Greetings, Edgedancers! My name’s Lyndsey, and your intrepid and faithful Alice and I are here to bring you chapter two of the Edgedancer Reread! We’ll be switching back and forth throughout this post, discussing our thoughts in “real time,” as it were, so strap in and prepare for some awesomeness.
Lyn: First of all, I just have to say how much I adore Lift. She has such a unique voice, and really reads well as a younger character. Sanderson does great things with POV and voice for many of his characters, but Lift in particular is unique in that I can always tell immediately when I’m in one of her chapters! Her inner voice is so different and the things she notices are… well, shall we say more crude than what most of Sanderson’s characters think about. It’s pretty obvious that he doesn’t want to be another GRRM or Stephen King, and many of his readers appreciate that – but Lift walks a fine line between tame vulgarity and childish exuberance that I find quite charming.
Alice: Welp. There’s really nothing to disagree with there, Lyn: I love Lift! I’m never quite sure how to respond to readers who say they skip her Interlude on rereads, and haven’t read Edgedancer, because they just don’t like her. Umm… To each his own? (Then again, I can’t understand skipping anything, because I want the whole starvin’ story!!) Anyway… Lift definitely has a thirteen-year-old mentality! The delicate balance of innocence despite a rough childhood is endearing, but it’s always jerked back from cloying by either snark or vulgarity, or both. One of my (many) favorite Lift lines is, “I’m so storming pure I practically belch rainbows.” It captures her essence so well.
L: Plus that’s a pretty hilarious mental image. And on that note, we’ll move on to…
The Awesomeness
Lift has come to a city cut into the starvin’ ground in order to hide. Nothing else. Just hide.
Really. (We believe you, Lift. Suuuuuure we do.)
She and Wyndle have a conversation in which Wyndle is awful uncomfortable about the prospect of becoming a Shardblade, but Lift doesn’t catch on. We learn that the “real” reason Lift decided to trek out here was to try some awesome pancakes – oh, and that Darkness guy’s somewhere in the city, too. Is that important? Naaaaah, it’s all about the pancakes!
A few other important notes: the Everstorm hasn’t hit yet, but we have reason to believe it’s on the way. (Insert dramatic chord.)
Kadasixes and Stars
L: WHAT? Pick only ONE quote? I’m gonna channel Lift here and say that you ain’t the boss of me! I’m gonna pick TWO and there’s nothing you can starvin’ do to stop me.
“It’s not about sustenance. It’s about torture.”
Stormfather, but I love her. She’s hilarious, and her back-and-forth banter with Wyndle always brings a smile to my face.
“So now you’re normal.”
“Course I am. It’s everyone else that’s weird.”
On a more serious note, I particularly like this one because, as a “weird kid,” I can relate to it so much. I think many of us had this feeling growing up, when we liked things that others didn’t or just didn’t fit in for some reason, and it made us outsiders. Whether that “thing” was fantasy novels, or a certain sport, or theater, or being an introvert… or liking really awesome pancakes… we were teased or bullied or just plain ignored because of them. (If you never had this experience, I envy you.) Lift has such a wonderful way of viewing the world, an outlook that I wish I had been mature enough to adopt. She’s normal. She’s perfectly fine just the way she is, and she sees no reason to have to justify it to anyone. You go on with your bad self, Lift.
Alice, did you have a quote that particularly resonated with you?
A: Well, of course! There are always too many – some just for fun, and some for the depth of meaning. With Lift, there are usually some that are both! But I’ll pick one:
“But don’t you feel something? Out there? Building?”
“A distant thunder,” Lift whispered, looking westward, past the city, toward the far-off mountains. “Or . . . or the way you feel after someone drops a pan, and you see it falling, and get ready for the clatter it will make when it hits.”
“So you do feel it.”
“Maybe,” Lift said.
She’s such an odd mix of insight and insouciance. Even here, right after a perfect – if somewhat bizarre – description of the building Everstorm, she won’t admit that she feels what she just described. Granted that since we know what’s coming, it’s far more effective on us than it would be on your random Azish citizen…. Still, I loved the creepy feeling this gave me as an intimation of what she feels coming.
Pet Voidbringer
L: Wyndle is being very cagey about Shardblades in this chapter. He clearly doesn’t want to become one – I wonder why? Has he had bad experiences in the past that he’s beginning to remember, or does he just not relish the idea of being swung around in the hands of a hyperactive teenager? (And who can blame him for that, really.) I can only imagine that being responsible for the death of another being, especially when you don’t have agency in the act, is difficult to come to terms with. It must be difficult to be a tool – especially a tool for murder, even “justified” murder.
A: I do have a thought on this, but it goes with another bit that I’ll address below. RAFO.
“I’m a gardener, not a soldier, so I’ll not have you hitting people with me.”
L: He let it slip here, but Lift doesn’t catch on completely.
A: This cracked me up, and at first I couldn’t believe she didn’t catch it… but she really has no reason whatsoever to suspect that he will become her Blade. She doesn’t know any of the other new Radiants yet. Okay, then.
“Something is wrong – I can feel it.”
L: I wonder if this is just an affectation of his nervous nature, something that only cultivationspren can sense, or something all spren sense?
A: Oh, that has so many possibilities for theorizing… because I have this ongoing theory that all the Orders on the lower half of the “double eye” graphic are closer to Cultivation, while the ones on the upper half are more of Honor. The Truthwatchers are next to the Edgedancers and share a Surge, and they certainly seem to sense things beyond what others do. Then again, Sylphrena seemed to sense when the stormspren started showing up, so maybe it’s all spren after all.
“We only moved to bond with you because the Cryptics and the honorspren and everyone else were starting to move.”
L: EVERYone else, eh, Wyndle? This is nice to hear that we’ll almost certainly be seeing all of the orders of Knights Radiant eventually! No one’s sitting it out.
A: There’s hope, anyway!
“Everyone who had any idea of how to accomplish all this died centuries ago!”
L: I’d assume because they were all bonded and hence became the static, dead Shardblades being wielded these days. But what happened to spren whose Knights died either before the Recreance or during the final battle? Surely they’d still have information and memories about this whole process. They’re basically immortal, right? If their Knights died, did they also become dead Blades, or did they seek out different Knights? Has this ever been addressed? So many questions!
A: As far as I know, these are questions we have no way of answering yet. Outside the broken-bond issue, we don’t know how long an individual spren can function: is there some kind of fading away, or do they just sort of remain the same forever, with the only difference being whether or not they’re bonded? Because if it’s the former, then there’s an easy reason for the knowledge to be lost over time; if it’s the latter, then it seems like there ought to be a few cultivationspren around who weren’t bonded at the moment of the Recreance.
I’m going to wax excessively wordy again and overlap some of your quotes, Lyn, (sorry!) because I love this whole conversation where Lift is trying to maneuver Wyndle into explaining more about Shardblades. (I love more than just this part, really, but I can’t quote whole pages. I’m pretty sure that’s against the rules or something.)
“It’s forbidden. You must discover it on your own.”
“That’s what I’m doing. I’m discovering it. From you. Tell me, or I’ll bite you.”
“What?”
“I’ll bite you,” she said. “I’ll gnaw on you, Voidbringer. You’re a vine, right? I eat plants. Sometimes.”
“Even assuming my crystals wouldn’t break your teeth,” Wyndle said, “my mass would give you no sustenance. It would break down into dust.”
“It’s not about sustenance. It’s about torture.”
Wyndle, surprisingly, met her expression with his strange eyes grown from crystals. “Honestly, mistress, I don’t think you have it in you.”
I have to suggest that part of what Wyndle is doing, in refusing to tell her how to get her Shardblade, is obeying the rules laid down by Ishar way back when the Knights Radiant were founded. I get the feeling he doesn’t really have a lot of choice – but I also get the feeling that for all his seeming spinelessness, he wouldn’t break this rule if he could. He may wilt far too readily when she gets tyrannical, but when he has enough reason, he’s perfectly capable of standing up to her.
L: And yet, he does let it slip a little later. I wonder if that was really an accident on his part, or if he’s trying to not-so-subtly lead her to the right conclusion…
A: I’m going out on a theory limb: I think the way he wilts, and the way he’s so reluctant to become a Blade that Lyn noted above, is more of a dislike of confrontation than it is actual fear. He knows perfectly well she can’t actually hurt him, right? And he really doesn’t want her to go around hitting people with him, even though it can’t actually damage him, right? So I think he just doesn’t like the conflict. What’s more, I’m guessing it may be typical of his kind; it seems to fit with what little we know of Edgedancers. If I can remember, this is something I’ll be watching as we go – evidences for or against this idea.
Journey Before Pancakes
“They got these pancakes here, with things cooked into them. Ten varieties.”
L: Okay, so… to me, these sound an awful lot like Japanese okonomiyaki.
Doesn’t it look delicious? Enough to make your mouth water. There are different kinds, and almost all of them are savory as opposed to sweet.
If you’ve never had okonomiyaki, it’s something like a very thick pancake with all sorts of stuff mixed in with the batter – shredded cabbage, meats, veggies, spices, sauces, you name it. You can either stuff your dish to bursting with fillings or scale it back to have a more soft, custardy interior. When my husband and I visited Osaka several years ago, we gave it a try. They brought us the batter and we poured it out ourselves onto a hot section of the table, flipping it and then cracking an egg over the top. It was VERY filling (I could only finish half) and very delicious. It would be easy to have ten different varieties, since there are almost limitless ways to combine all the possible fillings! Alice, any ideas on what a different real-world analogous food could be?
A: Honestly, this sounds like the most probable of all the suggestions I’ve heard, and I’ve heard quite a few! My first thought was crepes, because I’m used to those being wrapped around all sorts of things, but I think the okonomiyaki sounds way more like the pancakes in Yeddaw.
Friends and Strangers
L: Dalinar is briefly mentioned, and it’s important to note that Wyndle calls him a warlord. Which… I mean, he’s not wrong, but it’s just interesting to see that – outside of Alethkar and the characters whose eyes we’re accustomed to seeing Dalinar through – he’d be a pretty intimidating figure.
Also, apparently Lift likes to call Gawx’s viziers THE NOODLES. Okay, I admit it, I just wanted an excuse to talk about them because noodle’s a funny word. Nooooooodle. Noodle.
Noodle.
That’s all I got. Alice?
A: Noooodle. Noooope. I got Noooothing else. Because Noooodles win All The Things.
Storming Mother of the World and Father of Storms Above
“I got two powers,” Lift said. “I can slide around, awesome, and I can make stuff grow. So I could grow me some plants to eat?”
“It would almost certainly take more energy in Stormlight to grow the plants than the sustenance would provide, as determined by the laws of the universe. And before you say anything, these are laws that even you cannot ignore.” He paused. “I think. Who knows, when you’re involved?”
L: Interesting to note that growing plants would output more energy than consuming them would provide.
A: I thought that was fascinating for two reasons. First, there’s a sneaky way to answer a fan question by answering Lift’s question: No, you can’t use Stormlight to grow things to fuel your Stormlight, because conservation of energy and Investiture and stuff has to be preserved. Second, there’s the perfectly snarky and sneaky qualifier – because really, who knows, when Lift is involved!? And so we have most of an answer… but not 100%. Sneaky Sanderson is sneaky.
L: As for curses… We’ve seen Lift use “starvin’” before (in Words of Radiance), but damn if it doesn’t amuse me every time it shows up. It’s such an appropriate curse for her!
Darkness & Co.
“This guy has been murdering his way across Roshar too.”
L: We’ve seen evidence of this (he killed Ym and tried to kill Lift), and can surmise that he’s killing those who have the potential to become Knights Radiant. But why?
A: R A F O… No, seriously, I think this gets addressed when we get farther in, so I think we should wait for it to come up before we talk about it more. Suffice it to say that the viziers noodles have been hearing about him and are most interested in his behavior.
Everything Else
L: Clothes! (Of course I’d zero in on this, being a cosplayer.) Tashikki clothes are described as “a long piece of cloth wrapped around themselves, feet to forehead. It wound around both legs and arms individually, but also wrapped around the waist sometimes to create a type of skirt.” This is very cool to me, because this style of dress (using a simple, unstitched piece of cloth) is present in many cultures’ historical backgrounds. The Indian dhoti and the Scottish great kilt are examples of a piece of fabric simply being wound about the body. The beautiful thing about this, historically, is that this cloth can then be used for other things, like blankets! Huzzah for utilitarian garb!
This had once been a large, flat plain. Her vantage on a hilltop, though, let her make out hundreds of trenches cut in the stone.
L: Cutting a city out of the ground with Shardblades is a very cool concept. But the way the layout of the city was described immediately made me think of Elantris. Is there some reason the trenches are laid out the way they are? When viewed from above, do they make a glyph of some sort? Or am I overthinking this and they’re simply laid out in such a way to better facilitate the drainage of storm-water from the city?
A: Again, I think that the layout gets addressed later in socioeconomic terms, but I might be wrong about that. The original design, I assume, was a combination of practicality and aesthetics. I hope so, anyway. But I wanted to talk a little more about the Azish Shardblades. Their use in excavation is a fascinating contrast to the way the Alethi covet them as prized objects of war. Back in the The Way of Kings, when Dalinar was using his Shardplate, his warhammer, and Oathbringer to whack out a latrine trench, people pretty much thought he’d lost his mind – it was close to sacrilegious, to them, to use the Shards in such a mundane purpose. It’s almost comical to be reminded that the rest of the world doesn’t necessarily view them in quite the same way.
To be perfectly honest, though, half the reason I wanted to talk about the utility of the Shardblades is an excuse to quote something…
She’d heard some of the fancy scribes in Azir talk about it—they said it was a new city, created only a hunnerd years back by hiring the Imperial Shardblades out of Azir. Those didn’t spend much time at war, but were instead used for making mines or cutting up rocks and stuff. Very practical. Like using the royal throne as a stool to reach something on the high shelf.
She really shouldn’t have gotten yelled at for that.
Trust Lift to slip in a hilarious mental image so you almost slide right over it…
L: Haha. Slide over it. I get it. That was a pretty awesome play on words, Alice.
One last note. Interestingly, the weeping is starting and stopping again…
A: …which means that one of the few predictable weather events on this wacky world is no longer predictable. That’s gotta hurt.
Okay, that’s enough out of us for this week. It’s your turn. What did we not cover? What were your favorite quotes? Join us in the comment section, and then come back next week when Lyndsey will tackle chapters 3 and 4, in which … more pancakes!
Alice is a busy SAHM, blogger, beta reader, and general literature fan. She is enjoying the discussion of the Oathbringer preview chapters every week, and hopes you all have seen and had the opportunity to participate in the kickstarter Kaladin project by The Black Piper.
Lyndsey is a writer and cosplayer. She is currently working as an actress for the Connecticut Renaissance Faire (the best day job ever for a fantasy author), and now she really wants some okonomiyaki. You can see more of her work on her website or follow her on facebook or twitter.
Alice, in relation to your theory about sprens being close to Honor or Cultivation, I came across a Syl quote the other day where she said something about seeing the future is not of Honor. So that would make Truthwatchers a Cultivation spren and supports your theory.
Does anyone else read Wyndle in a C-3PO voice?
@2 Actually, now that you mention it… yes!
“I’m so storming pure I practically belch rainbows.”
I love that at the end of her chapter she actually belched a rainbow to save her friend’s life.*
Yay! I am so glad that there was a reread today. I was worried when it didn’t show up earlier, mostly because I realized that it had never been established that this was going to be a once a week reread (and I’ve been sick, so there hasn’t been a whole lot to do besides refresh TOR).
My husband and I had been bandying about a theory that maybe each of the three (potential) bondsmiths would “oversee” or be more closely tied to three of the orders – so that the three orders closest to Honor would be under Dalinar/Stormfather and the three closest to Cultivation would be under Nightwatcher/Bondsmith. But that left Odium or some Odium inspired spren for the third pairing, which doesn’t seem quite right. Or maybe some major spren that was something between Stormfather and Nightwatcher. I think that your differentiation of the orders into half betweeen Honor and Cultivation works better for that (and the way that the orders are laid out visually reflects that better too).
Although it doesn’t look like the types of spren that bond people work together on the other side, even if they are both cultivation. From what Wyndle said, it’s not like the Cryptics were helping out the cultivation spren. Interesting that they keep so separate, even if they end up working together (broadly) in the Knights Radiant in the physical realm.
Finally – I love Lift as an unreliable narrator. She’s the perfect example of it being done, without it being annoying. She tells Windle one reason she came to the city, and seems to at least half believe it herself, all why pursuing a secondary motive entirely (well, not entirely…she does love eating those pancakes). Speaking of the pancakes, I always imagined Qateyef, which are a type of filled pancake made during Ramadan. I loved them when I lived in Egypt, and although those used sweet fillings, I could imagine savory versions of them. Considering that Brandon has lived in South Korea and not in the Middle East, almost certainly his version would be more Asian inspired, but I like to see how many cultures do have some version of pancakes. It’s like the universal food.
Re: my spren theory, I think it also fits very well when you look at the Heralds and the Shard Vessels. Honor’s holder, Tanavast, is was male – as are all the Heralds on the upper half (Kalak, Taln, Ishar, Jezrien, Nale). Cultivation’s holder, whose name we still don’t know, is female – as are all the Heralds on the lower half (Battar, Shalash, Paliah, Vedel, Chana). So… there’s that. I think it just fits together.
I’m still holding any theories about Bondsmiths very loosely.
Not much to add this week, but I want to keep following the comments from the “conversations” page.
I enjoyed the back and forth L and A format.
Odium bondsmith? I will divide instead of unite? Hmmm…
@2 – Big Fat Yes. Anthony Daniels was born to play Wyndle.
Regarding the conservation of energy in Investiture, I’d be very interested in finding out how that works on Taldain. Wyndle’s description here seems to fly in the face of Slatrification in White Sand. But this is probably not the proper place to discuss that. Its just somtehing that came to mind as I re-read Edgedancer.
@9 One dodge is if the investiture only works as a catalyst for the plants and most of the mass/energy for the growing comes from the environment and not the surgebinder.
I think Syl mentioned somewhere that she bonded with a radiant before, and as she is not a dead sword, I always assumed when the radiant die the spren lose their consciousness again.
@11 – I don’t recall Syl mentioning that, though I could be wrong.
@11 When their radiant dies, the spren can probably get back to the Cognitive realm. Maybe they follow their radiant over. I wonder if it’s as traumatic as the trip from Cognitive to Physical. If it does equal damage to a spren’s memories, it would explain why there were so few post-radiant spren after the Recreance. There were those who had been bonded but they couldn’t remember anything about being bonded.
@12 – In TWoK, Syl says “I’ve helped men kill before” (p. 604)
@14 – Good catch!
@2 I have always used that voice in my head. They really need to get Anthony Daniels to do his voice when they make the film version.
Also, loved the back and forth dialogue of the reread. It’s different and fun, and works well with these ‘short’ chapters.
I love the idea of the Japanese style pancake. I think I imagined the types as all being very distinct the first time I read it. Like one is American style, one Japanese, one middle eastern, and so on. Like that article on FB that’s been going around with like 20 kinds of pancakes.
@2: I wonder if we could ask Kate Reading to do her best C-3PO voice for the next audio book with Wyndle?
@5: I had to go look up Qateyef. Those do look yummy. Later Lift talks about a sweet pancake, so it’s possible. But once again the downside of Lift and this discussion is how hungry it makes me. Bright side, it makes me want to try lots of different ethic restaurants, because as you said, the pancake is a universal food. With so many different varieties in different cultures. (Well, a flat bread filled with or used to wrap filling within.)
I too like the back and forth format for this.
Roshar needs a culinary tourism industry, simply because Lift would be a perfect travel writer for it, journeying across the world to sample the local foods and write about them with her signature snark. And she would go to Alethkar and eat lots of the foods that females are forbidden to eat…
I love the bit where Lift threatens to eat Wyndle. An excellent go-to threat in general, says me, and very much in-character for her.
I agree that “Who knows, when you’re involved?” sums up Lift’s abilities and effects on the world pretty well. She is utterly unique, and we never know what she’ll do next. Aside from seeking food. And there are unknowns even with that. Namely, this story failed to answer my Big Cosmere Question: Can Lift eat more than Sarene?
Lift is The Best Lift is The Best Lift is The Best OK I’ll stop.
Thank you, Alice and Lyndsey,
I think you guys make a great tandem here! Actually, it was funny seeing a discussion that dwelt on the interaction between Lift and Wyndle, via the lens of the interaction between you two. I hope this dynamic is able to happen as much as both your schedules allow.
So: It seems to me that Lift and Wyndle actually have certain personality quirks in common. Both deny what they know to be true about themselves (although we observe Lift with more opportunity to do so than we do Wyndle). Lift has given us a number of examples, of course (including what Alice and Lyn highlight in the Kadasixes and Stars section). And an obvious one for Wyndle is his supposed lack of desire to turn into a Shardblade offset by his later expressed belief that he would be a “stately” and “very regal” Shardblade. He does want to be one, he just won’t admit it directly.
Anyway, fun chapter and fun recap.
The concept of Yeddaw is not a cookie cutter fantasy city. Yet, the city fits with Roshar. It is also so practical for a world with frequent highstorms (i.e. super intense hurricanes). It makes me wonder why more people of Roshar did not create these types of cities.
On the other hand, I think that some places on the Shattered Plains do have the same type of protection as Yeddaw does. In WoR we see that there are subterranean portions in the war camps (caverns beneath basements). I think that before the War of Vengeance, the Parshendi lived in what is now the war camps. They abandoned them when the Altethi arrived to go towards the other end of the Shattered Plains.
Thanks for reading my musings.
AndrewHB
aka the musespren
My first comparison to Yeddaw’s pancakes was okonomiyaki too. Okonomiyaki is great! I cook it at home pretty often (an American approximation, anyway, but we do get okonomiyaki sauce from our corner Asian market at least).
And yes, Lift is awesome. And so is this reread.
I was looking up Qatayef, and apparently they are very similar to a Korean pastry that is also a pancake type thing that is folded over a filling, called Mandu-gwa. Given that the pancakes are perhaps Asian inspired, that means that what I had in mind as the pancakes could have been pretty close (for the sweet ones). It also was a reminder how every culture seems to have some kind of flat bread (often quick flat bread) with filling/toppings. Now I want to visit Yeddaw, and try all their pancakes too – I love good food! (But….not really when either Nalan is there or the Everstorm is coming…I like being a boring tourist, unlike Lift).
Totally off topic, but the clothes section had me going “Oh! So in Outlander when they spread out his kilt to lie down on it, it’s bigger than the regular skirt version!”.. This makes so much more sense now..
I believe this is within the realm of real science as in the First Law of Thermodynamics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_law_of_thermodynamics
I’m not a scientist, so I cannot explain. I just remember this from college Chemistry. :-)
@22: food tourist! I’ll join you. But yes, not to “interesting” places, in the Chinese curse since of the word.
@23: Yep, while historical kilts were rarely never “the whole 9 yards” , they were defiantly more than the 2-4 yards of the modern utility kilts.
Great post! Count me in with those who liked the back-and-forth format.
I’m enjoying rereading Edgedancer more than I thought I would be. Before, I kept having this impression of boredom when I thought about the story. I do like Lift. And I love Wyndle. He’s got a stronger personality than most of the other spren do, and I also just like it. He’s so nervous and anxious and indignant and the Only Sane Man to Lift’s craziness but also so nice to her. He’s storming awesome.
Pertaining to his anxiety about becoming a Shardblade, Wyndle did say “Ow” after blocking Nalan’s Shardblade. So that would be a reason for reticence in becoming a Shardblade.
It’ll be interesting too see how like a lot of Lift’s mental walls will break down over the course of the story; at this point she’s mostly avoiding her insecurity and not admitting her real reasons for doing things, whereas by the end of the story she’s facing up to a lot of things.
Other assorted things:
I was amused at Dalinar just being “that angry guy”.
Did Syl and Pattern and all these other spren go through this “trauma” that Wyndle was expecting when he bonded Lift?
@@@@@ 26 – theinsolublelurnip – Yes, as far as I know. Both Pattern and Syl talk about hardship in WoR and WoK.
@11 Wyndle actually mentions this again obliquely in chaper 8. So, we should be ready to revist this.
Something I noticed this reread is that Lift’s internal monologue and observations sometimes become storming sophisticated with lots and lots of big words which struck me as odd. I’m not sure if it’s because this is Third Person, so it’s considered acceptable to use more formal language in the description and stuff, but, it seems like, even when we’re solidly in her viewpoint, she breaks out the multisyllabic words from time to time.
Has anyone else noticed that? Maybe keep an eye out for it in the future and see what you think.
Also I do really like Lift and …yeah, I tend to imagine Wyndle as C-3P0 too. I kinda hope Brandon sneaks in Wyndle saying “We’re doomed!” at some point.
@24. You’re correct. The first Law of Thermodynamics includes the Law of Conservation of Energy: energy cannot be created or destroyed. Basically, if Lift converts food into Stormlight, grows some plants with it, eats the plants, and gets more food out of that than she started with, then the extra energy had to come from somewhere else. Which, if the plant sucks a bunch of nutrients out of the ground and air in the process, might be possible. On the other hand, lots of parts of a plant aren’t edible, so she’d lose energy there. It’s really impossible to know whether it would be a net positive for her or not before she tries it.
Note that, because other Surgebinders consume Stormlight directly, the energy IS coming from outside themselves, so they can use Regrowth to create food without ending up in some kind of perpetual motion machine problem.
WuseMajor and sheiglagh, its actually a restatement of the 2nd law of thermodynamics. While the 1st law insures that the energy extracted from a system can’t be greater than the energy it contains and that inputted, the 2nd law insures that the extracted energy must be less than the latter amount, i.e., the extraction efficiency must be less than 100%. This results from the fact that some energy will be dissipated as heat as the entropy of the process increases. A more humorous version of these laws is given by the statement: 1. You can’t win! 2. You can’t even break even. In any case, Wyndle (and Sanderson) are correct that the energy needed to create a plant must be greater than that extracted from it upon ingestion.
@13, re: “When their radiant dies, the spren can probably get back to the Cognitive realm. Maybe they follow their radiant over.”
Aw man. Now I’ve got a case of the feels, just imagining how hard that would be for the poor spren.
@20, re: “It makes me wonder why more people of Roshar did not create these types of cities.”
Ah. but they’d need Shardblades to do it, and using them in such a way would be very distasteful to most of the Alethi! You’re right though, it does make a lot more sense.
@21, you should come to New England and make some for me. :)
@23, They actually did a really great job of showing Jamie putting on his great kilt in the wedding episode, I believe it was.
All the mushy Lift-love on here. Yeck. I am one of those who don’t find her personality as appealing as the rest of you find it. On the whole, I like her bravery, her compassion, her willingness to sacrifice herself for other people, her cleverness, etc. But she also has an edge to her personality that rubs me the wrong way (apparently, it is the same edge that Lyndsey finds so adorable, go figure). I’m talking about her interactions with Wyndle. She ignores everything he tells her, continually calls him a voidbringer just to unsettle him, bullies him unmercifully all the time, … bah. I found all this pretty irritating, and I struggled to read through the early chapters because they were mostly about the interactions between the two.
The re-read is great for me. I only have the audio version and more seems to slip by me with the audio.
A and L, mentioned that Lift couldn’t hurt Wyndle but I disagree. By his actions Kaladin nearly killed Syl. I don’t think Lift would deliberately hurt Wyndle but she does cause him distress. And I thought a Radiant had to come up with the ideals on their own.
So when does Nalan get a clue and stop killing people that Roshar needs.
Wyndle probably knows about the dead Shardblades and doesn’t want to end up like them.
The caves on the Shattered Plains are just old buildings that got covered by crem. The Alethi built their camps on top of the ruins. In our world usually only the lower parts of the old walls survive when later generations build on top of them, and rooms fill in, but we don’t have highstorms covering everything with crem quickly.
Plants need energy to grow and live, and when you eat something, your digestion cannot get out all the energy that is in the food. Giving calories for kinds of food is misleading, because the energy you can get out depends on the efficiency of your individual metabolism and the way the food was prepared (you get more out of cooked food than raw food; that’s why the mastery of fire was an important step in human evolution).
I also find Lift annoying and sympathize with Wyndle who has to put up with the annoying kid instead of bonding someone who listens when he tries to explain things (which he tries to do, while the other spren we know don’t remember enough to do the same).
I liked Edgedancer. At first, I’ll admit I wasn’t convinced on reading a novella solely from the viewpoint of Lift: I thought it was premature and her character, while amusing in WoR, needed many years of growth to truly be able to carry on a story. In the end, I found Edgedancer was a simple enough story it was almost plausible for a 13 years old former thief to manage.
Within this chapter, I found the most interesting aspect really was Wyndle not wanting to become a Shardblade because it would imply Lift using him to stab someone. I wondered what it told us about the Edgedancers, as an order. In WoR, they were described as deadly and feared onto the battlefield, but they also possess the surge of progression which makes them as healer. Wyndle is an artist who dislike the idea of battle. An odd order who’s surges can be used either on or outside the battlefield which made me wonder how individuals within it truly were like. Also, it made me feel for the dead-Edgedancer Blades… I recall a WoB saying how they did retain some conscience of the physical world as evidenced by the fact they will change their shape, slightly, if bonded to the same individual for a very long time (and this made me wonder if Oathbringer had altered its shape for Dalinar as they were bonded for several decades). Thus, how much conscience do the dead Blades have of how they are being used? Say, would dead-Wyndle have the ability to realize he is stabbing killing people shall its wielder want it to? Does it add to the trauma?
As for pre-Recreance sprens, there has been several clues Syl is a pre-Recreance spren. We’ll see in Oathbringer.
Another interesting note, I think it was chapter two, little Lift explains the reason why she ran away from the palace. Yes, there was the pancakes, yes there was Darkness, but more importantly she was running away from people she felt were trying to change her. She feared she would forget who she is if she remained in Azir for too long. My thoughts are generous Lift feared she would become obliged to others, obliged to meet their expectation and, in doing so, she’d forget who she really is.
@36 Clues? We get outright confirmation in WoK. We didn’t know what it meant at the time, but we do get it. Syl directly states, about 2/3 the way through the book, “I’ve helped men kill before.” It’s one of the few clear statements she gives about herself before the “I am honorspren” reveal.
I want to raise another issue that has bothered me, about the fact that Yeddaw is a city carved into solid rock below ground, but open to the surface (as shown in the drawing). As a former civil engineer, I have major problems with drainage of this underground city as described. Specifically, a highstorm does not comprise only of strong winds; the winds blow largely parallel to the surface, which means the underground city would largely be spared most of the damage done by the winds, though the fact that the city has channels open to the surface would make that in a highstorm the wind would roar through those channels with incredible force.
My biggest issue has to do with the massive amounts of water and rain carried by the storm. Why isn’t the underground city completely flooded? The floodwater carried by the storm doesn’t miraculously jump across all the open channels does it? And if the water pours into the city, how do they get rid of it, with pumps to dump the water back onto the surface? Maybe I’m missing something, and I’ll appreciate someone explaining it to me.
@37: Yes, but as far as I am aware, we never got a direct confirmation it was indeed the case. It is just highly likely to be the case unless I missed a WoB or something.
@38
Supposedly it has a slope from the center outwards and the edges are open so that the water may drain out of the city. Obviously this must lead to flooding if the rain adds water faster than it can drain, so I am not sure how well thougt through this actually is…
I like the new format so far!
I have nothing particularly enlightening to add at the moment, but as a person who loves food and travel (mainly for the purpose of eatin new food), as well as lists, I was really invested in Lift getting to eat all the pancake varieties.
@38: As @40 commented, there’s slope. But I’ll have to read again about the cistern. Is it up high for water pressure, or low to collect?
It also sounds, to me, that the buildings ground floor entrance is elevated off the street level.
But that is only useful if the system doesn’t get more rain than it’s built to handle.
I’ve learn more than I ever wanted to about Houston’s roads, and their “designed to flood” system this last week. So cities can be built to handle repeated storms. The drainage just has to be very well designed.
Shows a high level of math for Roshar.
PS. Texas floods, not myself. Friends and family on the coast having to clean up. Or helping others, because their houses didn’t flood.
@40, 42: I’m confused … a slope, where, underground? But how does that drain the massive amounts of stormwater pouring in from the surface in every highstorm, and where does the water go?
@43
As far as I understand the text and the picture shown above the city is not actually underground, but a system of artificial chasms that are open to the sky. The general shape is a circle, with the center beeing the highest point and the rest of the city continiously sloping radially. So water can exit the city eventually on the outskirts, but as I said I have my doubts how well a system like that would actually work.
Have to remember the storm wardens @42 they do complicated math to determine when a high storm will hit so it would make sense they are skilled at mathematics and living with highstorms probably is an incentive to not get it wrong.
I personally enjoyed Lift as a character and found it both lighthearted and touching in places – this young, smart and kind girl, with a special way of looking at things. However, I did notice a couple of times in Edgedancer that her treatment of Wyndle went a little too far into the rude territory; and yet, later on in the book, we can infer that she does care for him a lot. Currently, I am prepared to write it off her being only 13 – kids that age are often going over the line and take things too far because they have not learned where those boundaries are, yet. I think it will get better.
@38 and following regarding the city. I think the picture provided is rather misleading – to me it looks like the city is located at the bottom of the valley, and thus water would aggregate there instead. The tiny dome in the centre then, in-book, is supposed to be the centre from which streets slope away. That would not solve the problem, as mentioned before. But what if the city is located at the top of a hill – then, given local elevation and being surrounded by flat land, it just might be enough of a height difference for water and the debris brought by the storms to be washed out via the street-canals radially expanding outwards.
Re Wyndle as C3PO – hahahaha. Spot on, did not think of it before, but Episode VI definitely comes to mind now that you mention it.
Re pancakes – there is, indeed, a surprising variety in many cultures. I’ll throw in the Swiss (mostly salty variations with various English Breakfast ingredients stuck inside) and Russian (honey, caviar, sour cream, mushroom, potato… not all at the same time!) ones in there as well!
Re Stromlight, Lack of – the more I reread Edgedancer, and with Oathbringer chapters coming out, the more lucky Lift seems in having a reliable source of energy to use to be awesome. Suggestions that she stuff herself and provide Stormlight to various Roshar communities is both scary and making sense at the same time.
Re the Perpetual Engine/Appetite Lift (@24, @30, @31) – thermodynamics sure does the trick, though it is interesting to consider all the steps mentioned in the process arriving at two extreme scenarios. Given that no-matter how much food she eats, even if it all was perfectly converted into useful molecules (it never is) converting that into Stormlight even then can never be a 100% efficient process since some (and that is likely a significant percentage) of that energy needs to go to sustain Lift’s life. Next comes the big question – the Stormlight to energy conversion coefficient, if you will. Depending on how much plant matter may be grown (and what nutritional value it possess) for a given amount of Stormlight, plus the additional nutrients extracted from the surroundings, we either get a scenario of diminishing returns (assuming Sanderson is sticking to energy conservation (and he did state, IIRC, that he is) in this universe, the remaining Stormlight will be producing a lesser food equivalent to be consumed, then only part of that gets converted in less Stormlight) and at the end Lift is hungry and cannot be awesome or, she becomes a menace to the local ecosystem in the long run… like a goat, force growing plants, living off them, reducing the quality of the soil in the process (even more dangerous outside of Shin on Roshar, one would assume) … leaving barren wasteland behind! Now that is a ludicrous image that I felt like sharing) (Though, if it is the latter , then she could be able to save a local village population by going Louis XIV on the food and force growing plants to eat and wringing the soil dry before evacuating the village.)
We have Gawx the commoner becoming an emperor in this part of the world. No decriptions of light or dark eyes by the viewpoint characters and the fact that shard lades were used to make the city (talk about tabula rasa, a city planners dream, which fits also really well with the bureaucratic culture of the region. Brandon really gives his cultures a lot of thought). Work that would be done by commoners not nobility. Impossible in Vorin culture, because that would risk permanently changing the eye colour of the workers.
In fact I don’t think we really heard about nobility at all. Here a rank is determined by how high you grow in the bureaucratic system. From the city guard captain it becomes clear she had courses so she can be a captain, but as a guard, not in the field.
Anybody else noticed more of these little things?