Awesomeness Summoned

There's some talk about references to the God Beyond on this thread, this thread, and there is a coppermind article.

Probably not as easy as a living person but shardblades still cut through inanimate objects quite effectively so would still be good for slicing off heads.

No, it was fine to enslave them because all indications were that they weren't a sentient self aware species with a will of their own. The Parshendi themselves call it "slave" form (yes, I know probably in reference to how the Alethi use them, but still) and they refer to them as not having a soul. If it was suddenly discovered horses were sentient beings, would you condemn all of humanity the last 10,000+ years for using them as beast of burden when there was no indication they were anything more than animals? When they first encountered the Parshendi, it should have caused some alarm bells on if they should be treating the Parshmen how they were but by that point is was so much a part of their culture that it didn't even occur to them that the Parshment might be more than they seemed.

I just figured that was a plot device to foreshadow that the fight might not go as planned and to build some tension for the reader. "Oh no, he doesn't have his lucky necklace? Something is gonna go wrong!"

I didn't argue against her having agreements with a good number but as I said, it's a big world. Do you really think there are only 12 assassins in all of Alethkar, much less all of Roshar? Despite her best efforts, there would still be plenty of people like Tyn she wouldn't even be aware of. Jasnah is a capable women but I doubt she has the connections in the underworld to know every person likely to be hired to kill her. Jasnah told Shallan after the Kabsal incident that the ghostbloods have tried killing her many times. Obviously there are still plenty of people the ghostbloods think are "good enough" to kill her that she doesn't have an agreement with. Besides, Tyn's method of sending thugs onto the ship to kill the whole crew just doesn't seem to me like the type of thing a professional assassin would do. Tyn is a criminal that takes what jobs she can, not a professional assassin. At least that's what it seemed like to me.

I hadn't actually seen the previous debate about it so I don't really mind that much either way. The epigraph about them implied that Dustbringers wasn't what they called themselves but your argument makes sense so waiting for a WoB on the correct term to use before relabeling the chart seems prudent.

Yes, he has those in his writing and they are probably partly a subconscious thing he picked up from Robert Jordan's work because WoT has a lot of quirks like that. Over the many years reading WoT though, my brain started to phase them out so I don't really notice them much when I read anymore. One you didn't mention that used to bother people a lot with Sanderson was his love for the word tempest. Do a word search of it in some of his earlier work. Edit: in his defense though, just about every writer has those idiosyncrasies in their writing style. Your friend probably does too, he just hasn't had his particular quirks pointed out yet. Writers like Martin and Rothfuss who tediously revise their prose phase a lot of that out but I'd take Brandon's quality book output pace with a few quirks left in any day of the week over waiting five years for perfect prose.

It's possible but unlikely. Jasnah can't have deals with every assassin on Roshar and likely only had agreements with the high end assassins in Alethkar and the shattered plains who are most likely to take contracts on a high prince's family. Tyn seems like a low level person and she doesn't even do the job herself. The men she hired and sent on the ship to do the job seemed more like thugs than professionals.

Looks good, though you might want to change Dustbringers to Releasers which is their official title.

Kinda like when he accidentally mentions a bunny to Kaladin he recovered from his slip up pretty well though.

It is indeed

While it's possible, the conflicting ideals you'd have to live by to sustain them would be extremely difficult. Orders that share a surge might have close enough ideals to make it plausible but in that case you'd only be adding one more surge to the mix. Plus, the spren chooses the person, not the other way around. You'd have to live by a set of principles that managed to attract spren from two different orders which seems unlikely.

Yeah, I'm actually more excited about the start of the new season then I am for the release of the next book.

371 is a Ferring still so I would guess you became an artifabrian at 375 Edit: on a related note, did you design me?

625 = Soulcaster I need to collect some stormlight so I can turn all the furniture in my house to gold.

Well if you want to catch up on how all Brandon's cosmere books relate, you could try the Cosmere 101 thread. If you don't already know, this forum has it's own wiki about all things Sanderson called the Coppermind. Lots of great information on there. The WoR Reactions thread is about reactions to the book as a whole. A similar thread is Lets Talk about Kaladin's Attitude. More about Kaladin's story arc in particular. Some recent threads I found quite humorous are the Zombie Survival Guide and Your Favorite Inanimate Object. Beyond that... there are tons of great threads that I couldn't begin to list. So go have fun exploring

I'm not saying you deserved the downotes just giving my opinion on why people might have downvoted you (supported by some of the posts that immediately followed yours). I will say, even though it was a thread about spoiler material, to that point no one had mentioned Jasnah, deaths, or any direct spoiler material. They just gave links. There was no ***Spoiler*** tag at the top of the thread so anyone that came into the thread to see what it was about could have gotten major spoilers from your comment by just browsing through. You were just theorizing but your post heavily implied that someone died in chapter seven, or seemed to die.

I think it has to do with the fact that as the bond progresses they get more and more locked into a certain state of being. At their core, spren are ideas come to life so their essential state of being can change depending on how they see themselves or humans perceive them. In their original form Honorspren are like windspren, how we normally picture Syl for instance, but once they form the bond, they begin to change and progress towards a state of being like the thing they are trying to copy, Honroblades. The spren from the vision had the highest level bond. They were closer to being honorblades at that point than the spren they originally were so they locked into that form when they died.

If you mean your post on the first page of this thread, I would imagine because you were announcing big plot points like Jasnah being "killed" but really still alive before the book was even released. Granted, it was just your assumption based on the review but that's my best guess for the downotes.

Yeah, I'm still baffled sometimes about why I get lots of rep for a post I myself find to be nothing special but then I'll make a strong, well argued point and get nothing. It was mainly because of This post my rep jumped last night. As I said today, it seems like just mentioning stick now days gets lots of rep. With his popularity growing, it wouldn't seem right for a new member to take that name and ruin all our fun so to prevent that I made a dummy account for stick today. Stick is safe. Edit: looking at swimmingly's post, I find it extraordinarily funny that shshshsh is one of the profanity autocorrects. Or did you add that Swim?

I'm not sure where the WoB is but Brandon was asked if the spren could have been left as spears, hammers, etc. instead of blades and he said no. The spren were copying what Honor did with the Heralds's when they made the Nahel bond. As such, they are fashioned after Honorblades. Since that is their "base" form, when the bond is broken, that is the form they take. The knights from that recreance vision could have already all broken their bonds separately from each other before they went to the fortress. Their blades were already dead spren so the coordination of all showing up at the fortress and dropping the blades together wouldn't have required the spren's cooperation. Edit: I missed your mention of them still showing surgebinding abilities up until they dropped the blades. That does imply they broke the bond at that moment.

So, perhaps stick needs to run for Forum President or something. Based on my post from the other day and Nicrosil's above, it seems like anyone who mentions him/her... it? gets instant rep. (Waits patiently in hopes that he's right and will gain more rep from this post just because he said stick)

Not sure if these have been brought up in this thread yet but I was rereading Taln's interlude with this topic in mind and two quotes jumped out at me. First, why is Gift capitalized? More importantly, though, is the second part where he says the words were never his but now they are. Those quotes and a few other things in that interlude indicate that the words his body is speaking have nothing to do with the person who's pov we are seeing. As he says himself, the words are coming out of his mouth but they aren't his. It's almost as if there are two people's minds stuck in one body which could I guess go along with the idea that Brandon keeps saying "The person who calls himself Taln." The mouth is saying he's Taln, but the mind inside isn't really. Could it be that somehow Taln's thoughts and memories have been thrust into someone else's body and have control over what he says? The part about The Gift, sounds like the Nightwatcher. Some guy, maybe a Son of Honor went to her and asked for the Heralds to return, or even to be a Herald himself, and she granted the request by putting Taln's mind into his. Yes, I know a little far fetched and it seems like the Nightwatcher is becoming our answer for every strange occurrence but I can't really think of any other explanation for why there seems to be a spilt personality within "Taln".

I'd just be a lightweaver and make myself look like a zombie all the time. You know, do as they do, when in Rome and such. Maybe lop off a head or two with my shardblade when I get a few alone but for the most part just blend in, especially if I get to have a grunt conversation with Rob Corddry.

It's us southerners best attempt at a ketek.