Brandon Sanderson's The Stormlight Archive

Ooh, neat thought. I'm inclined to say yes. We know memory's fallible; the whole reason copperminds are useful is that they preserve memories without the corruption our squishy human brainmeats are prone to. So your typical feruchemist would have loads of somewhat-inaccurate memories they could put into copperminds, and it seems intuitive to me that these memories should be just as inaccurate if put in storage. After all, if putting a memory into a coppermind restored it there wouldn't be a need to keep them from getting corrupted in the first place. Which means there shouldn't be any requirement that a memory be true for it to be stored.

So feruchemist Shallan would totally have different copperminds containing the backstories for her various personalities.

Hah! Feruchemist Shallan would have separate metal minds for different Identities, since that's actually one of the things you can Store. Veil goes in one mind, Radiant in another…

Random thought: Feruchemist murder mysteries! The witness saw what happened, but the murderer forced them to Store the memory in a coppermind and stole the coppermind! Now the detective needs to find the right coppermind to solve the mystery!

edited 18th May '18 11:01:34 PM by SCMof2814

Now imagine if Shallan met Shai. After her fiasco as the swiftspren, I'll bet she'd appreciate an art that would legitimately give her the skills and perspective of the selves she puts on.

Shallan's Lightweaving has advantages and disadvantages over Forging. On the one hand, it's much easier to create new identities. On the other hand, she doesn't actually get the skills and abilities of the associated identities, just the ability to fake them.

I imagine that Lightweavers would take to Forgery pretty well. I'll bet that Sanderson could get a lot out of an exploration of the two styles of magic colliding, even laying aside the Roshar and Sel meeting more generally.

(I also love the idea of Shallan visiting Sel because of the relative gravity. Though I doubt that it's the case, I like to imagine that she'd be a ridiculous towering CLAMP person compared to everyone there.)

It is time for me to give in... I've avoided this book for so long because it's so huge, but I'm having something of a Sanderson withdraw now and I just need a new novel to read. So, knowing very little about this book, I begin The Way of Kings.

Improving as an author, one video at a time.

Try to post your impressions as you read. Live reads are always fun.

We'll try to keep spoilers tagged for you.

I maintain my opinion that Shallan's alternate personalities are even more unhealthy for her than the book presents them as. Referring specifically to her and Adolin's seeming acceptance of them near the end. Shit's not right.

You right

edited 22nd May '18 8:15:40 AM by Ninety

Dopants: He meant what he said and he said what he meant, a Ninety is faithful 100%.

Weren't we gonna spoiler-tag stuff that happens near the end, because new person?

Anyway, I think the acceptance is due more to them going, "well, shit ain't exactly gonna go away so we better roll with it" than any idea that the situation is anything close to ideal.

Oathbringer reread chapters 19 and 20 updated. Dalinar flashback and Kaladin being Kaladin.

Interesting that the love of the exotic shows up in Alethi culture, which is inherently racist and nationalistic. Or maybe it's just the Kholins.

We still don't know about Thude and the others, but Venli did decide to start teaching the singers about the listeners at the very end.

We still don't know the full story, but I think part of the problem is that, as far as we know, the Radiants made no attempt to heal the parsh after they had accidentally done this to them. Given what we know of how healing works, and how the parshmen were eventually healed, I think any Edgedancer or Truthwatcher should probably have been able to use Regrowth to fix any given parsh. Obviously it would have taken a while, but it seems like a better option than breaking their oaths and giving up entirely.

The main villain is literally named Hatred. Don't be telling me this isn't a Good vs Evil story. The grunts are just people, certainly, but on the level of the folks making decisions like "do we even want to have a war over this shit" there's a clear moral high ground.

Also, obligatory note that Tolkien himself wrestled with the idea of an Always Chaotic Evil race and made a point of having a character wonder what lies led the human members of Sauron's armies to die on a battlefield far from home. Dude had more nuance than he always gets credited with.

Eh, there's plenty of nationalistic racists attracted to the exotic. They just tend to have racist ideas about what the exotic are like. And anyway, it's not like she's a darkeyes.

In a later flashback it's mentioned that the ardents are fine with Dalinar marrying a pagan because it represents conquering her culture. So yeah.

Sure, but that's still an exotic foreigner, not a local underclass. It's kind of like the Mighty Whitey and Mellow Yellow trope, except this is Roshar so basically everyone is kind of Asian.

edited 24th May '18 9:32:19 PM by rikalous

Oathbringer reread chapters 21 and 22 updated. Shallan, Adolin, Ialai, and Mraize.

I'm really having trouble with basically everything about visualizing Urithiru. We need some official artwork showing the tower, the plateaus, and some comparisons.

edited 1st Jun '18 9:31:43 AM by Discar

we do have some official Artwork ish

There is also some crunching from the 17th Shard forums

So yeah, I just see the Tower in my head as a Sci Fi tower-shaped Arcology just in Fantasy.

Or maybe the Aztechnology Pyramid from Shadowrun

edited 1st Jun '18 12:19:08 PM by 3of4

"You can reply to this Message!"

That second link certainly has some interesting information. The OP (I didn't read much past that) pointed out that simple stone can't support a structure of that size, but there are three important factors: The city has some kind of magic, and even if most of it has failed or been turned off, I imagine "keep the city structurally sound" is pretty high-priority; the tower seems to have been molded out of a single massive stone (and Roshar is geologically stable, so no earthquakes to shake it up unexpectedly), and Roshar has only 70% of Earth's gravity, which means buildings can get much taller.

I feel like I didn't word any of that very well.

When I think of Urithiru, I usually imagine Aincrad.

Abridged Kirito would be such much Radiant material...

"You can reply to this Message!"

Oathbringer reread chapters 23-24 updated. Kaladin getting shelter for the parshmen, and Dalinar meeting Taravangian.

I hadn't heard the theory that Lift had also met Cultivation instead of the Nightwatcher. I'm pretty sure that Cultivation said Dalinar was the first human she had revealed herself to in a very long time, but Lift most likely went after Dalinar, so it is possible.

Let's not forget that the reason the Orders exist in the first place is because Surgebinders caused a bunch of problems in Nohadon's time. "Not all spren are as discerning as honorspren." And it was Ishar who said "You guys are going to form Orders and cooperate or I am going to kill every single one of you."

I distrust this reaction precisely because of all the low-key bad vibes the woman gives off. If it was anything major then I could say "yeah, she's no good", but there isn't anything. There's just a ton of subtle "she's up to no good" signals, which makes me think Sanderson is playing us. He loves subverting those kind of expectations. I'm anticipating that her deal is neither exactly what she says she is (a loyal Dustbringer) nor what she seems to be (a Taravangian stooge), but something else entirely. Like she's actually a Ghostblood or a worldhopper or something and she's going to stab Taravangian in the kidneys at some point. We don't have enough information about her to really make any specific guesses, though.

The First Ideal means that Radiants can't decide that the ends justify the means (at least, not and stay Radiants), but most of the Orders can do pretty terrible things without violating their other oaths. "I will unite instead of divide" can certainly justify uniting people Genghis Khan or Alexander the Great style. While I don't see Dalinar waging a war of conquest, I can absolutely see him fighting a war against other Rosharians if they turn against him and his people. I suspect we'll see this from Tezrim.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

I'd make a note that any effort to unite by force of arms has to go up against "life before death," but the one Herald who joined his own order only recently stopped being a serial killer so ???

Heralds aren´t bound by oaths, they can do whatever they want as long as they have their honorblade they can still Surgebind.

Yes, that would be why I specified that this is the one Herald who joined his own order, with all the oathery that entails.

Yeah i kind of didn´t realise that when read your post, sorry. Nonetheless i think his is a special case and not translateable to other radiants. His order is all about following the law and if a remember correctly we have a Wo B that to his orders Spren HE is the ultimate form of the law, which again means he could mostly do whatevver he wants

I don't think "life before death" is meant to be taken that literally. It's not simply saying "life is better than death", it's more of a "live in the now" thing. It's saying don't try to justify doing things you'll regret now by saying it's for some good cause that will pay off in the future. If you think killing someone is a good thing in and of itself (eg, because they deserve it) then it's fine.

Our viewpoint of the Radiants is a little skewed because the first one we saw, and the one we're most familiar with by far, is the Windrunners, whose schtick is the standard good guy "protect the innocent, defend the weak" thing. Other orders are not as conventionally heroic.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.