy smokes, that's amazing! Exactly how I pictured Shallan. I haven't seen any Michael Whelan paintings besides the covers for The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance, so this floored me. Beautiful. I really hope more stuff like this gets put into Stormlight books in the future. I was going to buy the hardcover anyway, but this just triple sold me.

Looking through the available men in the Cosmere... Raoden: He's very noble and a great optimist, but I think I'd go crazy if I had to be with him for a while. Probably because I'd never be able to sleep from him glowing all the time. And I love sleep. Kelsier: He's a bit too old and a bit too sociopathic for me. But a great sense of humor! Elend: Probably my second choice, if only for the fact that he's intellectual and has a great sense of humor. I'd love to snark battle with Elend and discuss philosophy. However, I'd probably get tired of him loafing in the library all day. Vasher: Vasher's a great guy, but I'm not a huge fan of grumpy people. He'd probably scare me to death or something. Lightsong: Lightsong would be really fun to be with, but I think I'd get really tired of his flippancy. It'd be fun to just hang out together as friends or something and make fun of all the gods together. And eat grapes. Susebron: Strangely enough, I really like Seb. He's innocent and charming, and apparently very attractive. Probably one of my first choices, if only because I really loved the Susebron/Siri relationship in Warbreaker. So sweet! Kaladin: Another first choice, if only because he's also extremely noble and honorable, but also struggling with depression. I think we'd bond together rather well, as I have some empathy for his situation. Again though, Kaladin has his downside: he tends to be very critical of Lighteyes and falls into depressive episodes rather quickly. Oh well. I guess no man is perfect. So, to rank them: 1. Kaladin 2. Susebron 3. Elend EDIT: Just realized I posted an entire wall of text... *Sigh* Sorry, guys...