Shardlet

I totally get where you are coming from. Unfortunately however, written communication loses much of the nuance of face-to-face communication in the loss of tone of voice and inflection, facial cues, and gestures. This is why people have had a lot of problems with email communication. A benign message can frequently be read as hostile and aggressive without special consideration. Without care, misunderstandings abound.

Welcome, Jaller. Glad to have you in our community. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

True. But, until we know which events, parts, and characters will be preserved...

I think part of the problem is that you don't include any indicators (such as a ) when you post jokes. At times it is not obvious that you are joking (I would think especially to those whose primary language is not English). There have been times when I did not realize you were telling a joke until a second (or third) reading.

Currently, yes. But non-canonically since it has not been published and there will be substantial changes to the story.

Aether, does replacing the 'u' and the 'c' with a * really make that much of a difference? While you did not write the actual word, the effect is identical. We all read and heard the actual word. Please, (I earnestly request this) recognize the spirit of the rule rather than simply the letter of it.

The case between Ruin and Preservation was a special one because the intents of the shards were directly opposed to one another. I suspect that the same applies to the manner of Preservation's imprisonment of Ruin. In contrast, Honor and Odium do not appear to be directly opposed in intent. We must also consider what aspect of Honor is Honor's guiding intent and what aspect of Odium is Odium's guiding intent. Once we have that info, we would be much better equipped to speculate about what the Oathpact was and how it was entered into (that is, assuming we don't learn about it more directly before then). If Honor was to directly attack Odium in the way that Vin directly attacked Ruin, I very much doubt that the effect would be the same or even similar.

I think the first five will be the re-establishment of the KR and the second five will be dealing with the desolation itself.

It seems that you are trying to straddle a 50/50 split and needing to have more Preservation than Ruin to be sentient. I'm not sure it would work that way. For one thing, it seems that if that were the case, the genetics of a feruchemist and an allomancer producing children would essentially cancel each other out. Also, it seems unlikely that Preservation would have chosen a group of people to put less of himself into (which also kind of suggests that they would be less-sentient). I don't see how Preservation would have known that such an action would result in a different kind of investiture. And that is the only reason I can readily conceive of why Preservation would take such an action.

<cough, cough> Ruin and Preservation <cough> The fact that feruchemy is/was found in the Terris people exclusively suggests otherwise to me. If it was a result of the creation of humanity, then I would expect seeds of feruchemy to be more scattered and single metal feruchemists here and there.

I'm not sure that it is confirmed, per se, that the recipient is on Yolen. But a dragon is correct and Brandon indicated that is was someone whom we had not yet met.

Their bargain could have been rather early in their shard careers. That being the case, they would not have been so consumed by their intents that they could have used the power outside of the scope of their shards' intents, similar to how Vin was able to directly act to kill Ati.

I think a good example of Preservation working outside of his intent is when the mist-spirit stabbed Elend. Although it could be argued that he did it in order to work to preserve Ruin's prison, The action had no direct effect on that goal. He was intending to influence Vin, but that outcome was by no means assured. Indeed, he failed to do so. 'Well,' you might say, 'the Lerasium was there as a backup.' Yes, but again, in order to get Elend to burn it, he could only try to communicate to Vin, and convince her, that it would save Elend...possibly.

Even so, a substantial portion of the gem is going to be lost during recutting and discarding of pieces unsuitable for other uses. Yes, but how long does it take for a gemheart to develop to an economically advantageous level? How old are the pre-chasmfiends, chasmfiends, and other greatshells? Then you must consider keeping the greatshells from premature slaughter and illicit harvesting by rivals and thieves. It would likely take a long time and a lot of seed money to get that industry off the ground.

I always take the dust jacket off my harcovers when I go to read them and place the jacket in the bookshelf where the book was previously. Keeps it safe, keeps it nice. As to why a dust jacket, it is very definitely for marketing purposes. The front cover of a book can make an enormous difference as to whether someone picks up the book off the shelf. My wife in particular can be very attracted by a good cover and turned off of a poor cover. But the cost of doing something particularly nice on the cover of the book itself is quite expensive. The jacket is a better canvas and much cheaper. Though I much prefer the title and author to be embossed on the binding rather than simply printed on.

It seems like a clunky translation to me. I expect that when SA3 comes out we'll be able to make a better judgement. Right now, I agree with your interpretation of 'Truthless'.

Glad to have you with us, Cad. Welcome. I hope to hear some of your own ideas soon.

Welcome, Adam. Glad to have you with us. The only Cosmere I see missing from your list is Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell which is a short story in the George R.R. Martin compiled collection called Dangerous Women. Don't limit yourself to Brandon's cosmere works though. Alcatraz is a lot of fun, the Rithmatist is quite good, and Steelheart is enjoyable as well. Brandon also has a number of short stories on his website that are interesting as well (particularly Elysium). And that is not to mention the short works (ebooks) like the two Infinity Blade novelettes as well as Firstborn (a great sci-fi character piece) that you can get from Amazon or other sellers.

I think it just means that Isaac is a fanboy! Seriously though, I agree.

However, I would like to see some description of what he feels before I get on board with Szeth feeling the Thrill. The quote you gave, Aether, seems to me to be more mundane, similar to you or I would feel before and during a competition of some kind. Perhaps we will get a better picture in WoR, but for the time being, I am going to hedge on this one.

A more compelling question to me is: If a smoker is burning copper and a seeker is burning bronze while standing to the direct south of the smoker just outside the radius of the coppercloud and a soother is burning brass while standing directly north of the smoker just outside the radius of the coppercloud, can the seeker sense the soother? If yes, are the pulses harder to sense than if the smoker was not burning copper?

I don't think Lirin does tell him that. I pretty sure Laral speaks to him about it and/or that the farmers kids (including Jost) speak about it.

I pronounce both the 'S' and the 'Z' in Szeth. It almost sounds like a half-lisped 'S'. I say Tair-uh-van-gee-un and Sad-ee-us.

I thought we had a direct confirmation, but I don't see one anywhere. That being said, I think it is very unlikely to be a coincidence.

Well, Firstborn is somewhat of a special case. In my opinion it is the most character-driven of his works that I can think of off the top of my head. And, as Topomouse pointed out, Legion is/was intended to be essentially an episodic procedural crime show. Legion was written to be a pilot show in order to sell the idea to studios. The scope of the plot is far more limited in its importance to the world it is set in than most (if not all) of Brandon's other works. And, as you pointed out, you have a small plot-line to over-arch the entire series (the search for the woman), but this plot is not integral to the story line of the novella (at ~18,000 words it is on the extreme short end of the novella range).