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I would be shocked if the ending to Way of Kings is anyone absorbing all the stormlight. I mean, even if it's the same universe, using the same plot device twice isn't just hokey, it's boring. It's not going to happen.
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Feb 3, 2011 22:22
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Clinton1011 posted:Yea, I remember reading something about all his books taking place in the same world just 1000's of years apart. Given that his worlds have completely distinct deities/magic systems, they're clearly not the same world. What I've heard is (and I guess this is spoilerish for the end of Mistborn, they're all part of the same multiverse setting. Presevation, Desecration, Ruin, and so on all seem like potential members of a larger pantheon that got scattered and divided amongst different universes.
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Apr 26, 2011 22:01
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ConfusedUs posted:SPOILERS! Seriously, Chamberk, don't read that.
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Jun 24, 2011 21:38
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404GoonNotFound posted:Because the Lord Ruler A) Thought it was too useful to destroy entirely (both in terms of power and an artificial economy to keep the nobles in line) & B) Was half-insane from Ruin's whisperings. And because it presumably would grow back after it was burned, albeit a long time later. The stockpile meant that when the crunch time came it was all used without any gap in which it could come back.
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Nov 12, 2011 02:53
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gninjagnome posted:Not sure if anyone is following Sanderson on Facebook, but I'm getting a kick out of the fact that, when he's traveling, he signs the copies of his books in airport terminal bookstores. I'd totally do that if I was an author. Oh, as in he signs the copies on the shelf? I initially read it as him signing copies people have picked up. Either way, it has to lead to some rather awkward conversations. "So, you like The Way of Kings, huh? I actually wrote it, no big deal. Would you like me to sign it?" Or weird conversations with the people working the counter.
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Nov 29, 2011 23:15
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Ornamented Death posted:The next one should be out this year. The author is having serious personal issues. It's been 'coming out this year' for like 3 years. It's unfortunate, but given what's going on I wouldn't recommend them if you want a completed story. Also the first book is significantly better than the second, or at least dramatically different in setting/tone.
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Feb 8, 2012 03:45
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404GoonNotFound posted:Considering that Hemalurgy was created from whole cloth by Ruin after he was imprisoned, probably nothing at all. Just to spite Preservation that much more. I don't think it would be spite. It's a pretty important plot point in-setting that (major Hero of Ages spoilers) Vin can't draw on the mists while even faintly Hemalurgically empowered. The notion of the essence of Preservation being useful in an explicitly Ruin-derived empowerment goes against this as well. You see the same thing with the whole 'Preservation can't destroy' stuff, which leads to his overarching plan for the books.
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Apr 16, 2012 12:30
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Tanon posted:I think he's talking about kammar, which is the martial art that Szeth uses. Chayshan (from what I've read about it) is more of a magical martial art; Kammar is just a mundane fighting style that Szeth enhanced with Surgebinding. I'm not sure that honorspren are the vehicle for all of the types Knights Radiant. Looking at the Ars Arcanum at the end of Stormlight Archives, there are 10 'historical essences' with different associations. Kaladin is clearly the Sapphire/Protecting/Leading type, while Shallan might be Garnet/Creative/Honest type. The former certainly is honor-centric, but I don't think Shallan's powers are.
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Jan 19, 2013 14:50
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I was convinced it was going to be that (Stealheart ending spoilers)His dad was trying to save Stealheart, rather than it being fear related. That works too, I suppose. I completely guessed the Prof was a gifter early on, when they said Megan couldn't use his stuff for some reason. That said, I was pretty sure that Megan was going to be some sort of anti-Epic (internally using the term 'Angel'), rather than an infiltrator. So I enjoyed that reveal a lot. Overall a good book, if a bit short.
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Sep 27, 2013 01:06
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Tunicate posted:By the way, new steehunt chapter unlock! And how do we read these?
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Nov 8, 2013 22:37
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Tunicate posted:Brandon's apparently pushing as hard as he can to get an ebook tied to the hardcopy. If he did it'd be the first physical book I buy in years. I don't have a problem with that.
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Feb 26, 2014 14:55
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Yeah it's there search for Kaladin and you'll get it. Random pages but a decent sampling.
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Feb 26, 2014 23:03
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If you guys are in to additional random paging through the book, amazon has preview pages for the hardcover version. Seems to be randomly distributed through the book, and include some fairly extreme spoiler pages. Not for those who don't want to be spoiled.
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Mar 3, 2014 16:55
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Tonight's the night. Catch you all in a couple days.
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Mar 4, 2014 03:41
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I'm done. It was good, although I did burn through it pretty damned quickly. I really like Shallan as a character, and while I enjoyed Kaladin in TWoK, I found him a bit too same-y in this one. I do like Syl though. I feel like Sanderson was a bit more open with the cosmere stuff this time, which I kind of regret - I always like to see on a re-read some hint about the overarching universe, and knowing (serious cosmere spoilers!) that Wit was a worldwalker and constant cosmere character made it much easier to zoom in on his actions and words to get greater insights on first-pass. The nightblood cameo was out of nowhere, though, and I'm not really sure what I think about it. It did make obvious the identity of another character in retrospect. I do need to re-read the letter from this book though, I generally skimmed the chapter headers at best. Other spoilerish thouhts: There are a ton of different groups working at cross purposes. Ghostbloods, the Sons of Honor, that Herald killing radiants, Taft's family, the Seventeenth Shard folks, Wit/Hoid. It kind of boggles the mind. It's particularly weird since I never really got a sense from my readings of the true scope of the threat of Odium or the Voidbringers, much less what would motivate so many disparate secret societies to choose different ends-justify-the-means routes to prevent them from coming back. Sure, the visions were dark, but even if the Voidbringers are returning, the impression we're left with after WoR is that even 'ordinary' shardbearers can fight them on a scope of hundreds to one, and the Radiants are coming back. The Everstorm in particular didn't seem all that scary as written. I guess we'll have to see the scope of the desolation more explicitly in the next book, in a couple years.
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Mar 5, 2014 23:59
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Fezz posted:That wasn't an Honorblade, though. It was just a regular dead spren Shardblade. The question now becomes why did Taln have a Shardblade and where is his Honorblade? Ending spoilers: Sanderson makes a point of describing the blade Dalinar uses at the end, saying it looks like a cleaver. It's obviously not the same weapon Taln has. Additional more spoilerish spoilers: Hoid probably stole the honorblade. He's hanging out when Taln shows up, and he runs off for a while after hanging out with Shallan's caravan. He replaced it with a normal shardblade.
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Mar 6, 2014 00:01
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Part of the annoyance with the various conspiratorial groups is that they're made obvious to us by point of view characters. To me a comparison would be with A Song of Ice and Fire, where there are probably even more groups scheming. The difference is that in the latter people don't sit around talking about their allegiances, goals, and enemies outright, and for the most part we are forced to infer from second or third hand accounts what they might be attempting to do. Sanderson in this book doesn't do enough to preserve the mystique of them, nor does he really make any case for why they even should know about the others.
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Mar 6, 2014 15:26
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Law Cheetah posted:The Blade used to catch Amaran out (which Dalinar bonded to and started using) came along with Taln - that's where they got it. It should be an honorblade, but it doesn't match the physical description of Taln's Honorblade given earlier. Also, Dalinar hears screams coming from it after he bonds with the Stormfather, which shouldn't be the case if it was an Honorblade. On that note, why didn't Amaram just grab the Honorblade and pretend-radiant with it? If he's part of some weird secret society venerating the Heralds, and he's willing to pretend to be a radiant for Dalinar (which was totally random), why not go all the way?
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Mar 9, 2014 03:46
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mossyfisk posted:I really wish he'd stop doing that. I could probably have eked a little more entertainment out of AMoL if I'd actually had some twists left to see... Why? AMoL was pretty much bad in spite of Sanderson, any twists there weren't really his doing. Don't get me started on the atrocious ending confrontation.
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Mar 11, 2014 01:36
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404GoonNotFound posted: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. Haha, when (very minor WoR spoilers) Shallan is at the training ground and 'sketching the King's shardblades' she also takes the time to draw a picture of Adolin, just like he said she was there to do. I didn't think about that when I saw the 'sigh' the first time.
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Mar 13, 2014 22:44
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I'm curious about something: Why does everyone quibble over whether at the end Kaladin swears a third oath or not? Why are we assuming that "I will protect even those I hate, so long as it is right" is an entirely new ideal? "I will protect those who cannot protect themselves" is a relatively unrestrictive oath, as Kaladin himself notes, and the last one is more so. But generally they touch on the same aspiration of being more honorable in some fashion. We know Syl wants Kaladin to always be truthful, we know that she has sapience as a result of her bond with Kaladin, which is itself dependent on the extent to which he embodies or aspires to her particular code of conduct. Not to belabor the point, but she's an Honorspren, and the degree to which Kaladin acts honorably and binds himself to act in such a fashion seems to influence the strength of their bond. Can't it be that whatever 'oaths' he swears, which restrict his behavior to be more in tune with Syl's nature strengthen his abilities, but also limit what he can do and increase the possibility of contradictory requirements and losing the spren, as well? That is, that neither of the post 'Strength before Destination' oaths were actually specific oaths required, but rather that they were personal statements that clarified and codified Kaladin's committments to the ideals of the Windrunners?
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Apr 5, 2014 17:47
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Umbra Dubium posted:I just want to say that the use of the word "cologne" in a fantasy work in which there is no Germany is the sort of thing that would make a philologist like Tolkien spit his pipe out. Yeah, he should have made up a word with a bunch of extra apostrophes and accents to show how different the word (not the meaning, just the word) is on Roshar. I mean, sure, every word we use has origins in older language, but the ones that are explicitly, you know, from older languages should have references to the language appendix and be meaningless outside that context. This is one of the more bizarre criticisms I hear pop up every once in a while, and only in the context of sci fi and fantasy. Showing alien language is just so pointless and silly if all you're doing is creating a made up fantasy English. Contrast with Orwell and Newspeak, which actually had relevance to what he was trying to say, and the dumb Tolkien-esque fantasy obsession with made up words is just pointless window dressing. Bakkar and the Malazan books are the worst about this. Velius fucked around with this message at 15:50 on Nov 1, 2014 |
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Nov 1, 2014 15:45
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Also finished firefight. It felt a bit better than Steelheart, if only because less of the book was devoted to solving an obvious mystery. It was still fairly predictable in direction, though, and weirdly inconsistent in where it seemed to be going. Given Brandon's tendencies, I knew it was going to delve more into the basis of epic-ness and the origin/weakness of powers. It seemed really disjointed though, as if Sanderson changed where he wanted the story to go multiple times and never had it properly edited. Massive spoilers for the ending/complaints below. The big reveal is that Epics have weaknesses based on their fears, and if they face and overcome that fear then they don't turn evil when they use their powers (or that they can reject said power outright). That the second book hinges on fear again, after that was the key revelation of book one was a bit of a disappointment, but it's a secondary issue to the bigger problems with the plot. So Regalia is another city ruling epic who is Evil but not super duper Evil, and her city has some infrastructure and stuff. And she keeps trying to draw Prof to the city by trying to kill our plucky heroes, but explicitly doesn't try to attack Prof himself. What a mysterious situation! So we head to Manhattan to figure things out, and, coincidentally, Love Interest is there. At the start it looks like Regalia is at the least conflicted about killing, and clearly there are non-destructive powers being used in the city. Regalia repeatedly refuses to kill our heroes for some reason. There are all sorts of hints about the people in Manhattan being oddly passive in the face of danger, and new/changing Epic powers that I thought would be related to power-gifting or something (and possible constructive uses of powers). Or that the emotional state or intention when using powers might influence the effect on character, and that was something Regalia was trying to manipulate in Prof, or control in herself. But no, it's all a weird ploy to make Prof use too much power and turn evil, even though that already almost happened in book 1, and straight up attacking him regardless of locale might achieve the same result. Megan was specifically sought out to seduce David for handwavey reasons that aren't just contrivances to bring them into proximity. It's also devoid of reasonable motive - if she's dying, why on earth would she care about making him evil? Why not try and steal his healing power, since she's shown she can apparently manipulate and transplant epic powers? Or why not just kill all his buddies, then make him use his powers when he doesn't have help that might prevent her diabolical scheme? The idea she wants a successor to rule her city is especially hokey given the reveal that she's goatee-level evil when she tries to Epic-ise David. By now I think most of us are used to Sanderson trying to put a redemptive spin on the major villains in his stories, and this might be his lead in to retroactive redemption of Regalia when this all ends up vital to defeating Calamity. I just feel like if that's the direction he's taking things there are just way too many weird plot holes and misdirections. I'm not used to this from Sanderson, and I'm honestly quite curious as to what happened when he was writing the book.
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Jan 6, 2015 16:59
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theghostpt posted:You're absolutely right There's a fair amount of hints about the Heralds throughout the books. I believe that Brandon has suggested we've seen many, if not all of them, in the pages of the novels so far. The ones I can recall include several present during the events leading to the assassination of Galivar (the Justice herald, I believe, was talking to another), and the Herald of the Lightweavers is the woman going around destroying statues. Another one is probably a beggar from the prologues. Basically they're everywhere, but apparently 'twisted' by either their abandonment of duty or something else into either opposing what they formerly believed (see: Herald of justice murdering people or not because of the letter of the law, not the spirit, artistic herald defacing art).
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Mar 3, 2015 23:22
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rafikki posted:God, what a poo poo ending to a series. I think he's doing more. I also felt them get pretty forced and less good, but early on it was a solid couple of books
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Apr 25, 2015 21:48
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computer parts posted:Sanderson does a whole bunch of twists too, like Sazed becoming Harmony. Why on earth would you make this post?
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Jun 22, 2015 22:26
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NinjaDebugger posted:Spoiling the end of a trilogy most people tell newbies to read as the first one is still a lovely thing to do, whether it's against the rules or not. Especially when it's a post as asinine as the one I called out. "Sanderson has twists in his books. :spoils endings of multiple books: end post." There's no point to it except to gently caress over new readers, because it sure as hell wasn't a discussion of anything. I don't think we need walls of black everywhere either, but providing some semblance of context to the post before the endings of multiple books is a painless courtesy.
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Jun 23, 2015 13:09
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That chapter I've seen before, unfortunately. Still worth reading though.
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Jul 1, 2015 17:04
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All right. Working through the Shadows of Self and I have some theories. I'm about 60% in so spoilers abound. 1. They make a point of emphasizing how Harmony had difficulty acting because of his balanced nature, but then he reflects over how he was too nice in designing the world. 2. They have a huge hint of Atium being "the missing metal". Atium is Ruin's physical manifestation, which he didn't have access to when Harmony merged Preservation and Ruin. 3. Therefore Harmony is more preservation than ruin. And something else has access to the surplus ruin power via the Atium. Bleeder seems the logical person for this, as she can do the whole telepathy thing they make clear is of Ruin. 4. Not sure what Suit is up to. Yet. Or what Bleeder is trying to do. Progress through conflict? Velius fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Oct 6, 2015 |
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Oct 6, 2015 23:04
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Proteus Jones posted:I'm hoping that Taravangian on one of his ultra-smart/amoral days foresaw having to deal with Odium on one of his limited facility days and planned accordingly, screwing Odium over in a manner no one sees coming. I expect the opposite to be true, actually. That it’s his dumbest/most moral days which make a difference in the end. The only reason for that dichotomy to exist is if it matters in some fashion, and if Odium can see the future (with the caveat that future vision is not infallible, as Renarin showed) then he can presumably interpret the Diagram and it’s conclusions to a much greater extent than Taravangian. I think he’s going to be defied in some way by Taravangian acting counter to the predictions on a day when he would otherwise have his minders prevent it. I’m convinced it’s going to be all of the characters showing hidden depths in a moral way that helps defeat Odium. Particularly since we now know he’s actually Emotion, filtered through the personality of a being who (if you believe Hoid) was hateful and cruel prior to ascension to divinity. Emotion or Passion isn’t inherently evil, so I don’t think Odium is going to be as free to act against the protagonists than say, Ruin was. Then again, that may not be his plan either - the Parsh are good tools because they’re fueled by the past betrayal and enslavement of their people, but the endgame of Odium is escape, not necessary destroying the humans or saving the Parsh. I’m not sure we know enough to have a good sense of what the endgame is yet.
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Nov 17, 2017 21:16
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Tunicate posted:Well, the spren are certainly getting something from their side of it. This is a Sanderson story. The magic system is codified and rule-bound. The ethics of oaths isn’t really important compared to following the system guidelines (in this case that Honor = keeping promises, so getting spiritual power relies on getting that Connection from making more restrictive paths), and ideally finding magic the gathering style combos to break them.
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Nov 27, 2017 02:12
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The twist in Warbreaker where (spoilers, obviously) Vivenna is actually helping the bad guys and her bodyguards were actually evil was pretty interesting in theory, but I feel like the execution wasn’t great. It felt like Sanderson wanted to explore the idea but didn’t put forth the effort to make any of them have meaningful motivations or backstories that could be explained in the story. Instead we just get way too many of the players of some centuries old drama coincidentally showing up in the same place which just happens to also be the setting of Warbreaker.
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Apr 27, 2020 13:52
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Have we ever even seen Jasnah and Kaladin interact?
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Sep 1, 2020 00:09
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eke out posted:i will note that while i know nothing about :files:, you can switch your kindle's content preferences to pretend you live in Australia and buy the book legally right now You also have to shop on Amazon.co.au or whatever. But it worked.
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Nov 17, 2020 00:06
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Finished RoW. Some thoughts: Sanderson really likes a writing tactic I’m most familiar with from Stephen Donaldson, the notion of the villains being able to plan and foresee everything and plan around the heroes until surprise! the heroes show they have some unforeseen resolve or virtue that lets them keep going. I can’t even count the number of times it shows up in Stormlight, but it’s a lot. It’s really noticeable with all the stuff about seeing the future being associated with various shards. It’s a technique that gets old, particularly when it happens over and over again with the same characters, a la Kaladin. I wasn’t enamored with the last book, but this one was definitely more disappointing. Way too much filler, and the character beats were really pretty repetitive with where they’ve gone before. Oh Kaladin is depressed again, but this time it’s different from the last three books where we went through this. Etc. I think Sanderson should have condensed this into the “before the break” book instead of drawing it out, as it is this was definitely a minor/filler work.
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Nov 19, 2020 19:05
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Oasx posted:I have been re-reading the Saga of Pliocene Exile, the series came out in the early 80's, but the style of the covers look absolutely ancient. I'm amazed that art styles can have changed so much in so little time. There are different versions of the covers even in the states, my Nonborn King has Aiken Drum on a flying horse (I forget the name), but there’s a much more dated cover with him standing looking smug. I don’t know the deal with cover art except the authors have zero control over them. Charles Stross has a post about it here with regard to one of the most notoriously bad covers I’ve ever seen: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/03/cmap-6-why-did-you-pick-such-a.html
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Jun 1, 2022 14:39
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Is it possible that (TLM spoilers obviously) Telsin’s death satisfied the ruin part of Harmony being able to intervene there at all, and he causes it actively? We get an inner monologue from ostensibly Autonomy but ruin was always pretty good at that himself.
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Nov 19, 2022 22:48
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Yeah I did not find the “research” remotely interesting. For all Sanderson is about wrangling rules for magic into wacky combinations, he didn’t write a compelling process of discovery. Probably because for him it’s mostly trying to logically work through the possibilities and combinations of systems as if they’re magic cards.
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Sep 27, 2023 12:44
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Lawnie posted:
You can sort out the (is this even spoilers?) Doppler effect much more easily with sounds, which would definitely have happened previously. They also talk about sound and light distortion with bubbles.
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May 12, 2024 20:47
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