dsplaisted

From the back cover of Words of Radiance:

 

 

It is the nature of the magic. A broken soul has cracks into which something else can be fit.  Surgebindings, the powers of creation themselves.  They can brace a broken soul; but they can also widen its fissures.

One would think that Shallan's broken soul would be the result of killing her mother (and then later father).  However, Shallan was already surgebinding- it's why her mother tried to kill her in the first place.

Is a broken soul a prerequisite for spren bonding/surgebinding?  Was Shallan's soul was already broken when her mother tried to kill her?

I think the picture she paints in chapter 45 in her discussion with Wit is interesting here.  In that picture Shallan and her family definitely aren't broken.

 

It is beautiful because it could have been. It should have been.

Why didn't it happen that way?  In her description:

 

Mother still lives

 

The people my mother knew . . . Dreder . . . never came to our home. Mother loves me.

It seems like her mother didn't love her in the first place (kind of obvious I guess if she was willing to kill her), and that's what caused Shallan's initial psychological trauma which allowed her to originally gain her powers.

I'm giving encryption instructions to the translators. We'll see if they actually do it.

 

The code is solvable and you all have the information required.

Having the same message in multiple languages encrypted with the same method should make it easier to crack the code.

When does the first foreign language translation of Words of Radiance come out?