AquaRegia

Tress' fancy Inspector coat is... *cue dramatic music* ... RED AND GOLD. Clearly Lumar Royal Inspectors are also agents of the unholy Odium/Autonomy alliance.

Well said. I don't believe anyone is ever beyond redemption, and I think Brandon feels the same way. Where there is life, there is hope; all it takes is making different choices. He may keep making the easy choices... but Brandon has shown us MANY examples of characters coming back from the "dark side".

One of Brandon's tremendous strengths as a writer is his ability to give us "villians" who have believable motivations, relatable backstories, and don't see themselves as villains. Was The Lord Ruler a "villain"? To Kelsier and Vin, sure... but not in his own view. How about Kelsier? Is he a "good guy"? Depends on who you ask. Taravangian? Same. A Dalinar/Honor/Odium situation could certainly be seen in a similar vein. I definitely agree that we seem to be heading towards a Roshar vs Scadrial Cosmere struggle, and both sides will certainly see themselves as the "good guy". I expect it to be delicious.

Not knowing much about Arthurian legends, I was expecting the Black Bear to be none other than Cecil G. Bagsworth himself. After all the foreshadowing, I was somewhat surprised that he never made an appearance.

I seem to recall the promo material describing how the experts carefully choose which dimensions are fit for sale; ones where modern English does not exist are sold at discount prices. It certainly isn't random.

My impression is that 1) there is literally an infinite number of dimensions available, and 2) any fraction of infinity is still infinity. So no matter how unlikely it is for 5th century people to speak something resembling 21st century English, there are nevertheless an infinite number of such dimensions - and those are the ones selected for sale.

I really enjoyed The Long Earth series, and TFW brought it to my mind as well. I thought Baxter and Pratchett did a reasonably good job of showing how people's first (and second, and etc) schemes for commercial exploitation of the infinity of parallel Earths all ended up being, as you say, ridiculous. They "worked" for a short time, until the people on the buying end realized that (with infinity just a step away) there is always an easier or cheaper way, then they went bankrupt. I think one of the main themes of The Long Earth is that so much about our economic system is predicated on scarcity. If infinite resources suddenly become available, most "traditional" economic ideas can go right in the trash. I do wish this idea had been fleshed out more in the books.

Wondering if anyone else noticed the SNL callout in the Frugal Wizard™ promo material at the beginning of Part 4:

My Tress box finally arrived! I had already read the e-version of the novel, and while I enjoyed it, I didn't find it to be THAT compelling. I am, however, completely gobsmacked by the quality and beauty of the premium hardcover book itself. I knew, of course, that the delays in production and shipping were primarily due to Brandon's (and the team's) desire to do something special with the cover and interior artwork - and the difficulties presented thereby - but Rust and Ruin this thing is an absolute work of art. I don't even want to TOUCH it, never mind READING it! Kudos to the Dragonsteel team and to everyone else involved in the creation of of this utter storming masterpiece. I can understand a feeling of sticker shock at the $55 price tag if you are looking to buy it separately, but given the impressive amount of sweat, love, and craft that has gone into manufacturing this volume, honestly, it's a bargain.

*mind BLOWN* Big kudos to the "special" person who first noticed that! I think "fiddlygrak" is just a nonsense word Brandon made up so there would be an in-cosmere version of "balderdash" that isn't used here on Earth, analogous to the way characters use curses appropriate to their planet of origin: "Rust and Ruin", "storming", etc. It's a way to move the reader more fully into the cosmere.

I hope you enjoyed it. That was an awful lot of work to prove what we already knew: these moons are simply impossible for a variety of reasons, and the only way they can exist is "magic".

I'm a chemist by trade, so I know some things about natural crystals, less so about faceting gemstones. There is definitely a difference; crystalline substances NATURALLY form faces and edges, and the geometric relationship between them is determined by how the individual atoms pack together. So the shapes and arrangements of the facets of a natural crystal (e.g., quartz, pyrite, halite, etc.) depend solely on how the atoms arrange themselves according to the laws of physics. My understanding of gemcutting is that the best cuts for a specific type of mineral will depend on knowing what that mineral "wants" to do (sometimes described as its "crystal habit"), but if you are willing to work hard enough, you can put any kinds of facets you want on anything, as evidenced by "cut glass": glass is naturally amorphous and has no crystalline nature, but you can make it look like a cut gem.

Thank you so much for writing this, it was very illuminating and entertaining! Thanks also for including a Cosmere-themed puzzle this year. P.S. Your art is wonderful; thanks for sharing.

Have you read the whole book? I don't think anyone wants to toss out spoilers for someone who hasn't read the book!

@Serity very thought-provoking post. As an upper middle class white male American, it's very easy and comfortable for me to think MY reality is everyone's reality, and it's frequently difficult for authors to escape their "box". Thanks for the opportunity for me to think outside mine. As I'm sure you know, Sanderson has created numerous worlds (and dozens of cultures) in his Cosmere works. He himself has explicitly asserted, multiple times, that of all of them, Northern Scadrial was always intended to be the most "Earthlike" - meaning the most familiar to the audience. While he certainly boasts worldwide readership, I'm confident that the vast majority of his readers are either American or reside in closely aligned "modern" "Western" countries. It's no surprise, then, that Scadrial was very intentionally modeled after the Western culture we inherit from the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. As other Cosmere works show (e.g., Elantris, The Emperor's Soul, Warbreaker, the sprawling patchwork of diversity that is Roshar in the Stormlight Archives), he's quite willing and capable of writing very different, non-Americentric cultures and histories as well.

This is correct. Also, according to the Coppermind, Wax made some: There are many things about the "balance" in the Scadrial system we don't fully understand: - Kelsier said he always felt Ruin was more powerful than Preservation... so maybe balance has always been an illusion. - Lerasium is not the only manifestation of Preservation; the Mists are the gaseous form of that Investiture. - Humans are believed to contain more Preservation than Ruin, and they are "in the world". - We've only seen a fraction of Scadrial on screen; we have no idea what's happening with the Malwish, the Maskless, and the whole rest of the planet.

LOL. You are not the first one here to love Wayne (I love him SO MUCH), nor are you the first to answer this quiz with non-Stormlight characters. ;-)

Fantastic review, and I'm glad you enjoyed it so much! Mistborn Era 1 is definitely also one of my favorite fiction trilogies ever. Be forewarned: Mistborn Era 2, beginning with The Alloy of Law, is a VERY different thing. Many aspects of these novels are - quite intentionally - drastically different. The tone and style were crafted to reflect a different genre of fiction, and the reduced length and complexity represented an unwelcome change for some readers. I love Era 2 every bit as much as Era 1. Many of your questions are answered, or at least, addressed. But be ready for a new kind of ride!

My feeling - based simply on the texts and the WoBs people have posted, not all WoBs ever - is that axi are the cosmere analog of atoms. I think that just as "mass-energy" in our universe takes the form of atoms, "mass-energy-investiture" in the cosmere takes the form of axi. Axi often look and act like atoms do... except when they don't. For example, under a wide variety of conditions, axi form what would seem to us to be familiar elements and compounds; my guess is that a cosmere periodic table will exist and look pretty similar to ours. But because investiture is a thing, there are a few very important differences. Godmetals exist, and they don't (CAN'T, in fact) fit anywhere in OUR periodic table. Under the right circumstances, some metal axi can be swallowed and then disappear when used to "unlock" investiture-based powers, or can have investiture stored in them. These behaviors follow rules that we (and the in-cosmere characters) understand only incompletely right now, but we know Brandon has ideas about - and people working on - what the final form of the rules will turn out to be. Bottom line: the cosmere has axi INSTEAD of atoms. They are similar in many ways, but definitely not the same.

That is, in fact, exactly what the WoBs say. Sodium is NOT "salt", it's an alkali metal. It reacts rapidly with air and quite violently with water. Salts are compounds; table salt is sodium chloride.

Shucks, it looks like neither of our ideas matches Brandon's. Seems that "The Origin" isn't really the origin of the Highstorm, just "East" for Roshar.

Au contraire, mon frere. I think what @lacrossedeamon is trying to say is that it's not the AUTHOR telling us they are Allomancers... it's STERIS. She's never seen any use of non-Scadrian magic; it would be unreasonable to expect her to identify it as such. She interprets what she sees through her experience, and she could certainly be wrong. If we've learned anything about Brandon, it's that he LOVES an unreliable narrator. I also don't like the idea of Skybreakers using Surgebinding on Scadrial at this point, and I have not yet heard an explanation for it that I can buy. It doesn't work with what we know so far. But given that this is fantasy fiction, I'm willing to consider the possibility that Brandon has something in mind to make it work. There's always another secret!

I've been convinced for years now that every time Shallan uses a Shardblade in WoR it's Testament. I think the evidence is insurmountable. It's not exactly that; more like "Testament isn't a regular deadeye" because she is still bonded (to some degree) to her original Radiant. What people think of as "regular deadeyes" are spren who broke their bonds a thousand years ago... and Maya and Adolin are showing that even that's not the whole story.

Not gonna lie, this made me laugh out loud... and I think it's a great point. Occam's Razor is a useful tool in science and philosophy, but given that literature is neither, Chekhov's Gun may in fact be a more apt principle to invoke in this case. While I tend to lean in favor of @Frustration's interpretation, Brandon clearly had some reason for including the "is this legal?" line.

Just WILD. That is such a completely different way of envisioning the travel of the Highstorm than I had! I'd always been in the camp of the "modern" Alethi Stromwardens in imagining it as a constant pole-to-pole ring, rotating over the surface from east to west. Admittedly (now that I think on it), that image has the disadvantage of requiring the poles (or, at least, two antipodal points) to be "constant Highstorm" areas. If your interpretation is correct - that the Highstorm literally "originates" at a single point and spreads outward in all directions - it would be an ever-widening circle for the first half of its journey, then a decreasing circle for the second half, disappearing at the "AntiOrigin". Sorry if that sounds redundant (or remedial), but I'm a reasonably smart guy who just never pictured it that way, and my mind is moderately blown. In either case, though, I think there is significant textual evidence of the Highstorm being aligned more or less north-to-south as it crosses the continent of Roshar. This supports the idea that either 1) the axis of rotation of the single constant Storm ring lies at or near the poles, or 2) the Origin and AntiOrigin lie at or near the equator. By the way, @Frustration, I love this idea and definitely agree it's likely to be important. Another feather in your cosmere cap!