Bands of Mourning Cover Art & Blurb

[dayman]

So the running theory is that Wax travels to the strange and exotic southern continent in search of the (now legendary) atium bracelets the Lord Ruler relied on to stay alive (and that powered some of his more impressive effects).

 

Given the apparent mood of the series, I would say the Wax to Indian Jones comparison is valid. I'm really excited for some new Mistborn stuff, but I do hope it's better than the first.

 

I read the first immediately after finishing the trilogy so maybe I'm jaded, but the "fun" aspect of it didn't make up for the fact that it wasn't on par in the slightest with the first 3 in terms of scope, novelty, or overall drama. I mean, lets face it, Brandon held back on developing the future in terms of what he was capable of and what he has promised to do. Understandable b/c it was planned to be a one-off (writing exercise turned into book)...but now that he has chosen to make this a trilogy he needs to give it the epic scale it deserves. We're going to read 3 Mistborn books in this era now...it needs to make up for lack of developing the era in the first. 

[natc]

But they wouldnt be the atiumminds because those were used up in or before WOA

He was still young when he was detached from them. They were very much still charged.

Actually tapping it is a different story.

[Chaos he/him]

So the running theory is that Wax travels to the strange and exotic southern continent in search of the (now legendary) atium bracelets the Lord Ruler relied on to stay alive (and that powered some of his more impressive effects).

 

Given the apparent mood of the series, I would say the Wax to Indian Jones comparison is valid. I'm really excited for some new Mistborn stuff, but I do hope it's better than the first.

 

I read the first immediately after finishing the trilogy so maybe I'm jaded, but the "fun" aspect of it didn't make up for the fact that it wasn't on par in the slightest with the first 3 in terms of scope, novelty, or overall drama. I mean, lets face it, Brandon held back on developing the future in terms of what he was capable of and what he has promised to do. Understandable b/c it was planned to be a one-off (writing exercise turned into book)...but now that he has chosen to make this a trilogy he needs to give it the epic scale it deserves. We're going to read 3 Mistborn books in this era now...it needs to make up for lack of developing the era in the first.

Do realize that these next books are still Alloy sized, though your comments about it having more scale/relevance seems reasonable.

[ADIMORTIS he/him]

The blurb seems pretty interesting...However, IMO, the cover doesn't look very good. i will say the same about Shadows of Self cover too.The only cover i seemed to like was the alloy of law caver...

[Wonko the Sane he/him]

There were two bracers; both pierced his skin, so both were presumably spikes. One was definitely atium, but the other was presumably gold. And the atium bracer was used up...

 

Never mind. I just pulled out my copy of WoA for a quote, but when I found it, It turned out I had remembered it wrong. While the book does mention that they found the bracers after the fight, it does not, as I had thought, say that Vin burned up the atium. It turns out they were sold for supplies.

 

So I guess the question is, sold to who?

 

Also, this: "...they had actually contained only a very small bit of atium...". Were the Bracers composed of multiple metals?

[Comatose he/him]

You guys, what if the bracers were just storages for the Lord Ruler's age, with some hemalurgic enhancements as well (we still don't know what atium can all be used for in Hemalurgy), BUT they became more than that AFTER he died.  Think of it, they  the were in contact with the Lord Ruler's blood, and were essentially used to kill him.   True, Vin finished him off with a spear, but he was on his way to death as soon as she ripped off the bracers.  We aren't sure about all of the mechanics of Hemalurgy yet, so who knows what counts and what does not as a 'sacrifice'.  We do know that it requires blood and a death, but not much more than that.  What if, by ripping the bands out of the Lord Ruler's arms, Vin empowered them with power beyond what the Lord Ruler was using them for?  They would now include whatever charge the Lord Ruler originally put in them to enhance his power AND some of his incredible Lerasium enhanced allomancy. 

 

There are holes in this theory, of course.  For one, if the bands were already charged, I'm not certain they could be charged a second time.  Secondly, we aren't sure if the sacrifice needs to die as the 'spike' is being pushed through in order to imbue it with power, or if the spike just needs to cause the death.  Given that someone who is dying, but not yet dead, could technically find a way to survive, it makes more sense that the spike can't steal their power unless they actually die, otherwise you could either have a living person without allomancy, or duplication of the power, which would be kind of world-breaky and against Ruin's MO. 

 

On the other hand, we know the Lord Ruler was weak from his rapid aging, and I always took it for granted that was why all of the fight went out with him, and why he was crawling pitifully to where the bracers went out the window, BUT, what if he was more powerless than we thought?  What if taking away his bracers also removed his allomancy?   Sure, he was aging rapidly, but with his power, couldn't he have jumped out the window and pulled the bracers back to himself?  Maybe the rapid aging was enough to incapacitate him, but what if it wasn't, and his powers were stolen and sealed in the bands?  

 

Regardless of what is correct, I think it's clear the bands are more significant than we originally thought.  These are just my thoughts, not sure about their correctness, but I would LOVE the idea that Vin had a part in creating the Bands of Mourning. 

[Slater he/him]

Poor Wax getting left outta the covers. Bet the final one will just be a picture of him with his hands spread out and a caption underneath....

 

"Incrediblness!!"

 

That should totally be the final name for the fourth book.

[PeterAhlstrom he/him]

Well Wayne is on the cover of Alloy...

I tried to convince Brandon it should be Wayne and Steris, but instead Wayne will return for book 7.

 

Also, Steris 

Edited April 10, 2015 by PeterAhlstrom

[dayman]

Do realize that these next books are still Alloy sized, though your comments about it having more scale/relevance seems reasonable.

 

I actually did not know that was the case. 

 

So, is it safe to say that this era getting the extra books does not mean it is meant to be taken as one of the "prime" sagas for the planet? Like, in the end, we will consider Misborn to be 3.5 trilogies? 

Edited April 10, 2015 by dayman

[Kaymyth she/her]

I tried to convince Brandon it should be Wayne and Steris, but instead Wayne will return for book 7.

 

That fills my little nerdy heart with joy.

 

 

So, is it safe to say that this era getting the extra books does not mean it is meant to be taken as one of the "prime" sagas for the planet? Like, in the end, we will consider Misborn to be 3.5 trilogies? 

 

Except that there will be 4 AoL-era books, so perhaps that makes it 3.6?  3.7599999?  Or do we just call it an "almost-complete Hitchhiker's Guide" trilogy?

[king of nowhere]

I actually did not know that was the case. 

 

So, is it safe to say that this era getting the extra books does not mean it is meant to be taken as one of the "prime" sagas for the planet? Like, in the end, we will consider Misborn to be 3.5 trilogies? 

 

Yeah. This is brandon sanderson we're talking about, so 400 pages count as short story.

in the end it will be 1200 pages against 2000 for the original trilogy.

[Xaladin he/him]

"south of Elendel?"

Isn't Elendel the North Pole, or did I forget something important? Because if Elendel is the North Pole, then "south" simply means "away from the center."

[WeiryWriter he/him]

"south of Elendel?"

Isn't Elendel the North Pole, or did I forget something important? Because if Elendel is the North Pole, then "south" simply means "away from the center."

Luthadel was at the Magnetic North Pole (but not the Geographic) because the MNP was tethered to the Well of Ascension.  When Sazed re-made the world that became no longer relevant.  Elendel is also south-ish of where Luthadel was as well.

[Xaladin he/him]

Well, the way Elendel is designed (polar coordinates), it would be extremely confusing to use words like north, south, east, and west if it was far away from a pole (far from a pole, the spherical coordinates--latitude and longitude-- are very close to rectangular).

 

Even more confusing if a pole is close, but not in the center.

 

EDIT: I am trying to paste a picture, but can't figure out how. How do you paste pictures?

 

OK this will have to do. If you click the picture, you can see what I mean. I put the north pole in red. The city plan is the other coordinate system you can see. Imagine using words like "east" in that city! Confusing!

Edited April 11, 2015 by Xaladin

[WeiryWriter he/him]

Well, the way Elendel is designed (polar coordinates), it would be extremely confusing to use words like north, south, east, and west if it was far away from a pole (far from a pole, the spherical coordinates--latitude and longitude-- are very close to rectangular).

 

Even more confusing if a pole is close, but not in the center.

 

EDIT: I am trying to paste a picture, but can't figure out how. How do you paste pictures?

 

OK this will have to do. If you click the picture, you can see what I mean. I put the north pole in red. The city plan is the other coordinate system you can see. Imagine using words like "east" in that city! Confusing!

 

But Elendel is no where near that close to any of the poles?  So while yeah that wouldn't make sense, it does not apply in this situation.

[natc]

Well, the way Elendel is designed (polar coordinates), it would be extremely confusing to use words like north, south, east, and west if it was far away from a pole (far from a pole, the spherical coordinates--latitude and longitude-- are very close to rectangular).

Even more confusing if a pole is close, but not in the center.

EDIT: I am trying to paste a picture, but can't figure out how. How do you paste pictures?

OK this will have to do. If you click the picture, you can see what I mean. I put the north pole in red. The city plan is the other coordinate system you can see. Imagine using words like "east" in that city! Confusing!

East and west would be perpendicular to north. Simple.

Also, the planet isn't that small. Move it farther. Like way farther.

[Xaladin he/him]

Ok, so inside the actual city it shouldn't be that bad. Where is the north pole, anyway? Is it in the Elendel basin (much bigger than the city of Elendel)? Because what I really had in mind (assuming the pole isn't just outside the city, and you're right, it probably isn't) was how it would be easy to get confused when navigating to different parts of the country.

 

"Go north to city A, then southwest to city B, then farther west to city C. Then travel north, and keep going straight until you get back to where you started." Is actually a valid and quite reasonable list of instructions, if you are near the pole and the distances are right (you have to travel west enough to get a total of a 180 degree arc around the pole).

 

Of course that has nothing to do with how a city is planned. It is just hard to describe a straight line (as straight as the planet, at least) that doesn't go through the pole, unless you are far enough away to use rectangular coordinates (you could use these near the pole, but you wouldn't be able to use north, south, east, or west). The equation for a horizontal line that doesn't pass through the origin involves a secant function. How am I supposed to explain to a normal person to go in the direction that is 25 degrees northeast and keep going "that direction?" If they keep going 25 degrees northeast they will (right-hand) spiral towards the north pole. Why take a latitude (due east or west) when a straight line is less distance (unless you are in a city, of course)?

 

These things don't apply to us on earth, because we are all so far away from both poles that north, east, south, and west are just rectangular (close enough for navigation).

Edited April 12, 2015 by Xaladin

[WeiryWriter he/him]

The Elendel basin is at a fairly temperate latitude, the poles are nowhere close.  Also look at the map of the Elendel Basin, it uses rectangular coordinates.

[king of nowhere]

I don't know where the idea that elendel is the origin of polar coordinates came from, but it cannot be near a pole. modern scadrial has a climate close to that if real earth. it is the closer earth analogue in the cosmere. So, in the poles now there are ice  caps. It is theoretically possible that scadrial is in a greenhouse state with temperate climate at the poles and no icecaps (earth itself had been that way for, like, 80% of the time in th last 600 million years. the current situation, where there is permanent ice both at the north and south pole, arose 20 million years ago and it never happened before in that timeframe. look "azolla event" on wikipedia for some interesting facts on how global climate cooled down quite suddenly 50 million years ago). However, brandon said that scadrial is the most similar to earth, and I suppose he referred to the earth as it is right now. he said that we can assume that if something exist on our world, it exist on scadrial too,  and I take that to mean that yes, scadrial has polar icecaps.

 

Now, in the case the city really has polar coordinates, it is fully possible that it is because they haven't explored enough of the land to make it worthwhile to adopt a normal frame of reference. if they are all living close to the city, using the city as a center would make sense.

Edited April 12, 2015 by king of nowhere

[dayman]

Given that the maps we've seen on continents on Scadrial look nothing like continents on Earth...I had always assumed that the "earth analog" comment was primarily Brandon's attempt to lay the ground work for future books as time develops...e.g., Wax and Wayne's era resembling the late 19th century in the US...the next trilogy resembling the '80s...more about humanity's path of development as opposed to physical geography. 

Edited April 12, 2015 by dayman

[gjustice99 she/her]

He was still young when he was detached from them. They were very much still charged.

Actually tapping it is a different story.

Not used up by TLR but by Vin as atium beads

"They had found some small bit--the atium that had made up the bracers that the Lord Ruler had used as a Feruchemal battery to store up age." this line is in WOA pg30 in paperback so it is DEFINITELY not the atiumminds because they were burned for allomancy

[Comatose he/him]

Not used up by TLR but by Vin as atium beads

"They had found some small bit--the atium that had made up the bracers that the Lord Ruler had used as a Feruchemal battery to store up age." this line is in WOA pg30 in paperback so it is DEFINITELY not the atiumminds because they were burned for allomancy

 

The line in context says:

 

"They had found some small bit--the atium that had made up the bracers that the Lord Ruler had used as a Feruchmical battery to store up age. However, they had spent those on supplies for the city, and they had actually contained only a very small bit up atium."

As you can see, the atium minds were explicitly NOT burned for allomancy. Earlier on the same page, Vin mentions Kelsier left them only six beads, and it was those that she was burning. The bracers were definitely sold. I'm not entirely sure I'm reading your comment correctly, so feel free to clarify, but there's no way the bracers were burned.

This quote is important though. Earlier, it mentions the atium that "made up" the bracers, but then later it says they "actually contained only a very small bit". Either the bracers were small and entirely made out of atium, or they were made of more than one metal, which has interesting connotations.

Personally, I think they were just atium. The words "made up" seem to indicate this, as does the fact that they sold the bracers as a whole instead of separating out the different metals.

This also means that (unsurprisingly) Brandon has been planning something Bands of Mourning-ish since WoA, which is pretty cool.

[Argent he/him]

We should, of course, keep in mind that the Bands might not be the bracers,

[Nicrosil he/him]

Sorry if someone posted this already, and this probably not even close to true, but what about the spear Vin used to kill TLR? It's explicitly mentioned several times that she stabbed him through the heart. Maybe it's a Hemalgury spike?

 

On another note, what if we're looking at the wrong person's metalminds? From the Coppermind:

 

Sliverism is a religion on Scadrial that arose after the Final Ascension.

According to Steris Harms, they are known to revere Ironeyes.^[1]

 

Now, The Lord Ruler was called the "Sliver of Infinity." Sliverism is practiced by the descendants of everyone's favorite fanatic, Yomen. And in a lot of the books, skaa call Marsh "The Lord Ruler." What if in the 300 years since the Ascension, the myths were distorted? I'm AFB at the moment, so this might be really wrong. 

Edited April 21, 2015 by Nicrosil

[king of nowhere]

Sorry if someone posted this already, and this probably not even close to true, but what about the spear Vin used to kill TLR? It's explicitly mentioned several times that she stabbed him through the heart. Maybe it's a Hemalgury spike?

 

 

It is certainly possible, but I doubt hemalurgy is so easy. if it was that easy to charge a spike, then plenty of soldiers in battlefields that are struck by arrows (arrows recovered from previous battlefields) or run through with swords (wielded by veteran soldiers who already saw battles) should find themselves with superpowers instead of dieing. Or, heck, even someone stinging himself with a needle that was made from recycled metal from a battlefield. and there would be enough "accidental hemalurgists" that someone would have noticed.