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Thanks argent. I knew the idea sounded familiar! I'd forgotten about reading that thread. Hm, I'll give a bit more thought to implementation, but I do think a steelheart-centric list of questions could be done well while avoiding some of the pitfalls discussed before. As mentioned in the thread you link, a big party of this is publicity for 17S/Brandon's wider bibliography. If anyone from team Sanderson wants to weigh in with an opinion, it would be appreciated.

I think this is a great idea. I have (I think) arranged to be able to attend the 11/24 Atlanta-ish signing, and if I do make it then I will plan on doing this as well. So I'll be very willing to help compile the printable list, and if we're working from the same list then I'll need to update my answers before you print yours off. I agree that waiting until some of the other events have happened is the best idea so that we don't duplicate too much. My thought would be to put most of it together on the Saturday before my signing, and if I have time then I'll update through the week as more Q&A sets are posted. The other idea I had was to break up the questions into 2 or 3 sets. I'm guessing that most of the people who won't have a question of their own will be there for the Reckoners series specifically, and will not be as cosmere-aware. So having Steelheart-specific questions in one box, Cosmere-relevant questions in another, and general writing and/or other non-cosmere questions in a third would let them pick a question which they have a chance of caring about the answer. I thought about having separate boxes for all the series, but I suspect that extra level of choice would make it harder, not easier, for them to choose a question. Have you gotten any other responses from people wanting to collaborate on this at other events?

Just popping in to point out another humorous auto-correct.

This WoB pertains, at least to creating these imagined scenarios. Not so much to the underlying questions.

Re: Atlanta The signings I've been to here in the past have been in association with DragonCon (very crowded) or the Decatur Book Festival that same weekend (full but manageable). Since this one is in Newnan, not Atlanta proper, I am guessing it won't be as well attended as some others (right now it looks like I won't be able to make it). I suspect that an on-time arrival will be good enough, or 15 min early if you want to set up recordings, etc. EDIT: The B&N page for the event says you can buy a copy and get a wristband "as early as 9am on the 24th," so they seem to be expecting a good turnout including some early arrivals. The signing is scheduled for 3, so... 1hr early? More? I don't know. There will probably be a thread here for the event, and other sharders will say if/when they are going. It would be fun to meet up beforehand if you find some others that will also be there. Then again, the last signing I went to was for the WoK release, and his popularity has only increased since then. Also, this tour is for a YA series, so the fanbase that attend may be different. I can't be sure, but I would guess that will decrease the attendance slightly, since the nominal target audience would presumably need to get someone else to drive them the hour or more to Newnan. Has anyone noticed if the signing attendance at other locations has been affected by the featured series? (e.g. release of a WoT book vs SA vs Reckoners)

Just my two cents: If you have it, read it, but don't go out and buy it. It's fun enough, but I thought Mitosis was pretty sub-par compared to Brandon's usual work. I suspect that all the great reviews by sharders and my other friends inflated my expectations too much. It may also be because I listened to the audible version and generally prefer text. As I said in my goodreads review, it obviously didn't fit into the trilogy proper, and I don't feel like it adds much to the overall story.

So excited about Bands of Mourning. Two Wax and Wayne novels back-to-back! There are a lot of other fascinating bits in there, too (e.g. the planned cosmere "backstage" reveals mean he has to do Elantris sequels and probably Nightblood before moving forward into the contemporary Mistborn trilogy--What sort of connections have to be made there??) But the piece that caught my attention was Adamant (previously The Lurker). I absolutely love Defending Elysium, and I'm interested in more sci-fi from Brandon. Have we learned anything about this book before?

Wow, zas, that is a lot of great questions! Confirmations and answers of several things I thought would be RAFO, and also some insightful connections I hadn't thought of before. Well done! (Also thanks to those who contributed questions.) Of particular note, (or needing clarification): Odium's influence on people is necessarily via the Unmade "Odium is able to influence all 3 moving planets in the Rosharian system." Um, does that imply that there are non-moving planets? Or is it just the way it was said? We have me the "Ones Above" from Sixth Vapors is Scadrial (I'd guessed that wrong before.) Do we have any other confirmations for expanse/shardworld identities? The RAFO about Taravangian's spiritual/cognitive sliding scale is interesting. Sounds like we're on the right track at least.

For that matter, so is hiring assassins, I believe. Not that Stephen seems overly concerned with legality most of the time.

It's been a few months since I logged in (work has been quite busy) but it looks like I haven't missed an episode yet (unless this got completed in another thread?). Re: the monks vs awakened statue--I like the ideas so far. Chronos had some great suggestions. I like the idea of having two Awakened out of two different materials, and steel is an easy one for the cosmere. Other choices could be: granite, diamond, obsidian, aluminum/ralkalest (since that could have interesting immune-to-investiture effects, despite material weakness). One swordsman is good, and the other could be a grappling martial artist (e.g. Jiu Jitsu) or good with poisoned weapons such as daggers, blow darts, etc. As far as the monks go, there are clearly different levels of awesomeness depending on how high ranking they are. I'm having trouble figuring out what would actually be a balanced ratio. Re: the Ballad as gift for Brandon -- that's a sweet idea, and I'll support where I can. I do think shipping one or more bookplates, rather than the book itself, would be an easier way to do signatures.

I got the free Audible version (good for another month or so, if I read Brandon's post correctly) and listened to it. I think I would prefer the text version, but the narration was well done. (Also, if I misspell names, that's why.) I liked it. Not quite as much as the first one overall, but still very good. I just posted my review on Goodreads, but I'll go into spoilers here. I love Stephen's aspects and want to meet them all as the series continues. The exploration of his psychology is far and away the most interesting part of the books, even when the case he's working on is intriguing itself. My favorite part of Skin Deep was when Kalyani's husband showed up on the video call. Completely freaked Stephen out, and made me super curious about what that means. There were other developments (JC pushing him out of the car, Audrey learning crypto and writing in midair, etc) but that was the coolest one for me. I was also more interested in Sandra. After the first book I had decided I knew everything Brandon was willing to tell us about that backstory, but now I really want to know how Sandra knew about aspects. Did she have her own? And what about Stephen made her ditch him so completely? I had some ideas, but now I'm not so sure. Another thing I liked was the allusions to past cases. Teleporting cat? When can we learn more about that one? I did think the biotech puzzle was substantially less interesting than the time camera, and really didn't live up to the promise of "what the corpse knows." I was expecting some kind of ghost or psychic element to show up, but really it was about looking for a record Paanos had left, however unconventionally. And, as a biologist, I kept examining the various elements for plausibility. I know, not the best use of my time, but still. Overall, Brandon did a good job, but a few things stretched my credulity a bit too far.

I've been rereading Broken Eye, and there are a few things I have questions about. I thought I would find clues on the second read-through, but if they are there I haven't figured it out yet. Here is the one that's bugging me right now. Also, for what it's worth, I am liking the book even more on the second time through. That may be because I am seeing the foreshadowing and character undercurrents more, or simply because I've been skipping or skimming most of Gavin's sections to focus on the action at the Chromeria.

I love Hamster Fort and Crawdad's Iron Foe. Some other possibilities: Stone Shamanism: Means Ash On Mist Sixth of the Dusk: Tithed Fox Husks Tranquiline Halls: Quash Internal Ill

Rea Siluz Ironfist Epilogue

So, I finished Broken Eye in a 24-hour binge session. That was not my intention, but I simply couldn't get myself to stop. I have a spoiler-free review up on goodreads, but here are my thoughts: After the opening dozen chapters, it quiets down a lot. I obviously can't call it boring, since it sucked me into binge reading, but up until the halfway point it seemed inordinately slow. Not that nothing was happening, but the majority of our protags were being reactionary rather than working towards something, and by this point we know they all have some serious goals to be working for. BUT! Can I just say that the character twists in this one left me absolutely stunned? Shocked, even? I did a reread of the first two very recently, and the new revelations demand so much to be reinterpreted. I loved it in Blinding Knife when Weeks pulled off 3 plot twists in 3 chapters. This was similar, except that I liked the timing of them (in terms of position in the book) more in Blinding Knife. (For the record, I absolutely loved Black Prism and really liked Blinding Knife.) Vague musings that don't give anything away but can invite spoiler-tagged discussion later: Ironfist and Tremblefist are so incredibly awesome. Weeks hit this one out of the park. Twice. Zymun's storyline and character did not go at all where I thought they would. Andross's storyline also powerfully bucked my expectations. Karris' arc was pretty transparent, but I felt that her personal growth was shown well, and surprises weren't really the point in her sections. Rea Siluz? Anybody? Still pretty confused on that one. Oh, and the final epilogue. So good in the way it mirrors previous books, and in what it promises for the next one. Yet, there are some logistical problems. How did that happen!?

After WoR I resolved to avoid spoilers for the next book, so that I could enjoy it on its own merits. Time to break that resolve: 4 seconds I do want to chime in with Argent about the "child born without a face" line. That also struck me as a reference to the Unmade.

Other: She'll figure it out on her own. WoR gave us some evidence that she is actually clever, not just mouthy, so I think she'll piece together that mystery without anyone telling her. Also, what Patrick said: Amaram is not going on trial and won't be chatting with anyone from team Dalinar for a while.

I enjoyed it a lot. A few quibbles, but in general I want to see more of this world. I agree that the ending was a bit abrupt. I was expecting Dusk's training of the meekers to come back and bite him (i.e. Vathi) and raise the stakes. The Brandon avalanche definitely missed at least one piece there. Symbolically, that would also have his trapper traditions get in his own way, making the external conflict a bit more immediately personal rather than just angsty. Yes! Definitely agreed, though I also think that demands like this could actively hurt the story. One of my profound dislikes in books is when everything must be explicitly stated for the reader. If you bring everything up to the surface level, then you don't trust the reader to find any meaning on their own, and you destroy much of the talk-about-it-later value. This makes a lot of sense to me. In particular, my reading was that the threat of exploitation by the Ones Above opened Vathi & company's eyes to the dangers of what they were doing, not just to the danger they were in. It also provides incentive to the trappers to cooperate not just with the corporations but with each other, which fixes the one piece of the "old ways" that Sixth had serious issues with.

Just bought the e-book. I'll put my Sixth of the Dusk reactions in that thread, but thought the other three stories deserved some mention as well. In particular I loved how Howard's turned out--I think it's my favorite of the bunch. Mary's is also excellent, especially the way she depicts the encounter of disparate cultures. I think I would have enjoyed Dan's more if I hadn't listened to the brainstorming session. His ended up almost exactly like the outline they discussed, and I knew practically everything that was coming.

Well done! I got really excited when you introduced the jackhammer fabrial, but apparently it was not to be. That's fine. It would have been a very awkward weapon. Thanks for writing these up and hosting the discussions. I'm looking forward to the next one.

For what it's worth, I have interpreted the WoR quote about Skybreakers as referring to their propensity to start arguments. The two same-page quotes aren't necessarily consecutive, but it seems like they might be: The other WoR quote about the Skybreakers tends to support this reading. It says (essentially) that Nale took a really long time to acknowledge them, partly because of his own issues and partly because they were annoyingly fractious.

Kurk, I read Nin as referring to death in general, not to the fact that he was killed with shardblade.

I suspect they could tell the difference between surges being actively used, but not between two knights from different orders that were just holding stormlight.

Yes, if that is what "kind of blood" means. Now that I think it through, one additional co-dominant gene would give exactly 8 distinct blood types, compared to the 4 we have. [O, A, B, AB, C, AC, BC, ABC] So that is certainly possible, and if soulcasting blood is a common enough occurrence then they might reasonably have discovered those incompatibilities. Especially if an experienced soulcaster can sense cognitively what kind of blood she is dealing with. I guess I had attributed the idea (of destroying poison by soulcasting blood into blood) to Jasnah's quick problem solving, a spur-of-the-moment brilliance. But it makes just as much sense to assume that there was medical precedent to inspire what she did. And if the 8 types work as our 4 do, then O would indeed be the universal negative. In fact, our own Rh factor could be the 3rd gene. When you give your blood type, you say "A+" or "A-" because each of the 4 types has an Rh+ and Rh- version. So there really are 8 basic blood types on earth, with O- the universal donor. We don't need to posit additional genes after all. Not sure why I didn't think of that first. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction, Moogle!

The thing that interests me now is Jasnah's comment about essences: Eight kinds of blood on Roshar. I had been thinking about this in terms of our own ABO blood groups, which determine transfusion compatibility (an antibody-mediated quality). But there is no evidence to suggest that anyone has tried to transfuse blood, and in the absence of anticoagulants agglutination assays are impossible to perform. So nobody would have discovered an incompatibility if it exists. Even if they had, there is no reason to suspect that Jasnah checked Shallan's blood type before saving her life, and checking it after would only identify the blood she had already soulcast, not what was there originally. So either blood type genetics are strictly race-restricted (similar to hair color and other odd physical traits on Roshar, which appear to have a magical origin/component), or blood type doesn't mean "transfusion compatibility" the way I thought.(I suppose she could have intuited Shallan's blood type via Shadesmar, but that still doesn't address why "8 kinds of blood" is common knowledge.) So what is she talking about? It can't be a species thing (red, orange, and violet as seen in the prologue equals three, not eight) unless they are also counting insects, chulls, "piece of wet slime and a disgusting crab thing with seventeen legs."