happyman

Teft is unlikely to be a Herald, if for no other reason than we have seen a viewpoint from him and he doesn't seem to know enough. Even insane, I would expect them to have more than that. The concept of race is a tricky one, biologically speaking. In humans, certain traits tend to pop up more in certain areas, and while that may have a deeper cause, most often it's just chance. What we call races are actually extremely fluid. In this case, I think the description is saying that she doesn't fit any of the current correlations between traits and culture that have randomly popped up in relatively recent history.

I think this statement is not correct. In my view, Scandrial was messed up and unstable, but the Lord Ruler and his government was managing to hold it up so that most people couldn't see how it was slowly slipping lower. When tLR died, he dropped his part entirely, and it began failing more quickly. It was falling the entire time, however.

I agree with those who feel that the Fain/Matt ending wasn't built up as well as it could have been. Then I find myself wondering, when, exactly, such a buildup would be possible? I conclude that, with what RJ had left, there really wasn't any place to put it without throwing off the rest of the pacing, so I'll just have to take one climax which is a little too fast. What else could have been done?

My bad. I'll stop talking now. I believe you are quite correct. I personally feel that it should not work that way, but I now remember that it is otherwise. I have no idea how the 13 linked women can beat any man, but it does have a nice symmetry to it. Maybe it's a qualitative difference, rather than quantitative. (Or in other words, the ability to shield is not a function strictly of power.) As for deftness of the weaves, I also vaguely remember seeing RJ's comments on that as well. So I really will shut up now.

The thing about circles is that they aren't linear. That is, if person A has power x and person B has power y, the resulting circle is not equivalent to "x+y". It is stronger. In WoT, men are generally stronger channelers than women, but women's ability to link, combined with a non-linear increase in power as they link, they can overpower any single man. Since men can't link without women, this is an enormous balancing force in the universe it its own right. [sarcasm]And I am absolutely certain it does not reflect in any way on Jordan's views of how women and men use power.[/sarcasm]

My take? Yes, it is a decent series. You won't regret reading through it to the end. Some of the books were kind of slow; on my reread, I found myself dragging enormously in Path of Daggers and Crossroads of Twilight. They are worth making it through, though. Part of the problem, in my opinion, is that the books just took too darn long to write. The story is very good, but when you have had fans who have invested two-thirds of their life in it, it's not hard to see the expectations going higher than could ever possibly be satisfied. As a new reader, you would be just fine. I agree with the comments about Jordan and Brandon with Darkness, but RJ has different weaknesses as a writer that hurt the series. I'm just glad we got a decent ending.

Did you know that Theoryland actually had to devote an entire thread just to bashing Egwene, so that the others could actually have interesting conversations? Please, please, please don't become like that here. It gets irritating. I honestly don't care.

This. By "Knife of Dreams," which I would place roughly at start of the transition into the third act (long series means everything gets stretched out, esp. for difference character arcs), things were already picking up even without Brandon.

I once ran into a similar problem with another book. The claim I heard was that, because they are often not active sales, there is some quirk in the complex price-setting system which irrationally "bids up" the price if no people intervene. Certainly prices like that sound like a bug to me, so take it for what it is worth.

The turning bit is subtle. I actually suspect it is foreshadowing. As far as I can tell, there is essentially torture involved to make the person turn, and I suspect, by analogy with the DO winning, that you don't actually turn until you "agree" to it. Nobody said the choice was always easy. As for Compulsion, I would note that only the most subtle bits of compulsion leave you yourself. The kind that gets rid of all choice essentially kills you (e.g. if the weave is removed, you are dead). If you get hit with compulsion, either you are effectively dead or you are faced with much narrower set of choices. This is morally equivalent to many other non-magical situations in which I still consider choice important. Choices are not absolute. Others choices can limit yours, sometimes quite extraordinarily.

Choosing to be good is very clearly a good thing, in WoT. I think the point is more philosophical: If the possibility of evil does not exist, does the concept of good even mean anything? If Rand killed the Dark One, which was apparently philosophically possible, then apparently even the metaphysical idea of evil would cease to exist. People literally would have no choice about what they made themselves to be, any more than the Turned have no choice to be evil. I think that, just like the bore needed to be sealed to stop evil from overwhelming the world, so it is better to choose good than evil. Having that choice is important, though.

Nah. Only a small part of the sun near the center is actually a thermonuclear reactor. The rest is just really, really hot.

There's been lots of speculation in this regard. I don't think it's been confirmed, but it certainly makes sense.

It can't. She's already changed things from what she saw in her visions. Perhaps even more telling, in the visions, the Dragon's peace did hold the Seanchen, until the Aiel managed to get it broken. I suspect that in the new world, things will play out differently. That's almost certainly what the visions were for.

So far, it's been less backlash, more discussion. One thing I would have to say is that in WoT, they made it pretty clear that the decision to fight the Dark One was not just Rand's. He was the point man, as it were, but the decisions made by all the other people mattered as well. Egwene, Mat, Galad, everybody who fought and continued to fight and refused to let the Dark One control them, even to death, kept the pattern intact and the Dark One at bay. Rand represented them, but he did not make the decision for them, and I suspect he drew a large part of his strength from their decisions. I like this difference, because in so much fiction, it's only the heroes choices that matter in the end. Not in WoT. Every two rivers archer who continued to fight, every Ashaman who didn't give in, every peasant who slowed down a trolloc, every borderlander who spit in the dark ones eye---they all brought order and strength which strengthened the pattern.

Androl is what you get when you allow Brandon Sanderson to play with gateways. Which is part of why I enjoy Brandon Sanderson's magic systems just so much. All you can do is gateways? Well, gateways will win the day.

All I can say is that I have read the parts of Liar of Partinel on Brandon's website. If that stays canon, then the backstory behind Yolen is already quite complicated even without the other shardworlds. Thus I hesitate to speculate much about what happened there.

Describing the world as having been dieing for a thousand years, as of the end of HoA, is not an exaggeration. This is just one more symptom of that.

Now that I see Eric's latest post, I am thinking that efficiency really is the key question, and how it relates to storing weight/mass/whatever. The thing about bullet wounds is that (unless the bullet actually goes through you) all of the energy gets transferred into the person shot. There are different ways that that energy can be delivered, though. Some of it goes into heat. Some of it gets translated into destroying chemical and physical bonds (e.g. ripping organs apart, breaking bones, etc). Some of it gets converted into the kinetic energy of the entire person. How much it does of each would depend on how storing/tapping affects the physical properties of the person hit. They also would affect how likely the person is to survive the wound. For instance, if storing/tapping weight just changes the force of gravity, but nothing else, bullets would have exactly the same effect on the feruchemist as on a normal person. If storing/tapping weight changes the mass of the person, and all accompanied parts proportionately, it would do less damage overall (because feruchemical mass change in this case does not conserve energy, and any resulting kinetic energy transfered, either as heat or total kinetic energy, would be experienced as less by the feruchemist), but the proportions which affect the transfer would also probably change. Basically, it comes down to how much the other fundamental forces which hold the atoms/molecules/cells together react to the change in mass. Since at this point, I'm pretty sure that the cosmere doesn't act like the real world at this level (see: surges on Roshar) I think we should conclude that (a) Brandon's presentation isn't necessarily nuts, but (B)/> isn't necessarily like the real world, either.

The basic assumption seems reasonable. The more you have to store, the more you will have to draw on later. It seems like the inverse of Wayne's situation at the end of AoL, where he has to let his leg heal naturally because storing healing will just slow him down over all. Or similarly, I suspect that healing would work much less effectively on somebody who is naturally and chronically sick before discovering they are a gold ferring. As for compounding, well, yes, technically you might get more if you are stronger when you start. The only case where this could possibly matter would be if you are going up against another pewter compounder. In that case, though, have a stronger base strength probably would help.

From what I remember, Brandon shuffled the names for the three metallic arts before canonically assigning any one to its corresponding actual system. I think he ended up with a decent set of names, but I don't think the names were meant to have any inherent meaning, just useful general connotations in English.

This quote is what I believe also. Whether it is true or not is what is being discussed in this thread.

OK. Did he say anything about what Yolen's relationship to Adonalsium was?

Perhaps a simple example will explain the relevant differences: Mass is what you have the same of no matter where you go. In orbit, on the moon, on Jupiter, you have the same mass. In normal physics, it is what determines your acceleration in response to given forces. In F=ma, m is the mass. Weight is the total force that you feel due to gravity. You have less weight on the surface of the moon than you do on Earth. On an earth-like planet, it can be approximated as F=mg, with 'F' the weight, 'm' the same mass as in F=ma, and g being planet- and surface-dependent. Another important concept is pressure. Pressure is the force per unit area. Pressure is typically what causes slicing damage; the total force is not very high, but it is only on a small part of the material. The material gives. A little extra mass in the part that gives would technically increase its resistance, but likely not enough to make a life-saving difference. Changing mass would be consistent with the statements: "bullets still go through me" and "I weigh less". It would also be consistent with the statement "Bullets, on average, tend to do less damage, as do long falls. But bullets are still plenty dangerous, thanks the same." Changing weight (e.g. the lashing with the planet) would also keep the first two statements, but the third would become false; bullets would be exactly as dangerous as before. Long falls, on the other hand, are more complicated.