Brandon Sanderson's The Stormlight Archive

I am reliably informed by the internet that The Book of Endless Pages was going to be the title of Words of Radiance until Sanderson decided it would be a bit on the nose.

I am completely pulling out of my ass that Sanderson's delaying Book 3 in hopes of advances in printer technology that will ensure he can make the books as long as he wants.

I'm aware. I'm thinking books seven through ten will be Kindle exclusives for which each page is uploaded as soon as it's finished, which should be about fifty a week.

Speaking of non sequiters, I love the apparent rule from the back cover and something Syl said that Surgebinders are universally broken. Because if you're going to torture your characters anyway, might as well have an excuse for it.

On a Reddit thread the other day someone asked what the Stormlight Archive's main themes were. My answer was "If you want magic swords and cool superpowers, you better have a fucked up past".

I suppose a more polite way of saying it would be "someone who has been broken can be made stronger through the Power of Friendship," but that's no fun.

~rikalous, who's your favorite character?

Shallan. I like utter smartasses and geeky scholar types for reasons that are totally non-narcissistic, and the fact that the heroic power she grows into is lying for great justice is something you don't see too often. I mean, the Guile Hero isn't exactly a new thing per se, but guys like Miles Vorkosigan or Mat Cauthon were already trickstery little fuckers before the action started. Shallan's development is more like Rand going from never having touched a sword to a blademaster, or Egwene going from never having knowingly seen magic to Queen Boss Mage, except with trickstering instead of swordplay or magic. (Ignoring for a moment her magic sword and the fact that magic comes along with the trickstering.)

Szeth's new best bud would be a strong contender if they weren't disqualified for being a transplant from another book. I have a soft place in my heart for a character whose personality can be described using the phrase "homicidal puppy."

Shallan's character is just so good. I find her backstory more compelling and relatable than Kaladin's, and her development is gradual enough to be believable and so, so satisfying.

I started rereading The Way of Kings recently. Damn, but I forgot how dense the book is (and I mean that in the sense of "filled with detail", not "difficult to get through"). I noticed a half-dozen significant things in the first few chapters that I completely missed the first time around. (For example, the New Meat solider in the beginning describes Kaladin proto-surgebinding without understanding what it is, Szeth mentions the fact that his eyes become light as "unique to his blade", one of the bystanders in Dalinar's first vision curses by saying "three gods!"...)

And I've already read Way of Kings more than once, though this is the first time I've reread it since reading Words of Radiance. I expect rereading WOR is going to be even more of that.

I KNOW. Every freaking time, you notice a dozen new things. Tiny little pieces of foreshadowing are hidden everywhere.

For example, I can't remember the exact line, but there was one point where Shallan is remembering killing her father, and she remembers "her father's body on the ground. A silvery blade. Ten heartbeats." It was only on my third read that I realized only the first one is in relation to her killing her father. The latter two are her remembering killing her mother, hiding the memory by mixing it with the first.

There are a few other times foreshadowing is hidden like that, with a line that sounds like it means one thing with synonyms when it means more. The series tagline, for example.

Right, I hadn't thought about that. The Everstorm's come, but the True Desolation and the Night of Sorrows probably aren't the same thing. We're on book two of ten, it's a bit early for an apocalypse.

Though given what the Everstorm is gonna do to the world, it's hard to argue that it doesn't qualify as one.

Maybe it's one of several. I mean, we haven't yet seen stuff like thunderclasts or midnight essences.

"So here's this event. It's basically TwentyTwelve meets IRobot. Pretty good prelude to the real apocalypse, right?"

edited 30th Apr '15 10:50:19 AM by Durazno

I think that it simply is a full War not just one battle. The Everstorm is the opening shot. It will go downhill from here.

edited 30th Apr '15 12:44:24 PM by 3of4

Something else I just belatedly realized. Kaladin talks about hating the Weeping, when it rains for four weeks straight with no highstorms (except one, right in the middle). He talks about it making him feel unmotivated, apathetic, lethargic. I figured that was just a reference to his depression — which it is — but it's also a hint at his surgebinding. No highstorms means no stormlight. Inhaling stormlight makes you more active, more energetic, more motivated. If Kaladin had been doing that in small doses, then his depression during the Weepings makes sense.

Of course, it also raises questions over how long he's had some level of surgebinding. It definitely manifests (if only in minor ways) by the time he's a squadleader in the army, before he kills the shardbearer. The Weeping thing goes back further, to before he even joined the army. I'm not sure how far back it goes, but by the time he's 15, he's recognized the pattern and says that it always happens to him, so I'd guess at least four or five years at that point. 10 year old Kaladin as a proto-surgebinder? Maybe so! It might also explain his natural talent with fighting.

There's also Seasonal Affective Disorder.

I'd be more inclined to believe that Kaladin's issues with the Weeping had to do with being a surgebinder if Shallan or any other surgebinder had mentioned something similar. Given the thing where they need to be broken, by their nature they could all use a pick-me-up. I'm with Ninety on this.

Dito

Being deprived could affect different surgebinders differently, too.

Shallan seems to have repressed her Surgebinding abilities thanks to her incredibly fucked-up past. It's not beyond reason that Kaladin used them as a kid much more actively than Shallan ever did.

None of the other surgebinders we've seen have had Kaladin's issues with depression, either. I'm not saying that the lack of stormlight causes his depression, just that it aggravates the existing condition — he goes through cycles of depression, but the Weeping always brings one on because of the lack of stormlight.

We do know that surgebinders can use their powers unconsciously, even without having sworn any of the Ideals. It doesn't seem that farfetched to me to go from "using stormlight unconsciously" to "being unconsciously affected by lack of stormlight".

edited 3rd May '15 2:44:28 PM by NativeJovian

Fair points, all. Hm. How to distinguish between SAD and his going off his antidepressants.

If he still has the issues with the Weeping when he's got access to regular doses of stormlight through it, that'd be evidence pointing towards SAD. Not conclusive, since he could be Pavloving by that point, but suggestive.

SAD is a personality disorder, right? AFAIK, those can be induced by circumstance as well as being just inborn.

I believe that Kaladin suffers from basic depression (actually, I think it'd technically be bipolar disorder, with episodes of depression balanced by relatively mild "manic" episodes) rather than seasonal affective disorder, given that he has symptoms that have nothing to do with the season. That the Weepings always make him depressed is an exception; we never hear anything about other seasons causing him particular trouble.

No, he most definitely has depression (I believe that's even WOG). But that's not necessarily mutually exclusive with something like SAD. Which I just noticed is a very appropriate acronym.