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edit != quote. These seem to be happening a lot lately. 
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Mar 12, 2014 20:57
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My own pet theory is that when Taravangian asked for the capability to save the world, he got compassion as his boon and intelligence as his curse, instead of the other way around like how he thinks it works. That just feels right for a Sanderson book.
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Mar 12, 2014 21:45
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The Chapter 84 epigraph code has been cracked: Hold the secret that broke the Knights Radiant. You may need it to destroy the new orders when they return. Here's how: Chapter 83 epigraph: quote:
For each letter, find the first occurrence of that letter in that epigraph. For instance O = 1, H = 11 Use that as a substitution into the Chapter 84 epigraph: quote:1118251011127124915121010111410215117112101112171344831110715142541434109161491493412122541010125127101519101112341255115251215755111234101112915121061534
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Mar 12, 2014 21:51
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Augster posted:The Chapter 84 epigraph code has been cracked: Well, isn't that ominous. Though it did seem likely even without that, that whatever dilemma caused the originals to break their oaths and fall would be something for the main characters are going to have to figure out how to deal with too.
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Mar 12, 2014 22:21
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Xenix posted:I had hoped that Jasnah dying on the ship was sort of Sanderson's nod to the Joe Abercrombies and Mark Lawrences of the world, basically saying that he can get his hands dirty too. I was disappointed, but not surprised, when she reappeared at the end, mostly due to the dust jacket description of the book on Sanderson's website. While others in the book may have fit the description of The Explorer (I was thinking Shen for a bit there, despite what we get told about the Listeners and spren), none of them were women. Gonna be honest Jasnah and Szeth both coming back from the dead really ticked me off. Kaladin should have pulled Szeth's honorblade out of his hands and made him fall from the sky or something, the fact that he just gets deus ex machinad back to life through a previously unseen fabrial was frustrating. Jasnah just pissed me off because we saw her loving die, all the gems she had readily available Shallan inhaled to make illusions and sink the ship, she had no loving right to survive. I get that her power is teleportation/transmutation(at least that's what I gather from the chart) but there is no excuse for seeing someone stabbed in the heart and then suddenly coming back from it. The more I think about the book typing this stuff out and collecting my thoughts from the initial awesomeness I experienced on reading it, the more I realize that while Sanderson has become a technically better writer he plays it way too safe with characters and it makes it almost predictable that anyone with a PoV chapter of over 5 pages will still be alive and kicking. I don't even expect Eshonai to be dead just because too much was invested into her being a trapped and tortured soul after going stormform and we just see her fall off a cliff and not actually die. Of all of Sanderson's books only Kelsier's death in Mistborn truly shocked me because he was built up to be nearly invincible, and he was a really well written character. Lightsong's death in Warbreaker just felt empty and even though Lightsong was my favorite character his death didn't hit me where it hurts. Anyone think Rock is a surgebinder or has some powers beyond what he is showing us. He seems to be the only character that can naturally see spren. I think him having transmutation fits pretty well with him making amazing meals from poo poo quartermaster food. In fact I wish we had more Horneaters because both of the ones we have met were fun well written characters, although the "airsick lowlanders" shtick is getting kind of old. Also if I don't get more Lift and her awesomeness I don't know if I will forgive Sanderson. A little starving orphan thief with the powers of awesomeness and her own little "voidbringer" just made me smile. I actually am fine with her never becoming integral to the plot in any way I just want her sliding around and stealing food from nobles and fighting with her spren. Rant over.
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Mar 12, 2014 22:26
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And here's a bigger complaint I have, Sanderson or Tor needs to work on the illustrations in the ebooks because they are really good but they are so incredibly low resolution. I tried reading it on both my iPad and my Kindle just to make out the text in the illustrations and in both it was tiny as hell and that's really frustrating, especially since the new Kindle's are relatively high resolution, so while I wouldn't get color I should still be able to see the details of the pictures. They managed to make the chapter graphics look great on the Kindle why not put the same effort into the illustrations.
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Mar 12, 2014 22:33
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Locker Room Zubaz posted:And here's a bigger complaint I have, Sanderson or Tor needs to work on the illustrations in the ebooks because they are really good but they are so incredibly low resolution. I tried reading it on both my iPad and my Kindle just to make out the text in the illustrations and in both it was tiny as hell and that's really frustrating, especially since the new Kindle's are relatively high resolution, so while I wouldn't get color I should still be able to see the details of the pictures. They managed to make the chapter graphics look great on the Kindle why not put the same effort into the illustrations. Apparently Peter Ahlstrom is pretty ticked off about it.
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Mar 12, 2014 22:35
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Locker Room Zubaz posted:I get that her power is teleportation/transmutation(at least that's what I gather from the chart) but there is no excuse for seeing someone stabbed in the heart and then suddenly coming back from it. Stormlight heals people. That holds consistent across Radiant type, just holding Stormlight at all makes you heal super fast, plus it makes you super durable and physically capable. I mean, we see Kaladin go almost toe-to-toe with Shardbearers and heal shardblade wounds without even using any Lashings, just by being roided up on Stormlight. Presumably Jasnah was holding some when she got stabbed. It's internally consistent, even if you don't think she should have survived. I'd be pretty disappointed in Sanderson if he just started killing people off at whim, especially people like Jasnah or Szeth. Their stories were nowhere near done, it'd be a waste to cut them short. There are stories where sudden and pointless deaths fit, but Stormlight isn't trying to be one.
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Mar 12, 2014 22:55
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The next book is supposed to be Szeth's anyway, so it's not like he was killed and brought back on a whim. And I'm fine with Jasnah surviving, I just hope we learn how she managed to do it. Rereading the chapter, we never actually see Jasnah die, we see her already dead body, then one of the men stabbing her in the heart to be sure she's dead. It could be it was a body double that she created that looked dead, which is what the men found and why they wanted to be sure she actually was dead and not faking it. Narmi fucked around with this message at 23:31 on Mar 12, 2014 |
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Mar 12, 2014 23:10
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Yeah, I honestly prefer characters having full arcs and dying appropriately more than sudden, 'shocking' deaths mid-arc. I mean, I am genuinely interested in all the main characters and what they'll end up doing (even Kaladin, though in a complete reversal I'm more interested in Shallan and Adolin now). Having them die off before we really get to know them sucks and isn't even really that impactful this early in the story.
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Mar 12, 2014 23:15
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Locker Room Zubaz posted:Jasnah stuff quote:Rock stuff quote:Lift stuff
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Mar 12, 2014 23:17
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I hope the second set of five books don't get too far away from the main characters in the current set. Even though we're technically focused on Kaladin in book 1 and Shallan in 2, we've spent a satisfying amount of time with other characters like Adolin, Dalinar, Jasnah, etc. It would be a shame to have them become more distant than that that a "set of books" division implies.
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Mar 12, 2014 23:20
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I'm also a little ticked with character plot protection in WoR. Szeth's death wouldn't have been shocking. His arch would have been of a principled man whose ideals had failed him driving him mad. Combine that with a final clash with Kaladin finally taking up the mantle of Radiant and you could call it a pretty satisfying death. That said I understand the need to continue Szeth as a character so why not just not kill him. Have Kaladin soul sever his hand, grab the blade, and lose Szeth in the storm where Kaladin is somewhat forced to assume he perished. Then all you have to do is have Nalan stumble across a mortally wounded Szeth instead of a dead one. No good reason to kill him and then resurrect him 3 chapters later. Jaznah's salvation was just cheap. She got stabbed in the heart essentially screaming at the reader "I know what you're thinking but she is really, totally, super dead. Honest." It's incredibly lame to bring her back after something like that and if book three doesn't provide an incredibly good reasoning of how that went down other than *handwave* "MAGIC!" I'm going to be pissed.
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Mar 12, 2014 23:43
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Fetucine posted:Stormlight heals people. That holds consistent across Radiant type, just holding Stormlight at all makes you heal super fast, plus it makes you super durable and physically capable. I mean, we see Kaladin go almost toe-to-toe with Shardbearers and heal shardblade wounds without even using any Lashings, just by being roided up on Stormlight. Presumably Jasnah was holding some when she got stabbed. It's internally consistent, even if you don't think she should have survived. There are far better ways to deal with someone's assumed death then seeing one person stabbed through the heart and the other having his neck cut with a shard blade. If Shallan had just seen a lot of blood and then ran it would be one thing but instead we see a knife plunge into Jasnah's heart. Yes stormlight can heal that, yes it is laid out that if you are using stormlight you are a badass but both of them coming back from the dead by magics is just not an interesting way to continue telling their story. I also don't think Jasnah or Szeth dying is in anyway pointless, the entire book we are led to believe that Jasnah is dead and it makes Shallan a stronger character and adds all sorts of dynamics with Navani that would have otherwise been undoable. I am completely fine with him not killing any of the PoV characters or characters he has invested time in, although I think that books do need loss to make the story more compelling, but to watch them both die and be magiced back is a lot less interesting plot wise then there being a sort of mystery if they actually did die in the first place. I think Shallan's entire role in the book would have been more interesting if she thought Jasnah had a possibility of being alive and that when she sunk the ship that might have been what killed her. So to be clear I am not asking for main characters to die left and right but if you are going to have someone stabbed through the heart and then be in the ocean immediately after, there are better ways to make someone's death questionable then both Szeth and Jasnah's death were not something that should have been questionably lethal. Also just tweeted at Sanderson about the images and I guess they are only terribly low res in the Tor version but not the Amazon version, glad I bought the DRM free version :/
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Mar 13, 2014 00:02
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Illustrations are all up here, by the way: http://brandonsanderson.com/books/the-stormlight-archive/words-of-radiance/stormlight-2-maps-and-illustrations/ Just clicking doesn't put them in highest resolution, so open them in a new tab. Tunicate fucked around with this message at 00:09 on Mar 13, 2014 |
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Mar 13, 2014 00:06
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Re: Jasnah I'm assuming her Spren somehow magicked her soul to Shadesmar while her body was kept behind.
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Mar 13, 2014 00:26
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Democratic Pirate posted:Re: Jasnah I'm assuming her Spren somehow magicked her soul to Shadesmar while her body was kept behind. Her abilities should include teleportation so maybe that's what happened. How she didn't see Shallan there when Shallan was chilling there convincing the boat to be water, doesn't really make sense though.
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Mar 13, 2014 04:01
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Locker Room Zubaz posted:Her abilities should include teleportation so maybe that's what happened. How she didn't see Shallan there when Shallan was chilling there convincing the boat to be water, doesn't really make sense though. Well, we have no idea how teleportation works - it's probably not as mundane/useless as 'enter shadesmar, and then walk to equivalent destination, leave' - it probably instantaneously transported her somewhere else, even if that place was in Shadesmar. I like Jasnah, though, so I'm of the opinion we should wait to see what really happened with her before we judge how ridiculous her 'resurrection' was - we really know almost nothing about her abilities, and neither did Shallan. Perhaps escaping or surviving the situation she was in was no big deal. Szeth would have irritated me more if he wasn't given Nightblood and recruited by a Herald. It would have been annoying if he had simply continued as the Assassin in White.
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Mar 13, 2014 06:38
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Locker Room Zubaz posted:a previously unseen fabrial Not quite, the Stonewarden in Dalinar's vision in chapter 19 of Way of Kings used one.
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Mar 13, 2014 06:41
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Szeth: I liked getting Szeth back. I would have been disappointed if he'd died before I got to see his reckoning with the Elders that made him Truthless.
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Mar 13, 2014 06:47
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Agreed but then why not just not kill Szeth! It was a such dumb thing that he had to pull off a deus ex machina magic you've never heard of that only works in this extremely specific criteria that this situation just happens to fall under. If you want to use a character later don't decapitate his soul.
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Mar 13, 2014 07:38
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Wolpertinger posted:Well, we have no idea how teleportation works - it's probably not as mundane/useless as 'enter shadesmar, and then walk to equivalent destination, leave' - it probably instantaneously transported her somewhere else, even if that place was in Shadesmar. I like Jasnah, though, so I'm of the opinion we should wait to see what really happened with her before we judge how ridiculous her 'resurrection' was - we really know almost nothing about her abilities, and neither did Shallan. Perhaps escaping or surviving the situation she was in was no big deal. Szeth would have irritated me more if he wasn't given Nightblood and recruited by a Herald. It would have been annoying if he had simply continued as the Assassin in White. It's also worth noting that in the scene after seeing Jasnah get 'killed', and then using her Lightweaving to lure the murderers away, Shallan is surprised that she doesn't trip over or otherwise see any sign of Jasnah's body when she's stumbling around in the dark. Jasnah's survival was definitely foreshadowed.
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Mar 13, 2014 07:43
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The Puppy Bowl posted:Agreed but then why not just not kill Szeth! It was a such dumb thing that he had to pull off a deus ex machina magic you've never heard of that only works in this extremely specific criteria that this situation just happens to fall under. If you want to use a character later don't decapitate his soul. We've seen people heal from shardblade wounds before. And then seen Lift - completely untrained - heal a guy from near-decapitation with a more advanced healing ability. And seen a person in the previous book use a fabrial with that same ability. It's not exactly never heard of before. Tunicate fucked around with this message at 23:20 on Mar 13, 2014 |
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Mar 13, 2014 07:56
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Yeah you guys are being a bunch of babies about this. It's only the 2nd book! He can't kill his main characters off yet, let him have a few books before he offs Adolin or someone. So far the only death that has felt right was Sadeas, it seemed his character didn't really have anywhere to go, and now with his death you gonna get his wife being the new prime bitch to cause trouble. Jasnah and Szeth still have huge parts to play. When can things stop going in spoiler tags? Has anyone in this thread still not read it?
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Mar 13, 2014 10:16
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I'm fine with him not killing people, it's the ridiculous fake outs that are irritating. It would have been easy to make those characters' dire straits less permanent then decapitated and stabbed in the heart but instead he decided to magic away those very permanent acts. I just don't see the point.
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Mar 13, 2014 10:29
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SilverWingedSeraph posted:It's also worth noting that in the scene after seeing Jasnah get 'killed', and then using her Lightweaving to lure the murderers away, Shallan is surprised that she doesn't trip over or otherwise see any sign of Jasnah's body when she's stumbling around in the dark. Jasnah's survival was definitely foreshadowed.
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Mar 13, 2014 11:44
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I'm kind of torn on it, one of the reasons I couldn't get into Game of Thrones past the second or third book was that it was too hard to care about the characters since they'd keep getting knocked off. I thought Jasnah's death was actually a really good one, she was a mostly developed character and it gave Shallan room to grow, Shallan's my favourite character in the series now because of that development. Not going to complain, Jasnah's a fantastic character, I just hope he can justify it in the coming books. I'm really hoping the following books flesh out the world some more, both locations and customs. Couldn't tell you much about the customs beyond the safehand thing and Shin people finding stone to be hallowed ground, and I know Shinovar is way out west while the Shattered Plains are east, near the ~Origin~. The descriptions of flora and fauna and stuff all throughout Roshar are good, though.
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Mar 13, 2014 11:47
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ShadowGlass posted:This. I seriously don't even understand how anyone could have thought that Jasnah was really dead. Her body disappeared after her "death"! To me, it was obvious she wasn't dead. I mean what else could that mean? The only suspense was to see if she shows up in the last part to save the day, or only in the Epilogue. I'm glad it was the latter. It'd have ruined Shallan's arc if Jasnah had just appeared at the end with the solution. She's stranded with only Wit for company, still far away from anywhere, and at this point she knows even less about what's going on than the readers do, so she'll be great as a viewpoint character in Stones Unhallowed. alr posted:I'm really hoping the following books flesh out the world some more, both locations and customs. Couldn't tell you much about the customs beyond the safehand thing and Shin people finding stone to be hallowed ground, and I know Shinovar is way out west while the Shattered Plains are east, near the ~Origin~. The descriptions of flora and fauna and stuff all throughout Roshar are good, though. I find it all quite interesting. And strange. But I'm definitely looking forward to learning even more about it, as well as Shin culture, and maybe learning more about Horneater customs as well, beyond what we've learned from Rock. It seems that they have some similarities, in that they both see being a person who creates and grows things to be more important than warriors. E: From the last page, but Jorenko posted:It was so freaking anime. There were multiple moments when someone was getting a beatdown, but then stood back up with a burst of energy, and my brain just belts out, "DON'T LOSE YOUR WAY!" ArchetypeBlue fucked around with this message at 12:47 on Mar 13, 2014 |
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Mar 13, 2014 12:40
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I just started WoK. I don't have much to say about it yet except that it grabbed me from the beginning like no fantasy book I can think of other than Elric of Melniboné. I hope it continues this way.
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Mar 13, 2014 16:25
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Portable Staplefrog posted:I just started WoK. I don't have much to say about it yet except that it grabbed me from the beginning like no fantasy book I can think of other than Elric of Melniboné. I hope it continues this way. Heh, if you think the beginning is the interesting and attention grabbing part...
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Mar 13, 2014 16:28
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Portable Staplefrog posted:I just started WoK. I don't have much to say about it yet except that it grabbed me from the beginning like no fantasy book I can think of other than Elric of Melniboné. I hope it continues this way. Is this your first Sanderson?
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Mar 13, 2014 17:31
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Yes. I like reading, but I don't read tons. Except at times when I find something really good like this.
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Mar 13, 2014 17:44
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Portable Staplefrog posted:Yes. I like reading, but I don't read tons. Except at times when I find something really good like this. What they are getting at is there is a thing called the "Sanderson Avalanche" where about 75 to 80 percent of the way into the book poo poo gets cray cray and you can't not read it. If the first part of the book got you, hold on to your rear end.
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Mar 13, 2014 17:50
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Yeah, it's almost a psychological thing. Once you hit the avalanche, you just can't stop reading until it's over. In WoR I was lying in bed and I got the mini avalanche when Kaladin realizes he has to save Elhokar. Was about 11pm and after that part I pretty much read until the end of the battle when they go through the Oathgate. Finished around 2ish.
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Mar 13, 2014 17:59
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Dravs posted:Yeah, it's almost a psychological thing. Once you hit the avalanche, you just can't stop reading until it's over. I did the same thing! He had his realization, and then 'A daughter is disobeying...' and I was like  poo poo is about to go crazy. I just finished the book that night and went into work exhausted.
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Mar 13, 2014 18:50
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Tunicate posted:Illustrations are all up here, by the way: http://brandonsanderson.com/books/the-stormlight-archive/words-of-radiance/stormlight-2-maps-and-illustrations/ Is there a hi-res version of that double page Shallan spread from the inner cover? The Cover Gallery in the sidebar is only returning a single broken image.
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Mar 13, 2014 19:32
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I'm impressed. Some people feel that the prologue is a little too video game/d&d instruction manual. Honestly, It does get into the mechanics a little too much and is a little dry.
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Mar 13, 2014 19:35
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Fezz posted:I'm impressed. Some people feel that the prologue is a little too video game/d&d instruction manual. Honestly, To be fair, The Way of Kings does have two intro scenes: both the Szeth "this is what a Lashing is" prologue as well as the much more interesting and evocative story of the last Desolation.
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Mar 13, 2014 19:38
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Notorious QIG posted:To be fair, The Way of Kings does have two intro scenes: both the Szeth "this is what a Lashing is" prologue as well as the much more interesting and evocative story of the last Desolation. Honestly I think the Szeth prologue is probably one of the bigger writing missteps Sanderson has made - hell, you could practically skip it and not really miss out on anything, you might even enjoy it more - it's pretty easy to pick up what happened from what comes after, especially considering how a full understanding of what Szeth can do isn't really necessary for the entire first book - anything else can be picked up with context just like the actual characters involved do. Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Mar 13, 2014 |
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Mar 13, 2014 20:07
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Strangely, the Szeth prologue was the one I liked more...
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Mar 13, 2014 20:09
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