Brandon Sanderson's The Stormlight Archive

Although, why shouldn't Dalinar personally duel the champion?

I'm assuming that, if you're flush with stormlight, you're going to be about as physically fit as anyone else who's holding the same amount of stormlight, regardless of your normal level of athleticism. So if Dalinar doesn't have to worry about his age holding him back, then as the Radiant who (so far) has the most practical combat experience, he seems like a natural pick.

He just admitted he's not near the best duelist. So I don't think he would.

No matter how cool it would be for him to use his Shardblade.

I don't believe it's ever come up, so it could as easily work like Pewterarming where the higher your base stats the higher your buffed stats.

And on the King T thing, his heart may be in the right place but he's also known to be kind of dim. Probably safer not to give him too much authority.

I keep hoping Jasnah will show up sooner rather than later as I'm sure she could provide Dalinar with some insight on how to best approach the various heads of state. I'm guessing she doesn't know the exact location of Urithiru? Or else she would have just directly Elsecalled there, assuming she had enough Stormlight.

On the subject of Urithiru, I'm really looking forward to seeing the place completely up and running. We have gotten enough hints to indicate that it will be a true marvel of engineering once they have a steady supply of Stormlight and figure out how everthing works.

I was under the impression that she couldn't Elsecall for the moment, since the spren are pissed at her and crossing back over is a bad idea. That's why she dropped out at some random spot in the wilderness instead of in the middle of Kholinar (which she knows has an Oathgate) or the Kholin warcamp. But yes, I suspect even if she can Elsecall with no trouble, she wouldn't be able to jump straight to Urithiru because she has no idea where it is.

As for her diplomacy, I'm pretty sure that Navani is a better diplomat than Jasnah. Jasnah doesn't negotiate, she bowls over everyone else. That works fine when she just wants access to a library or whatever, but it will take more than that to unite the world.

I get the impression that even before becoming an Elsecaller, Jasnah has done her fair share of travelling. Also, she did show a willingness to compromise and help when dealing with Taravingian...wich probably isn't saying much.

Regardless, having a scholar who can teleport at will across the world would definetly help Dalinar's diplomatic efforts.

Also, I hadn't thought about the possibility that Jasnah wasn't Elsecalling because entering Shadesmar might be dangerous for her. I had simply assumed that it was a combination of her inexperience with her new powers combined with a lack of readily available Stormlight.

In general, Elsecalling and Soulcasting are amongst the most powerful abilities the Radiants can weild. They could definetly be completely broken if there wasn't the added caveat of having to convince some spren to generate the intended effect.

That of course once again raises the question of how in the world Jasnah was able to convince the spren of a human (their soul?) to transform said human into a puff of smoke.

Also, noticing it on second read, but it seems the Stormfather is pulling a Defrosting Ice Queen in regards to Dalinar

It's probably the bond feedback loop at work.

Say, I can't recall, what happened to Bridge Four after the bridgemen were freed? The actual, physical bridge?

I just got to wondering about it because we've been told that everything has a spren, and the nature and attributes of that spren are shaped by people's perception of it. Given how the bridgemen developed a very strong hatred yet also co-dependent relationship with the bridge they carried, I thought it might be cool if, at some point, Kaladin or one of the other bridgemen encounter the spren of Bridge Four, shaped into some sort of monster by their own thoughts of it.

Though it would also be interesting if the spren detached from the actual, physical bridge and started following the squad, having morphed into the more positive association that the concept "Bridge Four" has to them now.

I think they lost the bridge duing the clash between the Everstorm and a Highstorm, i don´t remember exactly what was said but when te Bridgemen come to get Kaladin after his fight with Szeth he notes that they aren´t using their standardbridge

That's actually a really cool idea. Someone pitch it to Brandon.

I'm not sure spren work that way. While physical objects do have cognitive aspects that you could probably get away with calling spren^note I'm not sure if spren are actually that concrete, but saying something like "the spren of this table" is close enough even if it may or may not be technically accurate, the only sapient ones we've seen are for abstract concepts — we've seen honor (Syl), truth/lies (Pattern), and cultivation (Wyndle) directly, and based on what what we know of other Radiant orders, we can infer law (from the Skybreakers) and possibly knowledge (from the Truthwatchers) as well.

Even if the bridge used by Bridge Four (did they even have one specific bridge they used consistently? Or did they just grab a random one every time they got called up for a run?) did have some sort of "bridgespren", I don't think it would have the ability to become a different kind of spren. More likely, what would happen is the camaraderie of Bridge Four would attract some other kind of spren — more honorspren would be the obvious choice, but something like loyaltyspren or the like wouldn't be out of the question.

I mean, even if you don't call it a spren, consider the ship's soul, or Stick. Those had identities and, after a fashion, personalities.

I think each crew had a specific bridge. Kaladin mentions using a different crew's bridge, and it would make sense for Sadeas to assign a specific crew to each bridge so that he has someone to blame if they break it somehow.

As for whether or not normal objects can actually think, it's hard to say. Obviously it's going to vary based on how much each individual object is thought of, but beyond that we don't have much detail. The ship's soul was old and powerful, but still quite simple. Stick of course was just a random stick on a beach, so it had no personality besides "stick." Syl mentions that roughly fifty percent of Kaladin's spears have been female, but that doesn't necessarily mean they were each intelligent and unique personalities.

Oh, and remember the difference between Surgebinder spren and normal spren is that Surgebinder spren have moved wholly to the Physical Realm. It's easier for spren to think in the Cognitive Realm. To think and do other things—both Shallan and Jasnah were warned that certain spren were dangerous while they were Soulcasting.

Hm, you know, I'd forgotten about the ship. That's a fair point. That said, a ship is a fairly complex object imbued with a good bit of identity by its crew (it gets a name, etc) and it still had a pretty simple spren/cognitive aspect/whatever. Bridge Four (the object) is physically much simpler, doesn't have nearly as long a history, and isn't personified at all, so I doubt it would have even that much.

Can you even be wholly on one realm? I thought that literally everything existed in all three realms simultaneously, but tend to have one as their "primary" realm.

Then again, we do see people moving from the physical to the cognitive realm through various shenanigans, so that they have no physical existence at all while they're there. I guess spren are doing the opposite — their "primary" realm is normally the cognitive realm (Shadesmar), but they can travel wholly into the physical realm via the nahel bond.

Of course, spren being based on concepts (not just honor and truth and law, but also life, hunger, fear, etc) rather than physical things, maybe they don't have a physical aspect at all. Which would make them somewhat unique in the Cosmere as far as I understand it, but maybe that's what makes them spren.

That´s only the difference if you only count bound spren as Surgebinderspren, a Honorspren is a Honorspren no matter if it´s in the cognitive or physical realm, bounded or unbounded.The difference seems to be more in the level of inteligence the spren have normally, with the Surgebinderspren on a human level and normalspren on an animal or plant one

edited 7th Oct '17 3:28:59 PM by Samaldin

Chapters out!

Dalinar flashbacks are laying it on a bit thick for my tastes. I get that young Dalinar was all about fighting and didn't give a damn about anything else, but the way it's presented, he comes off as less of a character and more of a caricature. I could buy it if it was calculated and he was deliberately playing up his reputation, but he's not. He's just legitimately a neanderthal. It's a bit disappointing.

Kaladin's chapter was a bit weak. Either help them out or don't, man. We've done this waffling thing before, it doesn't lead anywhere good. Personally, I think it'd be interesting to see some of the Parshendi ally with the humans against the Desolation, but we'll have to see where this whole thing goes.

In other news, Shallan and Andolin continue to make a fun pair. I'm starting to think that Andolin is eventually going to confess to Shallan that he murdered Sadeas, and Shallan's going to shrug and say "I killed both my parents, who am I to judge?" and Andolin's going to be very confused.

And we get our first look at Evi. Navani called ehr vapid, but I'd wager there's more to her judging by Dalinar's first impression. For all that he's an asshole, young Dalinar certainly is an interesting character. Spotting an assassin, saving the target, killing the assassin with his own knife, washing the blood off in wine and finally eating his pork with it. How's that for an Establishing Character Moment?

Sah is also interesting. He reminds me of Rlain, and he's clearly quite smart, which makes it all the more horrifying that he was reduced to a mindless slave for all his life. It's like the world is determined to keep Kaladin from having an obvious path forward to the right thing.

Sevarial and Palona are still great. The bit about the spheres holding Stormlight for longer than they should screams foreshadowing. And Shallan hits Adolin with the Oblivious Guilt Slinging in full force. Wonder how many of those he'll get. Also, I'm holding on to the theory that Ialai was the power behind Sadeas all of this time. She's gonna be a major antagonist, mark my words. Glad to see the Mraize subplot advancing too.

Some random thoughts on the chapter, in no particular order:

I keep being impressed at how much though Sanderson puts into the logistical ramifications of his magic systems. Gavilar opens up the chapter by mentionning how conventional siege tactics as we know them would be pretty ineffective in Alethkar, since starving out an enemy is unlikely to happen if they have access to Soulcasters.

I have mentionned this before, but Sanderson in general really enjoys creating ways for armies to completely circumvent the need for supply lines and extensive support networks: Lifeless dont't need to eat or sleep, they only require storage space;Koloss can eat anything; Soulcasters can provide food and shelter; etc.

It's a clever writing trick as it provides both interesting opportunities for world building and it also allows Sanderson to have armies fight tirelessly after having marched half way accross a continent in harsh conditions without it straining credulity.

I enjoyed the image of a drunk Dalinar calmly walking out into a Highstorm, slicing open a locked door with his Shardblade and casually asking the terrified soldiers inside if any of them have seen his knife.

But my favourite passage has got to be: "What? He wasn’t going to drink the wine he’d washed the blood into. He wasn’t a barbarian."

Sadeas is a detestable snake, but his interactions with his wife tend to humanize him. They publically show affection and tenderness in a way that is unusual of Alethi lighteyes. Genuine signs of love tends to make even the worst vilains at least a little more sympathetic. This makes the fact that we have yet to see Ialai's reaction to Sadeas' death all the more ominous: whatever she is planning, it's going to be horrible for our protagonists.

You need to remember that Dalinar is spending this entire flashback drunk off his ass.

Something I'm wondering about is how Vasher/Zahel planned to survive the Weeping. Shallan says that, normally, all the stormlight stored in gemstones should have vanished by now, and that's with a surprise highstorm occurring in the middle of the Weeping to replenish them. Given that he needs to consume Investiture every eight days in order to stay alive, that seems incredibly dangerous for him.

The flashbacks have been edited slightly since their publish in Thrill. For example, there was no mention of all the Alethi highprinces being descended from the Sunmaker, just the Kholins.

Dalinar's chapter, in addition to being hilarious, also shows hints of his later personality with him adamantly refusing to covet his brother's wife. His big establishing moment on that note hasn't come up yet, but I think it's in the next flashback.

Kaladin's chapter was short, but important. And yeah Kaladin needs to make a decision. Maybe he should mention Rlain? Or maybe that wouldn't help. He really needs to stay, though, because he's one of the few people in the world who has experience with growing past violent and justified hatred. If he leaves, he's going to end up fighting these people one day. He knows it, but he hasn't quite realized "Oh right, abandoning people in need so that I don't get attached and can kill them easier later isn't an honorable thing to do."

There's been a theory that the fourth and fifth Windrunner oaths have to deal with leadership (since that's their second divine attribute), so maybe it's something about leading even people who he has wronged in the past? I dunno, but after all this build up about how the parshmen are people, I highly doubt Kaladin is going to just abandon them.

Oh, and the Voidspren is evil. We saw so little of her in the previous chapters that I was wondering if she wasn't a Voidspren after all, or maybe that they had somehow been misrepresented as well. But no, she's totally evil. "Yes, take vengeance upon my enemies! And they enslaved you and stuff, but mostly just do what I say."

Shallan and Adolin really are the best. Interested to see what Mraize is planning. Knowing his odd morality, he probably thinks Sadeas deserves what he got simply because someone managed to get the drop on him. But is Ialai a Ghostblood? If she is, I wonder if Mraize has the authority to tell her to suck it up and deal. Hell, we don't even know if he would want to do that. We don't know the organization's exact goals, though Mraize claims they are not mutually exclusive with being a Radiant.

It also makes sense in-universe. Even in modern times, when our logistical abilities are at their height, a general would do almost anything for an army that didn't need supply lines. So it follows that anyone with even basic strategic training would immediately start looking at their magic system for ways to improve logistics.

There was also the moment where he said he detests assassins. It just goes to show how he's gotten worse over the years. He called it "more realistic," but he was just an asshole.

It's possible that he can hold Stormlight much more efficiently than gems can. His magic system works differently, and he's a small piece of a Shard. So he just had to make sure to stock up a few weeks or months at a time. Even in his sole POV chapter in Words, he apparently hadn't remembered that a highstorm was coming through that night, implying that he's not living on the edge from highstorm to highstorm.

edited 10th Oct '17 10:43:04 AM by Discar

He could also have a couple of hundred Breaths stored in something for emergencies.

Maybe he knows how to stash them in the cognitive realm without them being stolen. While that's never been mentioned, the existence of the Dor implies it can be done, and the spren in the cognitive realm still want stormlight for something.