happyman

Yes, and this means that the little article there wasn't completely made up. Not that it's necessarily true, but they incorporate elements of truth that apparently aren't common knowledge into it.

My two cents: Brandon tends to use real-world physics as a basis for his systems than older theories (although he knows not to follow it slavishly). This follows a very long tradition of using our best current understanding of the world as a place to start crafting fiction. Thus rather than using the classical elements (which are really just an outmoded physical theory), Brandon is more likely to use "fundamental forces" as a basis.

Her power definitely does not include *only* her. We actually see it in action later, and the fact that it acts exactly like a speed bubble, but the other direction, is made very clear. She probably just misspoke, or perhaps simply assumed that nobody else would want to be included. And I agree, this bit of dialogue definitely telegraphed that her power would be useful at the end of the book. Of course, I wasn't completely certain how...

That probably will be wrapped up in any sequel. After all, Brandon said he might do a sequel, and a sequel without that book in it would be a very odd place to start. Even with that, though, I'm guessing unsavory elements are going to successfully breed a new Mistborn, and that how they do it isn't going to be particularly nice.

Thanks! As for highlighting the ability: I kinda get the feeling that it is related to Wayne's character. His skills are absolutely, 100% perfectly suited for the type of lifestyle known as "con man and petty thief". It is also well-suited for "vigilante investigating, when somewhat restrained". "Professions" like that require an absolutely amazing amount of confidence and the ability to make people see what you want them to see, as well as the ability to observe others closely. Given the nature of the Roughs, Wayne would have had plenty of opportunity and motivation to practice; both jobs are much safer job when people don't realize you were a criminal/cop/impostor until you're five miles away, and even then, all they remember is the persona. From a meta-fiction standpoint, these qualities are also perfectly suited for that type of character known as "comic relief" and "quirky sidekick." Don't forget that this book was essentially a side project that grew into a full story. If Brandon liked the character, there doesn't have to be a compelling world-building reason for him to be like that.

Good thing, although I'm guessing that these events are really part of what will lead up to the second trilogy, and can't be completely stopped by the characters. I.e. I suspect there are long-term plot reasons why Wax's success was partial.

My theory? He's a fun character with interesting quirks and a few extraordinary talents (above and beyond Allomancy) who managed to survive in the Roughs. Anybody who can do that will have extraordinary skills; you can tell, because they are still alive. Yeah, it seems supernatural, but I feel that all it really shows is a deep and abiding and life-long interest in other people, combined with natural talent and a somewhat dissociated personality.

Here is this thread. Sorry. Read it and you'll get a pretty good idea of why none of it was used.

Good point. Not only was it a natural outgrowth of their previous religion, but it also has that "It's our guy who became the new god!" nationalistic feel to it. Given that before his Ascension, Sazed was essentially an uncrowned king, and after the ascension, he was their god...yeah, the Terris people almost certainly, as a group, began following the Path. I mean, you could make a pretty good case that by following it, they were just reverting to their ancestral (and essentially true) religion.

Tricky question. My thoughts on the subject are that the Ars Arcanum's tend to be incomplete. From a meta-fiction standpoint, this is to document the powers in a single place without spoilers, and with the "in-world" justification, it also allows them to match the readers beliefs without being strictly "true" (see Atium and Malatium). The fact that Brandon has created an in-world author for all of them is very interesting. I cannot help but think, then, that the author is learning right along with us, although he (she?) probably manages to put the information in a better metaphysical context than we do. For instance, the fact that the Fering powers aren't completely documented until the end of "Alloy of Law" strongly suggests that the author didn't have this information until Feruchemy became relatively widespread on Scandrial and all the basic metals were generally available and understood.

Do they lack cognitive abilities, or are their cognitive abilities just very small? I mean, how intelligent is your average chair or vase, anyway? Apparently they have some cognitive ability (Shallan talks to a pitcher, or at least, that is how she interprets the sensation) but not much.

Go ahead. It's been a while since I read them, and it's hard to regain the older perspective. We've had this kind of thing before, and it's been fun.

I feel like the ending was unsatisfying in much the same way the ending to Well of Ascension was unsatisfying. I'm not certain whether I want a sequel in the "interim," or if I'd rather see how it all falls out for the "official" second trilogy.

All I can say is, I don't think you'll be disappointed.

I'd just like to note that even though Special Relativity was around about the same time as the automobile, actually sensing things like warps in space-time was well beyond the experimental science of the day. Still is, really. I agree, though, that we are missing something. That's not uncommon when you start sneaking up on one of Brandon's ideas when you don't have enough info.

This may be true; the "arithmetic" of souls may well be more complex that 1+1=2 (plenty of things are). My fundamental point is, the patches are never as effective as they were in the original context. Thus you can't get a fully sentient creature by just patching in the sentient part from another. You need at least two patches. However, it's entirely in line with Hemalurgy that you then get more than full sentience from two patches, e.g. the blessing comes along as well. We also know that it is possible to have more than two patches, which results in an unusually powerful, but not notably more intelligent, Kandra. (TenSoon was pretty intelligent to begin with, but the extra blessing didn't seem to affect that one way or the other.)

The distinction between science fiction and fantasy is thinner than an atom, and breached just as often. You have the extremes of Hard Science Fiction, it which it should (at least in principle) be possible in the world as we know it, and Extreme Fantasy, in which the rules are explicitly left vague and mystical and absolutely impossible in anything like the real world. Then you have everything else in between. Anything which is claimed to occur connected to the "real" world has to pay a certain amount of lip service to science; otherwise the telephones and refrigerators, not to mention computers, stop working. Even in stand-alone fantasy worlds, commonality between the way our world works and their world is needed or else we can't relate. Somewhere in this mess, there might be a line, but good luck ever getting two different people to agree on the details.

I seriously don't have time to track it down (I've been looking!), but from one of the annotations, I believe Brandon said that Bronze is definitely an internal metal. It changes something inside the Allomancer, making them capable of feeling vibrations in the fabric of reality. Not Allomancy: Vibrations in reality. It tightens reality around them, or something. I am totally on-board with the idea that it could sense other magic systems as well.

Don't give me too much credit. After all, it is possible for Kandra to have four spikes, or two blessings. Two is just the minimum needed. And it doesn't surprise me in the slightest that the blessings give a bit more than just sentience (e.g. the blessing). For Kandra blessings, the hemalurgic decay appears to mean that you get less than a full "person" per spike, but more than half.

The mechanism varies from work to work. Sometimes you go through an alternate space in which the laws of physics are different and FTL is allowed. Other times the universe bends, just like you said. Issac Asimov used so-called hyperspace, and even had an early short story in which the time of traversal was a plot point (he claimed that later technology got around that fact). The time-travel part comes from the fact that (best we can tell nowadays) the basic structure of the universe in which we live is space-time. Space and time together. They are literally inseparable in modern physics. When you start moving, the classical effects of Einstein's special relativity are due to the fact that you are moving at a different "angle" through space-time than is the place you started from. Of the many side effects is the fact that the term "instantaneous" has no meaning for points that are widely separated by space. If you jump "instantaneously" from point A to point B, there will be another observer for whom you appeared before you left. No matter how you do the math, if you have an instantaneous drive and as long as Special Relativity is locally true everywhere, you will be able to also travel in time along your own timeline.

I'd love it if this was true, but do you have a quotation for that?

Apparently you can't snap more than once. Anyone who had been tried and hadn't snapped wasn't even considered by the mists, apparently. Once you had been out in the mists and nothing had happened, you could go out in them without trouble for the rest of your life. If you had been nobility and beaten into submission to point where you would have snapped if you could have, the mists apparently didn't even try. I don't know why. Maybe you did snap, but didn't have any actual powers?

How about "Terminator"? I mean seriously. The stories about TLR's healing ability were exaggerated, but not by much.

Folks, it seems to me that y'all are overthinking this. The real reason two are needed? Hemalurgy always comes at a cost. If a spike killed a single sentient person (taking the bit of preservation needed for sentience), and then created a single, sentient Kandra, that would be balanced. There would be no Hemalurgic decay. For Hemalurgy to always come at a cost, the number of spikes needed to be two at least.

I remember that back before the book came out, Brandon came here to do some research on how time bubbles would affect things moving in and out, like light. The basic conclusion we came to was that the real-world effects would be unmanageable as part of a useful magic system. So be aware that when you discuss this, a certain amount of handwavium will have to be invoked.