Welcome back to another Tuesday, and another discussion of the events in this week’s preview chapter! If you haven’t read it yet… what are you doing here?! Go check it out!
Fair warning. This week’s discussion is going to be full of discussion about Warbreaker and broader Cosmere theory, so be prepared for that.
Reminder: we’ll potentially be discussing spoilers for the entirety of the series up until now—if you haven’t read ALL of the published entries of the Stormlight Archive, best to wait to join us until you’re done.
In this week’s discussion we also discuss some things from Warbreaker and overall Investiture theory in the Cosmere Connections section, so if you’re unfamiliar with that book or the general theories, best to give that section a pass. Though… from here on out, it’s going to get harder and harder to “skip” stuff like this. The interconnectivity of the books is getting more blatant, so we may begin just pointing out which books are referenced in the relevant sections rather than giving direct spoiler warnings here in the front matter.
Chapter Recap
WHO: Kaladin
WHERE: Urithiru
WHEN: Day 11 (ten days after the mission to Hearthstone)
Kaladin is formally relieved of duty, and takes a trip down to visit Zahel, looking for some guidance on what he should do with his life next. On the way there, he runs into Rlain and tells him about how he’s forced an honorspren into accepting a bond with him, but Rlain refuses. Once Kaladin finds Zahel, he asks if he can become an ardent. Zahel tests him with a little duel, then sits him down and dumps a whole lot of Cosmere theory on the poor bridgeboy’s head.
Overall Reactions
“An honorspren?” Rlain said. “Who is willing to bond with a listener? Truly?”
“Vratim’s old spren, Yunfah. He was delaying choosing someone new, so Syl and I gave him an ultimatum: Choose you or leave. This morning, he came to me and agreed to try to bond with you.”
L: ::wince:: Oh, Kaladin. No. No no no.
A: As a slight aside, Lyn & I knew about this (obviously) when we read along with the earlier chapter—which is why we went back and carefully reviewed our reactions from the beta, to make sure we weren’t being influenced by later knowledge.
L: This is one of those cases where being beta readers makes our job here much, much harder…
A: Based on what Kaladin said in chapter 10, many of you argued that Kaladin didn’t order Yunfah to bond Rlain, merely to try to work with him (as I acknowledged in recent comments). If you’ll recall, his words to Yunfah at the time were, “I forbid you to bond anyone else unless you try to work with Rlain first.” Now you see Kaladin’s own thoughts on it, and it looks pretty obvious that he considered it essentially an order to form a bond. In Kaladin’s mind, there was no “try” about it.
L: Well… we don’t know that he didn’t have another discussion with Yunfah, either. It’s entirely possible that in the interim between scenes, Kaladin had another conversation with a much more direct order.
A: That’s true, particularly if Yunfah tried to get Kaladin to reconsider. I notice that Kaladin apparently didn’t say anything to Rlain until Yunfah agreed—either that, or he hasn’t seen Rlain since they got back. Perhaps despite his apparent confidence, Kaladin really was concerned that Yunfah would nope out.
L: Regardless, however… This reminds me of parents who try to force their children to be friends with the “outsider” or unpopular kids in their classes. Very few people want to be chosen only out of pity, and not for who they really are. I’m reminded of a quote from Trevor Noah’s The Daily Show recently: “Black people want equality, not charity.” While the racism displayed towards Rlain and his people obviously isn’t a 1:1 analogy, there are a lot of similarities. And Rlain is clearly bothered by this:
“Would you take a spren who was forced into the deal, Kaladin?” Rlain asked.
L: The bond between a spren and a Radiant is deeper and more nuanced than just a friendship. It’s so troubling that Kaladin tried to force this. Troubling… but understandable, considering the circumstances. He’s never been in the position that Rlain is, so he can’t see how it’s making his friend feel.
Buy the Book
Rhythm of War
A: That whole “be grateful for what you can get” is just sick-making in the context. ::shudders:: Understandable, perhaps, but still painful. To be fair, there’s a valid reason Kaladin is so confident that “try to work with” equals “form a bond with” Rlain. He’s such a good and honorable person, it’s just unimaginable that a spren wouldn’t take him after an honest attempt. But the spren still shouldn’t be arm-twisted into the attempt.
“I’m not trying to tell you that you shouldn’t think, Rlain,” Kaladin said. “I’m trying to help.”
“I know you are, sir. But I have no interest in taking ‘what I can get.’ And I don’t think you should force a spren into a bond. It will make for a bad precedent, sir.”
L: The key moment, here, I think, is what Kaladin does now. He’s had his mistake pointed out to him, but he doesn’t dig his heels in and insist that he was right, thereby invalidating Rlain’s experience. He almost does, but thankfully he does come to the right conclusion in the end:
And Kaladin hadn’t forced Yunfah. Kaladin had given an order. Sometimes, soldiers had to serve in positions they didn’t want.
Kaladin hated feeling he’d somehow done something shameful, despite his best intentions. Couldn’t Rlain accept the work he’d put into this effort, then do what he asked?
Or maybe, another part of him thought, you could do what you promised him—and listen for once.
L: Atta boy, Kal. I’m so glad to see him continuing to grow in this respect, to analyze his own ingrained prejudices and lack of insight and listen to the disenfranchised around him. It’s a similar situation to when he just assumed that Lyn didn’t want to fight and would rather be a scribe. We consistently see him being confronted on his biases, and after a few moments to process, he shifts his world view.
A: I have to admit, the first part of this quote—the part where he’s being defensive and aggrieved over Rlain’s failure to cooperate—had me worried. (I really hate that attitude. “I worked hard to give you this opportunity, so you have to take it even if you don’t want it. You owe it to me to accept my “gift.” UGH.) That last thought, though. That’s what we, or rather they, needed. Fantastic.
L: But enough about Kaladin and his reaction. I’m so happy to see Rlain stand up for himself, here. Imagine how hard it must have been, to say no to something he wants so badly: the chance to truly belong to Bridge Four, to be a Windrunner in more than just name, and he gives it up because it’s the right thing to do. He won’t force someone to do something they don’t want to do, as has been done to his people for so long. I so hope that he does find a spren that truly wants him! Watching his character slowly grow and change has been one of the more rewarding arcs in Bridge Four, in my opinion. Rlain doesn’t solely exist as a foil to teach Kaladin about privilege—he has his own agenda, his own fears and flaws, and he’s working through them like everyone else. I love that about him. I want him to find his place in this new world, and to be happy! And hopefully to become the hero we all know he can be along the way.
Humans
One learned to evaluate soldiers by the way they kept their uniforms. A neatly pressed coat would not win you a battle—but the man who took care to polish his buttons was often also the man who could hold a formation with precision.
L: I’d just like to point out here that this is probably one of the many reasons Kaladin holds Adolin in such high regard (albeit sometimes grudgingly).
A: Nice catch! I hadn’t really connected the two as such. The odd part is that he learned this way to evaluate soldiers while serving under Amaram. Which kind of freaks me out—but it also explains why it was so difficult for Dalinar to believe Kaladin’s accusations against Amaram. /rabbittrail
Singers/Fused
[Rlain] usually wore warform these days, though he’d confessed to Kaladin that he disliked how it made him seem more like the invaders, with their wicked carapace armor. That made some humans distrust him. But workform made people treat him like a parshman. He hated that even more.
L: Understandably so. Would you rather be seen as an enemy to be hated, or a slave to be looked down on? At least the enemy is respected and feared.
A: Not a pleasant choice, and I’d definitely have gone the same way he did. I wonder why he’s not able to take something like nimbleform, though; it’s less armored, and it doesn’t look much like the “slaveform” either.
L: I’m not sure, honestly.
And I can’t get humans to sing the pure tones of Roshar.
L: This whole concept of pure tones connected directly to the planet intrigues me so.
A: Right? I don’t suppose he’s had the opportunity to talk to Navani, or any reason to mention this to her. She thought she heard a tone, a pure note, when Dalinar opened a perpendicularity. And last week one of the Nine made some comment about how humans know little about “the nature of the tones of the world.” Are these all related? It’s such a fascinating concept.
…he didn’t suspect I was a spy. He just thought I was too smart. A clever parshman frightened him. So he offered me up to the bridge crews.” Rlain glanced back at Kaladin. “Wouldn’t want a parshman like that breeding, now would we? Who knows what kind of trouble they would make if they started thinking for themselves?”
L: Oof. This is so, so painful.
A: Ouch.
Bruised & Broken
Kaladin’s anxiety began to subside, and he pushed through the worst of the darkness. He always emerged on the other side. Why was that so difficult to remember while in the middle of it?
L: This is so, so real.
A: Whether it’s day to day, or weeks in between… it is hard to remember when you’re in it.
Kaladin found the experience humiliating. Everyone applauded his heroism even as he was forced out.
L: I can only imagine how hard this must be, for someone who’s wrapped up so much of his sense of worth in his position like this.
A: This is one where I simply cannot relate, because who I am isn’t really defined by what I do. Still, imagination says it would be really hard. He wants so much to protect everyone, and how can he do that now?
L: I can relate. At one point in my life I was bedbound and unable to do any of the things that made me me. It left me feeling very lost and unsure of who I was, if I didn’t have my job or hobbies or any of the other things in my life that I’d come to use to define my sense of self. If you’ve never had this experience, dear reader, I hope you never do. It’s a truly terrible feeling.
“Why do you fight, Kaladin Stormblessed?”
L: Okay, to start with, these words are incredibly powerful spoken all on their own. This gives me shivers. It has the feel of a big, important moment.
A: It reminds me irresistibly of some of those deep questions from Babylon 5—those questions that get to the heart of your motivations. Who are you? What do you want? Why do you fight? What do you fear?
“But your men are now as safe as they could ever be. They can care for themselves. So why do you keep fighting?”
L: A very good question.
“You love the fight, Kaladin. Not with the Thrill that Dalinar once felt, or even with the anticipation of a dandy going to a duel.
“You love it because it’s part of you. It’s your mistress, your passion, your lifeblood.
L: This is really beautiful—and a wonderful analysis of Kaladin and his mindset.
A: Is it really? Does he truly love the fight, or does he fight to protect? Really? I guess he’ll have to figure that out.
L: I guess… I kinda looked at this like, the actual physical expression of martial arts. It can be very freeing and rewarding, even if you’re just doing katas, or integrating sparring. You don’t always have to be fighting to the death, it doesn’t have to be violent. Martial arts can also be almost a dance, a form of physical expression that can be quite beautiful. That’s how I read Zahel’s words here, anyway. I may just be projecting, of course. Katas and forms are almost a form of meditation for me.
A: I’d agree, except that Zahel specifically ruled out dueling, which is (at least that we’ve seen so far) dangerous but usually stops short of killing. So it’s not just the contest, your skill against another’s. And it doesn’t seem to be about the form, it’s about the fight itself, somehow. I … honestly don’t know. Maybe Zahel is right. It’s been hinted ever since Kaladin’s earliest flashbacks, after all that there was something in him that was irresistibly drawn to spear-fighting.
“Return when you hate the fight,” Zahel said. “Truly hate it.”
L: Oof. Wow. This… this hit me hard. I don’t know if I want this for Kaladin, or not. If he loses this one thing that brings him purpose and joy… I’m sure that he would find something else. He would change, for sure, but… would he be the same character we’ve come to know and love? Would it matter, as long as he’s actually happy for a change? This is a really heavy concept.
(This is, of course, assuming that Kaladin ever gets to this place.)
A: While I’m not 100% convinced that Kaladin actually loves the fight, I am convinced that he doesn’t hate it. IMO, he fights because he truly believes it’s the best way to protect the people who need it. I don’t think it’s the only way—but at the same time, I think we do need people like Kaladin, who will use their skill in the fight to protect those who cannot fight for themselves.
Interestingly enough, his father truly hates the fight—at least the kind of fight they’re talking about here—and that’s been a bone of contention throughout the series. It will be interesting to see where this goes.
Cosmere Connections
REMINDER: There’s going to be a lot of discussion about Warbreaker in this section, since Zahel is really Vasher from that world. If you’d rather not be spoiled, skip on down to “Fabrial Technology and Spheres.”
“I’m going to—against my better judgment—seek wisdom there.”
L: Oh boy oh boy, here comes Vasher!
A: This made me laugh so hard. Against my better judgement, indeed.
Here, at the outermost of the drying lines, Zahel was carefully hanging up a series of brightly colored scarves.
L: Brightly colored, eh? YOU DON’T SAY
A: What on Roshar would he want brightly colored scarves for? I just cannot imagine. ::snort::
…and he wore a rope for a belt.
L: A rope which, if you’ve read Warbreaker (and for the love of the Stormfather why are you reading this section if you haven’t read Warbreaker) is a weapon, for him.
A: To be fair, everything is a weapon for him, as long as there’s any color nearby. But the rope is often… primed, shall we say?
“Why did you join the ardents?”
“Because I learned that conflict would find men no matter how hard I tried,” he said. “I no longer wanted a part in trying to stop them.”
L: Veeerrrrrry interesting.
A: In context of the ending to Warbreaker, this is indeed interesting. One of those “other names” of his was Warbreaker the Peaceful—the one who ended the Manywar. And then, despite all he’d done, conflicts and wars arose again and again. I can understand why he’d want to just give up on it. It’s an exercise in futility.
“But you couldn’t give up the sword,” Kaladin said.
“Oh, I gave it up. I let go. Best mistake I ever made.”
L: The subtext here, of course, is that Kaladin is speaking in broad terms while Zahel/Vasher is quite clearly referring to one sword in particular. Nightblood.
A: That was a real zinger. It almost sounds like he didn’t intend to give it away, but he made a mistake that let someone else take it from him? But now he’s glad it happened? I really want that story. I wonder if he went to see the Nightwatcher, and ended up inadvertently giving her Nightblood in exchange for the ability to draw in Stormlight.
L: That’s an excellent theory.
Zahel carefully wound one of the scarves around his arm. He had no weapons that Kaladin could see, though that ragged tan robe might conceal a knife or two.
L: Oh boy oh boy. ::grin:: I don’t know what it is about seeing different worlds’ characters go up against one another. It’s like those “matchup” threads that people do, “Who would win, Goku from Dragonball Z or Superman?” There’s just something so inherently satisfying about watching the main characters from two different series canonically interact!
A: This was a great scene. Poor Kaladin—he had no idea what he was up against. I also can’t help wondering how it would look if both of them were able to use all the Investiture and skills they possess. But at this point, it’s more fun—and more important—to see Kaladin fight with a known limitation against an opponent with unknown skills.
A face and figure formed in a nearby sheet, puffing toward Kaladin as if someone were walking through on the other side. He struck immediately, driving his sword through the sheet. It ripped—the point was still sharp enough for that—but didn’t strike anyone beyond.
L: There we go. Zahel’s starting to use some Investiture, here. He’s using Breaths to Awaken inanimate objects. And he continues to do so:
Zahel deflected the strike with his arm, which he’d wrapped with cloth. In his other hand he carried a long scarf that he whipped forward, catching Kaladin’s off hand and wrapping it with shocking tightness, like a coiling whip.
L: This is really a miniscule amount of Breath he’s utilizing for all this, considering how much he certainly has.
A: I just realized… he’s not giving audible commands at all. It’s been too long since I read Warbreaker, but didn’t he always have to speak the commands out loud? If I’m right, and he holds enough Breath to do Mental Command, he’s Tenth Heightening. That’s God-King level. Yikes. The next question would be… can that Heightening be achieved with Stormlight instead of Breaths?
L: Yeah, the main reason he came to Roshar was to be able to use Stormlight rather than depending entirely on Breath, right? Maybe he’s using some sort of combination of the two?
A: Interesting thought. We know that while it would be possible to Awaken using Stormlight, it’s a real trick, and so far all the Awakening we’ve seen has been from Breaths the person brought with them (Azure & Hoid). We also know that Zahel can use Stormlight to replace that weekly Breath he needed back on Nalthis. So… I rather like the idea that he could be sufficiently Invested with Stormlight to essentially be Tenth Heightening, but he still has to use Nalthian Breaths to actually Awaken things. Fortunately, Breath seems to be endlessly reusable…
New recruits were often surprised at how well a nice thick cloth could stop a blade.
L: He’s not wrong, but… in this case, he’s not right, either.
A: Hah! Yeah, Kaladin, you have no idea…
Kaladin didn’t see any Stormlight coming off the ardent, and he had no reason to believe the man could Surgebind . . . but the way the cloth had gripped Kaladin’s arm had been uncanny.
L: It’s a shame that Kaladin doesn’t know as much about Worldhopping as Shallan does, at this point. I do wonder if he’d suspect, if he knew…
The fool woman [Azure] will have to get through Cultivation’s Perpendicularity first, so I won’t hold my Breaths waiting for her to arrive.”
L: Hmm. So… she’s still stuck over in Shadesmar, then? I’m curious how Zahel knows this…
A: Well, Adolin passed on Azure’s message to Zahel, so presumably he also shared what he knew about her plans. If—and it’s a big if—Zahel has a way to know what’s going on in the Peaks around Cultivation’s Perpendicularity, he may have reason to know that she’s not getting back that way any time soon.
“I don’t have to believe,” the voice drifted back. “I know gods exist. I simply hate them.”
L: I meeeaaaan… is he referring to the Returned? That seems a little disambiguous in terms of this conversation, he should know damn well that they’re not “gods” in the context that Kaladin is using the term right now…
A: I thought about that, but I think it’s more likely he’s referring to the Shards. He clearly knows what happens to make a Returned, and he seems to hold it against Endowment. He may know enough about the Shards to think they’ve made a mess of the Cosmere.
L: Which is, to be honest, a pretty fair assessment. At least half of the Shardholders we’ve seen so far have been jerks (or at the least have been corrupted by the powers they held).
A: Well, they were willing to destroy God and pull him to pieces, so… one might reasonably question their character.
“You can’t join the ardents,” Zahel said to him, kneeling and touching one of the cloths with his finger, then lifting it and pinning it onto the drying line. He did the same for the others, each in turn.
L: Reclaiming his Breaths, presumably.
A: Again, wordlessly. Wow.
He tossed his scarf at Kaladin’s feet. Though it must have been a different scarf, for the one he’d started with had been bright red, and this one was dull grey.
L: And if anyone had had any doubts about his identity up until now… I’d hope that this squashed them. You don’t get more blatant than this other than him going “Hey, yeah, by the way, my real name is Vasher and I’m from another world.”
A: Oh, you mean he’s been draining the color from his scarf for Awakening??? ;)
L: Whaaaat?!
“I don’t think there’s anyone else quite like Hoid. I knew him by the name Dust when I was younger. I think he must have a thousand different names among a thousand different peoples.”
L: Interesting! The only time we’ve seen this nickname was in Words of Radiance. If memory serves, in Warbreaker he was going as Hoid.
A: Yes, he was. Apparently in some of the earlier drafts of Warbreaker, he was called “Dust,” but then Sanderson decided he wanted to make the identity a little more obvious, and switched to just calling him Hoid.
I’m also a Type Two Invested entity. Used to call myself a Type One, but I had to throw the whole scale out, once I learned more.
L: ::runs both hands back through her hair:: Hoo boy. Okay, so… up until now, Sanderson’s been pretty much on the “you don’t really need to know about the other Cosmere worlds in order to enjoy these books” train. But I think this is where that train careens off the tracks. I honestly can’t imagine how anyone who hasn’t realized that the Cosmere is a thing would read this. Readers? Are there any of you out there who aren’t super invested (heh heh) in the Cosmere? I’d be really interested to hear your thoughts on this, please let us know in the comments!
A: Yeah, all pretense of being alone in the Cosmere is gone right here. There’s SO much lore here. I guess if you haven’t read Warbreaker, you have no idea what he means, and maybe that’s okay? But all his talk about other worlds, and how some are super old, and all this “Invested Entity” business… it’s really obvious there’s a lot more going on, and someone who has only read is the Stormlight Archive with no wider Cosmere awareness would have to be wondering what this is all about.
L: They’d be in good company with poor Kaladin, anyway. He’s so confused.
A: Indeed. And he came to Zahel for advice…?
I had to laugh at the crack about science always coming along with new information, ruining perfectly good systems for the minor inconvenience of being wrong, though.
“My soul,” Zahel said, “is like that fossil. Every part of my soul has been replaced with something new, though it happened in a flash for me. The soul I have now resembles the one I was born with, but it’s something else entirely.”
A: I’m reasonably sure he’s referring to what happens when someone on Nalthis Returns. We already knew that the Returned are actually Cognitive Shadows who are reattached to their original bodies, and that they don’t remember their former lives. This sounds like a new hint about Cognitive Shadows—that it really is a shadow, an imprint of their soul but not the soul itself. This is getting … heady.
“The Heralds too,” Zahel said. “When they died, they left an imprint behind. Power that remembered being them. You see, the power wants to be alive.” He gestured with his chin toward Syl, flying down beneath them as a ribbon of light. “She’s what I now call a Type One Invested entity. I decided that had to be the proper way to refer to them. Power that came alive on its own.”
L: I’m sure that all you Cosmere Scholars are having a field day with this.
A: They’d better be! It makes my head spin, and I used to think of myself as a Cosmere Scholar.
L: The weird thing is, he says that the Heralds left an imprint behind when they died. But… they were all reborn. So… did that power get reclaimed when they were reborn? Or is there a bunch of… of Herald-Investiture just floating around out there, somewhere?
A: I wish I knew. One possibility is that their real souls actually did go Beyond, and it’s just the imprint that stays to act as a Herald. Whatever the thing is that stuck around, though, it seems to always have a physical body, whether it’s on Braize or back on Roshar. At least… I think they have a physical body on Braize; it’s just not a body that can die like normal, so it can be subjected to centuries of torture.
The longer one of us exists, the more like a spren we become. Consumed by a singular purpose, our minds bound and chained by our Intent. … That’s why she takes our memories. She knows we aren’t the actual people who died, but something else given a corpse to inhabit…”
“She?” Kaladin asked.
L: ANSWER THE MAN’S QUESTION, ZAHEL.
A: IMO, he’s obviously talking about Edgli/Endowment, but it would have been nice of him to say so.
L: The comment about being bound and chained by Intent is really interesting. We’ve seen this in a lot of the spren—the honorsprens’ almost obsessive adherence to oaths, the cryptics’ obsession with truth and lies. This also begs the question… if every piece of their soul has been replaced, are they even really the same person, anymore? What exactly is a soul, if it isn’t the essence of the person? Their personality and memories? Is it just a word for the power that imbues a person’s body?
A: Deep questions, indeed. Assuming Zahel’s thinking is shaped by his origins, it’s worth remembering that when a person Returns, they have a purpose. An Intent. They don’t remember their previous life, and they mostly don’t even know what their Intent is… until they meet it. But they still, to some extent, live according to it. (The story of Calmseer is a good example: she died of an illness, and Returned so she could give her Breath to heal her daughter of the same illness. In the meantime, she helped people however she could, particularly the sick.)
I think the spren are a little different, in that they’re the personification of the ideas at their core, so it’s less an obsession and more just… what they are. But Zahel seems to believe that the longer a Cognitive Shadow remains in place, the more they shift from the complexity of a living person to the single-mindedness of the non-sapient spren. In the same way a flamespren is fixated on flames, a Cognitive Shadow becomes fixated on their Intent.
Oddly enough, the sapient spren seem to shift the other direction; they don’t lose their defining characteristic, but they become more and more complex individuals, the more they connect to their Radiant.
Here’s another interesting thought, though. Was there something about the Oathpact that enhanced this, and something about breaking it that inverted the Intent of the Heralds? Last week in the comments, Isilel was speculating that perhaps Ishar and one or two others may have done something to bind Taln more deeply, making it virtually impossible for him to break. Could they have shifted something about the Oathpact so that his attributes “Dependable & Resourceful” completely suffused his being, and became his sole Intent? I’m not sure how that plays for the ones who broke the Oathpact and began inverting their Intent, but… it seems like a possibility.
Syl-logisms
A: No, I know they aren’t syllogisms. Go away. I wanted the wordplay. Syl has been begging for it.
L: Reaction.
Think about it, Kaladin. Everything else that comes out of your body you dispose of quickly and quietly—but this strange stuff oozes out of little holes in your head, and you let it sit there? Gross.”
L: I… I have to admit, she’s got a point.
A: When you think about it that way, um… yeah?
I think we’re losing, Syl said. To a guy wielding something he found in Adolin’s sock drawer.
A: Bahahaha! I don’t even have anything to say about this. I just couldn’t not quote it. Such an excellent metaphor.
Kaladin grunted
A: (In response to Syl’s above comment) We haven’t really been tracking, but this is Kaladin’s seventh grunt. Heh. Worth noting, his father does it too. I grunt, therefore I am.
L: He could give Geralt a run for his money. (Also, fun fact, Henry Cavill is a fan of Stormlight. Hey, Henry, if by any chance you’re reading these, loved your work on the show!)
Fabrial Technology & Spheres
Logicspren react curiously to imprisonment. Unlike other spren, they do not manifest some attribute—you cannot use them to make heat, or to warn of nearby danger, or conjoin gemstones. For years, artifabrians considered them useless
L: I find it curious that they call out logicspren specifically. Wouldn’t this be the case for any of the “emotion” spren, like creation, glory, fear, etc…?
A: Navani’s notebook shows that she’s used a wide variety of spren: flame, cold, gravity, pain, heat, wind, anticipation, anger, disgust, sadness, love, hate, joy, trust, fear, surprise. Some of those are in the “pain knife” design, and some are in the “emotion bracelet” design, but it seems that emotion spren can be used. We haven’t yet seen anything involving creationspen or gloryspren, that I know of, but I sure am curious about them.
Syl hovered in front of him in the Urithiru hallway, taking the form of a fanciful ship—only with sails on the bottom. “What is that?” Kaladin asked her.
“I don’t know,” she said, sailing past him. “Navani was drawing it during a meeting a few weeks ago. I think she got mixed up. Maybe she hasn’t seen boats before?”
L: These are clearly eventually going to be proper airships and I, for one, am here for it. (For once my GIF finding skills are failing me, so just imagine the sky pirate ship from Stardust, okay?)
A: Or check out her notebook, if you like.
L: I mean, yeah, but that’s not animated. :P
Navani and her scholars claimed that these outer plates around the tower had once been fields.
How could that ever have been the case? The air up here was cold, and though Rock seemed to find it invigorating, Kaladin could tell it lacked something.
L: Yet more in the mounting heap of evidence that the Tower is meant to have Investiture somehow.
A: Right? Kaladin can feel the lack of oxygen, but the cold is probably a bigger factor in the difficulty growing plants. Either way, the altitude is not conducive to either humans or plants, so there had to be something more.
Why had the Parshendi wanted gemstones? … You could simulate the highstorm minerals the plants needed to form shells, but the cold air would stifle growth. Rlain had agreed this was true . . . unless you had an edge.
Unless you grew the plants by the light of gemstones.
Beside each lantern sat an ardent with a drum, softly banging a specific rhythm. This was the secret. People would have noticed if gemstone light made plants grow—but the mixture of the light and the music changed something.
L: Ooooh, this is fascinating. I find it so cool how much it is becoming clear that music is integral to life on this planet, and how the humans just never realized it until now.
A: I wonder if the ancient humans knew more about the music, and that knowledge was lost somewhere along the line—like in the Last Desolation 4500 years ago, when they were essentially driven back to the stone age. It’s possible that they simply never learned of this thing that’s so basic to the design and functioning of this planet, but it seems odd that they could live here for ten thousand years without ever stumbling across it.
In any case, we certainly didn’t know about it, but it seems this may be our book for learning about the light and the music. (I love that title.)
One last thing, before we leave…
“Wit never gives me answers. At least not straight ones.”
“That’s because Wit is an asshole,” Zahel said.
L: This… this brought a tear to my eye. Bless you, Zahel.
A: That was… um… unexpected.
L: I like to think that Zahel and Kelsier would be the best of buddies based on this assessment of Hoid’s personality.
We’ll be leaving the speculation to you in the comments, so have fun and remember to be respectful of the opinions of others!
Alice is fighting her way through a weird eye inflammation. Isn’t that fun, and just what you needed to know? What a life.
Lyndsey is missing her faire family dearly. In these bylines, she’ll be giving some shout-outs to fellow local performers or vendors who could really use the support. This week, check out Pigasus Books for books, maps, prints, games related to the middle ages and the renaissance. If you’re an aspiring author, a cosplayer, or just like geeky content, follow her work on Facebook or Instagram.
Good old Vesher.
Transistors? Computers? Silicon Valley on Roshar?
@@@@@ 2 Jim
Haven’t even started reading the chapter but had to comment about this too. Navani/the artifabrians discovered computers and binary!!!!!!!!
Another great chapter, although I do love Cosmere lore so I’m more than a little biased.
A couple of points:
1) I’ve always assumed the Cultivation was the one who took Nightblood. The Nightwatcher did offer it to Dalinar, but I would think something like Nightblood would be too important, much like Dalinar.
2) Rlain’s warform is probably just a form that maybe he’s more comfortable in, regardless of the others that he has access. He’s trying to walk the line between being himself and not censoring himself for other’s sake, all while he’s aware of how he “looks”. Your racial analogy is correct.
3) I still think Rlain is going to bond Yunfah. My guess is that Yunfah will respect him for not accepting the bond unconditionally, and that will in turn intrigue him enough to make him look into Rlain anyway.
4) To everyone implying that the humans were doing the parshmen a favor by holding them as slaves, well now we know how the “average” Alethi – maybe human – felt about parshmen that were smarter than “normal.” So clearly not that rare to have a “smart” parshmen. Not to mention the breeding, once again.
5) Loved the power levels reference, Lyn. I think Brandon did imply that he was going to bring that more into the foreground in the later Stormlight books.
I will admit this chapter was not my personal cup of tea. While I have really loved the Venli chapters, this one was a bit too much on the info-dumbing side of things. The whole Type 1, Type 2 conversation doesn’t seen very important/relevant and it was weird. It was too mechanical. It belonged in an engineering office, not on Roshar, that felt like an anachronism. It just, IMHO didn’t fit and it broke my immersion. A bit like when Lift talk and reads as a character from another time era.
Now, the part I did like was Rlain. I felt for him: as predicted, he does not want the pity bond. He does not want the spren obliged to bond him. It made me angry Kaladin wouldn’t understand how other people may not want pity bonds, might want to get recognize for their own virtues. I agree with Rlain it sets a bad precedent. This is exactly what I said a few chapters ago.
I also liked Zahel explaining to Kaladin why he can’t be a swordsmaster.
All in all, I guess this just wasn’t my favorite chapter.
All this stuff with Roshar’s tones and rhythms has me thinking about the rhyshadium and they way they attract music spren. That’s got to be significant, right!
I loved this chapter! The battle of sheets and scarves was loads of fun, and while I was hoping Kal and his natural talent (and the ever wonderful Syl) would pull out a win, he was just too overmatched by a hundreds-of-years old dude with great powers unknown to him. I adored seeing the little tidbits of Awakening and Warbreaker references that then turned into full theories and Cosmere knowledge drops.
Also glad that Kaladin won’t be going the way of the Ardent… I so did not think that was right for him.
“That’s why she takes our memories.” … Hello Endowment!
“Oh, I gave it up. I let go. Best mistake I ever made.” >> A: That was a real zinger. It almost sounds like he didn’t intend to give it away, but he made a mistake that let someone else take it from him?
I actually read “I gave it up. I let go” as very purposeful. I think that Vasher made a conscious decision to give up Nightblood (how and where and to whom I so want to know – the Nightwatcher trade theory is possible!), probably in part as a further separation from his past and Nalthis. But in hindsight he probably realizes that letting Nightblood “loose” to be obtained and wielded by potentially anyone is not the best thing since Nightblood is one dangerous (though cheery) sword. So it was a mistake, but the best mistake, as he no longer has the responsibility and weight on his back of dealing with the sword, and he’s a very tired man.
Rlain calling lifespren and refusing the Honorspren bond!
Puts more credence to the Rlain the Edgedancer theory for me!
I would really like to buy the new Intel Shardcore CPU, please.
So happy when Rlain broke out into a huge grin
nice to see that he continues to be developed and that Kaladin has now begun to “listen” instead of just barrel through with what he thinks is best for him…could this be part of his next ideal??
The Intent – the process described here of Cognitive Shadows being drawn to a main personal Intent seems to be similar to what happens to the Shards, only for the Shards the power they wield is so great that they get drawn to that Intent rather then to their own?
How does this Intent process reflect on other cognitive shadows we know?
(e.g. so Ke-r is now all about Survival and might have lost other aspects of his personality? Kh-s is all about Learning?)
@6 – Good call! Gets us a little bit of Epona’s song for Roshar’s signature mounts!
Henry Cavill as Amaram? Give the guy a chance to really lean in to the whole ‘evil’ Superman persona.
Rlain seems destined to become something other than a Windrunner. He is going to be filling a bunch of crucial holes in Alethi knowledge about Roshar, I’m almost amazed that Navani hasn’t assigned at least 3 scribes to follow him constantly. Actually, I’m shocked she isn’t making Dalinar order him to tell her everything he knows so she can learn more. It makes me wonder about Venli’s role as the last of the Listeners – wouldn’t Rlain also be one of them? Could team human get 2 Listener surgebinders at the same time?
I love how the title of the book becomes more meaningful as the characters learn more (or reveal to us more of what they have learned) about the world. November 17th can’t get here soon enough!
“That’s because Wit is an asshole,” Zahel said.
My favorite line in the entire cosmere! I started laughing at work when I read this!
At this point, I really think that this could mean that Rlain will bond Yunfah, or he will be moving away from the Windrunners, and perhaps becoming a candidate to bond the Sibling (along with Navani). One thing I noticed is that Rlain is actually the last listener – not Venli, and I’m sure they’ll meet at some point and the dynamic should be interesting. (Also do we know anything about the Listeners who fled down the caverns? Its been a year: can we assume they’ve just died?)
On an additional point, from the previous chapter and this chapter – it doesn’t seem like any of the other windrunners will swear the fourth before Kaladin (or at least anytime soon). It seems that most of the Radiants just aren’t ready for the next step, like the Fused have stated.
Am I the only one who don’t like the last three chapters? Each if them has two Talking Heads (Mraize and Shallan, Vanli and Levshi, Kaladin and Zahel) who info dumping me about The Cosmere and nothing happens. It’s really boring.
Except that Vasher is never a main character. Vivienne, Siri are. Heck Lightsong is way more of a main character than Vasher.
One of the weirdest things of Warbreaker is that the prologue sets up Vasher as a major character, and then he barely appears in the book. It feels like a promise to the reader that is broken.
Anyone notice how there is an open field with gemhearts conveniently filled to bursting with stormlight…just waiting to be used by a 4th ideal Windrunner having to face down invading Fused
@7
I wonder if Vasher tossed Nightblood at someone, like he often did in Warbreaker and instead of repelling the person or making them commit suicide, they were able to wield him. I wouldn’t be surprised if Nale was able to do something like that, though I’m guessing the story is more complex than that.
At first I was disappointed that Zahel wasn’t in the sparing grounds and doing laundry. But oh boy! I’m so glad he was. I wonder if he’s going to use his power more in this book. He’s given up the sword and hates the fight. But has he really given up the fight? Awakened traps in Kaladin’s Home Alone style battle with the fused would be SWEET!
I LOVED this chapter. I love the nitty gritty details of the cosmere, and how everything is starting to come together. I’ve been waiting for this for YEARS!!! I still don’t feel like we as the reader are learning much more than we knew already, except for a bit about the nature of cognitive shadows… but as soon as stuff like this comes to Navani and Jasnah’s attention, I guarantee we’re going to get some REAL new knowledge, and I can’t wait!
That said, I think the most exciting thing is this info about Logicspren in the very beginning. I get the feeling the first fabrial computer isn’t far away! At the very least, it’s not going to take them long to realize they can use this pattern of flashing lights to communicate in code.
Alice in OP:
This might also partially explain Shardholders changing over time too?
Jim @@@@@ 2: I’d suggest the better comparison would be valves rather than transistors. Might also be a subtle nod to Maxwell’s demon.
Gepeto @@@@@ 5: was similarly jarring when those terms came up in Warbreaker. But it’s worth remembering that Zahel/Vasher is more of a scholar, or was more of a scholar, and this was him effectively flipping into scholar mode. But yeah, the sudden deluge at the end did feel a bit unnatural. But I’m not sure how else it could have been done in a single chapter.
General comments: fun to see different magic systems used in combat against each other. Vasher rides again!
Also interesting to see belief in gods coming up and how different characters think about it. I’m still sulking over the complete lack of info on what happened to Shallan’s religious beliefs since the start of OB though.
PS For anyone wondering, we do know for sure that Endowment is female:
https://wob.coppermind.net/events/69-shadows-of-self-release-party/#e6258
I LOVED this chapter. Super refreshing, informative, and just full of so much juicy content to pick apart. (This will have references to Warbreaker so avoid if you don’t want spoilers).
Kal searching for a new purpose with the same fervour as Adolin searches for a new coat when the fashion changes is relatable. His depressive slump has ended and now he’s trying to get on with things.
I loved the Rlain interaction. I’ve always loved Rlain, and seeing him have found his own purpose is really special. Crazy theory but I wonder if he could become a bondsmith to bond the Sibling/Urithiru? I know Navani is the one everyone assumes will do this because of her studies/the tower being a big fabrial and that being her thing but…
Rlain is bringing the tower back to life – quite literally invigorating the lifespren to do so. And as a listener bondsmith he could potentially bring unity to the listeners and humans. There’s a segment from the Diagram in WoR that I just reread that speaks of a parshman needing to be found before they become “the bridge”. I assumed this was Venli because she’s become a Willshaper/the first listener to bond a spren and become a surgebinder but…what if it’s Rlain instead? I’m just spitballing here, ignore me.
I did love that section though. There’s a lot of hints contained within it: Rlain demonstrating how the listeners really are the true/native peoples of Roshar, as they can farm it in a way the humans just can’t by using the Rhythms. Rlain being willing to try and teach the humans about the Ryhthms is also huge?
Others have also mentioned the Warbreaker connection re: tones/music and I’ve thought about that as well. There seems to be a basically canon implication that the Knights’ Ideals/Oaths must be spoken verbally – hence why Rock says Dabbid (who is now non-verbal) will never become a Windrunner. This has struck me as similar to Awakening requiring a verbal command which must be spoken clearly and crisply and was why Susebron was unable to Awaken. We know there’s crossover between Nalthis and Roshar but I’m so hungry for more.
In terms of Zahel not speaking when he Awakened the cloths, 10th heightening is possible for him I suppose? And it’s maybe why his life-sense can detect Syl. Or he could have implanted a command into the cloths before Kaladin appeared. You can pre-program items with Awakening “grip when thrown” for example. Not sure how likely it is that Zahel awakens his laundry while he’s doing it but you never know. Although Kal notes that the scarf loses its colour during the fight so *shrug emoji* who knows!
I’m super fond of Zahel/Vasher and have been since my first pass-through of Warbreaker. I like that he’s a character who almost breaks the fourth wall in a way? He’s just SO upfront in giving details about lore/the working of the world and his own nature. He was the same in Warbreaker when training Vivenna. It’s just so not what you expect, especially when he’s framed as a counterpoint to Hoid who’s as esoteric as they come.
The fossil also intrigues me. It’s too old for Nalthis, he says, and likely too old for Roshar as well. Where the heck did he get it? Was it a gift from another Worldhopper? Or has he been to still older planets??? So many questions.
As a side-note before I move on from him: Zahel commenting that Kaladin and Dalinar are “hens from the same nest” with regards to how protective they are is my new favourite image. If I could draw I’d make Kaladin/Dalinar chicken fanart.
I really enjoyed Zahel’s “testing” of Kal. Which wasn’t really a test but a demonstration. I’ve always seen Kaladin’s fighting as a parallel for Shallan’s art or Jasnah’s scholarship. It’s what he loves, what anchors and grounds him, what gives him a reason to live.
I don’t think he’s comfortable admitting that – there’s too much shame ingrained from Lirin’s attitude while he was growing up in there. But from that first moment he picked up a ‘spear’ in his flashbacks it’s always been his art, the thing he excels at above all.
I think Zahel was right. And I think it’s more than forms and katas and meditation. It is the FIGHT. Duels aren’t enough because they’re not real enough. They’re almost intellectual in a way: strategy, reading your opponent, there’s time and precision and care. A fight isn’t like that at all. I think it’s the challenge for Kaladin. A challenge he can take up and WIN. Something that forces him to stop thinking and just act, just do. He still needs that.
I wonder what he’s going to become…
It seems Brandon is preparing people for greater Cosmere connections even if they haven’t read the other books. I feel like the book has had a lot of Cosmere 101 and 201 to get people who are Stormlight-only up to speed so that they don’t have to read everything out there, but aren’t lost by what’s to come.
Even after all the explanations we got about Cognitive Shadows and how they are not truly the people they were before, am I a fool to desperately want to believe Kelsier was an exception to that? I want Kelsier to be the same guy as he was before he died, not some power invested husk that thinks he is Kelsier.
A couple of quick thoughts:
Glad that there is still a chance that Rlain will become a Bondsmith! Personally, I don’t think that it is wrong to force someone to consider a candidate that they would have rejected sight unseen due to prejudice, but I also understand Rlain’s reaction. Interesting that he never became a squire – what does it mean for Venli’s disciples?
I am confused why people would treat a workform Listener like a parshman – don’t workforms look significantly different from slaveforms? I.e. hair versus bald, noticeably taller and lankier, etc.? It was the _dullform_ that looked similar to the slaveform. Is this an oversight?
I am somewhat disappointed that all the blatant indications that Zahel comes from another world and has uncanny powers fly over Kaladin’s head and don’t prompt any natural curiosity/questions. That’s why I really hoped to see him through Shallan’s or Navani’s PoV. Not sure why Zahel chose to randomly admit his oddities to Kaladin either, but irritatingly stopped short of telling him that a certain sword could do for the Fused permanently. Here is to hoping that this does lead to something constructive from him in the future.
Zahel’s view of the Heralds being essentially spren conflicts with the Stormfather’s revelation that they could give in to torture due to being human and therefore capable of oath-breaking. Ditto their apostasy. It seems to me that the unlucky Heralds posess both human and spren weaknesses, which was the Oathpact’s undoing
I’m slightly worried someone is going to explain/discover how the Heralds were created and Kaladin will volunteer to become one. He’s selfless enough, but I’m concerned he’d do it as a form of self-destruction. I can easily see him thinking it’s his doom to be the next Taln.
Vasher’s abstract theorizing is very out of place on Roshar. It’s a completely different way of thinking about the world than anyone on Roshar has managed.
@24 We did see Kelsier explicitly not go Beyond and the narrative suggests continuity of experience between living Kelsier and dead Kelsier. It sounds like something different happened to him than what Vasher is talking about.
@21 Chris. I found it incredibly jarring and unnatural. Why would Zahel start to tell those things to Kaladin of all people? And since when does Kaladin thinks of Zahel as a mythical being who knows Hoid?
The whole conversation made no sense to me. There ought to be better ways for the characters to find out about the Cosmere. And if Zahel knows how to deal and kill the Fused, then why hasn’t he told Dalinar and other people yet?
I just felt someone has been holding the idiot ball just so we could get an info-dumping chapter. It would have been far more logical for Zahel to have already talked to Dalinar. There were no reasons why right now he say those things now, in this scene.
Some random thoughts regarding cognitive shadows:
Sveth might not age anymore. What’s his intent going to be? Hopefully justice and not say assassin
What is Kelsier’s intent over time? I worry it is revenge and that it will consume him. (Probably directed at the shards)
can’t remember her name but the honorable fused from earlier in the books probably has honor as her intent which is why she appears to be progressing towards a defecting from Odium path eventually
The persuer being so obsessed makes more and more sense as it has become his intent
@28
Why would Zahel tell Dalinar? He has basically given up. That’s his entire thing. He’s old, he’s tired, he tried to prevent conflict and failed, so now he’s hanging out with ardents and surviving. He tells Kaladin about things simply because Kaladin asks. Kaladin cares and Zahel/Vasher is too much the scholar to not explain. And too much the curmudgeon to give the full story and context.
As for why Kaladin is reminded of Hoid, it’s specifically because both Zahel and Hoid drop bits of esoteric information that they appear to have no reason to know. It’s not at all unreasonable that Kaladin would notice and see similarities there.
Of course it’s an info dump, but it is done well and in character for those involved. If you’re connecting a universe and can’t reasonably expect everyone to have read all the books, there aren’t really any other options. And that’s ok. Not everyone will enjoy it, but then there really isn’t anything that everyone enjoys, so why should a book be any different?
Brandon has previously said that there is debate about the Cosmere scholars on whether Cognitive Shadows are the real soul or just a copy. I don’t think he intends to answer that, much like his stance toward the Beyond.
So – The chapter starts with “in the weeks following the attack on hearthstone” but this commentary states Day 11…. Doesn’t add up, I dont think?
Interesting conversation with Rlain.. I agree, having a forced bond, isnt good… And his comment that “theres a wedge between me and the stormfather” is very interesting.. not sure where it’s going..
Its very odd that Kal sees what happening with the clothes, has never seen anything like it before, and doesn’t go… hey WTF? explain what’s going on here.. your not a surgebinder/radiant.. Explain!
Or maybe hes just learned to go with the flow with Zahel.
Love the comment of hoid being An Asshole. LOL
And yes, it seems hes very well aware of what weapon would be needed to destroy the fused…
Speaking of which, I saw that Szeth is in prison? how do we know this? Any knowledge of where Nightblood is?
@31 Yeah we are getting Vasher’s scholarly but jaded view on the matter and not a precise truth. He admits himself in this chapter that he once believed one thing and then had to change it because it proved untrue. Also his opinion may be biased by his lack of memories of his prior life
@32 this was the first we learned of it. It’s possible he’s not imprisoned. He could be running the prison
@30 Town. Because Dalinar is the leader of the Radiants and if Zahel has information he wants to pass down, then Dalinar is the one he should have told. That’s what bothers me with this chapter: why tell Kaladin here and now? Why Kaladin? Why now? There are just no reasons. So while the swordsmaster, oaths, Rlain discussions were much relevant and interesting, the whole Type 1/2 investiture made little sense. Why would Zahel tells this to Kaladin here and now?
Hence, I am not a fan of this chapter: too much info-dumping which is probably not going to be super relevant in the near term. I would have preferred if Sanderson had used another means to transfer Cosmere data. The conversation felt too out-of-place for me, not natural enough.
@32
Speaking of which, I saw that Szeth is in prison? how do we know this?
Word of Brandon.
And I’ve been wondering where NB is myself.
@5 Gepeto
I agree. I’m not as thrilled about this chapter either. There are a few places so far in this book that just feel too much like info dumps to me.
I love the Cosmere as much as the next person, but I’m much more a fan of it not being so overt. This just seems to in my face.
@30 Jtown – Your explanation here is the same as I would have said. Well reasoned.
@35 Gepeto: “Because Dalinar is the leader of the Radiants and if Zahel has information he wants to pass down, then Dalinar is the one he should have told. That’s what bothers me with this chapter: why tell Kaladin here and now? Why Kaladin? Why now? There are just no reasons.”
@35 – I understand that you did not like the method of information given in this chapter and personally found it jarring… but I also see that clearly giving you a bias when stating that “there are just no reasons”.
As @30 said and you did not address, Zahel has moved on from being involved. He has no interest in inserting himself into the overall conflict, or bringing huge amounts of attention to himself by revealing things to Dalinar, the Blackthorn and King of Urithiru. You say “if Zahel has information he wants to pass down”… but the point is that Zahel does not want to take initiative and pass down information.
Why he tells Kaladin now was also answered by @30 and you did not address, so to repeat the point, I’ll quote the text itself: “What are you?” Kaladin asked. “Are you like Wit?” Kaladin literally engages with Zahel and conveys interest and respect, and Zahel/Vasher, being the scholar that he is, educates the young man asking for some answers.
There are clear reasons.
@37 Hmm – That’s understandable; everyone enjoys their own form of reading experience. Note, though, that Brandon has made very clear that as the Cosmere novels progress, we are moving more and more from just hints and light crossovers to full mixing and meshing of characters and story between worlds, as that’s the ultimate goal of the Cosmere. So if you don’t like the in-your-face crossover parts, this is just something to consider as the Cosmere (and specifically later SA and MB books) novels continue to come out.
I haven’t read through all the comments so I don’t know if this has been mentioned yet. Some people have been theorizing that Vasher went to the Bank but cultivation personally met him. But do we know how long ago Vasher came to Roshar? Because in chapter 114 of Oathbringer when Dalinar goes into the valley and meets Cultivation, she says it’s been centuries since she met with and humans. So unless Vasher came a long time ago (which is possible cuz he doesn’t age) he didn’t meet with Cultivation herself. He may have met the Nightwatcher and somehow gave up nightblood.
I’m not sure what exactly the Heralds relationship with an Intent is, but after reading previous chapters I had a feeling that Taln was just an anomaly and a unique person who gave Roshar it’s chance to breath and catch up. Possibly things were changed when he was the only one sent back to Braize and he was pushed towards not breaking because of an intent…. but I’m feeling that Taln is a something special.
@32 It has been two weeks exactly since the attack. Remember, this is Roshar, not Earth. Weeks are 5 days long.
@42 – your right, thank you had forgotten that..
@40 – Cultivation might have lied about the timeline. whether on purpose or not caring…
@39 Point take. I know it’s all culminating in the Dragon Steel prequel series, which I’m for. I guess I just don’t like that it feels like I’m reading a C# manual or the like.
Ok so logicspren can make fabrials with logical circuits? Awesome!
I believe we already have confirmation that there will eventually be FTL travel through space. Would a conjoined fabrial with logicspren allow for FTL communication?
You just need to get around the problem with getting spren off Roshar but Mraize is already working on that.
@40 StormLord — unless Cultivation doesn’t consider Zahel to be human. He basically describes himself as a magic copy.
@45 – FTL travel is much easier with Mistborn tech. It’s heavily implied that the space travelers in Sixth of the Dust are from Scadrial.
I am holding out hope that we will see one of our core become a Stoneward. As the order I myself aspire to, I’ve definitely noticed the distinct lack of love for the frontline troops of the Radiants. While we do have Taln, it’s not the same as a modern Rosharran becoming a Stoneward.
Personally, I am holding out hope for either Adolin (hear me out all you Edgedancers!), Rlain, or Rock becoming a Stoneward. Each can definitely align with the 2nd ideal of the Stonewards: “I will be there when I am needed.” And for anyone who doesn’t know, Stonewards were always the frontline troops, charging into the battle to support and defend those who needed it. They align pretty closely with the Windrunners, which is probably why they were the last 2 orders to break their oaths during Aharietiom. They are also known as articulately good explorers, athletes, and soldiers.
Adolin has always been there for his family, especially his brother and father, and he has a penchant for athleticism, riding, and dueling. While I know that many people want him to reunite Maya’s soul and take up the oaths of an Edgedancer, I believe that BS wants a clear representative for each order among the core cast. Hence, why I believe Adolin would be a great Stoneward.
Rlain has always been there for Bridge 4, despite his lacking powers and prefered Warform, the most athletic of the known forms. He has never really ‘fit’ with Bridge 4/the Windrunners, and I don’t think it’s because he’s a parshman. I think he’s looking for the solution to his problem in the wrong place, with the wrong people, in the wrong Order. Besides, he’s said before how he wants to ‘Be there’ for his own people. That screams Stoneward to me.
And Rock, dear Rock, has always supported Kaladin and the whole Bridge team(s) as quartermaster. A supportive but strong-willed person is the exact kind of person that would align with the Stonewards. Nevermind the fact that, as a Horneater, he is extremely strong and has proven himself to be a VERY capable marksman. He even saved Kaladin STORMING Stormblessed’s life, in the exact moment Kaladin needed it. I think the fact that he became a WR squire is a red herring, and his refusal to accept a Honorspren comes not from a lack of ability to join the WR’s fully, but as a subconscious knowledge that the WR’s are not the order for him. I am excited to see Rock return to the Peaks, and maybe we can finally see him develop into the Stoneward I suspect him to be.
@47 yeah but are they just using Scadrial tech or are they combining tech from multiple worlds for FTL? Knowledge of the cosmere should be more widespread by that point.
I don’t recall ever hearing the term “lobberbeast” before. Do we know what that is?
In no particular order:
– I can see Vasher having set up the laundry line for the exact purpose of using it to kick Kaladin’s ass.
– On one hand, I like the idea that Vasher used Nightblood in his usual way, throwing him into a crowd, but someone like Nale getting it and just walking away with it, but it doesn’t match up. Nale had to get it from Cultivation/Nightwatcher, so Vasher had to lose NB there. NB doesn’t recognize Nale, either, but his memory is a weird thing.
– Are we basing the idea that Stormlight = Breaths on the idea that Szeth was told to keep Stormlight on hand for Nightblood? Or was there a WoB that said “Yeah, that’s what Zahel’s doing here”?
– I loved the Rlain bit. I sympathized with his line in OB “How can you love someone but at the same time want to slap them?” Kaladin’s showing some growth (recognizing the Rhythm), but still being absolutely clueless in other ways. Baby steps I guess. I disagree with @17 that the infused gems are going to be for a levelled-up Kaladin. They’re going to be used by Rlain.
– The emeralds on the field seem to hint that Rlain will be a Truthwatcher. It would show symmetry with the other Truthwatcher we know. The human with the corrupted spren/the listener with the “real” spren, both are kind of outcasts wherever they go, through no fault of their own. I hope Rlain makes appearances in the flashbacks so we can see if he further matches Renarin.
@47, @49 – Note that FTL travel is possible without any tech at all due to access to the Cognitive Realm, which is kind of like a wormhole (but also not) as the distance between points in physical realm space is heavily compressed, and you can get from one world to the next in much faster time than the lightyears between them.
Re: Cultivation not meeting with a human for centuries. Isn’t is also possible that she realizes what Zahel is and doesn’t count a Cognitive Shadow as “human”?
EDIT: Ninja’d by nightheron @46.
@52 – True, but I think we’re both referring to your standard Physical Realm travel, i.e. through space. Also, the Cognitive Realm can be a pretty dangerous place. And you would need someone to get you in there, either through abilities or as a guide.
@52 I’m pretty sure its been confirmed there will be physical realm FTL
A biologists response to Syl-logisms: fur/hair only seems weird on a planet where mammals are not native. There are few hairy mammals on Roshar all of which are imported and most live in Shinovar. Syl may only have seen humans and horses. If Syl was born on Scadrial she would be much less likely to think leaving hair unshaved to be gross. Then again its Syl…
@47, why do we assume that the Ones Above are from Scadrial? Given where we are seeing fabrial technology headed, Roshar fits more with the machines described in Sixth of the Dusk.
Of particular note is the insistence that the Ones Above can’t trade with them until they progress to a certain point, and follow the letter of the law in that regard, but also seek to manipulate them into progressing too quickly. Sounds like the twisted version of Honor to me, with oaths and rules that are followed rigidly while at the same time violating the spirit of those oaths (see also: Skybreakers, Order of).
It never occurred to me that Stormlight (in a non-Investiture form), with accompanying sound, could be used to grow plants and types of food. To be honest, I did not have a care. Agriculture/cultivation/gardening does not interest me in my fantasy stories. I suspect that the Ghostbloods know this. This is another way that they could make money off Stormlight if they are able to bring it off world. I wonder if there are worlds where growing things is difficult. If Stormlight would act as a strong (but environmentally friendly) fertilizer, together with the right rhythm, then some regions may be able to grow food where they would otherwise not. Of course, the Ghostbloods, would profit handsomely.
“The days where Kaladin could directly look out for the men and women of Bridge Four were coming to an end. He wanted to see them cared for;” this, Kaladin is your problem. As Kaladin’s father first taught him when he was training to be a surgeon, Kaladin has to learn when to cut his losses (so to speak). He has to learn that not everyone can be cared for. Sometimes, a person will put himself in danger and Kaladin will need to accept that. Further, some people will not want to be protected. I think Kaladin himself would not want to be so protected.
I knew that Rlain would not accept that Kaladin de facto forced a spren to bond with Rlain. Rlain is way too proud for that. Kaladin should have known that. Rlain is right. If the roles were reversed, Kaladin would not accept having a spren forced to bond him.
Zahel/Vasher used Breaths to fight Kaladin. I did not read Warbreaker, but from what I understand, Vasher never did fight fair. He is at least consistent.
Too bad Vasher did not have this discussion with Navani or Jasnah. They may have been able to take the breadcrumbs that Vasher gave Kaladin and create a weapon to defeat the Fused. Kaladin, however, he is like me; understanding only a few words but not the words in their proper context. The rest is just sounds like Dalinar used to hear when someone mentioned Evi’s name.
Overall, I did not like this chapter. I liked the first half; everything before Kaladin met up with Zahel. I would prefer that Vasher not provide any discussions about his past and the powers he has. At this point, I still wish that Brandon had kept the Cosmere wolds separate.
Thanks for reading my musings.
AndrewHB
aka the musespren
Iridescent Tones, anyone? Gemstones and pure tones.
I don’t think he’s “really” Vasher any more than he’s “really” Strifelover or Zahel. They’re names he has used. The closest thing we have to a real name is probably Talaxin, but even that isn’t the name he bore in life.
Is this the first time Brandon has used an obscenity in his fiction? “Asshole” seems like something Elantris-time Brandon would have avoided.
@15, Fell:
I’m in between. I didn’t dislike these chapters, but there’s too much infodumping in a row. I almost get the feeling that Brandon was rushing to get it over with.
Would a Tenth Heightening Vasher leave behind a gray scarf? Surely he’d drain it to pure white, once he could.
@28, Gepeto:
Mythical? Kaladin knows Wit, too. Why would knowing Hoid make Zahel “mystical”? I mean, he is, but what makes you think Kaladin thinks of him that way?
I, for one, actually kinda liked Zahel’s loredumps. I doubt he’s doing this because he thinks the person he’s talking to will get much out of it, or because he thinks they’ll know what he means, it feels more its just hard for him to stop talking about this kind of stuff once he gets started. It reminds me a lot of the feeling I get when I start to talk about my special interests, like the technical details of competitive fighting games, or whatever book or RPG I’ve been playing a bunch of recently, I’ll just spout out all the technical stuff that I think is even kinda relevant even if its not really necessary. Like, if some asks me “what kinds of games do you play?” I don’t just say “I mostly play fighting games and RPGs”, I’ll specifically name the games I’m playing, and why I play them, and what the difference is between an arena fighter and a platform fighter and a traditional fighter and an anime fighter. It was definitely the vibe I got from him when he first brought up Awakened Entities in Warbreaker. On that note, its interesting to see him change the name. From Awakened Entity to Invested Entity. I definitely can’t wait to see some more from Vasher in the future, I desperately want to see him in a conversation with Khriss.
Rlain is also quickly becoming a favorite of mine. I feel like I must have kind skim-read his moments in previous books, because I only really remember him in Way of Kings, and a small moment in Oathbringer, but I am doing a reread now that I’m (mostly) caught up on the rest of the Cosmere (Just in time, too! Geez, and I thought Azure was jarring to someone with no other Cosmere experience), so I’ll be paying a lot more attention.
Regardless of what Kaladin does with his retirement from the battlefield, I think its a very interesting way to take his character. As the Cosmere widens and time moves on, these characters are going to live out entire lives, and not all of those characters can be combatants the whole time. At first I was expecting Kaladin to actually become an ardent, and leave the fighting to his students and others, and that we’d see him step out of the more central, physical conflicts of the story. I still expect the second half of the statement to be true, it doesn’t feel right for him to be removed from his position like this, with him completely agreeing that he’s not fit for duty, then swear the fourth ideal during the big action climax and save the day, or kill the bad guy, or otherwise solve the problem at hand with more fighting. If he does swear the fourth ideal, I expect that moment will be more about him accepting that he just doesn’t belong on the front lines anymore.
Y’all are talking about Rlain becoming a bondsmith, but what if Vasher is already one. Trading Nightblood for the ability to draw in stormlight, a good way for the Nightwatcher to make that happen would be to form a bond. I don’t think this is super likely, having someone so outside of the main cast bond the Nightwatcher, but the possibility is so intriguing.
Some of the scholar characters should talk to Zahel, but they probably don’t know about him because he hides among the fighters. And he might not be as willing to talk to someone who actually understands what he is saying.
If Rosharans call every bird chicken it doesn’t make sense that they have a word for hen.
@59, Carl: “Is this the first time Brandon has used an obscenity in his fiction?”
See Words of Radiance, Shallan’s courtship of Adolin. She asks him what happens if he’s in Shardplate and has to poop, and… he answers.
Initial observations:
Kaladin’s arc seems like it’s going to move somewhat slowly (and therefore may not initially seem all of that interesting) right now in comparison to Shallan’s or Venli’s. But I do like that Brandon is using Kaladin’s POVs to give us info and development of characters and technological advancements in Urithuru. It’s good to see/hear about Rlain, Szeth and Zahel.
Rlain – My respect for him continues to grow. He perseveres amongst humans, even though he knows they look at him (and often treat him) different, just because he’s a Listener. I like that he declined a spren that only would begrudgingly attempt to bond with him; he knows that he deserves a spren that wants to bond with him. Whether he ends up a Bondsmith, a Truthwatcher, a Willshaper or continues on as unbonded-Rlain, he is worthy of the humans respect. Also, it was good to see what the Listeners were using those gemhearts for.
Zahel – This part was soooo good. The “fight” was fine, but the cosmere lore, information and proposed categorization was the best part. I like that Zahel just… answers Kaladin’s questions. Even though the answers may not be entirely useful for Kaladin, they are quite useful for the cosmerely aware reader. And it makes sense that in a book that will (presumably) have a lot of focus on the Fused, there is more discussion on what exactly cognitive shadows are, how they come to be, and what some of the issues with them are. And it was great to see Awakening used against a Shardbearer. Maybe we’ll see a larger fight later on in RoW between Awakenings and Surgebinding/Voidbinding.
Another interesting chapter. This book is going to be good…
@62, birgit:
It’s like Hoid’s meditation on the word “axehound” containing “hound” despite there being no dogs. Their languages remember more animals than the actual people do (outside of Shinovar, which seems to have North America in the Twentieth Century’s ecology).
You don’t think Brandon was tweaking us, the readers, a bit with that line about nobody wondering why the Listeners wanted emeralds so much? All our theorizing, but we never seem to have asked that question ….
I think another reason Vasher tells Kaladin info-dump style is because it’s safe. Vasher doesn’t want to get involved. If he gave this information to Jasnah or Navani then they would definitely draw him in. Even telling Dalinar is a frightening thing to do if you wish to maintain neutrality. Giving this information to someone who isn’t particularly scholarly does no harm to his stance while letting him indulge his natural pedantic streak.
Count me in as another reader who loves the lore. I honestly like it when characters who understand the world tell me things (I especially freaked out about the observation that Vasher may be doing 10th Heightening operations, but in a good way). Having read Warbreaker (due for another reread) I saw it as the natural state of Vasher and so it read as natural to me. But I may have been distracted by all the new information to care.
It’s crazy that Roshar is such a musical world yet humanity doesn’t feel it at all. It makes me think of world focuses and what they would be. Nalthis is obviously color, Scadrial is likely metals, but what about Sel? Taldain? Threnody? Yolen itself? It also keeps the trend of the title of SA books having multiple meaning throughout the book for multiple purposes so I enjoy that.
Rlain will be a Radiant. There’s contenders for numerous orders but he’s going to surgebind for somebody. But that wedge comment is interesting. It could mean that SF doesn’t see him as a Windrunner and thus has him earmarked for something else. Or it could be that his bond won’t fall within his purview, i.e. one of his Siblings has a claim on him. We know that SF will accept a bond between a Listener and one of his children, Venli holds one after all. I’m holding to the Bondsmith theory, but which is still up in the air. His joy at watching growing points toward NW, his efforts to make the tower more functional for its inhabitants points toward Sib.
Kaladin feels like the fight is integral to his sense of self, or at least that’s Vasher/ Zahel’s read on him. Could he perhaps channel that into a different profession? He does have other skills after all.
@22: The most obvious (and therefore suspect, given Sanderson) interpretation of the fossil is that it’s Yolish via Hoid, I think.
I think deep down Zahel does still want to help but that something happens during the Warbreaker sequel that has made him give into despair. At some point Zahel is going to have some sort of last stand and do something magnificent. Every Returned returned for a purpose
@@@@@ 58 AndrewHB
My guess is that it has to do with Cultivation, literally. The Listeners use sound/rhythm for actual food/plant growth and oaths(?) for the changing of forms in order to survive on Roshar. I still think it’s weird that no-one other than Hoid and Zahel talk about her.
@@@@@ 68 John
That’s what I think too, but I’m not sure what that would be since I don’t think Endowment cares about off-world activities. Zahel has clearly met Endowment by the time that this book starts, but hadn’t by the end of Warbreaker. My guess is that he found out his purpose in whatever the sequel to Warbreaker becomes and that’s why he gives up and runs. Unfortunately, we don’t get that until at least after Book 5, maybe Mistborn Era 3.
We mainly see Alethi who worship Honor. Other Rosharan cultures might know more about Cultivation.
@69, Keyblazing:
[Cultivation]
In the epigraphs (of a previous book) she says that Odium “… will be dealt with.” Why do you think Vasher is on Roshar? Why does he remind us in this very chapter that he was sent back by Endowment?
Aside from any other possible reason, she would presumably like to remain alive, and Odium’s known goal is to splinter all other Shards, which would certainly kill Edgli.
@37 Hmmm. I didn’t mind the other “info-dumping” chapters. This is the first one I felt jarred reading. I just didn’t find the conversation fitted nor made much sense: I read it as a setup to pass down lore and I didn’t find it was a particularly organic one.
@38 Bridge4. If Zahel is so concerned over not being involved, then why does he waste any minute telling Kaladin all this stuff? He basically told Cosmere relevant data to the one character who’s the least likely to understand what he is even talking about. Or the one with the least interest in finding out. Hence, while I get the setup was “Zahel does not want to participate but he still wants to say his gig”, it just didn’t read like an organic conversation.
There is also no reasons for Kaladin to spontaneously ask Zahel “who he is”. This just does not work with Kaladin who tends to be unobservant and don’t really bother with people if they are not his people. I understand Sanderson wanted Kaladin to have a chat with Zahel, about his future, and thought to use it as a setup for Zahel to disclose his other knowledge, but I did not feel Kaladin was the right character to trigger this particular conversation.
This is why I didn’t feel the conversation fit with the scene, the setup, and the characters. The rest of the chapter is fine. I really liked Rlain.
@48 Average. I saw some readers argue for Adolin as a Stoneward, in large parts, because the Stonewards’ blurb matches his personality a lot more than the Edgedancers’ blurb. Then again, Lift absolutely does not fit her own blurb: neither are interested in religion in any small way, so it odd to have this on the blurb. Anyway. I think Adolin is pretty much setup to revive Maya and become an Edgedancer. I can only hope the arc will have enough depth to it to be compelling, enough struggles, enough, well of everything to actually be referred to as “an arc”.
@59 Carl. That’s my point. Why would Kaladin ask any questions to Zahel other than “should he joined the swordsmaster”? That’s why the whole conversation felt inorganic to me: I do not think Kaladin was the right character to question Zahel about the Cosmere.
@64 KiManiak. Shallan, Adolin, and Venli currently are the narratives I am the most anxious to read. I am not super interesting in reading Kaladin’s story, at least, not with the current setup. I am still hoping his page time will be greatly reduced once Shallan/Adolin and Venli stories really start because I feel they have the greater tale to tell.
I really enjoyed Rlain too. I would really like him as a Bonssmith just to show his finger up to the Stormfather’s nose for not wanting his honor on his team.
While this has been the best chapter in a while, by a long shot, which gives us much to discuss… the most important of which is what is Syl doing hanging around Adolin’s sock drawer?
Inquiring minds wanna know!
So you get different effects from Stormlight by playing specific tones in specific patterns? Sounds like Lightweavers could become stupidly powerful with this technique, since they can produce tones at will and their Cryptics are pocket-sized supercomputers when it comes to pattern recognition.
I understand this is going to an unpopular opinion but I liked this chapter because I didn’t have to see Kaladin in a relationship that we all have to ship. Why does every character have to be in a relationship to move the story forward?
I know, I know. Some don’t agree, but I LOVED this chapter. The words about Wit, the Syl-logisms, and the battle with Zahel! So sweet. I saw it coming, and so loved seeing it. Yeah, I know those who haven’t read Warbreaker are left a lot in the dark, but for those of us who have? Loved it!
Heat @60: I see his shift from “Awakened Entity” to “Invested Entity” as evidence that he has traveled and learned. He learned that there were different forms of Investiture than just Awakening and hand to “adjust his science,” so to speak.
As for his infodumping? The way he talks to Kaladin is EXACTLY like he talked to Vivenna. He’s a guy who knows a bunch of stuff, so much so that he has trouble breaking it down to simpler terms for a novice. So in character. Although, he might have gotten better at it since teaching Vivenna. He seemed to relate it a bit better to Kaladin than he did when trying to teach Vivenna about it in Warbreaker. And remember, Vasher was a scholar, not a warrior. Yasteel and Arsteel were the warriors. Vasher was always a guy who fought because he had to, not because he liked to. At least that’s how I’ve always interpreted it. He was always more concerned about the hows and whys of things than just using it to break things.
As for why he doesn’t talk to Navani? He’s afraid to. He knows too much, and he’s seen the consequences of knowing too much and using that knowledge. (Nightblood, the Manywar, etc.) Like he said, he’s trying to stay out of the way and let conflict find others without having to try and fix everything. If he steps in, sure he could help. But what disastrous consequences would follow? (Nightblood, undead armies, statue armies, just to name a few.)
And Seth is in prison. How could he not be? C’mon, he assassinated the Alethi King! Urithiru is populated mainly by Alethi. Do you think they can just let him run around? He’s in prison for his safety just as much for any other reason.
Oh, and a Babylon 5 reference! Alice, you so made my day with that!
There is something jarring here in the relation between Rlain and Junfah and the Stormfather on the other side. To me it seems, there was a fracas between Tanavast and the singers probably at the time of the founding of the oathpact. And the spren of the Honor spectrum being spren carry it on to eternity. So it seems Rlain can only bond a spren of the Cultivation side orders.
Or the sibling. Yes while I formerly felt, that the idea of him of a Bondsmith was over-exuberant, I now consider it quite possible. He is just competent and mature, traits that a bondsmith should have.
@75 But isn’t Vashadin an interesting and cute ship?
@72
As to why Vasher gives all that information to Kaladin, see posts above, including mine. As to why Kaladin would come to Zahel of all people, note that Kaladin has asked for advice from Zahel before, and that he was nearly instrumental in Kaladin progressing to Oath #3. Kaladin is unobservant when it comes to relationships and social interactions. He does follow advice from those he considers to be wise. He quoted Hoid during the palace breakout with Elkohar by referencing the Fleet story, he follows Dalinar and finds the elder stateman’s advice to be sound for the most part. Hell, he still reveres Hav, his old sergeant. Strangely, the only elder he doesn’t listen to is his father and that tears him up because he considers his da to be the greatest man in Alethkar. Anyway, Zahel has established himself as a person Kaladin would look to for advice, and it makes sense that he’d notice some of the same esoteric qualities that Hoid displays. It’s not like Zahel is trying awfully hard to hide the fact that he’s different, unlike some other worldhoppers like Felt.
Besides all that, how else would we get some of this information and who would pick to impart it? In a related question, where in the book would you rather it take place? If you want to impart information that likely won’t be significant until later, would you not want to place it in part 1 of a 5 part book? I guess you could put it in an interlude but maybe by putting it here means that some portion of this will actually play out in this volume.
@72, Gepeto:
If you look up a few chapters, I predicted that Kaladin would get life advice from Zahel. They’re actually very similar people (gruff, skilled fighters prone to seasonal and other depression who are unhappy with being thought of as heroes). Also, a clear theme of the Kaladin storyline in this volume especially is father figures, with Lin, Zahel, and Dalinar all taking that role so far.
Just wanted to mention that the humans on Roshar have stumbled across the music being integral to the planet, they just didn’t know why or what made it so important. Specifically, in the first book, Ardent Kabsal (or maybe he was aware since he was a Ghostblood?) they could use harmonic frequencies to create patterns that matched the shapes of the largest cities, the ones that had natural protections from the Highstorms. Or maybe I am looking too deep into it.
@72 Gepeto: There is also no reasons for Kaladin to spontaneously ask Zahel “who he is”. This just does not work with Kaladin who tends to be unobservant and don’t really bother with people if they are not his people.
The reason is that Kaladin just fought the man who showed techniques and things with moving cloth that Kaladin had never seen before. Yes, he tends to be less observant to people off the battlefield, but he’s super observant in regards to people he’s fighting, as that’s his specialty! So it was not at all spontaneous, it was his curiosity to what Zahel had just been able to do when fighting him, and the way he was talking similarly to Wit.
@75, 76 – I absolutely loved this chapter, it’s actually my favourite from all the released chapters so far! I don’t think you’re in the minority in loving this one, or that’s its a “controversial” opinion, I think that most people who’ve been dying to see more Cosmere crossover were ecstatic about getting this chapter.
@@@@@ 71 Carl
I guess that you could argue that, but I would think that it’s a bit of a stretch. You’re basically implying that either bringing Nightblood or defeating Odium is Vasher’s Intent, which I just don’t see. To me, his comment was just a generic “why Returned are brought back.” As for her threat, that read as more of a “if he attacks me, he’ll be dealt with,” not a proactive plan. I think for that kind of set-up, we’d have gotten a lot more Warbreaker involvement already.
Forget to mention in my earlier post:
Kaladin questioning Zahel didn’t come out of nowhere. Kaladin has long seen him as an aberration, different from everyone else. Zahel teaches differently, talks differently…and he really doesn’t try to hide it.
And as some have mentioned, I’m sure Kaladin does see a kindred spirit in Zahel, and vice versa.
It’s somewhat ironic that while in last week’s chapter I speculated how Leshwi could die / be killed it didn’t occur to me that it could come up in the expected Cosmere heavy discussion with Zahel. Oh well.
That being said, it sure looks hard to permanently kill Fused practice. Well, unless you have Nightblood.
So, is Kaladin going to be able to put his knowledge to use himself? I can’t think of any obvious method though who knows how things might change by the end of the book. It seems to me that Navani or Jasnah would have a better chance with this knowledge (I’m ignoring Shallan since I expect her to be far away). For example, Zahel compares those like him and the Fused to spren and we have all these chapter headings from Navani discussing how spren can be captured etc. So, could she figure out how to create a cage that captures the soul of a Fused after it’s killed? Or at least damage the soul? Would probably take some trial and error though.
Still feels to me like the Cosmere stuff wasn’t as organic as it could have been. Wasn’t quite as jarring on a re-read but still kinda felt it needed to be in its own chapter or something. I liked the way cognitive shadows were described though. Hmm, random thought. Can you create a “shadow” (copy) of someone’s soul without killing them?
For Zahel overall, feels like he is likely to die at some point, sooner rather than later. Could he use his Divine Breath to save someone, or something (like the Sibling)? Would that happen before Azure finds him? Or maybe he’ll just spend the rest of the series grouching in the background.
Oh! I just realized something obvious. Ryshadium’s musicspren allow them to hear the Rhythms.
To the tune of “Fields of Barley”
“You’ll come look for me when the red scarf moves,
Among the magic laundry;
You’ll forget those knights zooming through the sky,
Among the sheets and folds.”
“Why do you fight?”
Doesn’t anyone recognize this as the very question Tam al’Thor asks Rand right before he has his revelations and becomes Zen Rand in WoT? Something Brandon himself wrote? This is probably leading up to Kaladin swearing the 4th Oath. Maybe he even swears the 5th Ideal too and becomes like a force of nature ..
I wish that the comments from the Alice and Lyn were more about the book and less about themselves. Couching all of your comments about this in terms of how it makes *you* feel is not necessarily what we’re here for. A little heavier hand on editing that part (I’m sure this if from messages back and forth or emails) would not be inappropriate.
I’m sure you love the books, and have many feelings about all of the things that happen in it. And that is great. You should definitely do that. But this place isn’t just Alice and Lyn gush about their feelings and ship the characters. It’s supposed to be about lore and connections in the stories. Many people are more here to learn more about the connections in the series and things that they’ve missed.
TL, DR: More lore, less feelings from Alice and Lyn.
So, I have to think the “dueling Dandy” comment was a back handed reference to Adolin. I enjoyed this chapter alot but throughout the fight scene I kept thinking there was going to be someone commenting on all the cut up and ruined sheets.
I wish we’d also gotten a hint about what has Azure so angry with Zahel. My guess is losing Night Blood has to be part of it but there must be more. It also seems the only way to defeat the Fused with Night Blood would have to involve standing near Dalinar with an open Perpendicularity. Otherwise the wielder of the sword would also be consumed, Right?
I hadn’t been thinking of the Heralds and Fused as Returned like it was used in WarBreaker but it makes sense. The Shards have different magics but similar usage of magic.
Another reason I do not like Kaladin: his first instinct is to judge a person on his/her appearance (i.e. judge a book by his cover). The fact that a soldier has a dirty or unkempt uniform does not mean he/she is not the person you want in the chull hole by your side when the Fused are attacking. Give me a disheveled soldier who will not flinch when the arrows and other stuff start falling then the pristine soldier who lets him/herself during the initial assault. I have never served in the military. In my profession (the law) the way one wears his/her clothes does not mean that he/she is a good attorney. I have known sharp dressers whose legal skills were duller than a butter knife. Likewise, I worked with some folks who dressed like they shopped off the rack but took other lawyers in their $5,000 outfits out to the proverbial woodshed.
Alice and Lyndsey. IIRC, Rlain was undercover in the Alethi warcamps for several years. Is it possible he is not familiar with nimble form? It is possible that nimble form was discovered after Rlain left Narak and he is not familiar with that form.
Alice. I always appreciate a reference to Babylon 5. IMO, B5 is the second-best Sci Fi series ever; behind only the revised Battlestar Galactica (the one with the female Starbuck and the human cylons).
Alice. I disagree with Vasher. I do not think Kaladin loves to fight because of the fight itself. Rather, for Kaladin, fighting is the way he can protect all of those he feels are his charge. In many ways, Kaladin is the male version of Navani; he is the father axehound to Navani’s mother axehound. In WoR, Dalinar observed of Navani when Navani saw that Shallan had survived the chasms in WoR: “The mother axehound had finally emerged. Shallan was apparently no longer an outsider, but one of Navani’s clutch – and Chana help the man or woman who stood between Navani and one of her own.” Kaladin takes this same attitude with those he considers under his protection. He did this with the men in his unit when he was in Araman’s army; he did this with Bridge 4; and know he takes this attitude with all the Windrunners, whether he or she only swore his/her First Ideal or whether they are a full Knight Radiant. Until Kaladin lets those who serve under him have full agency over his/her actions, Kaladin will always have this fear. I do not think it as much as PTSD as a fear of failure. The failure is Kaladin will loose some of his soldiers. Yet, Kaladin has to learn that the fight is important to others and the others understand they may die for the battle. Such a risk is something that they are willing to take because they believe in the cause. Until Kaladin accepts this, he will not grow as a leader and will not progress as Windrunner – not speak additional Ideals. Once Kaladin overcomes this character flaw, he will be able to function on the battlefield and become the effective soldier he can be.
I am probably in the minority, but I would much rather be around Hoid than Vasher. I find Vasher to be more an @@@@@$$hole than Hoid. I would not mind Hoid insulting me. Either his insults would go over my head (in which case I would not be offended) or I would try (albeit most likely unsuccessfully) to verbally joust with Hoid. I think he would respect my attempts to try to give what I got. Vasher, on the other hand, is the Stormlight version of Oscar (for those who are too young to remember Oscar Madison on the Odd Couple, then Oscar the Grouch on Sesame Street).
FWIIW, Kaladin is the Eeyore of Roshar. I frequently am as negative as Eeyore; yet, I am not a fan of Kaladin, a negative person if there ever was one. However, I did enjoy watching Eeyore when I watched Winnie the Pooh. Go figure.
Thanks for reading my musings.
AndrewHB
aka the musespren
@28 regarding Kaladin asking Zahel about Hoid…
Kaladin asked him in WoR if he knew where the King’s Wit was. Zahel called him Dust (that fool, to be specific, thus implying his opinion of Hoid.) Both also know him as Hoid. So….
This was probably mentioned in the comments somewhere. If so, my apologies for missing it.
@78 EvilMonkey. I did not question why Kaladin sought Zahel out for advice on his professional career: his reasons to want to discuss with him are both comprehensive and reasonable. I question why a discussion on whether or not Kaladin should become a swordsmaster derived into Zahel starting to talk about investiture. This is the part I thought felt inorganic. The rest was fine.
I don’t know how else we would have gotten this information, but I would have preferred had Zahel approached Dalinar to partake a bit of wisdom on things he does know. Him throwing Cosmere reveal to Kaladin just didn’t feel… natural. That’s it.
@79 Carl. It isn’t the life advice I question, it is the whole discussion on investiture and Type1/Type2. The whole “are you like Wit” questioning. If I had never spent any time in the fandom, I wouldn’t have even known to link Zahel and Hoid, so to have Kaladin make those leaps, to me, this was stretching it. A colleague of mine just finished reading OB. She thinks Azure is a Herald. She has no opinion on Zahel. She guessed Wit was somewhat important. She never linked Zahel to Wit.
I get Sanderson wants to expand the Cosmere, but I didn’t feel this was the best way. Perhaps a side novella would have flown down better.
@81 Bridge4. But there is literally no link between Wit and Zahel Kaladin can realistically make. At best, he should have asked how he learned how to fight this way, how he did it, questions on the fighting, but to start to link different techniques he can’t explain to Wit, there is a leap I didn’t feel Kaladin should have spontaneously made.
@84 Cochino. Being eccentric is not enough to start having other people ask you if you are some magical creatures, ancient and knowledgeable like Wit. So Zahel is different? That’s still not enough to link him to Wit: a lot of people can be different. Azure was considerably more different than Zahel and Kaladin never really questioned her all that much.
When placed in front of difference, most people will try to explain it with the knowledge they know, they won’t jump into the big life-changing conclusion.
@89 drki. I enjoy reading about how Alice and Lyndsey felt next to the chapter at hand. There is more than one way to connect to stories and while some readers prefer lore, others really prefer digging into characters. There is enough place in the readership to accommodate both readers and I feel Alice/Lyndsey did good work in trying to broach all topics.
@90 goddess. Yeah. The dueling dandy was most definitely Adolin. Zahel right here confirmed Kaladin is the truer soldier: he loves the fighting. Dalinar was just addicted to the Thrill and Adolin just likes dueling. Kaladin is the one who loves to just… fight. No wonder it depresses him to be told he should never fight again!
@@@@@ 89 drkirienko
How exactly do you think a re-read works? It’s pretty much has always been like this on all of the Tor blogs on books, going on like 4 years at leas. You can’t have a read/re-read without expression.
@@@@@ 93 Gepeto
1. Kaladin & Zahel fight
2. Kaladin notices that Zahel is doing something strange / can see Syl
3. Kaladin knows more or less what the other surges do
3. Kaladin knows one other person who does strange magic stuff (Hoid)
4. Kaladin asks if Zahel is like Hoid
This is literally all there is too it. Kaladin literally notices something weird going on during his mock battle and knows that it isn’t Stormlight. He knows Zahel is different from “normal” people based on his description of him prior to the battle. It really isn’t that much of a stretch to ask if the man using weird magic and looks like he’s hiding/running from something is in anyway like the weird trickster who also uses weird magic.
This part made me so happy. When Vasher shows Kaladin the fossil.
“Kaladin held it up, then—out of habit—used a few drops of water from his canteen to reveal its hidden colors and shades.”
That’s what Tien used to do!
I’d just been wondering where Szeth was! Well, prison makes sense at the moment, given what he’s done, and as a Skybreaker I expect he’d appreciate it. Justice.
I really am looking forward to his book.
I enjoyed Kaladin in this chapter – he’s thinking, pulling himself out of self-pity, and seeking advice from someone, Zahel, whose opinion he trusts. Rlain reacted to the Yunfah idea about how I’d expected, and I’m glad that Kaladin took the time to think about his reaction and set his own feelings aside.
I’ve read Warbreaker and I still didn’t understand a lot of stuff in this chapter. But I think Zahel hit on part of what’s holding Kaladin back. His people don’t really need him anymore. And that’s a credit to Kaladin – he’s taught and led them well. But he needs to move forward to something more, and he hasn’t been doing that in the last year.
I still hope he’ll have a role in reconciling the singers and the humans; he’s one of very, very humans who has genuinely interacted with the singers as people and values their lives. In the shorter term, I like the idea of his spending more time with his family, maybe working with Lirin as a surgeon. He genuinely is good at it.
As far as combat goes, I get what Zahel is saying. The physical motions of combat are something Kaladin’s loved ever since he first picked up a spear. But there’s been a conflict around the idea of “killing to protect” from the start of him becoming a Windrunner, and I’d like to see resolution for that,
Gepeto,
If sheer word count and number of chapters are the most important thing for you you will be disappointed because Shallan and Adolin will probably get their shortest book (having viewpoints only in Parts 2 and 4)
that doesn’t mean it won’t be interesting, but if you care THAT much about number of words each character get (most people don’t care), no way they will get more chapters than Kaladin.
This might apply to me. I’m the type that has read most of Sanderson’s stuff, but who didn’t notice that he had Hoid show up in multiple books until someone pointed it out. A big part of that is that I’m typically reading these books years apart, with dozens of other books in between them. I remember main characters and the main story beats, but I rarely remember the particulars of smaller scenes or the names of smaller characters.
I’ve read Warbreaker twice, so I’ll use this particular scene as an example. I remembered Zahel, but it wasn’t until Kaladin’s line about Azure that I figured out who Zahel was. I remembered that the Tenth Heightening is a Big Deal, but didn’t remember that the lack of audible commands meant that he’d reached the Tenth Heightening. And to go back a book or so, I hadn’t really put together that Vivenna was Azure until I looked her up.
Some time in the middle of Oathbringer, I basically just started keeping the Coppermind wiki up at all times while reading. Sanderson is pretty good at throwing up flags that say “hey, this is an important person that has just shown up, even if the viewpoint characters are oblivious.” The Coppermind helps immensely with keeping the locations and the minor characters straight.
@L &A.
First you said don’t read farther if you havent read warbreaker then what we think about all this larger Cosmere info. :p good thing I am too curious to listen to your warnings (potential willshaper here).
Anyways enough poking fun. I think it is frustratingly interesting and now I wish I had enough time to read all the other books before RoW comes out. I will just have to read them after.
L: The weird thing is, he says that the Heralds left an imprint behind when they died. But… they were all reborn. So… did that power get reclaimed when they were reborn? Or is there a bunch of… of Herald-Investiture just floating around out there, somewhere?
If you re-read what Vasher said here, he says exactly what he means. ““I’m not surprised.” Zahel thought for a moment. “Imagine it this way. You know how you can make an imprint in crem, then let it dry, and fill the imprint with wax to create a copy of your original object? Well, that happened to my soul. When I died, I was drenched in power. So when my soul escaped, it left a duplicate. A kind of… fossil of a soul.”
Precisely like a fossil. The original soul is gone, probably Beyond, replaced by Investiture that remembers being the Soul it replaced. So, presumably, when the Heralds died the very first time, what came back to their bodies was not them but a Power Fossil (totally using that from now on).
RaySea @6. Excellent observation about Ryshadium and about how they attract music spren. I think you are right and that will become significant.
Naje @17. Shame on me for not picking up on the potential of the field of gemhearts with Stormlight. Once you pointed that out, it is like a Stormlight charged arrow. (I was trying to use a Rosharian equivalent of a blinking neon light; I obviously failed with this analogy.) Someone will wind up using those gemhearts in the pending Fused attack. I hope Kefka @51 is correct and Rlain uses those gemhearts. To take it a step further, I hope that Rlain uses those gemhearts to access Stormlight as part of a Nahel Bond with the Sibling.
Taryn @22. I think as you do; Rlain will be the one to bond the Sibling rather than Navani. For me, Navani has more in common with a Dustbringer. Rlain has the characteristics of a Bondsmith. A Singer Bondsmith would be quite a shock to the Fused. Also, a powerful inducement to Singers who are not so on board with the thought of giving up their souls to so a Fused can inhabit their body.
Isilel @25. I think Zahel was willing to explain to Kaladin as much about Zahel’s true past and his abilities as he did was that he knew most of it would go over Kaladin’s head (in the same way it would have gone over Dalinar’s head). Kaladin and Dalinar are less likely to make the connections that Zahel would rather not be made than Shallan, Navani or Jasnah. I think the three women are more inquisitive in such areas. I see the information that Zahel provided as more research potential than practical. Both Dalinar and Kaladin think more practically than on theoretically. As a result, I concur with Gepeto @28 that Zahel’s explanation to Kaladin read like an info dump. An unnecessary info dump at this point. Just my opinion.
(Like EvilMonkey @66 said. Only EvilMonkey’s explanation was more eloquent than mine.)
This scene between Kaladin and Zahel worries me that the rest of RoW and Book 5 (let alone Books 6-10) will almost require the reader to have read all the prior Cosmere books published to date to get the full enjoyment and understanding of the Stormlight Archives. I had the impression that this would not be the case. About 95% of SA could be read and understood without being Cosmere aware. If the rest of the series becomes very Cosmere heavy, I will be disappointed. It will also rank lower on my all-time favorite fantasy series.
The Average Joe @48. I agree. I hope we see modern day Stonewards in the rest of RoW and Book 5. I agree that Rock would make a good Stoneward. Adolin and Rlain, not so much. With respect to Adolin, I hope he does not become a KR. We need at least one major secondary character (I am not sure I would go as far as to call Adolin a main protagonist) who fights against Odium who is not a KR. If Adolin does eventually become a KR, then I think he will be an Edgedancer because of Maya. I think Rlain will be a Bondsmith and the Sibling will bond Rlain.
Carl @65. When I read Kaladin’s thoughts about no one bothering to ask until just recently why the Listeners needed gemhearts (specifically emeralds), I am reminded of what Eshonai said in the I-1 in RoW. Eshonai is talking with Venli and Eshonai says “The gemheart is ours. We will continue to eat.” I had assumed that Eshonai meant that the Listeners would use the gemheart to Soulcast food. After Chapter 15, she obviously meant that it would provide Stormlight for farming together with the proper musical rhythms.
I wonder why the Listeners never equated music with creation. They were so focused on art to attract different spren necessary to rediscover additional forms. I suppose that music is too close to the way they communicate with rhythms that they do not view music as a form of art and creation. How different would things have been if the Listeners had focused on music as a means of generating different spren necessary to rediscover additional forms?
Drkirienko @89. Personally, I enjoy Alice and Lyndsey’s how they feel about the books enjoyable. I find their personal comments to be a good way to introduce topics to discuss in the comments. A simple summary of what happens in the chapter would be boring. Part of the what I like about commenting on SA on this forum is to discuss how the books impact me on a personal level. I also enjoy reading different perspectives from those who post their comments as well as Alice and Lyndsey. Others have different life experiences. They way they view something sometimes causes me to have a different understanding to a scene that I would not otherwise have.
Thanks for reading my musings,
AndrewHB
aka the musespren
I am in the midst of my Stormlight Archive reread before this book, and I definitely think Kaladin loves the fight. Even as a child, he loved the spear (I can’t remember the exact wording, but he was happy to get pummeled by the Hearthstone farmboys to learn how to use the spear because he felt such a powerful, instant connection to it). In Way of Kings, he impresses Bridge Four early on with his beautiful kata. The act of using the spear and participating in the fight brings him joy. I think as he gets older and more aware of his strong felt duty to protect, it becomes an outlet for his protection, but we see many ways to protect in these books (including Kaladin’s other talent of medicine). He chooses martial arts as his protection strategy because he truly loves them and they seem to bring him peace.
El Cochino @76: Yeah, Alice slips those B5 references in from time to time just to see if we’re paying attention.
It’s too bad that she’s so busy with the Cosmere stuff here, because I would love to have her do a B5 Re-watch.
>ctrl+f “pure white”
>only result is someone mentioning that it’s weird to see Vasher drain a cloth to gray if he actually is of the Tenth Heightening
>zero mentions of this line: “Kaladin turned about, searching the seemingly endless rows of fluttering white sheets. Like dancing flames, pure white.”
How did no one else catch this??? I literally read that line and thought “ooooh, I wonder what Lyndsey and Alice have to say about that.” Then, when I saw they missed it, I thought “well, I wonder which of the cosmerenauts is going to bring it up.” Rule #2 (or maybe 3, IDK, I need to write them all down lol) of Sanderson: If he writes out a character’s description of something small in its own sentence, it’s probably Important.
@Alice & Lindsey, and everyone considering that Vasher gave Awakened commands without speaking…
We’ve got a WoB from Reddit (check out the comment replies from his annotation post on Ch15 in the discussion) that you can assume that he actually whispered them and they were not silent commands, and thus there’s no implication of Vasher’s heightening.
Regarding the notion of Zahel and his awakening – Sanderson stated on the thread of his Reddit annotation for this chapter –
Which, while perhaps being something that Kaladin would/should have noticed (and maybe just a slight continuity error?), may indicate that Zahel is not high enough in Breath count (or Investiture hoarding if he has figured out how to use Stormlight to fuel awakening) to be at Tenth Heightening…accounting for the draining to grey not white. Or maybe not. Either way, an interesting WOB for this. And interesting that he would respond to that specific query and give this specific answer.
[Edit to add: Rats! beaten to it by Bridge4Kufer!]
As for Szeth and prison – there is a WoB (from 2019) about Szeth:
Overall, I really liked this chapter – shows off Zahel/Vasher (is it just me or must have some of the command he gave the sheets on the fly been impressively complex?), while also dropping knowledge for the reader. As far as infodumps go, I am okay with those that add more to the Lore Bins, and those that set the stage for people to actually learn and advance the plot/character arcs. I thought this one was handled well (and actually liked the alternating discussions and dialogue in the midst of the Sheet Spar Session, adding different beats and punctuation to a dynamic scene) and within character for Vasher too. Grumpy old pedant, who loves to get on his professorial soapbox and show off his knowledge, when he thinks it won’t lead people to expecting more involvement from him. It’s possible that I may identify with him a little bit…
However, as others have pointed out – there seem to be phrases and bits and pieces of knowledge that are being dropped here that will surely come back to mind at other points and times. On the other hand, while much of this goes over his head, it also shows off Kaladin as intelligent but out of his depth when it comes to this subject. He can make the jump about the comparison to the Fused and how it might assist their fight, but he is unable to grasp broader Cosmere/Investiture implications as he doesn’t have the requisite knowledge to parse Zahel’s pedantic academic-speech (that and Zahel is deliberately obtuse about some of the things, just throwing out typologies of invested objects without any prelim discussion or explanation).
@104 – I noted that line and thought – this is suspiciously similar to the descriptions of souls of people in the CR…
And to cap it all off – loved the whole things with Rlain. Can’t wait to see where the narrative goes with him.
Steve-son-son-Charles @73 – “what is Syl doing hanging around Adolin’s sock drawer?” Looking for inspiration on what to suggest to Kaladin if he ever gets another girlfriend? Maybe the sock drawer is a good place to hide and peek.
El Cochino @76 – I had a great comment all written up about the parallels between the scene in Warbreaker and this one, but I thought I’d better check for new comments before I posted… and you basically said exactly what I was thinking. The similarities are unavoidable, if you’ve read both scenes.
Also, you’re welcome. I love Babylon 5, and get most of my best quotes from it. Occasionally, I can even find a relevant gif.
bridge4kufer @105 – Dang. I wish we could get Brandon’s annotations ahead of time… That put a crimp in my theory, for sure.
I didn’t know that they had changed Dust’s name in Warbreaker to Hoid. I remember reading it back when it was released for free on his website, and that version definitely had Dust as the name. I guess I just never mentally updated the name on future rereads.
I don’t see that anyone else has mentioned this, but I’m pretty sure the Type I and Type 2 invested entities correspond with the four types of BioChromatic entities listed in Warbreaker. The change is that Vasher found an actual Type I entity and realized that what he had previously categorized as a Type I entity (the Returned) were really a Type II entity (Lifeless.) This finally starts to answer how Lifeless have some degree of thought – they are a small piece of a soul cognitively shadowed onto the wrong body. It also explains the old word of Brandon about Lifeless not being very happy about being kept in the dark, and that their treatment was a potential problem.
@Andrew HB
I am a soldier, have been for 20+ years, and I can tell you that Kaladin’s instincts hit right on the nose. Having enough pride in your uniform to wear it right is literally one of the tenants of leadership taught to everyone. It translates to the care and maintenance of one’s weapon so that it will not fail when it’s truly necessary to use it. It translates to mental discipline, and it makes it easier to identify someone who has their shit together in case of a crisis. Are there exceptions to this rule? Of course. Not every great leader I’ve served with took proper care of their appearance. And I’ve known a few guys who were nothing but a great uniform with nothing underneath. But by far the most common condition was one where uniform and quality of leadership aligned. I.e., dirtbags look like dirtbags more often than not. In a profession where instant recognition of threats can literally be the difference between life and death, that type of prejudice must be ingrained. So maybe don’t judge Kaladin too harshly on his surface viewing tendency. He was likely trained that way. What I like about Kaladin is his flexibility. He is always reevaluating, a tougher skill than one realizes as people tend to get stuck on their first impressions.
Re: Cosmere Crossover
I believe that we’re still at the baby steps phase, for the commentor worried about being overwhelmed with it and thus sapping enjoyment from the story at hand. True, it’s a bit more heavy handed than in previous volumes but I don’t believe there’s quite enough there where one has to read outside of SA to get full enjoyment from the works. It’s at the teaser phase I think; the bits of lore may drive one to look to the wider Cosmere for information but choosing to ignore the easter eggs will not leave you lost on an island with no way to follow the primary narrative. I expect that to continue in the front 5. The back 5 though? Two of the flashback characters literally came from a different world than Roshar and have lived near about 10,000 years. Reading the front 5 should be enough to follow the action but one would really benefit in having some wider Cosmere knowledge when approaching that point. May not be your cup of tea but to each their own.
I like his exclamation for cognitive shadows but I’d like everyone to remember his earlier explanation about how systems are ruined by science coming around because the old systems proved to be wrong. While his theory is a good theory about why cognitive shadows returned fused or Harold’s are the way they are remember it’s only his theory based on the stuff he has learned he’s not one of the shards who has a more intimate knowledge of how everything works. Plus we know that Kelsierexperience was quite different in secret history where he saw the souls get shifted over to the spirit plane and disappear and his own soul never went anywhere and he resisted and still got infused with power so obviously while this theory might work if it’s true for some of the beings in this story it certainly wouldn’t apply to kelsier. and if the whole fossilization thing is true it may not mean that it’s not the true soul of the human being remember again this is only a theory he has and isn’t exactly something he can test out. For example you are might be familiar with the thesis ship theory where you replace every part of a ship is it the same ship or is it a completely new ship the answer is yes to both it is a new ship but it is in essence also The old ship it’s a continuity of consciousness question in this case bits and pieces of the mortal soul may be replaced by power but it may still be a soul that will someday go beyond to the spiritual plane when it’s connections are finally cut and it finishes dying and going away. it may be that the energy that’s invested is the only thing anchoring it to these other planes like shadesmart and the physical world and then once that energy is gone you’ll find if there’s still a soul that goes beyond. An alternative to vashers theory is that all the energy that gets invested in the soul saturates that soul like die coloring a white piece of paper and over time altering how it thinks and feels. for example think of all the victims of ruin from the mistborn series and how they over time were twisted and altered by its power or even think of the shards themselves like ruin and preservation and how once they got invested with a lot of the shards energy their minds were affected this could be the same thing with those called cognitive shadows and that these beings do have the original souls and they don’t have souls that have already gone beyond but rather have souls that have been vastly altered and infused with intense invested energy from a god shard that has altered their mental emotional and maybe physical status. because otherwise you’re basically just talking to spiritual clones of the original people and I don’t think that’s what Kelsier was.
What do you guys think Szeth is upto since bounding himself to dalinar in OB? 15 chapters and we haven’t heard of anything about him… The fuzed don’t seem to know about his presence either… In terms of threats to them he’s up there with kaladin… Wonder if dalinar will use him strategically to gain an edge over them?
I see people here concluding from Zahel’s statement about weapons that could kill Fused that Nightblood could kill them. Should we conclude that the knife that Moash has got can also kill them? Because it can kill Heralds and they’re a similar type of entity?
Also, the use of Szeth for an example of that type of being makes me sad because it means the character we’re seeing (and having a book focus on) isn’t actually Szeth.
@111: Zahel said in this chapter that Szeth is in prison.
@100, Daniel Snyder
Remember, one of the first things Vasher says to Vivenna is, “I won’t lie to you.”
I think he doesn’t lie, and if anyone asked him, “What are you?” he would answer. He has no problem keeping secrets, but he doesn’t lie.
And when I say he has no problem keeping secrets, I mean he actually isn’t that good at it, but he does succeed a lot because people are oblivious and don’t talk to each other. Like right in this book, will Kaladin mention to our Ghostblood Lightweaver that a Worldhopper is working in the tower laundry, and he might be able to help her out about that “Nalthis” place? Nope. Zahel didn’t even ask him not to, it’s just a Bester effect. (Old SF fans will get that reference.)
@105, bridge4kufer:
All I ever found was to flag my own post so the mod would get it.
@111, Jason Nderitu:
Szeth is mentioned by implication in this chapter. He’s the guy in prison that Zahel talks about, as @katherinemw says, although not named. He will be more important later in this story, count on it, but Part 1 is not about him. Also, with Nightblood he’s way, way scarier than Kaladin. he’s a Third Ideal Radiant like Kaladin, but carrying a Stormbringer expy.
EvilMonkey @109. Re Kaladin, I guess we will have to agree to disagree. I do not find his charcter flexible. He is someone whose digs in his opinion. Throughout the series, Kaladin’s default rule is that he does not trust Lighteyes. He only changes his opinion when he gets to personally know a lighteye (see Dalinar and Adolin). Yet, if he meets one who he is not familiar, then Kaladin generally dislikes that person because he or she is a Lighteyes.
Thanks for reading my musings.
AndrewHB
aka the musespren
@97 Mitz. The Shallan and Adolin Shadesmar story is about 80-90K words long (Sanderson told us). I sincerely doubt the remaining Kaladin viewpoints will be longer than that, especially considering he will have to split his with Venli and Navani both having been confirmed as more prominent characters than him in this book. Hence, at some point in time, the bulk of the first arc will be told from Venli/Navani’s viewpoints, less Kaladin.
Also, just because part one has focused a lot on Kaladin, it does not mean parts 2, 3, 4, and 5 also will. Also, Shallan/Adolin having viewpoints only in Part 2 and 4 does not mean their story will be smaller than Kaladin’s entire narrative. It may be Part 4 is the longest part, we just do not know.
I am also allowed to be more interested in reading the Shallan/Adolin story as well as the Venli viewpoints over the Kaladin narrative. Other readers have expressed similar thoughts.
@101 Andrew. I agree with most of what you wrote except you know I wish for Adolin to eventually become a Radiant though not in RoW. I am looking more towards the long run. I also think the Stonewards blurb does oddly seem to fit Adolin so I cannot fault readers who are pushing for this idea.
I agree the info-dumping was heavy-handed and even for those having read Warbreaker, it was hard to follow. I agree with Katherine on this: I hardly knew what Zahel was talking about. I read Warbreaker, but I never was interested in remembering all the details of this story.
I personally wish Sanderson would just explicitly state the books one has to read before the next installment. I wish he would officially make Warbreaker part of the SA series and I think a summary of “what happened and what do we know” at the beginning of the book would do wonders. Islington did a wonderful job of summarizing his otherwise super complex tale before each book and it allowed me to even understand better elements I had partially missed. I think going on the assumption all readers understand those parts or keeping on saying they don’t need to when it obviously is starting to be important is starting to no longer work.
Hence, my advice for Sanderson’s team would be: make Warbreaker the official SA prequel to read before WoR. Include a summary of “things we know” before each book for the more casual readers. I believe this would make the books more satisfying and engaging for more readers. Those who don’t want to read it can skip the summary, but I think many would choose to read it.
I agree over Alice/Lyndsey providing a fun to read summary able to bring forward topics to discuss.
Andrew HB @115
I’ll give you that regarding Kaladin’s hangup about Lighteyes, but with a caveat. Up until he met Adolin and Dalinar (and of course Shallan) every Lighteyes he’d ever met let him down in some way. Wistiow died, Roshone killed his brother, Amaram killed his men, Sadeas tried his best to see him dead, 10 different slaveholders, Elkohar imprisoned him. It’s taken him a long time to even see that there were Lighteyes with honor at all.
Nevertheless he does, or once did, have a thing about Lighteyes. But look at his other relationships to which he has no strong previous bias. Lyn. Drehy. The Singers. Rlain. In these cases he had a preconceived notion, someone informs him about how his perspective is in error, then he course corrects in attempt at understanding. But we can agree to disagree if you like.
@Gepeto 116
I’m not sure Warbreaker works as a prequel to SA despite the character bleed over. It may enhance the reading experience, if only by being able to point to people you recognize, but none of the Warbreaker plot has any relevance to SA right now. Maybe the sequel to Warbreaker, the one yet to be written, would have more relevance to present day events but we don’t know.
I think KiManiac wrote a compelling case for Adolin as Stoneward. I personally had him pegged as an Edgedancer based on the Oaths they speak. My current headcanon is that Adolin will be a dual-wield Radiant until further evidence proves me wrong.
@101 Andrew. Ah, Andrew, I forgot to say. Sanderson did state Adolin was one of the main characters in RoW. At the very least, he thinks of him under those terms, for this specific book.
@117 EvilMonkey. I personally feel I am starting to get lost within all the cross-overs and I come here weekly to discuss the book. How will more casual readers feel? I definitely think Warbreaker currently is a must-read, not a nice to have, but an absolute must or else chapters like this one makes literally no sense whatsoever.
I don’t mind that this is the case, but I wish Sanderson were more transparent about it and drop the pretense his series can be appreciated separately. I feel this is no longer the case and I’d prefer it if he were more straight-forward about it. A resume would also do wonder to have more casual readers or just readers who never really cared all that much about Zahel understand what is being discussed. I don’t like the fact Sanderson takes for granted all his readers will re-read all his work before each release and “study” for the next book: “Dude, just put up a resume!”. Other authors do it, I find it is… not cool Sanderson just expects us to follow all of those details and to remember stuff an unimportant minor character said within another series.
I would so love a good resume.
I read some compelling argument on Adolin as a Stoneward though I do not recall who wrote it. I remain firmly within the Edgedancer/Maya band-wagon, but I thought the arguments based on the blurb were quite solid. If it weren’t for Maya, I would buy into this theory. Edgedancers just aren’t as interesting as I thought they would initially be. I am not big on “Adolin the therapist who can’t have a decent character flaw because selfless people don’t have flaws” trope. I’d rather Adolin were allowed to have real tangible flaws, hardships, and character growth. The Edgedancers path seemed like no growth at all for him, but Maya is pretty cool.
When Zaher was talking about the shadow of his soul and use the analogy of something imprinted in wax I immediately thought of The Emperor’s Soul. Anyone think there’s a connection there?
@112 KatherineMW
I agree with you that a copy is not the original person. The original person would be dead as a doornail, presumably. I don’t think Szeth ended up permanently dead dead, despite actually being dead for a time. He has that weird afterimage effect, like his soul only got partially reattached– or perhaps partially detached before he was restored.
Well anyway I hope that the case is that he isn’t a copy, because then I need to worry about Gawx.
@120 – Not to mention that, as I said in an earlier comment, whether or not a Cognitive Shadow is a copy or the real soul is a matter of debate among scholars. That’s according to Brandon. So people shouldn’t take Zahel here as a definitive source on the subject. Also, the difference is irrelevant to the overall story, as there doesn’t seem to be any practical difference between the two concepts.
I won’t hold my Breaths
It make me laugh!
Zahel is a zen master, what he says isn’t supposed to make sense to the student. He wants to fight Kaladin to get to know him. Kaladin also gets to know Zahel better by fighting him. That is why he asks about who/what he is. Kaladin asks Zahel for advice because they are similar. He is not as educated as the female characters, but he understands more than other men if someone bothers to talk to him about scholarly topics. Zahel may be glad to have someone who is like him to talk to, even if he lacks the background knowledge to really understand. A real scholar would understand more, but that’s not really what Zahel wants. He doesn’t want to be studied or questioned about knowledge he thinks should be forgotten (like how to make swords that can kill Fused).
So one thing kind of glossed over in the discussion is that Vasher, straight and directly confirmed that a cognitive shadow can be ‘pinned’ to a body (even the original). I am more and more convinced that Kelsier is somewhere on Roshar and it ready to punch another fragment of divinity, and we’re going to meet (or discover) him this book.
I just thought some more about Zahel’s “divine breath”. It could be used to awaken the Sibling when Urithiru is being attacked. Zahel doesn’t want to fight anymore but he could help save Urithiru. That sort of aborts the Auzure storyline though so there would need to be more to it.
I think some folks are getting too worked up about Cognitive Shadows not really being the original person that they were. Yeah, it’s true that they aren’t entirely, but the philosophical questions opened up are the same as those in sci-fi stories with digital immortality via brain upload–or even the standard real-life conundrum: if every cell in your body is replaced every 7 years (I’m sure that’s not entirely true), then are you really the same person that you were when you were a child?
I did not understand how some commenters are complaining about crossover hints. For this book at this point of time, the takeaway from Zahel’s info dump is about “what are fused” and how do you even kill them. You dont need be cosmere aware or read any other books outside this series to understand this. All the other parts(of Zahel’s infodump) are not necessary at this point for this story and are just hints that would be expanded upon at later point.
You feel the need to be cosmere aware and being left out, only because of the discussion in the fan forum like these where ppl who have read the other books are putting forth their points. So you could say cosmere knowledge would help to get more involved in this fan forum and not feel left out. BUT you have been suitably warned of that very fact at the beginning of this read-along post by Alice and Lyn.
Regarding the Cosmere crossover stuff, I’d say that the biggest problem with this is that is can distract or confuse casual readers from what the core point actually is. I’d say the most critical part of the chapter is this bit:
But would a casual reader be able to determine that? Maybe, maybe not, but the cross-over stuff does make life harder for more casual readers. Putting it another way, it makes the magic system “softer” to such readers because they understand it less which makes any plot resolutions that depend upon a “harder” understanding of the magic system less satisfying.
Obviously this will vary from reader to reader. Personally, I didn’t mind it in this chapter, though it probably helps that I’m quite familiar with Warbreaker – the problems I had with the chapter were more about the presentation than the actual content. I can understand how it can be a source of frustration to others though.
First off, I loved that s chapter!
Second, I see that a lot of people seem confused or feel like Vasher gave an unnecessary info dump but this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Vasher is helping Kaladin better understand the fused and is teaching Kalandin (little by little since that tiny exchange alone blew the poor boy’s mind). Kaladin even alluded to this himself when he thought “why he is there a guy saying this too me, and then realized that Vasher was talking about how to kill and understand what a fused is.
Also, that s type of explanation definitely did Vashers personality so go back and read Warbreaker if this chapter doesn’t make sense.
I am not convinced that Vasher and Dalinar have no additional information than what we have seen. It seems to me that Wit is very interested in knowing what Dalinar knows about the general Cosmere. It would not surprise me if Dalinar’s idea about a greater god, a real god is at least not based on ideas he may have gleaned from Wit or Zahel. I guess we will see.
I still think, perhaps hope, that Dalinar already has some investiture from Cultivation. He is one of the few people that Cultivation actually dealt with directly. Dalinar’s ability to heal did not come from Odium, or did it come from Honor. The idea that Dalinar is somehow healthier than he should be, his ability to feel warmth and see light that no one else sees seems to point to him being invested with some other power, perhaps unknown to him, he has bonded with the Cultivation spren. It would actually help explain why Dalinar could survive while being pruned, and how he was able to grow into a better man.
“You love the fight, Kaladin. Not with the Thrill that Dalinar once felt, or even with the anticipation of a dandy going to a duel.“
Adolin is the dandy, right?
The possibility of a fabrial computer jumped out at me right away too. My next thought was, will Taravangian eventually try to feed the Diagram into the sprenputer? This would allow him to update the Diagram and recalculate the future anytime reality started deviating from Diagram. If I recall correctly, he was complaining that the Diagram was become less accurate as time went on.
@132
The problem with feeding the Diagram into a computer of any kind is that it’s only as smart as its programming. It’s going to need more input as the information the Diagram is working from is by now quite stale. Plus the type of information will need translation. How long did it take to invent machine language? Does Roshar have time?
I love the use of Stormlight and music to grow plants!
The discussion between Rlain and Kaladin is made even more poignant by the revelation of why Rlain got sent to the bridge crews in the first place. He has ideas and opinions, but he’s had to refrain from voicing them for so long. He couldn’t even let on that he was capable of having ideas and opinions. Being able to openly say what he thinks must be such a relief for him. I really hope he does get to bond with a spren that truly respects him. I wonder if this scene is pointing toward him becoming a Bondsmith–he’s trying to teach humans about the tones and rhythms of Roshar, and he says “some of them are getting closer.” Even if it’s in a small way, he’s bringing humans and Listeners closer together. Uniting instead of dividing, you might say.
I’m really glad I finished Warbreaker before I read this chapter!
The place I come from, it didn’t have any of these. It’s too new. Your world might have some hidden deep, but I doubt it.
Nalthis is too new to have fossils? And Zahel thinks Roshar might be as well? The history of these worlds on a geological timescale must be really different from our own, if it’s been around long enough for complex life-forms to evolve but is also too new for fossils.
@Nina (134) – Well, if you think about it, if Nalthis and Roshar are like Scadrial, then they were created whole cloth by the Shards who inhabit those systems, including the people and everything else on them. That would mean any of those planets could be a mere several thousand years old, which is way too young for fossils.
I would imagine that Zahel’s fossil came from Yolen, which is the original world and likely the only one old enough, created either by Adonalsium or the G-d Beyond.
MSnyder28 @135. I thought I read somewhere that Roshar as a planet was created before the Shattering of Adonalsium. Likewise, the Singers pre-dated the Shattering of Adonalsium.
Thanks for reading my musings.
AndrewHB
aka the musespren
Somehow, despite having read Warbreaker, I forgot about the impact of a Returned’s Divine Breath. @125 wondered about healing the Sibling, but I wonder about healing the Oathpact. I mean, Zahel was known as Warbreaker the Peaceful, so maybe he’s come to Roshar, consciously or not, to bring peace to a war that’s been going, on and off, for several millennia.
What the what??! Thank goodness for the read along discussion! I was so lost in the sauce. And yes, I’m the someone who did not read Warbreaker. I had to read the fight scene slowly because I felt like I was missing something. Makes so much sense now though, thanks for the spoilers, hehee!
I think it is pretty much confirmed in last two chapters that Jezrien is trapped in a gemstone instead of being dead.
I really hope Zahel’s description of cognitive shadows doesn’t apply to Survivor. Though as someone mentioned in previous comments that he did not go beyondso maybe he is a special case.
I loved this chapter!
@130, Almazar80:
We know already how this works. Just as with Kaladin, even before speaking the First Ideal, Dalinar had started to bond with the Stormfather. Kaladin also had healing and unconscious use of the Surges before speaking the Oath. Remember Teft feeding him Stormlight in Oathbringer to heal him after he was exposed to the Highstorm? You’re right that the warmth and odd visions speak of some Spiritual Connection we don’t understand yet, but that seems more likely to have something to do with the mysterious God Beyond that we’ve heard about both here and in the latest Mistborn stuff.
Worth mentioning, maybe: Brandon has said that Warbreaker was written as a Stormlight Archive prequel from the beginning, a way to introduce Vasher. It didn’t end up getting published that way, but (pardon the joke) its Intent is to introduce the SA.
I’m sure Strifelover has a role in the story, but I’m betting he remains a supporting character until somewhere in the Back Five. Don’t expect him to move out of his semi-covert role for real-world (or fictional) years, yet.
Spoiler and not that incisive speculation:
Is Talaxin the anti-Hoid? Brandon has said that he’s consciously making symmetry a theme of these books. So: unaging, takes many identities, has secret knowledge of the history and nature of the Cosmere, widely hated but also can make deep connections with a few people, worshiped by some people as a god and yet able to hide in plain sight … that’s both of them.
But Hoid can’t harm anyone. (Punching Kelsier didn’t harm him, just trick him into thinking he was feeling pain.) Vasher murdered his own wife, and killed several of his own best friends, and started the Manywar! Hoid is jovial and sociable, Vasher hides from people and drives them away.
I’m probably thinking too hard about this.
@135, 136 – Roshar was created by Adonalsium. Brandon specifically mentions this in a WoB. I assume it’s the same with Nalthis. As far as we know, Scadrial is the only planet created by the new Shards.
Am I the only one that thought of Dalinar’s lost memories when Zahel described the Returned?
@143 Dalinar’s “lost” memories are from Cultivation’s pruning. She was playing a deep long game against Odium using Dalinar as his Champion. Dalinar isn’t a returned.
The memory loss of Returned and Dalinar’s pruning are similar effects caused by different Shards.
@51: Vasher needs Investiture to keep his Returned status…on Nalthis the only source he had available was consuming a Breath from a person. On Roshar he can use Stormlight as the source of Investiture to keep himself alive.
I think he still has actual Breaths from Nalthis that he uses for Awakening (and not to keep his Returned status), and apparently enough to be 10th Heightening. He tells Szeth to make sure he has Stormlight ingested because when drawn, Nightblood feeds off of Investiture, and if you run out it will take your life force. On Nalthis, Nightblood would feed on your Breaths (and hopefully you had more than your one on you…)
To my knowledge you cannot use Stormlight to fuel a non-Rosharian magic system, or Breaths to fuel Surgebinding, etc. Allomancy/Feruchemy/Hemalurgy I think are the only exceptions since you use metals to fuel the magic.
I’m with everyone who says that the Vasher/Kaladin conversation makes perfect sense to me. And that this infodumping feels pretty natural, while definitely identifiable as such, as necessary setup for the protagonists’ further adventures into this deeper knowledge of the magic around them, including taking things interplanetary and gaining some explicit experience with off-world people and magic. We’re looking, after all, at the culmination of a cycle that lasted thousands of years… some outside perspective is usually just what’s needed to change things up.
Those who either have or haven’t read the rest of the Cosmere and think that the crossover is too in-your-face, for your own or other readers’ sake… have you forgotten what genre you’re reading? I know there are readers out there who really will just go through Stormlight in a total vacuum from the fandom and greater Cosmere, and while those people obviously aren’t here, it’s not like they’re going to just throw the book down in frustration because there are some unexplained terms or concepts going over their head or they wouldn’t have made it a single page into the Prelude to WoK. And this has been a clear and major aim of the plot at least since the trip through Shadesmar, with significant hints earlier (hello Hoid’s letters?). Also an obvious and natural extension of Dalinar’s whole “God is dead, but actually wasn’t god just someone with power taken from something even greater, which might also fail to live up to my expectations of God” journey… if this Adonalsium thing got shattered and just 3 of the pieces managed to make this crazy mess he’s in, what the storms are the other pieces doing? I’m sure it’s particularly frustrating to participate here without the greater context when there are some of us who like to dive in particularly deeply. But that’s an even smaller minority of people’s experiences with the book as the complete vacuum approach probably is, by which I mean vanishingly small in the grand scheme considering that I and anyone else participating regularly can probably name the usual complainers from memory.
@141 I’m fully with you on the “anti-Hoid” comparison, was about to say something similar in response to
@91 about the fact that while I don’t doubt that someone who dubs himself “the musespren” would prefer some verbal jousting with Hoid, there are those of us who identify with and/or prefer the more straightforward, if sometimes gruff, approach of Zahel. It’s a demeanor I associate with engineer types, mechanics, doctors and the like… people who live so deep inside of technical minutia that the fundamentals fade into the background. As someone else noted, tends to make them bad teachers unless they make a point of doing that specifically, because to a mechanic, “the engine turns the wheels and they push against the ground to make the car move” and “the gap on a spark plug needs to be pretty precise to operate properly” are about equally basic and unworthy of being explained or maybe even mentioned even when technically relevant to a situation. It can be just as frustrating to deal with in real life, but at the end of the day it’s usually better for most people (particularly those less aware of social cues than average) to err toward obtusely technical than condescendingly simplified if they don’t know up-front where either of those lines are.
Though in this case, Vasher definitely knows here that a lot of what he’s saying is going over Kaladin’s head, and is doing it deliberately. Because yeah, he clearly has no interest in talking about this stuff with anyone who’s capable of properly grilling him. Still can’t quite seem to let go of teaching people who need and appreciate his help though, even if he likes to make them work for it.
Does make me sort of buy the theory @125 that this might be setup for him to use his divine breath to heal the Sibling. We know by WoB that a deadeye can be brought back, though it would take a lot to do. And here we’ve got a guy spouting off about his photocopy soul that (as only he and his aspiring captor know) is purpose-made to be Endowed upon something in need of a divine level of healing, usually in a dramatic flash of understanding and inspiration that cuts through the malaise of the immortal like a lightning bolt to the face. And he’s just… casually hanging around doing something otherwise out of character right where he can watch the local Listener. The one who’s bridging two worlds and already making moves toward using his knowledge of Roshar’s tones and rhythms to bring the tower a little way back to life, an idea just introduced by the Fused. I gotta say, I was pretty firmly convinced of Bondsmith Navani up to now but this is definitely swaying me.
Though I’m also surprised not to see anyone mentioning the thought yet that Yunfah might also have been quietly hanging around keeping an eye on R’lain. An honorspren would probably be pretty appreciative that Kaladin got set straight like that. Good for his odds as a potential Windrunner too.
And on the subject of orders, I’m still on Adolin as Edgedancer. It’s not just his blade’s spren, there are a zillion instances of Adolin making a difference by listening or hearing someone or something that others missed, ignored, or forgot, and he’s spent a fair bit of his screen time here focused on healing his friends. Have we seen him interact much with Lift yet? I can only hope she’s in charge of his surgebinding training once he makes it over the hump. Though it would also be super interesting if he did attract and bond a spren of another order (or the same order even?) while also waking up Maya for the dual-wield.
On to Zahel and the description of cognitive shadows… sorry to everyone so worried about Kelsier’s soul, but let’s not forget that saving himself from passing Beyond meant diving into the Well, which he was then trapped inside until Vin opened it and let the power out. But really it’s very much a Ship of Theseus thing anyway… the original soul was made up of the same stuff to begin with at least.
As for anyone worrying that his Intent is anything other than SURVIVE! I don’t know what you’re thinking.
Minor issue saying Zahel/Vasher is at the tenth heightening; at the level of the God-King, an awakener gains the ability to completely drain the color from something leaving it bone white rather than grey. The scarf Zahel tossed at Kaladin after their duel was grey, not white. Obviously there are some tricks he has as far as awakening without speaking but not draining color completely like the God-King did at the end of Warbreaker.
Brandon ended the debate about Zahel. He said we can assume he was whispering the commands. So Zahel is not of the tenth heightening, which would be very noticeable anyways.
Once again, keeping up with these re-reads and comments is basically a full time job, so I’m never able to keep up :)
I actually enjoy info dumps in a sense becuase I like having the information, but I will admit this one felt a little expositiony. But, I did really like getting more hints of what Vasher/Zahel has been up to. (Also: Rlain’s comment about ‘tones’ makes me think if the Irisdescent Tones on Nalthis which is one of those phrases I love even though I have no idea what it means, but it evokes a realy cool image in my mind. It IS somewhat interesting how things like wavelength/frequency – either in color or sound/vibrations – are so important to both magic systems).
As soon as Kaladin said he ‘ordered’ Yunfah to bond Rlain (however he might justify that in his mind) I was just like, ‘oh honey no’. But I appreciate that he overcame some of his initial defensiveness and just tried to listen. I hope there are great things in store for Rlain regardless!
I almost spit out my coffee at the ‘Hoid is an asshole’ line lol. It maybe felt a little ‘modern’ but chalk it up to being some ‘translated’ version of an appropriate Rosharan insult ;)
@148/149 – Yeah, noticed that too. 10th heightening also does the color distortion field thing as well, so definitely not that.
And had thought nonverbal awakening was a lower heightening anyway, but turns out I was wrong unless that claim by Vasher was incorrect in WB. Was confusing that with Verbal Command, which would at least streamline all that mass awakening of sheets if he could do some (or all at once?) from a distance.
I never read Warbreaker, but I read your section because I want to KNOW what I am missing.
And now I know what I need to read after my Mistborn reread.
damn.
I am thoroughly enjoying your commentary. Thank you for your thoughts, insights, and supplementary information!
Wow this chapter was great! I, as many of you are discussing am one of those stormlight-only fans, but ever since I finished Oathbringer, in my interim wait for this book, I’ve been hard at work on the catch up. (I still read on, the revelations coming back later are still just as satisfying to me.) And I know that Szeth’s sword asks about Vasher, so… Yeah that’s something I’m excited to dig into!!!!
@Jaime, at least you can read Warbreaker for free. I paid for it, mind you, but that’s Brandon’s “the first taste” story, available for no money on his web site.
For anyone who missed it before, Warbreaker was conceived as a prequel to the Stormlight Archive. This isn’t strictly a crossover for Zahel, he was originally created as part of this series. (Now, the dozens of other Worldhoppers we have seen area a different matter.)
I don’t expect it any time soon, but now I want to read a conversation among Zahel, Wit, Khriss, and Mraize. It would be especially fun because I think all three of the others dislike Wit, and he’s very comfortable with that role..
10 days is one week right. Shouldn’t it be ‘week’ instead of ‘weeks’ in the first sentence.
@155 – a week is 5 days on Roshar (edited for spelling
Rhythm of War?
Kaladin 4 is much better name for this book.
Seriously, I am disappointed. Ok, Kaladin is Brandon’s favourite character, he doesn’t love other characters as much as he loves Kaladin. But this was supposed to be an epic fantasy series with large cast…
@157 we have the first fifteen chapters, this book is not all about Kaladin. I believe Rhythm of War as a title will suit this book very well, and fit in to the rest of it’s story as time goes on. Maybe don’t be so quick to judge?
Kindle unlimited now has the first book of the series for several of Brandon’s series, including The Way of Kings.
@austin 142: Thank you for clearing that up, I hadn’t heard that before! If that is the case, then the distinction made between the fossil’s age (and the world from which it came) and that of Roshar or Nalthis becomes even more interesting. At first I assumed Adonalsium created Yolen eons ago whereas the Shards created the Shardwords post-shattering in imitation of the original (like Khriss explained to Kelsier regarding Scadrial), which is why they are so relatively new.
But if we are saying Adonalsium created Roshar and perhaps the other Shardworlds (other than Scadrial), why such a big difference between Yolen and the others, timewise? Or perhaps, Adonalsium didn’t create Yolen either? Maybe the original world and the original people predated Adonalsium as well, and were created by the mysterious G-d Beyond at the Beginning, Who then left the three realms of the Cosmere for Beyond, leaving Adonalsium to work with the powers of the universe.
Can’t wait to learn more!
@160, MSnyder28:
The truth is, we readers know almost nothing at all about what happened before the Shattering of Adonalsium. I have my own crackpot theories about it, but the evidence is all but nonexistent. None of Brandon’s projected books really deal with it except Dragonsteel, which we won’t see for decades at best if he sticks to his schedule.
Does Hoid hold the survival shard? Think of his interactions that we’ve seen so far. And he never wants to be pinned down
@162: From what we know, Hoid does not hold a shard. He originally was supposed to be in the group of 16, if I understand correctly, but backed out for some reason.
If he held a shard, he wouldn’t be interacting with Humans and Singers the way he does. I suppose the Hoid we see could just be an Avatar of the greater being, but I don’t think that’s the case from what I understand of his history.
@2 Jim, @3Ulim @45 Shardbearer – Agreed, this is actually really important. For those NOT familiar with low level computer/memory architecture, the fundamental building blocks of computers: transistors, logic gates, clocks/crystals, data flip flops, could all be implemented using what’s described in the “fabrial” introduction. A Computer Science/Electrical Engineering student could likely make at least a primitive computer with existing Rosharan fabrials.
I wonder if that means that Sanderson’s going to get the existing fabrial techs to the point where they CAN create computers, or if he’s setting us up so that when computers show up on the scene, there’s a valid in-world reason for it.
Thank you @163
The biggest issue with the logicspren computer is if you can only fit one spren in a gemstone then your computer will never be able to have more than a handful of bits of memory. So your memory would be limited to how small of a gemstone you can use to capture a spren and how many spren you can fit into a gemstone and if you can isolate individual spren within that gemstone. Also if a spren escapes you essentially have a corrupted hard drive. Basically there are a lot of complications with the logicspren computer but if those can be solved then I don’t see why it couldn’t work.
@166 Daflan
I get what you’re saying but I think you’re missing a piece. A single gemstone, in this case, would be a single bit of information (on or off, zero or one, etc.). But If you put eight gemstones together, that would be 8 bits of information (one byte). Logic gates (the basis of mathematical operations) are implemented by getting information from two gemstones and producing a single output. It’s a little hard to describe the way the electronics work. Clocks (pulses switching between low/high at regular intervals) is how you get memory and a processor that takes steps (now do this instruction, now do this next instruction).
So basically you put a bunch of gemstones together (with the right connections) you get a computer.
The only thing that’s missing from the fabrial discussion is how one gemstone/array would detect/know/receive a flow of stormlight from another gemstone. In electronics, you get a logical “Add” by saying ‘if (gemstone/input) A is high frequency (1) and (gemstone/input) B is low frequency (0) then one plus zero is 1, so output (the result) is a 1. It gets more complex than that when you get carries (like in regular decimal arithmetic 1 + 9 is 10, but what do you do with that 1 in the “tens” column) but that’s the basics. So the question that the Fabrial section DOESN’T address is how a Logic Gate “knows” that Gemstone A is high frequency and Gemstone B is low. In electronics that’s done through the flow of electricity out of each, and I assume we’ll see a way that gemstones can “detect” an outflow of Stormlight from another, but that’s the only thing that’s missing from what we’ve seen so far for a Fabrial Computer to work.
I think the point he’s trying to make is that at least so far, the computer would have to be massive.
@168 Lisamarie
You mean some enormous fabrial, like the heart of the Sibling? There isn’t, at this point, enough evidence to specifically think it is one, but my point is, in-world, at least one massive, complex, many-gemstone fabrial exists.
They could skip our kind of computers and immediately build quantum computers. AI would also be easy with spren computers.
@MaKro I agree completely with your comment about why a fabrial computer would be difficult as I am a computer engineer and my point was basically about how big a computer would have to be to even have a reasonable amount of memory or computing capacity, I didn’t even want to start talking about how difficult it could be to use spren and storm light instead of electricity
There’s a pretty strong implication in the phrasing of Vasher’s infodump that Elhokar might, due to the circumstances of his death, be “eligible” for another body. I know the other reasons for talking about shadows and a big investiture “moment” just before death and the unusual situation that could cause, but…if you’re only reading Stormlight books and you read that sentence…You are going to think of Elhokar immediately, aren’t you? And yet unless I missed it, nobody has said anything in all of this commentary…
@171 Daflan
Gotcha. Yeah, there are definitely challenges, but I think it’s more than theoretically possible. I can’t imagine Sanderson going into a long explanation of all the pieces involved to get to Navani’s engineers creating something. That’s kind of why I think maybe something really large that has already been created might be in our future – something that works, and when it works there’s a logical in-world explanation for it.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to insult your intelligence – I’m a software engineer and a hardware hobbyist – I get it. Yep, the other issue is scale – it’s hard to describe just how many of these “basic” circuits are in a modern computer. It does also make me wonder if Rosharan engineers would figure out how to make these kinds of fabrials at a small scale, but that would obviously require something other than capturing millions if not billions of spren to act as transistors…
It seems pretty clear from this and previous chapters, and from the fabrial lecture, that no amount of raw stormlight will revive the tower. The Stormfather physically passing by seems to partially activate it, but it is going to need to be permanently inhabited by a powerful, living spren.
Logicspren computers are super intriguing, and I think all the above comments are underselling them massively. Don’t think of each gemstone as a single bit/transistor, that’s small potatoes. On top of the fact that they can, bare minimum, superpose at least stormlight level and frequency, and most likely have both more complex rhythm potential and all sorts of possible resonance states…this isn’t just dumb crystal, it’s got a particularly rare and hard to attract bit of splintered deific power at its core. Each gemstone is its own little black-box microprocessor.
Does the heart of the tower not remind anyone else a bit of, like, an early Cray supercomputer?
I’ve never liked Vasher/Zahel much, though I appreciate that he saved Vivenna when nobody else would and helped her become someone the other characters and readers didn’t hold in contempt. But he’s great in this chapter, giving Kaladin an unusual type of fight and giving us an explanation of himself and the Cosmere that I’ve bookmarked along with this page for future rereading because it might actually help me understand this stuff. I especially like the exchange comparing fossilization to Soulcasting for Kaladin’s frame of reference. And I just enjoy any appearance of fossilized shells in a story, as I live where they’re very abundant and have volunteered for many years at a paleontology museum where I talked about them a lot and helped people find and choose one to take home.
“He’d always found martial ardents to be a strange bunch. Ordinary ardents made more sense: they joined the church for scholarly reasons, or because of family pressure, or because they were devout and wanted to serve the Almighty. Most martial ardents had different pasts. Many had once been soldiers, then given themselves over to the church. Not to serve, but to escape. He’d never really understood what might lead someone to walk that path. Not until recently.”
That’s interesting. Before the Rathalas Reveal, much was made of the mystery of what experience could be so extraordinarily horrific as to make Kadash leave the army for the ardentia (after he vomited.) But it sounds like plenty of other people do that too.
Kaladin turned about, searching the seemingly endless rows of fluttering white sheets. Like dancing flames, pure white.
A beautiful simile, one that might or might not have come to my mind in such a situation. Though a vast expanse of flame is not something I actually want to see.
“Hoid is an asshole” surprised me. First because Sanderson has rarely if ever used that word in a Cosmere book. Second because I don’t think of Hoid that way (even though it’s true), as my most vivid memory of him is when his kindness and wisdom brought Shallan out of her darkest despair — wisdom I try to use on myself at need.
@50: I also wonder what the storm a “lobberbeast” is. Something we haven’t seen before, apparently, as it’s not in the Coppermind Wiki.
@87: Perfection. Thank you. Though that song is officially called “Fields of Gold.” And I have a grudge against it because it makes me enviously grouchy, so now I’m going to go comfort myself with sad songs about shipwrecks because I’m weird.
@122: I noticed that, and wondered why it was capitalized in Kaladin’s perspective.
@AeronaGreenjoy:
Note that Vasher is one, too. He’ll give you a straight answer (as in, this entire chapter really), but he’ll also be a discouraging, touchy, unhelpful, well, asshole a lot of the time. Parallels: the theme of the Stormlight Archive. Also irony.
@133
” a computer of any kind is…only as smart as its programming.”
With the advent of Machine Learning, this is not quite the case any more. You need an appropriate algorithm or two and lots and lots of data to train a model (and test it), then let it predict. Will Roshar have enough time to do that? That’s the question. If Taravangian has another supra-genius day (or two), though, maybe he could invent Machine Learning, invent the algebra and/or calculus he needs to quantify world events (though he might have already done that when he originally created the Diagram), write the predictive algorithm, and train others to continue to feed data into the algorithm… :)
@177 – I think it’s even more complex, but also more potentially powerful than that. It’s not just bits and transistors, each spren is a little bit of godly power with its own degree of access to all the different of aspects of power that contains… it’s not just magically replicating our own technology, you have to look at what the technological manipulation is doing in context of the magic. At a bare minimum, it makes the whole thing a lot more like quantum computing than traditional, and the interaction with Surges would take things to another level entirely.
Apologies, ladies, but there should have been a HUGE spoiler alert at the beginning of this post as I, myself, was not aware that Vasher (or more to the point, his sword) has already traveled the Cosmere and was residing in Roshar.
No harm done, really, since all I’ve done since that revelation was reread Warbringer, but still, THAT was a big, fat, ugly spoiler that you unleashed on my poor, soggy noggin. Please, be more careful when you release Cosmere-esque stuff.
Hugs and sh**,
Woe
Thank you for asking. I read ALL of Sanderson books (and appendix and such) but every time I read comments and theories about the Cosmere I sit back and think: wtf? How can they KNOW things like this? How can they get information X from this book Y I just read? I feel like stupid, even if in normal life that does not happen often.
I love Sanderson for how he writes, for the world building, for the characters, for the emotion I feel reading, the sadness, the passion, the laughter… but I admit that – even if my Nerd side appreciate all the Cosmere stuff – I can’t learn of it while reading the actual books, but only when I step aside from them and go hunt for information on forums and websites. It’s a pity, but it’s so.
i.e. Azure. Of course I had already read WB (2 times) when I read OB, but I’d never have guessed she is Vivenna. I simply don’t see the hints. Same for Zahel, up until this chapter. Okay, I feel like stupid. Kaladin, know that I understand how you feel.
For this very reason, it’s truly a pity these commentaries won’t go on after chapter 17… I would have liked to have them at hand also for future chapters: I feel that ROW will be quite though for what concerns Cosmere stuff and connections and hunting the info in forums and groups is more difficult to for avoinding spoileris for next chapters. Good job, the two of you, at writing them ;-)
Well, “after chapter 19”, not 17, sorry for the slip. Again, good job everyone for explaining me stuff, I enjoyed the journey.
Kaladin, you WILL get better and save everyone’s ass, I trust Brandon.
“What exactly is a soul, if it isn’t the essence of the person?”
This is why the Emporer’s Soul is my favorite Sanderson book. The soul isn’t any one thing, but all the things, maybe kind of. Preservation also explains it to Kelsier in M:SH, though vaguely. Yet another aspect is what breath is (on Nalthis), and how someone can live as a drab without their breath. I was thinking a lot about this in the weeks leading up to RoW being released, stuff to do with hemalurgy and kandra particularly.
I think Kelsier is able to persist as a cognitive shadow because of the fame he had generated for himself across the empire. He’d become a religious figure, and perhaps everyone’s idea of who he was guides, to some extent, his nature in the cognitive realm. Later he ascends, but that hadn’t happened yet when he is made a cognitive shadow. Unless his experience at the Pits of Hathsin caused him to ascend or descend in some way.
But back to the question of what is the soul, the idea we often get is of a ghost, which inhabits a meat suit to be what we think of as a person. Sanderson’s saying it’s not a dual situation but a triune one. There’s whatever the flesh is, and whatever the mind is, and the Soul perhaps is whatever isn’t one of those two things. Preservation describes them all as being like a beam of light (well, this is a description of the realms, at any rate, and I’m extrapolating that the soul is the Beyond dwelling part of a being.)
In the end I’m tempted to say the soul is not a part of us but what we are part of. But that’s a whole other kettle of fish.
“Readers? Are there any of you out there who aren’t super invested in the Cosmere? I’d be really interested to hear your thoughts on this, please let us know in the comments!”
I’ve only read SA. My thought is that some payoffs don’t hit as hard without in-depth knowledge of the Cosmere, and that’s a shame, but I still really enjoy the novels and the allusions to the wider Cosmere lore.
I remember reading TWoK and the epigraphs of Hoid’s letters and being like what the heck? I went online and that’s when I became aware of the Cosmere. In so doing I spoiled myself the ultimate conclusion to Mistborn Era 1, but that’s okay. I also remember reading Szeth picking up Nightblood at the end of WoR and knowing it was significant. However it wasn’t until the re-read when people were going insane in the comments, that I realised how significant.
I’ve resolved to read the other Cosmere stuff after RoW so I can get the maximum enjoyment going forward.