Purelake Earthquake

No good in water Centipedes are like fantasy authors.

They follow the rules strictly, but the end result doesn't always match the original intent. The Reckoners are like french toast.

Both are mass murderers. Electrons are like telemarketers.

It's only awkward during the middle of a conversation. Styrofoam packaging is like global thermonuclear war.

Woah, you're reading way too far into this. This isn't Kaladin's character arc for the book, this is just Kaladin being in a crappy situation and being a little upset about it. In book 1 Kaladin is dealing with external problems, but there's this underlying bitterness to him that isn't really evident because of his circumstances. Then in book 2 once he's conquered the external conflict he can't progress until he's solved this internal conflict with his bitterness and hate (not the depression it's a flaw vs handicap situation). Now in book 3 external problems are thrown at him once again only without the underlying conflicts he solved in book 2. Sanderson's not an idiot, he's not going to repeat the same arc in every book. Him doing that doesn't seem like a realistic worry at all. This is just one chapter and you can't really project the whole book from that. I think hitting the depression so early on in this chapter works in a way for the narrative to show where everyone was coming from in the previous books. We've seen this before in the WoR where it takes a few chapters that are more similar to the way the characters were in the WoK. It starts with some chapters of Kaladin happy with the bridgecrew and transitioning to the new way of life before it becomes evident that some of his traits that made him good in WoK didn't suit him so well in WoR and he starts going down a bad path. We also see Shallan, lighthearted and very dependent on Jasnah, doing scholarly things--she'd finally become her ward in truth and she acts similar to how she acted in WoK, only without the underlying deception that made it interesting. Then, bam, Jasnah dies and Shallan has to figure out things on her own. (Ninja'd a little talking about those Shallan chapters). (I suspect these kinds of sequences exist as a result of making the books more self-contained, without feeling too discontiguous. It wants to show us where the characters came from, so we can appreciate the full arc and tone in that book.) With this chapter we see Kaladin gloomy, this is probably to call back to his previous state so it can be contrasted with his arc for the rest of the book. He's going back to the core of where all his problems started, and in that way, he can face them and overcome them. We might see a similar structure with Shallan in this book too (maybe she'll be complying with the ghostbloods for a while, but move to actively fighting against them, something like that). It was a high priority for him, it being the reason he went back there in the first place, but more important at the moment was checking for voidbringers and seeing what's left of the town. He can't just go charging in to the thick of things, he needs to conduct a little investigation so he can see what's happened to the town. Plus, he probably doesn't want to confront the fate of his parents if they didn't make it. He's probably pushed those thoughts into the back of his mind so that he CAN function. People do that kind of thing all the time when their anxious or scared about something. Really? First off the spheres are only really useful for people who can use the stormlight. Also, it's a fortune, but they're dealing with several fortunes at Urithiru. Was Dalinar just supposed to say, "Sorry Kaladin, I won't give you the resources you need to check on your home town when a disaster is about to strike even though you're one of the few people who can make good use of those resources and you just helped save all our lives. I don't care about your parents, let them die." Then we REALLY would be dealing with an emo Kaladin again, plus a Dalinar who was a complete jerk. Really, the choice to visit his parents was Kaladin's to make and Dalinar shouldn't go about infringing upon that. I'm confused as to where this idea is even coming from. Why would surviving guardsman just be randomly attacking anyone that comes by, there's no real incentive there. And Kaladin doesn't have a lot of reason to believe they would, he describes them as the first hopeful sign he'd seen. Also,where are you getting the idea that Kaldain IS "too depressed to defend himself", I'm not getting that anywhere in the text. In fact, it says that he approaches the group warily. He's a trained soldier, if he sees them try anything he'll pull out Syl. They're expecting some unarmed darkeyes, not a skilled radiant. If they were to try to kill him they wouldn't need to be so subtle about it, since they wouldn't expect any meaningful resistant. And they don't seem hostile at all, for Kaladin to act as if they were planning to ambush him would seem incredibly paranoid. However, Kaladin is trying to scope things out. Since he's found survivors he wants to find out what's going on, going with them is the best way to do that. It seems to me like you're projecting your fears of another emo Kaladin book onto this chapter because there is some depression and finding more of it that isn't really there. I think if you give it the benefit of the doubt you'll find that there's not much brooding emo Kaladin, and it's more of him responding to things turning out really bad. To respond a little to what maxal said, yeah, the five day thing does seem a little odd. But, the whole Urithiru sequence of WoR did seem a little rushed, I'm not quite clear on everything that happened then. The purpose of that kind of section is to give us a glimpse of the new status quo for the coming book now that the main conflict has been resolved. I'm not sure on everyone's motivations during that time, I could try and come up with some explanations on why it had to take that long for Kaladin to leave, but I'm sure we'll get all the details we need when they recap on those days during Oathbringer. I don't know where the whole strong suspicion of Kaladin being denounced and imprisoned again is coming from. I don't even know how you can have any sort of strong suspicion about those kind of specific events just based on a preview chapter and one detail from the resolution of the previous book. This feels more like more of reading your own narrative between the lines. But, I expect this will turn out like the Shallan thing you mentioned.

Both tend to fill up with pointless garbage. Education and owls are a lot alike.

Reading books late into the night. Breaking copyright law.

I haven't seen any WoBs on this. I looked it up on theoryland, and found a couple people asking about it, but he RAFO'd it each time. It seems like he's trying to keep this topic up for debate. I'm not talking about the magic forcing his actions so much as it manipulating him in addition to his culture. I don't think his character under those circumstances is any less interesting than the one without magical influence, and I think it creates potential for more interesting character later on in the series. But, the real point of my post was just to see if everyone thinks it is just culture involved. The fandom here on the forums seems to have pretty much universally accepted the idea that there's just cultural influence and no magic, whereas in the text itself, I don't see that as much. So, I wanted to know if I really am the only one who sees this as a good possibility, or even a reasonable possibility. EDIT: didn't see the other post yet I'm certainly not denying that this has a significant influence, it set him off in that direction. I just don't think he could have continued such a path for so long without some sort of additional force manipulating him.

Am I the only one who thinks there might be more forces at play compelling Szeth than just the cultural/religious ones? I know when Brandon was talking about the book back when in the earlier versions he said that the inspiration behind Szeth was something like 'a good man forced to kill' (I might be able to dredge up a quote on this, but that's the gist) It wasn't 'a decent man strongly persuaded to kill'. Granted, this was the earlier versions, and a lot changed between then and now. But, being as it was his core idea for Szeth, I don't think it would have changed too much, maybe moving somewhere between the two ideas instead of going all the way to the latter. Anyway, I don't think we can rule out an additional magical influence or some other force until we figure out a little more of what the heck is going on in Shinovar right now, as well as Roshar in general. There's so much we don't know.

Oops, that's supposed to say Additional circles. What I meant was if you used limits to make a one-dimensional triangle, using slightly different definitions for how it's shrinking, could you come up with any different sorts of Rithmatic circles. I don't think you can though, at least not with any methods I could come up with. You can make a five point or a regular four point from this (another way to do the same ones with regular triangles), but those would violate the non obtuse rule anyway. So I don't think there's anything new that can be done here.

Ah, that makes sense. It looks like that solution works. I was starting to consider that sort of a scenario before, but I moved on too early. Merging the points along those parameters I see it approaches a circle with A/B and the midpoints as a diameter with a removable discontinuity where they actually meet. With that discrepancy resolved, I'd say that there's a quite good chance of this being correct. Though, I still think it shouldn't have taken long for Rithmatic scholars to try this out for themselves. Also, could you exploit limits like this to come up with some addition circles? I tried, but haven't come up with anything conclusive yet.

I've done a lot of the geometry for this too, but came to some different conclusions. I don't think a two-pointer would work, if my theory is correct. Here's why, but it requires a big theoretical geometry warning as well: That said, there is still some possibility for my theory. My personal reasoning regarding all this is that merging doesn't work, i.e. the nine points have to be distinct. The Rithmatic scholars probably thought about this theory and tried merging, but it didn't work. I took the fact that they hadn't come up with five or eight point circles as evidence that they don't work. The illustration on nine-pointers in the book mentions they can't be obtuse, but it doesn't mention, them being right triangles, isosceles, or equilateral, all of which cause merging. In fact I don't know why it says they can't be obtuse, those don't cause any merging, you just have to extend the lines of the triangle passed the vertices to get some of the H points.

The thing to remember is that the flashback character of a book isn't the same as the main character of a book. Sanderson's even said that it's possible for a character to be dead in their flashback book. If we look at whose got the most screen time so far, the first four major characters are Kaladin, Shallan, Dalinar, then Adolin (who I don't think is getting a flashback book ever). They have 292k, 213k, 117k, and 51k words. That's a fairly significant gap between each character. So, why do people focus on Kaladin? It's because Sanderson put the focus there first. I'd say that Kaldain is the main character of the series so far, probably for the duration first five book arc. He could get killed off or phased out soon, but it looks like he still has a lot of character arc left to go on. Look at how it's split up in each book. In WoK, Kaladin's book, he is far and away the focus of the story, with almost twice as much screen time as the second most common character, Dalinar. Then Shallan get's about 75% as much screen time as Dalinar. Her viewpooints are really like a side-story that doesn't interact with the main plot in the shattered plains. Then in WoR when it's Shallan's turn, she has to split the focus with Kaladin. She just barely gets more than Kaladin. Without her flashbacks the difference was basically negligible. Then Dalinar just pops in enough so we don't forget about him. In fact out of the ten parts from both books Kaladin's the only character who's been in each and every one. While there is a large cast of characters who all get large amounts of screen time Kaladin still stands out as the most major character. A story like this one, I think, just wouldn't work without someone who can be a clear protagonist. It's not like Mistborn where it seemed like Vin got almost every viewpoint, but he clearly gets more than anybody else. Plus, there's an idea in storytelling that you introduce things in order of importance. Kaladin got to be the main focus of the first book, so people are going to naturally expect more from him in the future. Tl:dr Kaladin is the main character of this arc. Numbers from here: http://coppermind.net/wiki/The_Stormlight_Archive/Statistical_analysis

What discreet and discrete are spelled differently?! I didn't know that. My whole life is a lie.

This was me with WoR. I read it in any class where I wouldn't get yelled at (it's a hard book to read discretely). I was a senior in highschool at the time, so I didn't care about doing well in any of my classes.

I think Odium and Autonomy are the two most popular theories. I probably lean toward the Autonomy. My view on the name Trell is that it comes from mythology, which probably traces back to whatever was going on in Yolen. Trell could just be another name for Bavadin or something. I don't know where White Sand goes on the timeline, but I can look at everything. Trellagism predates the Final Empire, the only book we have older than Mistborn is Elantris. It could predate that too, it's been at least 1000 years. Right now Era 2 and SA are the latest books in the series (discounting novellas). SoS takes place between SA 5 and 6. Hoid mentions Bavadin in the WoK letter, talking as if he is still alive and a threat. The letter seems to be written around the same time as the book. So I doubt that Bavadin's power has been usurped in such a short time. Trell is just what Miles talks about and what they assume the power to be coming from at the end. But that term has been around for a lot longer than we've seen Bavadin talked about, so it's probably more likely that if they are seperate Trell would have been the first Shardholder and then Bavadin. Oh, we may be able to assume that WS is before SA because we see a character from it appearing in the WoK interlude with the 17th Shard, the other members are appearing after their books. Anyway, Trell is a mythological name, I don't see why it has to be a different entity than Bavadin, no other Shards go by their own names on planet. I think a lot of this has to do with the goings on with Dragonsteel and the shattering, which we can't accurately predict. Maybe all the shards were held by different people on Yolen before going off planet.

I've got a somewhat similar experience to yours. A long time back, probably when Alcatraz vs the Evil Librarians came out, I would have been around the target age group for it, maybe a little older. When my mom would go to the library she would sometimes pick up a bunch of books that she thought I might like, this was one of them. I looked at the cover and blurb, maybe the first page as well, and thought, this book looks stupid, I bet this guy thinks he's soo funny, so I let it go back to the library unread. (At the time I was really fed up with the wacky, "Oh, I'm so random" humor, and I didn't want to read any books that I thought were too young for me). As the years progressed I forgot about that experience. Flash forward to a few years in high school, I started reading the Wheel of Time, which was my gateway drug into a whole world of fantasy books. I believe I started late freshmen year and finished it late junior year. Anyway, when I was about halfway through the series, I heard that the guy who was writing the last books wrote his own books which were very good. So I started alternating the mistborn books between WoT books. Then the same person told me, that Sanderson also wrote a children's series called Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians. Cue a sudden flashback to my first experience with the book. It was a very shocking realization. Now I wish I could go back, kick my younger self in the back of the head and tell him not to be so stuck up and concerned about being patronized. I started reading that series intermittently after I read mistborn 1-4 and Elantris and quite enjoyed them. I think I was vaguely aware of the Comsere reading Mistborn and Elantris. I'd been told, but I didn't think much of it. I knew to look out for Hoid. I didn't really start thinking about things until after Warbreaker, and coming into Way of Kings.. When I started Sanderson, there was this big metaphorical pile of books for me to read, plus all the other fantasy books it had introduced me to. I'm not the type to binge one author or series, so I took things slow, reading a lot of other books in between. I saw how huge Way of Kings was and knew to save that book for last. So I started Way of Kings after I'd read all the other Cosmere books that were out, after finishing WoT, Alcatraz and some of his novellas as well. I may have looked briefly at the Coppermind, but I was waiting to finish WoK, because that was the last thing left to read, and once I finished I could dive in headfirst. So, knowing it was the last book, I took my time with it, letting it last longer. I'd just read all the other Sanderson books, so I hadn't been wanting for his fiction yet. I don't remember how long it took me to read it, over two weeks, less than a month probably. Once I was finished I hopped onto the Coppermind, reading everything I could find, and had my mind blown several times. I usually miss a lot of details, so there was a lot I didn't know. Now the second time I read WoK was to get myself ready for Words of Radiance. It was the first major Sanderson book that I could get on release date. I was there for his 2012 novellas and 2013 YA novels, but this was a full blown thousand plus page Cosmere novel and I was really excited. So I reread Way of Kings over the four days before Radiance came out, then I read that over the next four days. That was me spending every moment I could spare immersed in the books, during classes, on the bus, after school (I was a senior at the time). I was so immersed that I dreamt about the characters and Roshar felt more real than Earth. I was more observant, but still missed some important details (I'm looking at you Zahel.) I don't know how you people manage to read them so fast. I could maybe do a day and a half, if I had no other obligations at all.

Each interlude usually has something important to offer, usually for later in the series or the Cosmere as a whole. Have you read WoR yet? Some of those interludes are more important. What's important from each (non-Szeth) interlude: Words of Radiance has more interludes than Way of Kings. If you discount the main interlude characters, all of WoR's interludes combined are over three times as long as WoK's, I believe. I also think that it's interludes are, in general, more important to the overall story.

To clarify, the 1980's tech levels books are fairly definite; it was part of his initial plan for the mistborn series: three trilogies for past, present and future. He was thinking about the 1940's as a possibility to add in between like he did with Wax and Wayne, since he can't do the 1980's books until he writes three more Stormlight books and two more Elantris books, which might take a while. He's also been talking more about his plans for the modernish trilogy lately. I don't know how the fourties would fit into the overall storyline. If he did do it I might like it on the Southern Continent, and maybe just one or two books.

There are many sequences of events where Kelsier could have been a villian, but even though I've seen this one used a lot, I don't actually think this would be the case. I think part of his sociopathy is due to enviornmental conditions. I don't think he would have gone all crazy murder rampage over government corruption and poverty, as opposed to terrible slave system led by an immortal tyrant. He might work against the goals of Wax and crew, but he wouldn't go to such drastic measures. Unless he just chilled in the Roughs and didn't realize about the state of the city.

Heroic sociopath, not a bad person, not the best role model.

I don't think Emperor's Soul is underrated, that story gets praised to the high heavens (deservedly), especially after it's Hugo award. I've just heard tons and tons of hype and praise for it. So much so that the other two Cosmere novellas get overshadowed, I think those two are underrated. I thought both stories were brilliant; they have some of my favorite locations and characters. I've tried to rank all three of them in my head, but I just can't. Maybe after I read them a second time. This post got longer than I was intending, so I'm putting the rest under spoilers to save space. This section is dealing with how you deal with the concepts of over/under rating as a whole. Tl;dr: Determinding overratedness and underratedness is hard. By my own weird system, I don't think any of his books are overrated.

We know that all the names of the Shardworlds are Yolish in origin, but we don't know what naming scheme. I wasn't suggesting that Endowment was Nalt because so far we haven't seen any planets that seem to named after residing Shardholders. Furthermore there's this WoB which says that the planets were named before the Shards got there. This suggests that Nalthis was named a long time ago, possibly even pre-shattering. Which means its hard to say what they're named after. This leaves us with a few main questions. The first is if Nalt exists. If Trell is real (and we don't even know that for sure), then it seems likely to me that his brother Nalt would be too. The next quest is whether there is any connection between the names Nalt and Nalthis. Due to the translated nature of the books and the Yolish origin of a lot of the naming systems I don't think differing languages would be much of an issue. I don't have a proposed answer to that question though, It could still be a coincidence. I don't think Nalt would be the one on Scadrial influencing Paalm and whatnot. That's still probably Trell, though the identity of Trell is it's own can of worms. Rather Nalt would be someone associated with Trell, someone who probably didn't get along with him very well. Like a lot that's going on with the Cosmere there's just a ton of important things we don't know yet which makes it hard to speculate on this issue

So, I just finished Shadows of Self and after finding out that bit about Trell maybe being another shard or something I decided to look into Trelagism for any hints Brandon may have left. I don't think anyone's pointed this out yet, but I noticed Trell's brother's name is Nalt. Like as in Nalthis. I'm way too tired right now to think about what that may mean or if it's a coincidence. So far, I don't think we've seen any planet/person name correlation (besides Yolen/Jane Yolen which doesn't count). It's really late here so I'll just leave this now and see if anyone else can make more of it.

Okay here they are: 1. Brandon Sanderson 1. Brandon Sanderson 1. Brandon Sanderson 1. Brandon Sanderson 1. Brandon Sanderson 1. Brandon Sanderson 1. Brandon Sanderson 1. Brandon Sanderson 1. Brandon Sanderson 1. Brandon Sanderson Brandon Sanderson and his nine clones. Seriously though, here's my other list: 1. Brandon Sanderson 2. Terry Pratchett 3. Robert Jordan 4. Dan Wells 5. Orson Scott Card 6. Larry Correia 7. Brent Weeks 8. Brian McClellan 9. Jim Butcher 10. Patrick Rothfuss I just threw this list together right now, my opinions might be different on this by tomorrow and the ranking will certainly change a lot as I read more books. Most of these are pretty well known epic fantasy writers (which tends to be my favorite genre), but there are a few other genres that have snuck their way onto my list.