New to forum, long time fan

[StarrFall]

Hi there folks!  I'm an unrepentant Cosmere junkie and I hope I'm in the right place... 

I've completely caught up on the Cosmere materials, excepting White Sands (currently in progress, thankfully vol 2 is out now too) and some of the unreleased stuff Sanderson made available on his site, but I'm struggling to get someone in my immediate vicinity to catch up so that I can talk with them about all of this awesomeness without using a mental filter.  I am happy to report I have 2 people well on their way, but they have a lot of pages to get through yet and I'm impatient.  So...

I have always read fantasy predominately because I prefer my leisure reading to provide an escape.  That said, I'm a system designer who likes to understand how things work and I've always disliked how many of these stories would just take the magic system's existence for granted without ever satisfactorily delving into the mechanics surrounding them; magic just is and are and there are words/objects/feelings/genetics/what-have-you that allow characters to access them.  This is, in my opinion, where Sanderson becomes the greatest fantasy writer of all time; he has built not just a world but an entire dynamic universe, complete with its' own unique mechanics that are full of beautiful nuance and which make logical sense in the way they are arranged and presented, even as they evolve.  The evolution of powers on Ladrian, the Warbreaker/Oathbringer crossover (speaking of, WoK progressing way faster than I expected which makes me think that story won't be as simple as I originally thought (awesome!)), Threnodites in the Cognitive Realm (???), all the various crap happening on Sel...  I have questions, so many questions...

I can't even imagine how much front work would have to go into making all of these stories fit together cohesively, but it makes the Marvel universe look like child's play by comparison.

I have a lot of reading to do on this forum and i'm sure you will see more of me once I get caught up and have a chance to compare notes.

Edited July 16, 2018 by StarrFall

[Niteshado]

Welcome and have an upvote!!

We like to greet others by saying "My life to yours, my breath become yours" You should try it! You say it first

I love the work brandon does as well, and im with you when you say hes one of the greatest writers. His magic system is awesome, and there are so many little easter eggs to find. Its awesome. I re-read and find new things all the time. 

[StrikerEZ]

@StarrFall Hey, welcome to the Shard! Have a free upvote and a spiked delicious cookie!

Spoiler

DISCLAIMER: Side effects include, but are not limited to, hearing voices, gaining supernatural powers, having the sudden urge to kill everyone, and completely losing control over your mind and body. The Dark Alley™ claims no liability for any damage done to/by the eater of this cookie.

I'm glad to hear you're enjoying discovering the Cosmere! I also don't have anyone to talk to about the Cosmere in real life, except for my little brother. I've tried getting other people to start reading his books, but I just can't get anyone into them. That's why I spend so much of my time on here lol. (Also, WoK is the name of the first book; the series is Stormlight Archive. You might already know that, but your first post was a little confusing at that part). You should definitely read Aether of Night. It's not as good as Brandon's newer stuff, but it's definitely a lot better than a lot of fantasy out there. It's a really good story, with some writing flaws, but that's understandable. 

Which Cosmere book is your favorite? If you could pick one magic system to have, which would it be? Who's your favorite character in the Cosmere?

[Silva]

Welcome and have an upvote. Take care not to accept any spiked cookies or give your breath away.

[Vogelsang]

Hello, would you like to make a donation to the Kandra Bone Drive? Every body counts!

[StarrFall]

Too many Breaths to part with.  That is, unless there are more cookies...  No bones to spare, but I have some nice sturdy Elm branches that I stripped and polished up that might work nicely for Kandra who aren't on the job.

Good call on Stormlight v WoK.  I did know that (as well as the fact that I called Scadrial Ladrian above) and am therefore ashamed; however, those cookies are helping with that.  I've got 2 friends who are fully on board the Cosmere train, but neither of them have read Oathbringer or any of the Wax & Wayne Mistborns yet, let alone the novellas that are Cosmere heavy, so I always have to ask where they are and try really hard to remember what happened when as I talk to them (would be a real bush-league move to spoiler for someone who likes the stories).  Its rough.

As to favorite planets/systems in the Cosmere, Scadrial still holds that title for me.  Sanderson caught my interest when he fixed Wheel of Time (ya, I said it) and he won me over with Mistborn.  I'm a particular fan of how Feruchemy and Alomancy are blended in the Wax & Wayne books and am super impatient for the last of those; Scadrians (?) eventually use their abilities to travel through space ("6th of the Dusk") and I think this last W&W book will fill in some blanks as to the mechanics there.  Also super curious to see Hemalurgy loose in the Cosmere at large; who knows what powers can be stolen and combined with it.

As to character, I'm definitely most intrigued by Hoid/Midius/Cephandrius.  There isn't a heck of a lot to chew on there yet though (plenty to speculate on) and it is really hard to pick a favorite otherwise... Spook or Sazed (for whom I've mentally cast John Turturro) from MB, Rock or Lopin from SL, or Warbreaker himself...  

Edit: seeing what I just wrote makes me think its a one-armed wrestling match between Lopin and Warbreaker.

Edited July 16, 2018 by StarrFall

[StrikerEZ]

14 minutes ago, StarrFall said:

I've got 2 friends who are fully on board the Cosmere train, but neither of them have read Oathbringer or any of the Wax & Wayne Mistborns yet, let alone the novellas that are Cosmere heavy, so I always have to ask where they are and try really hard to remember what happened when as I talk to them (would be a real bush-league move to spoiler for someone who likes the stories).  Its rough.

I've got my English teacher to read the first Mistborn trilogy, but she hasn't read anything else. I tried emailing her to see I forgot she was interested in any other Cosmere books, but she never responded. 

15 minutes ago, StarrFall said:

As to favorite planets/systems in the Cosmere, Scadrial still holds that title for me.  Sanderson caught my interest when he fixed Wheel of Time (ya, I said it) and he won me over with Mistborn.  I'm a particular fan of how Feruchemy and Alomancy are blended in the Wax & Wayne books and am super impatient for the last of those; Scadrians (?) eventually use their abilities to travel through space ("6th of the Dusk") and I think this last W&W book will fill in some blanks as to the mechanics there.  Also super curious to see Hemalurgy loose in the Cosmere at large; who knows what powers can be stolen and combined with it.

Yeah, the Metallic Arts are definitely my favorite magic system(s) in the Cosmere. Just the way they interact is so cool. 

Spoiler

Also, we don't know if the Ones Above from Sixth of the Dusk are Era 4 Scadrians. Many assume they are, but we don't know for sure yet.

Sixth of the Dusk is also one of my favorite stories in the Cosmere. Something about Dusk himself just really makes me love him and the magic is so cool and the world itself is amazing. The plot, while relatively simple, is also quite good as well.

18 minutes ago, StarrFall said:

As to character, I'm definitely most intrigued by Hoid/Midius/Cephandrius.  There isn't a heck of a lot to chew on there yet though (plenty to speculate on) and it is really hard to pick a favorite otherwise... Spook or Sazed (for whom I've mentally cast John Turturro) from MB, Rock or Lopin from SL, or Warbreaker himself...  

Yeah, Hoid is definitely an interesting character. We don't know much about him though, so I don't really consider him to be one of my favorite characters though. In SA, my favorite characters are definitely Adolin and Venli, both for OB spoiler reasons. In Warbreaker, I really loved Vivenna's character growth. Vin is just amazing and Steris is probably my favorite for Era 2. I don't really like many characters from Elantris, though Emperor's Soul is really good (and Shari by extension). 

[Just a Lifetime]

1 hour ago, StarrFall said:

Sazed (for whom I've mentally cast John Turturro)

You said it, man.  Nobody storms with the Harmony.

Sorry.  My mind immediately went to The Big Lebowski---kind of different from my mental picture of Sazed.

Anyway, welcome to the Shard and have an upvote or two!  Are there other authors who have done a decent job of satisfying your system designer's desire for well-designed magic systems? 

[StarrFall]

13 minutes ago, daschaich said:

You said it, man.  Nobody storms with the Harmony.

Did we just become best friends!?  "Storms" is a new (and totally excellent) replacement for the word I used, but the rest has been stated verbatim in my head many, many times...

 

As to other authors, I honestly haven't given anyone else the time of day of the past few years bc I got heavily into Sanderson as my career was picking up and so did't have a lot of free time like I used to for exploration.  I'm all ears if you have recommendations in that arena though!

[Just a Lifetime]

I'm in a similar situation---I think N. K. Jemisin is the only new author I've picked up over the past couple of years, and the magic system in her Inheritance Trilogy is much "softer" than I tend to prefer.

Instead (if others on the forum will indulge my fourth plug for this fellow), I would suggest Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London urban fantasy series.  I find it a lot of fun, and although the magic system is not spelled out in detail, that's because the characters don't know the details.  But at least some of them are convinced that there must be a sensible system behind it, and are determined to figure it out.  Here's a taste:

Quote

The sons of Musa ibn Shakir were bright and bold and if they hadn't been Muslims would have probably gone on to be the patron saints of techno-geeks.  They're famous for their ninth-century Baghdad bestseller, a compendium of ingenious mechanical devices that they imaginatively titled Kitab al-Hiyal---The Book of Ingenious Devices.  In it they describe what is possibly the first practical device for measuring differential pressure, and that's where the problem really starts.  In 1593 Galileo Galilei took time off from astronomy and promulgating heresy to invent a thermoscope for measuring heat.  In 1833 Carl Friedrich Gauss invented a device to measure the strength of a magnetic field, and in 1908 Hans Geiger made a detector for ionizing radiation.  At this very moment astronomers are detecting planets around distant stars by measuring how much their orbits wobble and the clever people at CERN are smashing particles together in the hope that Doctor Who will turn up and tell them to stop.  The story of how we measure the physical universe is the history of science itself.

And what do [redacted] and I have to measure [magical] vestigia with?  Sod all, and it's not even as if we know what we're trying to measure in the first place.  No wonder the [redacted] kept magic safely under their periwigs.  I had jokingly developed my own scale for vestigia based on the amount of noise Toby [the dog] made when he interacted with any residual magic.  I called it a yap, one yap being enough vestigia to be apparent even when I wasn't looking for it.

The yap would be an SI unit, of course, and thus the standard background ambience of a Central London pub was 0.2 of a yap (0.2Y) or 200 milliyaps (200mY).  Having established that to my satisfaction I finished the half-pint and headed downstairs to the basement, where they kept the jazz.

PS.  The site has a profanity filter, though I played it safe and wrote that quote as it appears.