Greywatch

And judging by Dalinar's reaction to meeting his second son, Renarin, which is night and day with Adolin's birth scene, I don't think this was Brandon's misstep, at all. Every time Adolin and Renarin appear in Dalinar's flashbacks, they were contrasted, and this is one of those comparisons. I don't understand your criticism at all.

Yeah, I think they could end up working well together. In my mind, it's mostly a matter of... will there be enough page time to devote to seeing their working relationship evolve? Based on how many "small" moments the characters had to breathe in OB, I fear there might not be any opportunity for them to interact much if their (ever-growing) duties keep them in separate spheres. As for why I, at least, am convinced Jasnah is not interested in romance itself, I think Feather's post on it had the best explanation with backups, especially the first section:

Navani is not vapid... On the contrary, she's clearly very intelligent and is a driving force for science and scholarship in her domain.

Vasher is Zahel, and Vivenna is Azure.

And now you know that Vasher and Vivenna are in Oathbringer as well?

I really dislike any time a woman character is mean or insulting to a male character, which then is interpreted as "she's being flirtatious!" This happens in real life all the time when any time a woman engages with a man, someone can twist it to mean "she's interested!" I think when she snapped at Kaladin, that was not an indication that she was being flirtatious or bantering, but a woman being genuinely fed up with something she genuinely sees as a bad or useless idea. Her threshold for bad ideas is very low, and I don't think it's indicative that Kaladin is in any way special to her. Also being that Kaladin and Shallan are of a similar age, I doubt her appreciating Kaladin's sarcasm and verve is anything more than that.

There's nothing inherently wasteful in giving Kaladin a foil. I think Moash as a character achieved what he was supposed to - someone who shows us what Kaladin could have been had he decided not choose to let go of his hatred, as well as giving Odium's side a serious contender as a human character. I'm really interested to see what happens with Moash next, as it seems he's going to be given a lot of powerups.

I actually didn't have any problem with how Jasnah acted towards Shallan. More than that, if her ward, who had eagerly and enthusiastically agreed to an engagement with Jasnah's own younger cousin, who then started seeming interested in another man while not giving any indication of breaking off the engagement, I'd be concerned, too. If I had been in Jasnah's place and Adolin was my little cousin, I probably would've been harsher than Jasnah ended up being. This is Jasnah's own family who was being affected by how Shallan was behaving, and at the time, I'd taken it for granted that Jasnah feels responsible for Shallan's behaviour.

I did like Malata - counting Diagrammists as antagonists here - but I also wish we knew more about her, her wants, her motivations, what she cares about. I've spent a lot of time anticipating the Releasers, I want to know more!

Note that I didn't say payoff. I said resolution, and I stand by it.

The ends of Sanderson's novels have been called avalanches, or Sanderlanches, for a good few years now. That fanlingo prrrrobably won't be changing any time soon.

I deeply disagree that hating lighteyes has to be a character flaw. If Kaladin actually lost his dislike of the caste system and the kind of lighteyes who use their position to step on darkeyes, I'd lose a lot of respect for the writing. Kaladin's response to lighteyes is completely understandable, and it's both significant and correct that Kaladin only gives his trust and respect to lighteyes who've proven that they're worthwhile (ie. basically only the Kholins). I'm totally with you. Adolin is not a main character, and like his brother Renarin, benefits from a little closer reading and ability to connect the dots on the part of the reader. Adolin is a straightforward guy who isn't supposed to be a mystery to the reader, but since he gets less screentime, there's more to his character if you dig deeper, and less to his character if you don't. Adolin's whole character is teetering on the edge of a knife, deeply connected to his father's arc. So much of his character is bound up in being compared to his father and what Dalinar thinks of him, it informs so much of his character. There's a reason the resolution of the Sadeas murder arc in OB wasn't in the murder becoming public knowledge, but in telling Dalinar and what Dalinar's reaction.

We still have the Listeners, I expect, because there was a segment of the parsh population that were not bonded to voidspren/Ba-Ado-Mishram, and thus were left completely unaltered by the event that turned all the other parsh people into the parshmen we see in WoK and WoR.

I don't agree. While those critiques of her have merit, they aren't about her leadership ability - they're about her personality while teaching. I do think she has some things to learn as new leader of a powerful nation, but her having those personality traits does not mean she's going to be a failure. In my opinion, she's already a lot farther than Elhokar in some ways: she believes in herself, she's not easily cowed and won't back down when challenged, she's willing and able to seriously consider other people's views when other people present their concerns, she explains herself and is willing to be held accountable, she's not narrow-minded and thinks about problems from all angles... She might not enjoy being a monarch as much as she is so clearly satisfied by being a scholar, but perhaps we'll see more of that in SA4.

I believe their point is that what exactly is happening with the Stormfather is sketchy and hard to define, almost fuzzy...

Oh, okay, awesome. Yeah, I wish we knew any of their oaths or ideals, so I think it's still too hard to say, but them being out and about with Windrunners on the front lines bodes well for this idea.

Oh, for real? Do you have a chapter/WoB, I wanna go see.

Being that we haven't seen literally anything of them yet, and how the Heralds don't necessarily line up that well with the Orders who followed them, I don't disbelieve you, but there's a serious lack of evidence. From the WoR epigraphs below: In terms of numbers, we only see comments on the the amount of people associated with the Windrunners. Stonewards might have similar personalities to Taln, but those virtues aren't exclusive to soldiers, and we don't see any comment on their numbers or purpose. They might turn out to be like that in future books when we see more of them, but just based on what we've actually seen, I can't agree or disagree yet.

Yeah. Based on every single interaction where Adolin learns something new about Shallan - no matter what part of Shallan it comes from - he's always liked it, and seems to find every bit of her amazing. So yeah. I take it as an indication they have the right foundation going forward even though they have struggles coming up ahead, rather than proof they're destined to fail. Same text, different reading.

I'm not saying they shouldn't be recruiting at all, but what I am saying is that one, the Windrunners seem to be the Order most helpful to the military problem. Windrunners seem the ones most focused on fighting the enemy, and also one of the two Orders who can fly. So it's also in line with your point that they also are the ones who are recruiting the most, but it's also starting to seem like that they might be the only Order who recruits like this. Using other examples - the other Orders are being built but most more slowly, and it's not the humans' fault at all. Elsecallers? Ivory is the only one who broke away from the inkspren, against his people's wishes. Can the humans force the other resistant inkspren to accept them? No. What about the Dustbringers? It seems like the ashspren don't want to be aligned with the other Radiants at all - maybe recruiting more of the Dustbringers would only be building up their enemies. Willshapers? The Reachers don't seem all that interested in creating more Knights. Cultivationspren? They decided to send one. The Skybreakers are still going strong, but even though they're taught to fight and can fly, they aren't the soldiers of the Knights Radiant, they're the police - and up until again, very recently, they were going around killing any Knights of other Orders who bonded spren. How could our guys recruit them when that was happening? It goes on and on - this is a combination of many different issues on why the Radiants have been so slow to come back this time and why it isn't their fault. I also believe that the Windrunners are more the soldier than any other Order, and the other Radiants might join the fight but simply with fewer people and with different methods. I expect we are definitely going to see more Radiants coming up in the next few, but it's also unfair to expect that all Orders should operate like the Windrunners, when we've had every indication that it's normal they should be built up the most.

@Watchcry A reminder that instead of double-posting, you edit and use the multi-quote function.

Another thing is that at the point they are now, they aren't focusing on recruiting from the general populace (perhaps Windrunners excepted?). We don't know if it even works that way for other Orders; people used to go to Urithiru and just join the Knights Radiant, but we have no idea how that process even worked. Right now, our main characters are in a position where they know that spren are bonding with people out there, somewhere, and are focused on bringing existing Knights Radiant together. Even that much was extremely difficult/impossible because Nale had been killing them all up until very recently. I also don't necessarily think they should be focusing on recruiting - too much, too fast. Recruiting people isn't the only way they can do their jobs of defeating Odium, and I doubt it'd be viable to expect them to tackle the Desolation and lead dozens/hundreds of people suddenly at once, complete with training and mediating issues and re-inventing Knight Radiant society wholecloth again.

The Windrunners seem to have had lots of squires in past times, and so recruiting might be something that Windrunners favoured more than anyone else. The other characters in different Orders seem to be tackling the problem - Odium and the new Desolation - in ways that fit their goals, motivations, and preferred methods. I think we have such limited ideas of what the purpose of each Order used to be to say that only one guy is doing it "right".

Split the topic from the non-spoiler Stormlight forum - if anyone wants to continue this discussion with all OB spoilers, you can do it here.