Bliev

The joke about @Overlord Jebus saying "andolasiaum" just made me think of the fictional "Andalasia" from the Disney movie "Enchanted" and now both my and my children's fantasy worlds have collided. I may never recover.

Battle of Thaylan fields. After the Thrill leaves? I Mentioning the Unmade would be apropos for a Death Rattle. From OB: So what if this is that sort of thing? That it's someone who looks around them after the Thrill leaves...and they wonder...what have we done?

You know...I like this! Have an upvote!

So, I listened to this in the podcast version and then had to come see the infamous blanket-ghost-tech-lag intro, and it was worth it. I'm not laughing at you, I'm laughing WITH you. Promise. (and yes, that promise is the kind we moms make to our kids that we have no intention of keeping lollllll)

I thought “rhythm of war” a long time ago when it was revealed this would be the eshonai flashback but I after my most recent re-read I thought maybe “the lost rhythms”. But rhythm of war fits better. Hope it sticks!

Nope! Doesn't have to be romantic at all! I just went to re-read that Syl scene, and it is definitely one of those small moments of true love. This one too: I mean, chills. At first this felt like a more sweeping moment to me, but nope--the sweetness and love are in that embrace, don't you know? The soft "hush" that sounds like it could have been me whispering it to my daughter when she sobbed after a nightmare. Such a *real* moment.

That Syl/Kal moment was really sweet.

Yes, true. But she also knows that Kal and Adolin aren't headed to the Shattered plains and they're fleeing Kholinar, so they'd probably be little help to bring her back to Vasher if that's where she was headed anyways. My guess is that Nightblood is bounty #1, and Zahel would just be a bonus. If i had to guess, she'd probably rather avoid confronting Vasher if she could and just go after NB...but I'm not sure she knows that they aren't together anymore. Any WOBs about that? I can't find them.

So I'm on an OB re-read (I ran out of other books to read, so here we are), and I'm at the moment when Azure, Kal, Shallan and Adolin are in Shadesmar on the boat. Shallan is contemplating her drawings and how her multiple selves--whom she created to help her be *less* broken--are, themselves, broken. Adolin approaches her and the following occurs: Which is then followed by: After he shares his secret to her re: Sadeas: So, I read that again, and in depth this time, and I really felt the "little moment of love" in that section. I think Brandon is really good at writing those little seemingly mundane moments of relationships that actually make a relationship work. Like in a marriage, the importance of someone just listening when you complain, and not trying to fix everything. Or of a small hug when you're feeling alone. Many novels do the "sweeping romance" really well, but don't do the mundane well at all. It just made me realize how well the "little things" work in OB. During an exceptionally cold winter, it just gave me a little warmth. :-) So I thought--what little moments of love have stood out to you in OB (or in SA in general)? So many relationships to choose from...

Right? Thanks, WOB! In OB, she first mentions the weapon (Nightblood), but then also the "one who brought it to your land". I would imagine this to be Zahel, as I doubt a Herald could have left the Rosharian system given that they're cognitive shadows bound to the system (thought I could be wrong on that). She's prioritized her hunt though--weapon first. She probably figures that it's still with Zahel, so following the reports fo the strange sword would be easier than pinpointing a particular, nondescript man. Even one who trained princes.

but even Kal could not resist a fluffy ball of golden retriever snuggling his poor sad face. once he got past the weirdness of the fur in general, that is. lol

Soul casting is a terrible, impressive power. She doesn't need to be a master of sword fighting to turn someone to smoke with her touch.

Definitely. Like a snuggly golden retriever puppy to lick his face.

We have a question for Brandon at a signing now! :-) ”would anti depressants work on Kaladin, or are those emotions too strongly intertwined with his self identity to be healed?”

I think that their lack of knowledge of mental illness would help them here: Kal doesn’t identify as being depressed, nor Shallan as having multiple identities. They don’t cognitively envision themselves as such, which means they aren’t part of the sense of self. In other words, the illnesses have not become identities, but probably more so because they are unaware that they even could be such.

I’d give Jasnah a thumb drive with Wikipedia on it (shout out to the shardcast crew). I’d give Renarin a journal. I’d give Kaladin a good self care spa day. Then deploy therapists via parachute.

I believe we have a WOB that spren are attracted to people who are near those who are already bonded to other spren (or maybe that was a Shardcast epi??), Iowa: KR beget KR. This would mean that with people coming together at Urithiru and the Kholin-adjacent KR expanding their reach, we will probably see a diversified coalition of KR beyond the Alethi that we are mostly seeing now. I think it would make sense in Dalinar’s quest for Unity, to see a burgeoning drive toward bonding spren emerge among different groups. But I also think that the sort of introspection needed to create these bonds is the sticking point and will cause more drama before it is resolved. Brandon does like the sprinkle the political problems and solutions in with the magical. All this is to say that I agree with the “Lift’s squire” type of hypothesis. And with the idea of a Rlain storyline in this regard. I wouldn’t mind him as bondsmith, but I don’t know if that’s his path.

Concur with a lot here: 1. Don't want a Moash redemption. He made his choice. Luckily I don't think Brandon has an issue with letting people live with the consequences of their choices--we've seen "bad guys" in his stories before. So I hope he keeps it this way. I also think Moash will be the closest analogue to the original "void bringers" of Eila Stele fame. Maybe he'll show us a little of what came before. 2. Don't want a reinvigoration of the "love triangle". Argh. Too much. I don't expect Shadolin to be "sunshine and rainbows" but I want their struggles to be internal to their relationship and not due to some external force. Again, choices have consequences--and I think people live within those consequences. 3. Don't want Maya revived. ...Yet. I think that's better as a Book 5 device. 4. Don't want Navani to bond the Sibling. I thought I did, but I like her as a non-Radiant, I think. I actually want her to be the person through whose eyes we see the transformation of "regular to radiant". I want her to see her husband changing, her step-son and daughter in law, her daughter--all struggling with oaths and journeys that she cannot fathom. I want to see her throwing herself into her work to make people's lives better who are alive and well in the here and now, and not struggling with some existential issue of existence. I like Navani's practicality.

I want to add just a twist to this...that maybe they *thought* she was paranoid schizophrenic (or the cultural equivalent at the time), but really she was seeing/hearing Ivory, or seeing Shadesmar. We know that Shallan bonded Pattern as a child, before the craziest part of her history (i.e., killing her mom and dad), and maybe Jasnah was beginning that process before she knew what it was. And the treatment to "beat" that out of her caused serious trauma. I would love to see a parallel here between her and her ward, Shallan, where they both bonded--or started to bond--their spren early in their childhoods and took different paths to deal with trauma--Shallan going the Lightweaver and hiding the truth route and Jasnah throwing herself into logic. But maybe not. Maybe she didn't start bonding Ivory until that moment in the flashback...hmm. Can't wait to find out!

I think Edgli’s response is likely a shard’s natural hubris: why would she fear Odium? She feels she’s just as powerful as he and she won’t be taken by surprise. I doubt Nightblood was an invention made for the showdown with Odium; rather I think it’s coincidence. Well, its creation is coincidental for the Odium fight, anyway. Vasher may have his own reasons for bringing Nightblood to Roshar.

If her intelligence and logic was leading her toward her atheism, or toward asking questions that challenged the ardents, and the ardentia was so strongly integrated into her father's court, it might be that her questions made them advise Gavilar to have her locked away "for her own good" (which of course really means for the stability of the kingdom). Logical Jasnah may have even eventually come to agree that this was a logical course of action to protect her family's power at some point, but not before screaming for help. This quote, and the one above re: getting clammy when she saw shadows going the wrong direction, suggests to me that she may have seen those shadows before, and it may have even led to some pretty severe consequences. (Edit: given how much Navani loves her, and how she refers to an "illness", I wouldn't be surprised if that's how Gavilar framed it to people--that she was just "sick" and had to "go away" for awhile.)

I took the “extra dead” comment a bit differently I guess. Stabbing someone would kill them. But in the case of a Herald, it seems that it might kill a physical body but the soul would always regenerate, just like the Fused. So the only way to “kill” a Herald is to trap its soul and prevent its ability to be regenerated. I mean, unless you have Nightblood. Lol so I think it stands to reason that Odium’s plan against the Oathpact ever being remade is to trap the souls of the Heralds which might then serve to free him from his prison? I don’t know. Its early and I have a baby that never sleeps so I’m happy to be wrong. Lol

I think the pact was not “go their separate ways” but rather a pact of non-interference. So it would be entirely consistent to be on the same planet, so long as they didn’t interfere with one another. And, given how we’ve seen Cultivation and Honor’s magic and spren act thus far, it seems like they upheld that pact.

@Void89 I don’t think he’s “better” per se; I think he took them off guard. That’s why honor and cultivation managed to bind him, because they were more prepared. And it’s probably why Endowment is unafraid. I got the sense that he struck when they were not expecting any threats at all.

Right?!?! (I’m a her, though, just because it IS pedantic-cast after all. Lol)