Awesomeness Summoned

Spirit guide who

I'm with rooster on wise man's fear. I enjoyed it the first time but not as much as tNotW. I've reread it a couple times though and I like it more and more each time as I pick up on more details under the surface.

Wow, almost exactly how I would describe my journey except it started about 15 years ago.

The shard of Stage Fright The more you invest, the harder it is for the person you are looking at to speak articulately.

This topic is closely related to a theory I've had lately thinking about Darkness' motivations. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the knights radiant were a recent creation in the cycle of desolations. Before there were just the heralds and general surgebinders. Judging by the fact that 9/10 heralds survived the last desolation and we assume dalinar's visions are from honor (and not sanderson slight of hand), then it seems like the KR were a positive force in the previous desolation. So why did darkness (if he is actually a herald) actually turn on the KR and start hunting them down to prevent the desolation? He hasn't gone after Szeth whom you'd think would be at the top of his list and the only difference with Szeth is that he doesn't have the nahel bond. I posit that the relationship between the KR and their spren in the last desolation gave them a better understanding of the bonding process. They realized the desolations came because of the parshendi's bonding of voidspren and creating voidbringers. They figured out how to sever that connection (the betrayal some of the spren speak of?) and to prevent future desolations they cut off the parshendi's ability to bond creating parshmen and part of that process required them to cut their own bonds (the recreance). Darkness is hunting people with the nahel bond to either prevent the knowledge of bonding from returning, or because too many people bonding spren would somehow make it possible again for parshmen to bond voidspren

Agree as well. The first two books I couldn't put down but things fell apart in a few areas for the third. Along with some of the stuff mentioned above, my biggest problem with it was the rehashing of known events from a new perspective. Sometimes that can be done well (ender's shadow - o.c. Card, Zoe's tale - scalzi) but for me those sections became a drag and I was tempted to just skip ahead to new material. Hopefully, we'll be past all that in the fourth book and the series as a whole lives up to the potential of the first two.

I had interpreted that passage as akin to someone saying they liked the feel of a real hearth over an electric fire place (as I personally do). The dancing flames, crackling logs, smell, type of heat, etc., in a real fire create a certain aesthetic that an artificial one can't quite replicate. But knowing brandon you could be right and the thought held more significance than that.

Anyone else wonder if brandon ever scans through the forum and thinks to himself things like "man, never thought my book would inspire three pages of gem cutting and mining techniques"? Sorry, kurk and gloom's conversation was both enlightening and entertaining

I'm almost certain I read a q&a somewhere where Brandon talked about how preservation singled out vin from a very early age and was preparing her to replace him. It's one if the reasons ruin took an interest in her, to thwart preservation's plans for her. My brain is too fried from a long day though to scour the web for that interview.

So what you're saying is that I shouldn't dial that number? Darn, I was hoping to chat with a black magic specialist about getting my lost love back.

Thanks for that... Though his vague description of it still leaves room for the possibility of that blending in being into the spiritual or cognitive realm. He just doesn't want to give details about the process yet

I hadn't ever really thought about where ati and Laras bodies were before they appeared. Is there a WoB that stated they were just "spread-out"? Could it be the body is pushed more into the cognitive or spiritual realm when a shard is taken up?

Point taken about dalinar's not having a bond yet and there possibly being problems with modern plate. I was really just speculating with the bond thing, though. The main point was that we don't have enough evidence at this point to know if Szeth's plate issues are common or unique to his surgebinding.

That's assuming what's true for Szeth is true for other surgebinders. It's possible his abilities don't play nicely with shardplate because he doesn't have a nahel bond. The KR in dalinar's flashback obviously used their surges and wore plate at the same time and there is indication the dalinar's plate was glowing slightly like theirs.

I'd agree except for the fact that he tells the head vizier that no one is beyond his reach. I don't think he'd hesitate to eliminate Jasnah as long as he could find a legal justification for it (such as slaying a few men in a dark alley in another monarch's kingdom).

Big fan of Lift so photoshopped my own version of the edgedancer glyph.

After only one interlude, Lift is already my favorite Stormlight character. I wanted a name that referenced her and i laugh every time I read Lift "summoned her awesomeness" so there you have it. Even photoshopped myself an edgedancer avatar. It didn't, however, occur to me at the time that other members would be calling me awesomeness when referencing me in the threads. While funny, it is a little self aggrandizing and was by no means intentional so feel free to call me summoned or summon or even AS instead.

Wow that just gave me some WoT flashbacks. Please don't let any aes sedai find out about kaladin.

Just had an hour long car ride with a coworker coming back from a job and somehow we got into him talking about the fantasy novel he's trying to write. I suggested he listen to writing excuses if he was serious about writing. That led into me talking about how much Sanderson does to help aspiring writers which in turn led to me talking about Sanderson's various books. When I dropped him off at his car, he saw there was a B&N across the street and said he was gonna go look at picking up a few of Sanderson's books before it closed in thirty minutes. Fingers crossed for a new convert.

When someone you know really well suddenly does something completely out of character and you catch yourself inspecting them to see if they have any metal piercing their skin

I'd love to read "The Adventures of Lift and Her Verbose Voidbringer"Edit: it's possible BS made a mistake in making lift too interesting for just one interlude in WoR. Not sure I can wait a whole other book for more lift.

This is my first topic and definitely nothing profound, just something I found curious when reading the WoR interludes. It seemed like darkness has an uncanny ability to identify and locate surge users over wide areas of Roshar. Any ideas on how this is possible? Ym I can sort of understand because he was healing kids, though very secretly, and rumors might have gotten around of how quickly kids healed after getting some shoes. It was apparent from lift's interlude she had been giving him the slip for a while but not only did he know she was at the place but he also knew exactly where to find her under the dinner table. In Jasnah's prologue he frowned at her when he saw her which I took to mean he recognized there was something "off" about her, possibly that he could even tell she had a budding nahel bond. (On a side note, if that is the case, why did't hunt her down sometime in the last seven years?) So, do you think he can actually see surgebinders? Maybe he can see their spren? Can the Larkin not only absorb stormlight from someone but also track people that can invest?

Fully agreed. The cryptic's interest in someone isn't dependent on one specific secret but rather someone who has a complete false persona. Shallan hides that she killed her father, that her father is even dead in fact, that she has a shard blade, her family is on the verge of ruin, that her father was using a soul caster, that she sought Jasnah for the sole purpose of stealing her soul caster, etc., etc. shallan has built an entire web of lies about herself that was likely irresistible to the cryptics. The cryptics interest in elhokar is a strong indicator that he has quite a few huge secrets yet to be revealed to us.

Well, Elhokar isn't actually "seeing" the cryptics either. He's seeing their reflection in a mirror. In both his and shallan's case, the spren are seen indirectly which is possibly the only way cryptic can be "seen" before they cross over. Being able to draw them as shallan does is probably an extraordinarily rare gift. I would expect mirrors are the most common way people would see them

They'd probably save that for the half time show cromptj