Brandon Sanderson's The Stormlight Archive

Humans with crab shells. Which is one of the reasons they're assumed to have some relation to the chasmfiends.

My guess is dead parshendi eventually become chasmfiends, but the process is interrupted if you move the body. It's the only explanation I can think of for their hardwired Berserk Button.

There's a spoiler warning on the first post now, by the way. Spoiler tags aren't necessary.

Are you sure? Dalinar freezes up when he sees a Parshendi under the armour, and it looks like a teen.

I assumed they were just physically like humans that grow carapace over their limbs. Something like this◊.

IIRC, the parshmen don't have the armor but they still don't like it if dead parshmen are moved.

There probably is something going on there, though.

...I just assumed the dead deal was a religious thing. Though now that I think about it, it doesn't make sense for both the Parshendi and Parshmen who've never met to have the same exact spiritual beliefs regarding the deceased.

Parshendi is an Alethi word for "Parshmen who can think".

Yeah, I think the parshmen/parshendi are basically human-shaped, but they both have mottled red/black or red/white skin and the Parshendi grow that armour. Also they have orange blood.

And Brandon has said that "dead parshmen do not become chasmfiends." Which doesn't preclude dead Parshendi becoming chasmfiends..........

Also, it's pretty obvious that Kaladin is going to end up revealing his powers while fighting Szeth, otherwise Szeth would totally pwn him, mind Szeth may well still totally pwn Kaladin one-on-one due to his greater experience and his Blade, that's why I think that fight is going to end up as Kaladin/Adolin vs Szeth, neither of them could win on there own, but together they might have a decent chance.

I wanna know what's up with Shallan killing her dad, and him apparently having a Shardblade which she ran off with. And I want to know more about Shadesmar and the weird symbolhead spren. That kind of remind me of Slender Man for some reason.

I wanna know what's up with J...

That girl who can Soulcast without a fabrial. How can she do that? I forget.

Shallan and Jasnah. Something to do with more spren - the equivalents to honourspren for their branch of the Knights Radiant?

More spren...

What are the spren?

Wait

Fabrials have spren trapped inside them

Yes.◊

Brandon has said we're going to find out more about the nature of spren eventually. Also he says there are lots and lots of kinds of spren that people in story don't even know about because they only show up in certain places an/or certain very specific circumstances. Like those alespren/intoxicationspren that Axies the Collector was trying to research, that only appear in Iri and you only see them if you're really really drunk lol.

D:

what's that supposed to mean?

They're trapping the spren inside the Fabrial.

yes, well, normal spren aren't sentient and we don't know how many can become sentient, and we don't know if it hurts them to be trapped, so it's hard to make a moral judgment about that. Although it'll be interesting to see Navani's reaction if/when she finds out that some spren can be sentient.

-shrug-

They might not be sentient, but they are living.

I dunno. Just doesn't seem right.

So i bought this book without knowing much about it. All I know is that Sanderson is finishing WOT and the book looks really big. How is it?

Personally I thought it was excellent. It lasted me all of a 10-11 hour bus ride, so I was already predisposed to like it, but the characters, plot, and setting (my personal most important criterion) were all quite good. I recommend it.

Seconding the rec. As a story, I think Sanderson's Mistborn: The Final Empire is his strongest work, but Way of Kings is his best mechanically and in terms of worldbuilding, and I think the overall series (it's the first of a projected ten) has the potential to be his best anything so far. Hope you enjoy it!

It's fairly good, if you like high fantasy.

However, it's only the first book in the series, so consider this to be an introductory book, establishing the setting, some of the characters, the concepts and the like.

And, since ten books are planned for the series, don't expect the final resolution to come quickly.

I found he did a good job of making the ending feel like something got resolved, but yeah, it is the first book of a long series so expect to have a lot of questions at the end.

Definitely worth it if you're patient enough to wait a year and some for the next book to come out (he's finishing the last Wo T book before writing the next Stormlight one).

One of the reason I bought it was because I wanted to read a series as it got released. You know, anticipating when each one gets released and speculating a lot about the next installment. I've never really done that with books before, so that's a good thing.

Over half way through this book now. Hoping to finish by Thursday, so that I can finish A Feast of Crows by Saturday (after having been reading it off and on for about three years), and then I can begin the new Dresden Files book, and then A Dance With Dragons.

Sorry for elucidating my reading schedule haha

But, really, this book is brilliant. I love the worldbuilding most of all. For teh first two or three hundred pages I didn't give a damn about the plot, I simply wanted to know more about the world. And then Dalinar was introduced and boy oh boy. Damn fine work.

Sorry about the double post.

I'm now very, very close to finishing this book.

One thing I really love about it is how nonchalantly some of the revelations are dropped. Like, what happened to Dalinar's memory of his wife, or what Shallan did in Jah Kevad. I mean, of course they're not treated as revelations since they're not to the characters, since the characters know exactly what happened, so they're not treated as grand as they are in the writing, either.

I think this is pretty brilliant.