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Mordiceius posted:Writing up my thoughts on Bands of Mourning and Secret History. Their placement on the Sanderson Ranking Chart may be shocking. As always, I'm really looking forward to reading those. I'm quite curious where those place, surprisingly high or disappointingly low? Secret History spoiler: You weren't a fan of ghost Kelsier/Kelsier "surviving" in Hero of Ages, so maybe Secret History will rank low because of that?
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Sep 15, 2021 10:33
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Mordiceius posted:Mistborn 7 is Nov 2022, SA5 is Nov 2023. Oops. I misread the original post. That's me being a dumbass. Either way, I'm glad Brandon is both so prolific and transparent that we even know all this information. Maybe he'll accidentally write two books at once again.
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Sep 15, 2021 14:58
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I don't care about his non-Cosmere books, but here's a quite lengthy excerpt from his upcoming Skyward novel, Cytonic: https://www.tor.com/2021/09/17/excerpts-cytonic-by-brandon-sanderson-skyward-book-3/
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Sep 17, 2021 18:59
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Torrannor posted:I don't care about his non-Cosmere books, but here's a quite lengthy excerpt from his upcoming Skyward novel, Cytonic: https://www.tor.com/2021/09/17/excerpts-cytonic-by-brandon-sanderson-skyward-book-3/ Time to do a Skyward reread! Between this and Will Wight dropping Reaper, I'm gonna have quite a few unproductive days in November.
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Sep 18, 2021 08:23
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Well, shout out to whoever recommended that I dive into Mistborn after reading everything in Stormlight Archive. I've been listening to the audiobook during my commute for the past couple weeks. I'm getting close to the end, and now realizing that I need to be much more cautious with following the thread for spoilers in the later books. Such a good use of the heist format, thrilling final act, and I'm really close to the finale so I'm so curious about how it's all going to wrap up.
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Sep 20, 2021 17:24
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welcome, cosmerenaut
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Sep 20, 2021 20:00
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It’s pretty wild and that thing goes places in the last book.
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Sep 20, 2021 20:06
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The first of the Skyward novellas is up for pre-order: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09FYV1V4Z/ It's an FM novella, featuring Jorgen and Rig and the cover is NICE! It looks like it picks up on Detritus after Jorgen's epilogue chapter in Starsight so I am stoked for this. 
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Sep 21, 2021 02:45
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Been having a lot of interesting talks lately about depictions of Evil in Fantasy. What makes someone evil? What even is Evil? How to depict any of this? I think Odium is a really interesting take on this. In my view, guilt is absolutely the first step to stopping your evil actions because it means you understand what you are doing is wrong. It is only the first step of a long, long road - many people are good at suppressing their conscience - but it is absolutely the first step. You don't stop being evil until you recognize what you are doing is evil. Dalinar's guilt nearly destroyed him. It left him a broken man ready to be taken up as Odium's Champion. But thanks to Cultivation, he recovered and was able to take the next step passed the pain and guilt and become a good man. He would NOT relinquish his guilt (ie . his responsibility) to Odium and so he became a true hero. Moash is the opposite. He feels the guilt just like Dalinar, he knows what he's done is wrong just like Dalinar, but he flees to Odium and the oblivion he promises to avoid responsibility. Odium's insidiousness is precisely because men of conscience join him in order to drown out their conscience. Another good contrast would be Boromir vs. Saruman. They both knew they did wrong but only Boromir was truly contrite and wanted to atone for his crime. Saruman's pride prevented him from being humble and admitting his wrongdoing. Boromir is Dalinar, Saruman is Moash. NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Sep 21, 2021 |
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Sep 21, 2021 04:07
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NikkolasKing posted:Been having a lot of interesting talks lately about depictions of Evil in Fantasy. What makes someone evil? What even is Evil? How to depict any of this? Of course Dalinar killed hundreds of thousands of innocent parshendi and has never felt any guilt about that, so ...
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Sep 21, 2021 04:14
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Marsh and Moash are different but I can say with certainty that Marsh also experiences a ton of guilt and I don't think he's had any good coping mechanisms for that.
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Sep 21, 2021 05:01
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M_Gargantua posted:Marsh and Moash are different but I can say with certainty that Marsh also experiences a ton of guilt and I don't think he's had any good coping mechanisms for that. Oh wow, I totally did screw up the names there in a major way. My bad. Thanks for pinting that out. Cicero posted:Yeah I was really confused how Marsh got in there. But I also didn't remember anything about Dalinar interacting with Preservation. I'm getting everybody's name wrong tonight it seems. NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Sep 21, 2021 |
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Sep 21, 2021 05:16
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Yeah I was really confused how Marsh got in there. But I also didn't remember anything about Dalinar interacting with Preservation.
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Sep 21, 2021 05:49
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But to go further with Dalinar, he generally doesn't feel much regret for deaths he caused intentionally. Dalinar's regrets are chiefly defined by being unintentional on his part. He didn't know Evi was in the city and regrets causing her death. He didn't expect Szeth to show up as an assassin, and regrets being too drunk to fight. But killing people for political power? Dalinar doesn't feel a lot of regret for that. Contrast that with Taravangian, who feels deep guilt over every single death he inflicts intentionally. I think Taravangian would feel less guilt for someone who was killed in one of his plans by accident, since he'd feel less personal responsibility for it. Taravangian will kill people for political power - same as Dalinar - but he regrets every corpse and recognizes it as an evil (even if he believes it to be a necessary one).
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Sep 21, 2021 06:11
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Tunicate posted:But to go further with Dalinar, he generally doesn't feel much regret for deaths he caused intentionally. Dalinar's regrets are chiefly defined by being unintentional on his part. He didn't know Evi was in the city and regrets causing her death. He didn't expect Szeth to show up as an assassin, and regrets being too drunk to fight. But killing people for political power? Dalinar doesn't feel a lot of regret for that. Dalinar explicitly is haunted by everybody he burned to death that day, not just Evi. He doesn't just think of her when he's at his worst, he hears the screams of other women, of children. As for Taravangian, it is notable that the genius Taravangian has no empathy whatsoever. Sure, his stupid, emotional self does think "these are necessary evils" but he isn't the one concocting those evils at all. He's just going along with what his sociopathic side thought to do because he believes wholeheartedly that this was his smarter self and knew what was best. He's essentially a child trusting in an adult. I'm pretty sure it's pointed out multiple times that he doesn't even understand what he's doing, he just has to trust in the path laid out by Smart Taravangian and the Diagram. Guilty Taravangian doesn't come up with evil plans, Guitless Taravangian does and the former just dutifully obeys the latter. NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 06:24 on Sep 21, 2021 |
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Sep 21, 2021 06:19
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NikkolasKing posted:Dalinar explicitly is haunted by everybody he burned to death that day, not just Evi. He doesn't just think of her when he's at his worst, he hears the screams of other women, of children. And yet he only cares about being forgiven by her, individually. He doesn't have any interest in making amends to the survivors or relatives of Rathalas.
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Sep 21, 2021 06:29
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Completely forgot I hadn't posted my thoughts on my recent reads (or audiobook listens rather). I'm just going to post large spoiler walls because I'm lazy. Wax & Wayne - The Bands of Mourning I was excited for this one coming off Shadows of Self. But in the end, I felt like it was slightly weaker than Shadows of Self. I really liked the book, but I definitely found parts of it frustrating and more predictable than previous Sanderson books. It's been about two weeks since I finished the book and I should have written up my thoughts then because I could have written in more detail. This is going to end up more in the way of some bullet points that stood out to me. - The first half of the book felt tremendously meandering. Then at the dinner party, Edwarn is on the telephone and remarks how it was meandering on purpose. That's like when you're playing a video game and doing an escort quest and they make a joke about escort quests sucking. Everything up until the party... was kind of really boring. - Steris rules. This book completely won me over on her. I felt like she was basically a non-character in books 1 & 2. This book did a lot of heavy lifting and every scene with her was a delight. "We need a distraction. I AM GOING TO MAKE MYSELF VOMIT." Steris went from being a non-entity to probably my favorite character. - Ranette being confirmed a lesbian was good. MeLaan and Wayne loving was good. MeLaan basically being genderfluid and Wayne still liking her was also good. - The sister being evil was something that, I felt, was almost too obvious. From the moment she shows up, she's like "no no, I'm not listening to you I MUST GET THE BANDS!" I don't know if I'm getting better at picking up on the clues, but booooooooooooooooooy did that feel too obvious. - The Bands of Mourning referencing the bands of metal in the spearhead were very good. - Marasi getting to go Mistborn was great and I love that for her. She needed something good like that. - Oh hey, Kelsier's back! - My biggest complaint overall is that this book sets up moments and then completely invalidates them. Wax dies. Then he comes back. I don't think I liked Wax dying. It's just a little too literally deus ex machina. Wayne finally picks up a gun and shoots some one, point blank, in the face (which was loving awesome btw). JK he knew she wouldn't die, that's the only reason he did it. - My second biggest complaint is specific to the audiobook. Kramer uses a loving Swedish accent for the Southern Scadrians. It was really hard to feel emotionally invested in Allik when he talked like the loving Swedish Chef. Overall, I enjoyed this book. But I think it was a step down from book 2. Emperor's Soul thought I had while reading: They talk about Connection a lot - talking about it in the context of "rewriting history" and it immediately made me think of forging in Emperor's Soul. I think having gone through Emperor's Soul helped me understand the concepts in this book better. And this book made me better appreciate Emperor's Soul. The Eleventh Metal This book was written for an introduction to a tabletop game or something? It feels like it. Didn't really do much for me. The main positive I can say - it wasn't long. Allomancer Jak and the Pits of Eltania I don't hate the Allomancer Jak gimmick. The gentleman adventurer schtick can be fun. I think this might have worked better in the written format over audiobook, because it has constant interjections from the Terrisman steward Handerwym that completely break up the flow of the narrative when in audiobook format. I enjoyed the story overall, especially since we get more time with koloss than we do the entire Wax & Wayne series so far. But I feel like there was a little to much "wink wink nod nod isn't this ridiculous" going on. It should have been played more straight. Mistborn - Secret History Yeah. I was not expecting this one to go the ways it did. Absolutely loved this. Took a little bit for my brain to fully picture everything going on because so much of it was so drat abstract. I didn't realize that this book only covered era 1 and thought it would cover era 1 & 2, so I was caught off guard by it ending. I wish it was longer. Kelsier gets his rear end kicked repeatedly. This was good. We met loving Elantrians. That was weird. This book did two things incredibly well - 1 - I'm always skeptical of a "this character was secretly at all major events all along and you didn't even know." For people who have watched the show LOST - think Nikki and Paulo. That's when you do it poorly. This one was great, because while Kelsier was at the events, he was largely powerless and didn't do much. 2 - It gave me closure on Vin & Elend that I didn't know I needed, and therefore made Hero of Ages a better book overall. Vin & Elend's deaths were something that I never had quite made peace with. It worked within the Hero of Ages, but I was always sad that we didn't get any final words with them. It hurt. This gave us some final words and what final words they were. Twisting the knife for Kelsier. Vin and Elend made peace and proved that they were better people than Kelsier could ever hope to be. It was complete loving perfection and that single moment made this entire journey across seven books worth it. Also, Kramer gave Spook a different accent in this book which again was jarring. But also, not a problem for non-audiobook people. CURRENT SANDERSON RANKINGS - The Final Empire The Hero of Ages Shadows of Self Mistborn - Secret History The Bands of Mourning The Alloy of Law The Emperor’s Soul The Well of Ascension Elantris Allomancer Jak and the Pits of Eltania The Eleventh Metal The Hope of Elantris ALTERNATE SANDERSON RANKINGS - S-Tier - The best of the best. Near perfection The Final Empire, The Hero of Ages, Shadows of Self, Mistborn - Secret History A-Tier - Fantastic stories with few flaws The Bands of Mourning, The Alloy of Law, The Emperor’s Soul B-Tier - It has some issues but is still worth the time The Well of Ascension C-Tier - This book has as many, if not more, lows than highs Elantris Side-Tier 1 - Short story that I didn’t feel wasted my time Allomancer Jak and the Pits of Eltania Side-Tier 2 - Short story that doesn’t need to exist (but at least it’s short) The Eleventh Metal, The Hope of Elantris
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Sep 21, 2021 07:43
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I'm reading Elantris now. Apparently one of the weakest Cosmere books, but the first chapter definitely has me hooked in.
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Sep 22, 2021 21:59
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tweet my meat posted:I'm reading Elantris now. Apparently one of the weakest Cosmere books, but the first chapter definitely has me hooked in. Let us know what you think of Sarene.
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Sep 22, 2021 22:13
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So far I like her, she has a fun setup for her plotline and she seems pretty likable so far. Does the quality take a sharp dip or something? Also Elantris is a super hosed up place.
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Sep 23, 2021 04:48
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tweet my meat posted:Also Elantris is a super hosed up place. Elantris is basically Dark Souls.
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Sep 23, 2021 05:00
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I have a weird relationship with Elantris. It was the first Sanderson book I read, only because at the time, it was the only Sanderson book out there. I saw it in the store and bought it specifically because it was marketed as a one and done novel - it wasn't part of a trilogy or the first book in an epic twenty book series. It stood on its own, with its own story and characters, and I wouldn't have to wait two or three years for another book to find out what happens. Well, looks like I got Sandersoned because look what's happened since. I still love Elantris, but it's so definitely a 'first published novel'.
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Sep 23, 2021 16:00
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Been thinking about Bands of Mourning some more. Goddamn is there a lot to love with that book but so many parts of it make me so frustrated.
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Sep 23, 2021 16:01
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Lucas Archer posted:I saw it in the store and bought it specifically because it was marketed as a one and done novel Oops, All Cosmere!
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Sep 23, 2021 17:55
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Honestly I'm really digging Elantris so far. I had prepared for it to be disappointing, but I love how the story is shaping up and I really enjoy all 3 main characters. I had a much harder time getting through W&W than I'm having with this one so far, though I still really enjoyed W&W.
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Sep 23, 2021 22:50
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I've read all the Cosmere, and there's a lot I don't like about Sanderson's writing, but for some reason I just love Warbreaker, to where I even bought the ebook version with his notes for each chapter. for random rankings cause I'm watching AEW and why not: 1. The Final Empire 2. Warbreaker 3. Oathbringer 4. Emperor's Soul 5. Way of Kings
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Sep 25, 2021 03:32
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For some reason my kindle opened Bands of Mourning to the epilogue and I didn't realize until I hit the postscript lol. I don't think I really spoiled myself on too much, since I already knew that Kelsier is hemalurgized. I haven't read Secret History yet, am I correct that it's recommended to read after BoM? Definitely going to have to go back to RoW and look at those epigraphs again...
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Sep 25, 2021 14:33
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Professor Spatula posted:I haven't read Secret History yet, am I correct that it's recommended to read after BoM? Yep
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Sep 26, 2021 00:00
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Elantris was great. Definitely not the worst sanderson book I've read (that would probably be alloy, which I still like) Hrathen and Sarene are probably two of my favorite characters Sanderson was written. With Elantris down I have read all the books referenced in the arcanum unbound stories, so it's onto that next.
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Sep 26, 2021 03:55
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The 'Chapter Summaries' on Coppermind are spoiler free, right? A friend of mine finally finished Way of Kings after two or three attempts at it and has started Words of Radiance, but the large amount of proper nouns and all the POVs are giving him a tough time.
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Sep 27, 2021 18:01
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Sab669 posted:The 'Chapter Summaries' on Coppermind are spoiler free, right? A friend of mine finally finished Way of Kings after two or three attempts at it and has started Words of Radiance, but the large amount of proper nouns and all the POVs are giving him a tough time. The summaries just cover what's known up to that point, but a lot of the character/concept pages are full of spoilers so following links is iffy. You could do what I tell people to do with Wheel of Time, and have them ask you about a character and you look them up to avoid spoilers.
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Sep 27, 2021 19:05
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Leng posted:The first of the Skyward novellas is up for pre-order: Huh, I check his website, but I had no idea that he had written a bunch of novellas, especially with Cytonic coming out in about two months. Anyways, something to look forward to for tomorrow. Narmi fucked around with this message at 19:26 on Sep 27, 2021 |
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Sep 27, 2021 19:19
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Sab669 posted:The 'Chapter Summaries' on Coppermind are spoiler free, right? A friend of mine finally finished Way of Kings after two or three attempts at it and has started Words of Radiance, but the large amount of proper nouns and all the POVs are giving him a tough time. The Time Machine has a 'before words of radiance' option, though the wiki wasn't very good back then https://coppermind.net/wiki/Special:TimeMachine
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Sep 27, 2021 19:31
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Narmi posted:Huh, I check his website, but I had no idea that he had written a bunch of novellas, especially with Cytonic coming out in about two months. It's not written by him, the "with" author was the writer, they're publishing these to get more books into our greedy nerd hands
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Sep 27, 2021 19:40
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mewse posted:It's not written by him, the "with" author was the writer, they're publishing these to get more books into our greedy nerd hands He was fairly involved from the start. Latest weekly update talks about how the collaboration started: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJmAkHsck2s A few updates ago, he also talked about how he stopped working on The Lost Metal (Wax & Wayne 4) in order to revise the Skyward Flight novellas. https://wob.coppermind.net/events/464/#e14975 As far as I can figure out, Janci picked the POV characters she wanted, they either collaborated on the outline or Brandon probably gave her a lot of direction on the outline, she went away and wrote the first drafts, then Brandon got involved in revisions and either gave a lot of notes or did some revising himself. Sunreach is dropping tomorrow for you guys (today for me, though it's only just past 6 AM in Australia and I don't have it on my Kindle yet, so maybe in a few hours). Most likely I'll blast through it tonight and let you guys know.
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Sep 27, 2021 21:11
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Leng posted:
Have finished Sunreach and it is good. FM as the POV character is different. I think I prefer Spensa as a POV character because she's just hilarious to read, though I did have some laugh out loud moments in this novella. My only complaint (and it's a minor one) is perhaps the plot moved along a little too smoothly? It felt like Jorgen figured out how to teleport around a little too quickly. I don't think you could jump into the novella without having read Skyward and Starsight. But there were loads of fun things, in particular massive tentacle space monsters. Also Boomslug has gotta be using mind blades. Edit: I also saw the befriend the slugs and Jorgen is still alive plot promises from a mile away. Not sure if that's because I read the blurbs for ReDawn and Evershore or because I've been extra focuses on analyzing plot lately. It was still good though, novella delivers on its promises, and the promises from Skyward and Starsight that were left hanging Leng fucked around with this message at 13:25 on Sep 28, 2021 |
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Sep 28, 2021 13:16
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He's getting screwed on Sunreach lol. Searching for it on Amazon or audible autocorrects it to "suntech" (a chinese company), so it's visibility is hosed
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Sep 28, 2021 16:11
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Emperor's Soul was awesome! Probably one of my favorite stories from him so far and definitely my favorite magic system. Forgery has always been a concept that has fascinated me so I love when a story explores it, especially in such a fantastic way. One small question that I'm pretty sure I already know the answer to: the Imperial Fool was Hoid, right?
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Sep 28, 2021 19:16
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tweet my meat posted:One small question that I'm pretty sure I already know the answer to: the Imperial Fool was Hoid, right? Yes, of course.
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Sep 28, 2021 19:17
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Torrannor posted:Yes, of course. I think the answer to that question is almost always yes.
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Sep 28, 2021 21:56
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