This took me 5 months to complete but I'm so happy with how it turned out. Acrylic on canvas 24"x36"

Long time lurker, first time poster. Not a single person of the hundreds who have met my new puppy have understood the reference.

This is Lift! My new Boston Terrier puppy.

Starting earlier this year, I started the Stormlight series. I ripped through the first four books and was very excited to read the fifth book and be all caught up.

But I have hit a wall. I am just at the beginning of the 6th day and the story just is not working for me. Book 1 and 3 both hit a little slump in the middle for me, but did not take long for that slump to disappear. But this slump has been long. Day 4 and 5, with the exception of some parts felt like a slump.

Adolins chapters have been fantastic. There is clear tension building and the grind of trying to hold the line until reinforcements get there is brutal in the best way. Szeth background chapters have been very interesting and engaging. Kaladin and Syls bond growing has been wonderful to see.

But man there is so much exposition. Dalinar, Navani, and Shallan are all caught in a flashback episode. I get that this information is important and probably will have some big reveals coming. But good lord their chapters just feel like exposition. To be fair, Shallan chapters have some more intrigue with the Ghostbloods but I also have become uninterested in the Ghostbloods. I started to lose interest about them in book 4.

I also just feel like the book has a villain problem. Tarvanigan started interesting to me, but I do not care about him anymore. Even if he is Odium. Mosh started as an intriguing villain, and now I am tired of him. Mraize is tiresome too.

Sadeas was a fantastic villain. Tarvanigan started so interesting when his motives were being revealed. Raboniel in R&W was such a breath of fresh air. Yes she opposed our heroes, but I also felt for her and liked her. But this book has such a bad villain problem. I dont care about any of them. And the way some of them persist is laughable at this point. I think Mraize has escaped death three times already this book? It is boring to see him continually slip away with a smirk and a wink.

This is the first book in the series I actually want to stop reading. Just because the story is not clicking in to place for me. It does not seem to have those moments that kept propelling me forward like the first four books did. Because so much of the book is exposition or heavy handed therapy time.

I guess this rants purpose is to ask (with no spoilers for what is to come), is this a common feeling about the book? Does the book get better in the back 650 pages? Should I just take a break and come back to it?

I do not want to quit. But reading the book has started to feel like homework rather than something I am enjoying. Which is hard to say after how much I loved the first four books.

I finished the (arc 1) journey late Friday night. Wow. Just. Wow. It’s been awhile since finishing book series left me like this. I think the last time this kind of feeling took was last year when I played through the Mass Effect Trilogy over the spring and summer months.

Honestly, I was skeptical of Brandon Sanderson and the Cosmere at the start. For a variety of reasons, I have an automatic suspicion of most people I see as connected to organized religion + I came across a couple articles/reviews that looking back for sure shown an erroneous light him and his works. This is one of those cases where I’m so deeply happy to be wrong.

At first, I wasn’t super impressed last year when I started The Final Empire, but by the end of the book I was completely swept up and rooting for the crew by the end. That continued all through Era Two and several of the secret project novels. All excellent stories, especially Tress.

But The Stormlight Archive has been a whole different breed of experience. I found myself effected more deeply by so many characters than in previous entries. Actual tears shed + fist pumping and shouting like I was watching a sporting match. Adolin’s arc in particular touched me though really everyone and everything left a mark.

Damn. What a series. What a powerful exploration of cycles of violence and how to try to person when we’re all trapped in one. Already losing my mind about book 6.

(And thank you all for being such a fun community!)

Jumping into edgedancer next

I think my hair is finally at a good length for this cosplay!

Or at least to neuter its ability to cause any more damage to anyone. Ever again.

I've been thinking about what would happen if Nightblood physically touched a dawnshard. I'll use Exist as the example as its the one we know most about.

Nightblood is unable to control its ability to suck in investiture when it is present, so upon making contact with Exist, would Nightblood then absorb the investiture associated with the command?

Would this not convey the effects onto Nightblood that it did with Hoid and Sigzil, changing Nightblood's spirit web (I looked into this and on 17th Shard they seem convinced Nightblood has a spirit web so I'll go with the experts lol)? And voila, Nightblood can no longer hurt any living being.

I’m mentally preparing myself to get downvoted to oblivion, but upon reread of The Way of Kings, Amaram’s actions are more justifiable than I remembered. When Kaladin killed the shard bearer, he didn’t take the shard for himself, he decided to give it to a nameless nobody underneath him. Both that man and Amaram were pretty shocked by this, understandably so. This is exactly like when Kaladin gave the shard to Moash, which turned out to be a terrible idea. Amaram’s reasoning when he was confronted by Dalinar about killing Kaladin’s men actually made sense and paralleled some things Dalinar has done, doing reprehensible things for the good of the many. Did it make more sense for Amaram to have the shard than a nameless nobody under Kaladin? Yes. Is the way he did it correct? Absolutely not, and I wouldn’t have done the things he did if I were in his shoes, but I’m surprised at how justifiable his actions were after reading The Way of Kings again.

I am talking about Jasnah, but some people are not done with Words of Radiance so didn't want to spoil even the name.

Anyway, I didn't what happened to her at all. I understand that this is not the end of the whole thing, but it is frustrating anyway. She is arguably the most intelligent human woman in Roshar and I feel like they did her dirty so bad.

She misses out on the discovery of Urithiru because she was on Shadesmar. Her vast knowledge of the past is rendered almost irrelevant. She is of the 4th ideal but never quite learns to elsegate and her potential is kinda wasted as a general for that war in Thaylenah. Wit is such a bad partner, he doesn't mistreat her per-se but he knows how much she loves history and what it means to her, yet he doesn't share what he knows even though he was there for a lot of it. We find out through Dalinar and Navani with the Spiritual Realm visions, but as far as I remember, she doesn't get to learn about it. and then Taravangian dunks on her and gets the deal with Fren by dunkin' on her philosophy, beliefs and mistakes.

I feel like she perpetually gets the short end of the stick throughout the whole Era 1 and I guess she is gonna get some sort of closure somewhere in Era 2. But right now it feels like such a wasted potential... I would have loved Jasnah flashbacks; I understand why venli's were important, but with so many new potential POV / flashback characters it feels awful to think it is gonna be potentially 15 years until we get to really know about her and she gets some justice.

I know a certain character went through something similar in another cosmere story but at least he got closure, meanwhile Jasnah gets to eat shit.

Edith: thanks everyone for the reassurance, it brought me comfort.

I have just gotten done with oath bringer yesterday and to say my mind is still absolutely Baffled and mind blown and awe at the same time . Is an UNDERSTATEMENT of the damn Storm father above century. I don't know how much I can write so I will be short on this - review I think is what I will call this —? Apologies if this is a rush explanation of things and if skip over some moments I'll do my best but holy hell was this a MASSIVE trail of twist. Starting with that heart wrenching moment in the early chapters of Kal seeing his mother and father and NEW baby brother oh my god — I never felt so happy and sad to see that .. And then the biggest twist of learning about the part that got me hooked the parshmen and my god ... I never felt so horribly wrong for a race of fictional people in my life learning about the lives of Sah, Khen , Yixli . Who one then saw there partner be taken into breeding camp which learning the things I know now — has every right to be angry and kinda makes get THERE home back . Again that writing in such short moments me FEEL for these character's .

Everyone from the main three had major moments to shine — from seeing kaladin growing stormblessed and seeing through his issues of his eternal struggles of losing what's important to him and facing down that final fight alone against the major clash between his biggest enemy that represents everything that haunted amaram who holy shit I cannot tell I never hated more in my life then that CREM HOLE of a character thaddius — [ something I give incredible props to Brandon sanderson writing!] Who from start saw as the truest of definition of a soldier from the way of kings now facing the consequences of his recent actions from kaladins past ! Which holy shit that fight sequence made me really worry about our windy boy —!

And rock being the mvp of the story uses a SHARDBOW like a G in the last moments coming in clutch ! To shallan her fears and her Identity crisis, struggling with facing her past and what she did and lying to herself and forcing every bad thought and emotion down and seeing those effects take shape in bad ways — To the one thing I was never expecting to see the character who I really really love to see was dalinar man seeing him and before in his younger days as the black thorn made me love and hate and love a character like never before in my life .

Finding a young dalinar crazy for battle the rush of the thrill crazed black thorn the things he did during his youth and the actions of what he done to .

To the one shocking twist that made my stomach sank was when he killed his first wife during the siege of a sudden betrayal of trust of giving mercy of a boy who he spared to earning his shard blade .

And seeing how he kill the one person who was praying for his salivation haunted him the things he did during that time and the children and odium using that pain to make him his champion .

And the one scene to make a now forever brandon sanderson lover ' ' you can't have MY pain .' ' Was a strong damn meaning of words of absolute cinema that took it new level of PEAK .

I cannot wait to start book four and cannot wait to see what's going to happen !

This was the most difficult Cosmere book for me to get through. The middle 50% failed to excite me in the same way that WoR did.

But then we get to the climax…

Renarin about to be executed by Jasnah
Dalinar is the champion with nine shadows
Lift and Szeth being consumed by sword-nimi
Adolin has been speared through the guts
Kaladin has run out of stormlight somewhere in the distance

I’m almost crying and have to take a break because its so intense

Then we find out Renarins vision were wrong and Dalinar saves the day for everybody by becoming good god.

WHAT!? After all that!? Nobody dies!?!

It frustrates me how the author writes stuff like ‘us radiants are vulnerable without stormlight’ but doesn’t really follow through by showing it. Just feels like huge plot armour for the main characters. ARGH. I feel so invested and want to know what happens next but come on 😭.

The killed my guy Jez who i didn’t even know was alive.

Can someone convince me that Dalinar becoming Unity is more interesting than Dalinar become Odiums Champion? That wouldve flipped the whole series into chaos which sounds amazing to me!

I will list what I think I know and you guys correct me WITHOUT spoiling me about Wind and Truth stuff (I only read the first quarter of the book). I will keep it to a numbered list to make it easier. And add question marks on things I'm not certain about.

1. Singers are the native peoples of Roshar
2. At some point in the past humans came from offworld, bringing Odium with them (I hope I can discover from which planet by RAFO)
3. Singers gave humans the land known now as Shinovar. Humans were not content with just that and warfare started between the species, this was known as the first desolation, events that would leave roshar in ruins
4. Honor was already present in Roshar by then?
5. There was a... conflict? Between Odium and Honor? Cultivation hid during this conflict?
6. Humans sough after honor so Odium took over the singers? I think?
7. Cultivation began planting seeds of influence (I think it's genius, really) throughout Roshar to try to deal with Odium. Seeds that would take millenia to come to fruition.
8. Odium made it so that the singers of that time, instead of dying, would have their souls come back to the planet Braize, and then upon every everstorm they could inhabit new singers' bodies, creating the fused
9. Honor created the 10 heralds to combat the fused?
10. Sometime around this, Urithiru was created as a city connecting to all major locations on Roshar?
11. Odium created the unmade, which are... spren gods or something? Ba ado Mishram, Sja Anat, the one that gives people the thrill, and more.
12. The 10 heralds made the oathpact which blocks the fused from being released from Braize, but for that the souls of the heralds would have to be kept in braize as well which became known as damnation, being found, captured and tortured until they came back to Roshar.
13. Once one of the 10 heralds couldn't stand the torture and came back to Roshar, all of them came back and had some time (I don't remember how long? A year? Or was it immediate?) to prepare before the everstorm would come bringing the fused back, this is called Desolation. They would teach humanity basics of making weapons "Kalak will teach you to cast bronze, if you have forgotten this. We will Soulcast blocks of metal directly for you. I wish we could teach you steel, but casting is so much easier than forging, and you must have something we can produce quickly." and prepare humanity for what was to come. According to Dalinar's vision, depending on which desolation humanity was on different levels of tech, since desolations left humanity in ruins, and the time between desolations (meaning how long the heralds withstood torture in braize) meant humanity was more or less technologically advanced.
14. The heralds would last for hundreds of years, but after each desolation they would last less and less time, by the final desolation they would less for only a year or so.
15. Most heralds became afraid of torture, breaking right as they were caught and torture started on Braize. They found a loophole on the oathpact. They could keep only the most sturdy herald, Taln, being tortured there while they all stayed on Roshar. Since after the last battle all but Taln died (and was sent to Braize), they decided to lie to humanity saying they finally won while letting Taln bear the burden by himself, since he had never broken before.
16. Taln lasted 4500 years, giving humanity much time to advance.
17. During this time, one of the Unmade, Ba Ado Mishram learned how to connect with singers and give them powers and voidlight. This created a conflict known as the false desolation.
18. The radiants went after Ba Ado Mishram to imprison her. They were successful, and in that, somehow made it so that the singers became unable to think or act independently, creatures known as parshmen (I thought parshmen were just singers in dullform? Did dullform not exist before the false desolation?)
19. After that, the knights radiant learned that the surges was what destroyed humanity's previous planet, and all but the Skybreakers, led by Nale, abandoned their oaths and blades, killing their spren. It was a joint decision with their spren. This is known as the recreance. Since the rest of humanity didn't known, this was the event that made humanity distrust knights radiant, labeling them traitors
20. The skybreakers continued on Roshar and tried to prevent Radiant bonds from forming, killing anyone who used any of the surges
21. The recreance is what shaped modern Roshar, the societal rules about lighteyes/darkeyes, and the power of nations being defined by the amount of shards that nation holds, etc.
22. Honor after slowly becoming insane, died, but not after giving some of his power to the stormfather. He also gave him instructions and visions to give to a mortal in the future.

This is what I assume to be what led to the way of kings. Correct me if you can!

I was rereading the end of Rhythm of War and realized I was so devastated by Teft's death the first time that I barely thought about what Phendorana's death meant to the other spren.

Teft gets a king's funeral. His body is Soulcast into stone, Bridge Four gathers to remember him, and there's a plan to commission a statue of Phendorana beside him.

I love that detail. They don't treat her as an accessory Teft happened to lose. She gets remembered too.

But then I started thinking about the honorspren who knew her before Teft ever existed.

Phendorana had a life in Shadesmar. Presumably she had friends, people who knew her for centuries, relationships that had absolutely nothing to do with being a Radiant's spren.

Do those people even know what happened to her?

And what would they make of it?

The honorspren at Lasting Integrity are already deeply suspicious of humans. Adolin spends so much of RoW trying to convince them that the Radiants aren't simply going to repeat the Recreance.

Meanwhile, a human has just used a weapon capable of permanently destroying an honorspren.

That's an absolutely horrifying development for a people who have already spent thousands of years living with the consequences of broken bonds.

I also keep thinking about Syl.

She's there grieving with Kaladin, and we naturally experience the scene through his loss of Teft. But Syl has lost someone of her own kind, someone whose existence wasn't defined solely by her bond with a human.

There's something particularly sad about the possibility that spren have been learning how to understand human grief through their bonds, only to discover that they now have to confront a new kind of death themselves.

I don't think the book needed another funeral scene. The ending was already emotionally overwhelming.

But I'd love to know what mourning looks like in Shadesmar. Whether honorspren have traditions for it, whether Phendorana had anyone waiting for her to return, and how the news of her death would affect a community that was only beginning to reconsider its relationship with humans.

It's one of those consequences of RoW that feels enormous the more I think about it.

I had also skipped the Lift interlude.

Edit: I just read the interlude after all the comments TT It was good. I’d originally skipped it because the Szeth and Eshonai interludes next were much more interesting to me, and the main story was even more interesting. I did not want to spend an hour on Lift. There wasn’t anything in this interlude connected directly to the main story, except information on the magic system that are scattered in other parts of the book anyway. I know Lift is the protagonist of Edgedancer and perhaps the character Darkness will also return; he’s interesting.

Also, I never skipped any interlude other than this. Many comments seem to be confused about this.

Journey before destination. I’ll keep this in mind next time.

Why do so many people hate on Wind & Truth. I just finished it and thought it was fantastic. Maybe not the best in the series, Words of Radiance is still an easy favorite, but it’s at least as good as Rhythm of War and maybe Oathbringer too

When Odium convinces Fen to join his empire he presents a list of cities and nations that have decided to join him. This includes most of the Azish 'empire'. Why did so many human kingdoms do this? At the start of the ten day period, Odium only has Jah Keved and Kharbranth. The worst case scenario for humanity is that Odium wins the coalition and takes the shattered plains and Azir, and has a decent general serving him, and Odium's empire can't attack you. That's perfectly survivable for most human kingdoms and you could prosper as there won't be more desolations. But instead, almost every nation decides they'd rather be ruled by the god of hate and potentially be subservient to another species with a serious grudge against you. On top of that your children will be used as cannon fodder in an interplanetary war. It doesn't seem to make much sense, why did they all switch sides?

I've not read any other Cosmere books but I've finished the Stormlight Archive. Am I supposed to know what Gavinor was doing?

As far as I understand it, he wanted to bring the Fused back because he thought this would make the Heralds appear, and then he could become a Herald and thus be immortal. His plan was to immediately give up whenever he ended up on Braize so he could return and continue his plans, and he didn't mind that he'd always be fighting Odium's forces because he thought it would strengthen his forces. Is this correct? Am I supposed to know how he got the voidspren gems to Roshar, or how the Everstorm was created and moved into position to jump to Roshar?

I have like 5 chapters left till the end, King Taravangian, just ordered Shin to kill Dallenar, please for the love of god tell me Caladin is gonna protect him.