EmagSamurai

Hmmmm.... Good point. But how does one become a surgebinder with no spren? My current (limited) understanding of lashings is that spren are responsible, or at least involved. An example being when Kaladin begins attaching rocks to things, he notes the spren at the interface between the rock and the wall. If that's true, then Szeth would have had to have some interaction with spren in order to learn about his surgebinding abilities. Perhaps I have a fundamental misunderstanding of how Szeth's lashings work?

I'm glad to have at least contributed something that hasn't come up in the last week or two Thanks for the link! My instinct is that Szeth's truthless status is something different as well, but this jumped out at me in my reading. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to offer a fitting solution where I had nothing else. I can certainly see where a failed bond due to a public untruth could be seen as a betrayel to the Shin. Their dealings with Vstim and Rysn (Interlude-4 RYSN) indicate they place a high priority on being truthful with others. In fact, to me it seemed the whole point of that chapter was to point out how much emphasis they place on honesty.

I'm still learning my way around here, so I apologize if this has been considered before. Is it possible that Szeth is truthless as a result of a failed bond with the same type of spren that Shallan bonded with? I'm wondering if the Shin are aware of the symbolheads, and their stone shamans bond with them in some sort of public ceremony or ritual. Perhaps Szeth was intended to do this, but when asked for his truth to complete the bond, he lied? I don't know if a failed bond preclude him from seeing the symbolheads any longer, as he doesn't mention them.

^ Good point, that!

Thank you both! I started WoT series years ago, but realized It was going to take many more years for the series to be finished, so I put it down. Now it's on my list to finish. With a series like that, I don't think it's unreasonable for someone to wait until it's finished before they start reading, and even then it can take a long time to finish.

Aha! Thanks. I'll take a look at that thread. A sticky for something like that might be nice as well. It's a little tough to get a grasp on everything initially, and reading two posts and then spending half an hour in the wiki can be both enjoyable and tedious at the same time! Thanks again.

I'm sure there is a better place for this, but the WoK is the book I'm most interested in at the moment. I've been reading posts on here for a couple weeks, and I'm continually running into terms, phrases, or events in the cosmere that I'm completely unfamiliar with. As an example, cosmere is a word that I don't remember running across in the books I've read so far. I've read the Mistborn trilogy, WoK twice, and I'm working on Elantris now, but I'm getting the feeling that there is a lot more being discussed here than what I'll find in the books. Did I just miss the memo on all of this somewhere ? How do I catch up without the inadvertent spoiler (I've run across a few of those already)? All this business about splinters and slivers has me scratching my head