The slaver subplot didn't bother me at all — the point was less the physical danger of "semi-captured by slavers" and more about Shallan's character development in learning to act commanding. I will say that Words of Radiance handled that particular character arc very well — Shallan's rather traumatic growth from a timid smartass into a commanding, confidence presence was both believable and fun to read. She's always had the capacity, she just needed to bring it out, and the circumstances she found herself in forced her into it. Certainly she wouldn't have had the same level of growth if she'd remained in Jasnah's care.
Actually, it sort of reminds me of Mass Effect, where it's noted that serving under Shepard is actually stifling Garrus's development into a leader in his own right.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.I didn't have a problem with Lift. I had a problem with her chapter, or the first half of it anyway. Not really sure why, but it kinda felt like a slog.
Writing a post-post apocalypse LitRPG on RR. Also fanfic stuff.Yes, he absolutely is.
Nazh is a guy named Nazh. We don't know what's special about him but we do know he travels between worlds, because he drew pictures of people in The Alloy Of Law, too.
edited 18th Mar '14 7:35:52 AM by Shale
Heh, I didn't even realize that. Considering that his notes are clearly talking to someone, I assumed he was one of the Parshendi spies in the warcamps, reporting back to Eshonai.
Writing a post-post apocalypse LitRPG on RR. Also fanfic stuff.Nah, he's human, or at least human-looking. Some of the bridgemen actually point him out in an early chapter, though not by name - they talk about an ardent who's been sitting nearby staring at them and drawing for hours. And then we get a sketch of the freed slaves' forehead tattoos, signed by Nazh, where he says he spent hours watching the bridgemen to get reference material.
edited 18th Mar '14 8:40:47 AM by Shale
So, a question occurred to me. Given what we learn about soulcasting in Words of Radiance (name the fact that the soulcaster basically has to negotiate with the object being changed in order to convince it to accept the change), what the hell would that have looked like when Jasnah turned that dude into fire in Way of Kings? That must've been one hell of an offer she made his body.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.Well, we don't know exactly how it works, since Shallan has only successfully Soulcast twice. We just don't have enough details yet. My guess is that the thing you're supposed to offer is Stormlight—so Jasnah just used a whole lot more than she would have had to when transmuting something else. I don't remember the precise details of the scene, but maybe it was a loophole, too, like Soulcasting his clothes to fire rather than himself. But I can't remember if he just burned to death, or was actually turned into fire.
Writing a post-post apocalypse LitRPG on RR. Also fanfic stuff.He was explicitly soulcast directly into fire; when Shallan is remembering the scene later on, she describes him as becoming fire rather than burning. From what we see of Shallan's attempts to soulcast, you have to get the object to agree to the change to want it to make, in accordance with its purpose. The ship wanted to continue to serve its crew — it only agreed to change after Shallan convinced it that the best way to help them was to sink. Her problem with the stick was that it didn't really have a purpose (and, being rather less complex than a ship, it was correspondingly rather dull in Shadesmar). It did seem to hesitate when she offered it stormlight, but the impression I get is that stormlight is just the fuel for the transformation, to actually make it happen you have to convince the object's cognitive piece that it should change. Granted, some of that comes from The Emperors Soul, where the physical/cognitive/spiritual realms are briefly explained in reference to , but it is all the Cosmere, so it should still apply. In any case, Emperor's Soul says that making an item want to transform can be the make-or-break point of a successful or unsuccessful transformation, and the same thing seems to apply in Words of Radiance.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.Well, she was unconscious at that point, so we don't know how that would look from a normal perspective. And Jasnah seemed to be careful to tell her what was about to happen, and what she was going to do (and that she wasn't very good at it). It could have been a simple "Don't freak out and screw up my concentration," or she could have been starting the Soulcasting trade discussion.
Like I said, we don't have enough scenes from the POV of the Soulcaster to know much. And that's not even getting into the fact that Soulcaster fabrials apparently work entirely differently. Let's not forget that throwaway line when Adolin found the ardents Soulcasting during the day due to time constraints, and apparently the ones who use the Soulcaster are slowly transformed into living statues.
Writing a post-post apocalypse LitRPG on RR. Also fanfic stuff.Don't know about Jasnah's versus Shallan's Soulcasting. They seem to be the same, but we still don't know how the different surges interact with each other to be sure.
And as for Elhokar, he was seeing some kind of spren, apparently Cryptics judging by his description. It's odd that they'd leave when Kaladin showed up, but maybe they just didn't want to get near an honorspren if they could help it. The real question is why they're following Elhokar. The implication is that he would become a Radiant if he wasn't so freaked out by them, probably related to how he (like Shallan) has confidence issues that he can overcome with "lies," as the Cryptics call it. I think we'll find out more next book, as now everyone knows how Radiants are made, and they'll be able to figure out that the spren following him around are trying to bond with him.
Writing a post-post apocalypse LitRPG on RR. Also fanfic stuff.

Lift will do much better when we get her in a main chapter I think.