While we don’t get a lot on her, she

A) Feels a need to pass as a woman

B) Has effectively abandoned the Sleepless in favor of passing as a human

C) Actively feels joy from passing as a human woman

D) She’s abandoned her Sleepless name, and only reveals it when given reason to in order to explain what she is. Kinda seems like a deadname.

I know that like maybe two people will get this, but still.

I will answer. I may not answer correctly, but I will answer confidently.

Elantris has been the slowest read in the cosmere so far and it is so very boring.

Up til now at least! Holy heck things are happening :D I always aim to finish books, no matter my opinion on the. And I was so afraid I'd be stuck with Elantris without enjoying it, HOWEVER, I just started part 2 and it's really heating up in here. I'm no longer dreading the rest of the book :)

I probably should've expected this though, with Sandersons writing being what it is.

That's it, I just wanted to get this out there some way. Feel free to discuss below :P

Frustrated that aluminium is always refered to as aluminum? The international standard name for the metal everywhere bar North America is aluminium.

In the cosmere there is no North America (that we know of) so surely it should be the more commonly used name: aluminium?

britishenglishwoes

I’m trans and have outgrown my given name. My dad and I tried to get my little siblings named Kaladin (didn’t work out), cause we liked the name. I figured I’d pick it up myself.

It’s unique, and his story is one I find inspiring. (And he’s not an active war criminal like Dalinar).

Just thinking out loud I guess.

A few days ago there was a post from a newcomer asking if there are any queer characters / relationships in the cosmere and because I actually couldn't remember any at the time of reading the post, I commented that. I got a few answers saying there are multiple but I genuinely can't remember any. There was a Mistborn Era 1 Tag on the post so I couldn't ask for examples.

What (major?) characters / relationships in the cosmere are queer? The only one I can think of right now that maybe qualifies is Wayne and MeLaan.

Sorry for spelling and grammar errors, English is not my first language.

Ok please hear me out:
So I just finished Yumi yesterday, and I have some thoughts. For the longest time the book really didn't 'click' with me like many other Cosmere novels had. Even tho I was intrigued by the worldbuilding and the characters, and there were undeniably beautiful moments, I had no idea where the story was going and what it meant, so to speak.
But now that I have read the finale I cannot help but think of it as a profoundly anti-capitalist book.

For the record, I studied history and philosophy in university and consider myself a socialist, so I am definitely a bit biased here, which is why I am interested in what you guys think.

Here is my thesis:

1. The wider theme as established pretty early on, especially with Painter is the loss of creative spark in a mundane job. Painter was once the bright eyed young artist, that lost nearly all ambition once he entered the workforce. He doesn't think of his painting skill as an art anymore, and puts in the least amount of effort possible ("Bamboo works").

2. Yumi has another problem, but one you could also relate to capitalism: she only sees herself as a tool, has no concept of her own value besides what she can provide for society. Painter has to tell her explisitely that she does. This is something that many modern anti-capitalist authors write about as a loss of identity under late stage global capitalism.

3. The main antagonist of the story is literally called "the machine". I don't know about you, but where I come from that's an often used shorthand for capitalism, and corporations in general. And the way the scholars describe the machine is even more overt.
   Quote: "It doesn't want anything, it's not alive. (...) These are not the machines's wishes anymore then a tree wants to grow. But once it started drawing on us, on all of us... we defended it because... we were then a part of it somehow."
   This sounds a lot like someone describing an ideology and not an entity.

4. The one sentence that finally made everything fit into place for me:
   Quote: "[Yumi] frowned, looking upon the city. A shining beautiful city full of buildings like towers, with fountains, trees, red roofs, and sculptures of dragons. Empty of people"
   A common criticism of capitalism among philosophers is, that it prioritises material things over humans. It may built beautiful cities (that turn out to be rubble anyway) but it sacrifices people in the process.

TL;DR: An evil machine that sacrifices human souls and turns them into a shell of a person, and may also be a wider metaphor for a loss of creativity in the workforce might be a metaphor for capitalism, right? Discuss!

Hey, it's me again :) So after reading Elantris and quite enjoying it, I decided to follow the publication order and starting reading Era 1 of Mistborn. Here's my thoughts on Final Empire.

I'm gonna start by saying that I had a lot of expectations from this book and that was probably a bad thing. Ever since I first heard about Cosmere I kept hearing how Mistborn is a really good entry point, I saw so many people claim that it's one of their favourite series ever and a majority of people ranked Final Empire specifically quite high not just in terms of Cosmere, but in terms of fantasy books in general. I'm pretty sure the Misborn series regularly ranks in the top 10, if not top 5 of r/fantasy yearly poll of favourite sci-fantasy series. So naturally, I had high expectations from this and probably went into it slightly overhyped (though I would say that I was still being cautious). I'm not entirely sure that this is one of the reasons why, but it certainly could've played a role in the fact that, well, I didn't actually enjoy this book that much.

In terms of the characters, I liked Kelsier and Vin almost instantly. Vin's character development where she doesn't trust anyone at the beginning and she slowly realises that this is what real friendship is actually like and that she finally really has people that care about her was really satisfying. Her relationship with Kelsier was also very entertaining, I liked the dynamic where they weren't really equals as it was pretty much a teacher-student hierarchy, but yet they treated themselves as equals most of the time, with Kelsier trusting Vin that she can handle herself in dangerous situations and Vin not being afraid to stand up to Kelsier when she though he was wrong.

I didn't really care too much about the rest of the crew though, except for Breeze who I found pretty charming. And that's where my first big criticism comes in: I found the crew a little underdeveloped. Aside from Kelsier and Vin who are the main characters, everyone else felt kinda just like a stepping stone for Vin to learn more about allomancy, but there wasn't much more to them than that. Sure they each had their unique personality, but I never felt like they were really developing it much. In terms of actions, they also didn't really do much, they were doing a bunch of stuff off-screen but that's the thing, it was off-screen. And since the story ended up playing out the way it did, most of these off-screen actions felt like they didn't matter anyway. Ham spent most of the story training an army off-screen, but like 75% of that army ended up being killed in a stupid assault anyway. Breeze spent the entire book using his calming abilities to recruit soldiers into the resistance, but in the end the entire city rose up because they like Kelsier anyway, so the recruiting didn't seem to be that important. Dockson... I honestly don't even remember what he did. Same for Clubs. Marsh was the only one that seemed to be doing something that ended up mattering, providing information about the Ministry and becoming an inquisitor himself, managing to find out the secret to killing the inquisitors and killing them all himself, I mean that's awesome! Aside from that though, the crew to me only seemed useful when explaining the nuances of their allomancy to Vin. They were basically tutorials explaining new mechanics. At least that's how they felt like to me.

The only characters aside from Vin and Kelsier that seemed to be utilized nicely were Sazed and Elend. Sazed was a really cool character. He wasn't just a "tutorial" even though he did explain quite a bit of things about the world and stuff like feruchemy, but he also had an actual good chemistry with Vin especially and I quite enjoyed their interactions. I felt a bit of a father-daughter vibe between him and Vin, whereas with Kelsier it was more of a sibling dynamic. Elend was a pretty good view into the world of nobles and he was pretty much the embodiment of "not everything is black and white". He's a noble yet he seems to care for the skaats. He shows Vin, who in turn teaches Kelsier, that murdering all the nobles is not the answer, that not all of them are bad, some of them are simply ignorant. I was fascinated by the fact that some of the nobles don't treat the skaats like crap because they are just evil, but because they've been brought up to believe that the skaats are a lesser race and that behavior like this is expected and justified. And yet some of the nobles, like Elend, still found conscience, wanted to learn more about them, realised that they are not so different from the nobles and perhaps behavior like this isn't justified after all. Elend's thought processes about this throughout the book were really interesting to me and part of me wishes that we could see a story like this from the perspective of a character like Elend, a member of a class that opresses other people believing it's okay and then slowly realising that it actually isn't. Pretty much a "are we the baddies?" story.

As for the story itself, it starts off pretty good and I thought Part One was okay. It's a perfectly reasonable introduction to a story, we meet our main characters, we learn a bit about their personalities and abilities, the magic system is introduced pretty nicely and all the important aspects of the world are showcased effectively. Then the book gets pretty slow though and this is my main gripe with it. Parts Two, Three and the first couple chapters of Part Four felt like a bit of a slog to me, apart from a few sequences. Again, it probably stems from the fact that I had different expectations for the book as I've heard a lot of people describe this story as a "heist". And it started as one, the plan was to start a revolution, get into the Lord Ruler's palace and steal his atium, we develop a plan where we decide what are the things we need to do to achieve this and we assign each member of the crew a goal. But then it gets reeeeally slow. I felt like 50% of the books was just Vin going to a ball, talking to some nobles, going back to the crew, everyone giving progress report, rinse and repeat. Most of the book felt like I was just watching the characters talk about their plan and not actually seeing the plan come to fruition, that was happening off-screen. I wasn't watching Breeze recruit soldiers, I was just watching him talk about how many he recruited last week. I wasn't watching March infiltrate the Ministry, I was just watching the other characters read a letter where he describes what he's done. I wasn't watching Kelsier murder nobles and creating tension between them, I was just seeing him come back to Renoux's manor and talking about it. Sure we had one chapter where Kelsier visited the army that was being trained, but even that didn't really show anything, it was more of a "look, this is what the characters did off-scrren, cool huh?". The only character that I was watching actually execute the plan was Vin, I was watching her become one of the nobles and spread false rumours between them. But honestly? That was probably one of the more boring parts of the whole plan and I found most of the balls rather dull, except for interactions with Elend. And in the end, we don't even do any "heist", cause the plan falls apart and things kind of just happen at the end.

There were some high points as well. Kelsier had a little action scene where he broke into a noble's mansion and stole atium from there, killing a couple of guards in the process. That was a nice scene, I just wish we could see more of that. There was also the attack on the palace where Kelsier and Vin tried to get into the special room and Vin almost dying in the process, that was a really cool sequence and is one my favourite chapters of the entire book. Though it was kinda stupid for the two main characters to just go into the Lord Ruler's palace completely on their own with no real preparation in advance, I mean what the hell were they expecting? But it was a cool fight so I'll forgive their foolishness. The part where Vin finds out about the plot to murder Elend and fights Shan on the roof was also super awesome. These are the things I wanted to see in this book when the magic system got introduced, I was really looking forward to Mistborn/Misting fights and I got almost none of them. What I got instead was a ton of talking and that was simply disappointing. My copy of the book is about 600 pages long and for every 100 pages of talking we get like 5 pages of fighting. Maybe it's my fault for expecting this to be an action book when it never claimed to be and never wanted to be, but I mean Elantris also wasn't really an action book, we didn't even have magic for most of it and yet I still found it very entertaining. Elantris didn't have fights every other chapter, but things were still happening. In Final Empire, it didn't feel that way.

Speaking of the magic system, I actually wasn't very impressed by it at all. The pulling/pushing on metals is a pretty unique ability and I loved how creatively it can be utilized to fly, use coins as "bullets" and a bunch of other stuff. But the rest of the abilities are just kind of... meh? If you're a Mistborn you can combine them fairly effectively, but if you are just a Misting and have only one of these abilities, unless it's an iron/steel one (and even there you really need both to be actually effective I'd say) they seem kind of pointless. You can calm or increase someone's emotions. Useful in some situations but not really a "fighting" ability. You can hide the fact that you're using allomancy from other allomancers. Like what do I do with that? I can hide my allomancy, but my allomancy is entirely limited to the ability to hide my allomancy. Same goes for detecting allomancy of other allomancers. Nice, I can find my enemies, but unless I have a team with me, I can do pretty much nothing against them. The increasing your senses/making yourself stronger is pretty okay, at least you are more capable of fighting I guess. So these abilities really seem like you need to have more of them available at once to actually be able to utilize them effectively, either by being a Mistborn or by being in a team. And yeah, we saw Kelsier and Vin use these together, but even then they were mostly using the physical ones, the emotional/discovery things were just kind of passive abilities that they had activated and that was that. I think it's a bit of a wasted opportunity to not have some sort of a team battle, where the various Mistings can cooperate and use their abilities together. But since our two main characters have all of these abilities at once, they don't necessarily need other people. Yeah yeah Kelsier said something like it's better to have an expert in one field rather than trying to do everything yourself, but in practice I just didn't feel like any of the other crewmembers were needed in a fight and frankly I don't think we ever really saw them in a fight. Perhaps I'm focusing on the fighting aspect a bit too much and not seeing the other areas where these abilities are useful, but I haven't really seen an example of the abilities being extra useful in other situations. And when they were used in other situations, I just didn't find it that impressive. I don't know, I like the idea of this magic system but its execution seems a bit sloppy. Atium is really cool though and I love it's utilization in fights.

Let's talk about the ending now. I've already become familiar with the term Sanderlanche where the ending is so gripping that I can't put it down. I felt like Elantris had an ending like this and though I was able to put it down (simply because I don't read more than an hour on any given day for personal reasons) I still really liked it and was looking forward to the next reading session. With Final Empire, I didn't really feel like the ending was THAT gripping. The end of Part Four was awesome and things escalated super quickly which I really liked. The battle between Kelsier and the inquisitor + the guards was in my opinion the best sequence in the entire book and I was having a really good time reading it, THIS is what I wanted more of in the book. The arrival of Lord Ruler was terrifying, his sheer power seemed absolutely overwhelming and I couldn't see how the hell were our heroes going to defeat him. Kelsier's death at his hands was extremely shocking to me. I have heard the names of Kelsier and Vin with relation to this series countless times before and I always assumed they are the two main characters that we are following for the entire trilogy. So seeing Kelsier die in the first book already was completely unexpected and it took me a couple of chapters to actually accept the fact that he's dead, I kept thinking he was gonna come back somehow (Renoux kinda tricked me at one point into believing that that's happening but nope).

The actual climax after that though wasn't as great though. I mean it was fine but if I had to compare, I would say I liked the ending to Elantris much more. The uprising of the skaats throughout the city came a bit out of nowhere. Like yeah I know Kelsier was being nice to them throughout the book, built up his reputation and then died a martyr to stir their emotions but still. The entire book we've been working towards this big plan and in the end it was all thrown away and we kind of just improvised with a resistance that suddenly formed spontaneously. The only thing that went according to the plan was the nobles starting a war amongst themselves, everything else just kind of happened. And yeah I get that secretly this WAS Kelsier's plan all along, but he did want the other things to work too right? Apperently they didn't need to, so the whole plan with the army and everything was kind of pointless. Or did he make up this plan about becoming a martyr after they lost the army? I'm rambling a bit now though so let's get back to the point.

Vin's final confrontation with the Lord Ruler was a little weird tbh. First she just marched in thinking she can beat him, realised he's too powerful and got captured. Then Sazed and Elend save her and she... marches in thinking she can beat him, releases he's too powerful and almost gets killed. Sure she had a slightly different plan at each attempt but still, it felt a bit sudden and reckless. I guess that's what Vin is but I just didn't really like the way this ending went about. It felt like Brandon spend 50% of the book writing about balls and nobles, then realised the book was getting too long and needs to end at some point so he quickly made all the main players meet and fight and that was that. I just didn't like the pacing of it I guess. The way Vin defeated Lord Ruler also didn't seem very satisfying. I liked the reveal that he isn't actually the person who wrote the logbook but instead a servant who killed the author of that and became the Lord himself. But the whole Eleventh Metal thing... I mean yeah, that's what made Vin realise who Lord Ruler is and where his abilities come from, I guess I was just expecting something a lot different and as a result was disappointed by this. I thought the Eleventh Metal would be a cool new fighting ability, instead it's just a backstory revealing thing that gave Vin information she needed. And then she suddenly had the strength to pull out the rings from Lord Ruler's body which made him lose his power. Why was she strong enough to do that? I guess that's something the next books will explain but the only explanation to that really is that she is somehow special and that just feels... cheap. We defeated the main villain not by some trickery or hard work or something but simply because our main character found out some information and then just happened to have enough strength to be able to exploit that. It just didn't really feel earned, especially since Lord Ruler was built up as an absolutely OP god-like being. I didn't enjoy it much.

I loved Marsh's role in all of this though. I reaaaally wish we got to see more of Marsh in this book. Imagine following him as he slowly infiltrates the Ministry, becomes one of the inquisitors and learn all of their dark secrets. Wouldn't that be a much cooler and exciting story than watching Vin go to 7 different balls and talk to a bunch of nobles?

Phew okay, this was a super long post, but I tend to write a lot when I'm describing things I didn't like xD. Overall I wouldn't say the book was too bad, it was still fairly entertaining, though the middle part was really dragging at parts and it didn't have nowhere near as much action as I was hoping for. Elantris is the only other book from Cosmere I've read and I couldn't help but constantly compare Final Empire to it. Elantris was a book where it felt like we made progress in every chapter, whereas in Final Empire, it felt like barely anything was progressing for half of the book (and even the little progress that there was was happening off-screen). With Elantris the ending was gradually escalanting until we got to a final battle, but in Final Empire we had not much happening, then Kelsier gets into a fight in which he dies, that triggers the uprising and suddenly we killed the main villain. I mentioned how Elantris' ending made me excited every time I finished reading to read again the next day. With Final Empire the ending was so sudden I basically read all of it in a single session, not because I couldn't put the book away and made my session longer, but because the ending was so quick I didn't need more time than that to read it.

I've seen a lot of people say Elantris isn't their favourites, it's Brandon's first published book after all and his weaknesses are much more on display. On the other hand I've seen a lot of people praise Mistborn and say that it's one of their favourite series with Final Empire itself ranking quite high. But after reading both, I have to say that I actually liked Elantris more, way more. Maybe I'll see things differently once I read the entirety of Era 1 and will see the bigger picture, but as a book on its own, I don't think Final Empire is that good. Like I said, it's not a bad book, but I feel like it had a lot of missed potential and focused on the wrong things, or rather it didn't focus on the things I personally wanted it to. It didn't really suit my taste is what I'm trying to say I guess. It also didn't help that it took me a long time to read the book, I read Elantris in less than 3 weeks but Final Empire took me almost a month (both books are pretty much the same in length). I'm not sure if the book felt slow and boring because I was reading it too slow OR if the book was actually slow and boring and that made me read less. Either way though, in terms of a tierlist, I'd put Final Empire in a B-tier, borderline C-tier. For comparison I've put Elantris in A-tier so far.

Hopefully the other two books will suit my tastes a little more, we'll see. I've read the blurb on the back of my copy of Well of Ascension and it already seems more interesting than Final Empire, so I'm hopeful but cautious. Sorry for the super lengthy post but if you've read this far, please let me know, what did you think about this book? If you're one of the people who love it, why? What are the things that make this book stand out for you? Or did you have similar feelings as me? Do you think I'll enjoy the other two books based on my opinions on the first one?

EDIT: Yes, I realise this post is long as hell, I don't need 5 people to tell me that. If you don't wanna read it I completely understand, I probably wouldn't either. But if that's the case I really don't see why you feel the need to spam my feed with "lol, long post" messages. Sorry for coming off a bit aggressive here but I came here to discuss the book, not the length of my post.

Everyone praises Sanderson for hard magic systems, and I'm one of those people. I think that having clear sets of rules on what a magic system can or cannot do makes it more satisfying when it comes up in the plot.

First let me highlight three examples where I think this is done very well: Tress spores, Windrunner Surgebinding and Era 1 Allomancy. Spores have a clear set of rules: when they interact with water they do the thing, when they interact with silver they die. So, when Tress makes the big tree grow to avoid a wave, it makes sense and it's a clever use of the given rules. Windrunner Surgebinding has three types of Lashing and that's it, so whenever Kaladin combines those three types of Lashings in battle it makes sense to us. Era 1 Allomancy is similar - when Vin splits the atium shadow it's based on the rules of how atium has been established to work.

So yeah in TLM and WaT this isn't the case anymore. In TLM, two new magic users are introduced, an Elantrian and an Aether user, who for all intents and purposes can do whatever the fuck. Which is fine if this was the setup to a plot -we'd learn more about the powers as time went on- but it's the last damn book in the era. (It was fine in Elantris too, as Elantris's restoration was clearly set up as the win condition narratively so it doesn't matter how exactly the magic allows them to win.) A large part of the plot relies on what Harmony and Bavadin can or cannot do to each other, which unlike the Preservation/Ruin conflict in Era 1 has extremely vague rules. In WaT, Notum can suddenly wear Shardplate even though why isn't every 4th Ideal Radiant fighting side by side with their spren then? I could give more example but the point is the plot is resolved less through application of existing rules and more through introducing new rules out of nowhere.

The other problem is the attempts to tie every magic back universal cosmere-wide rules. As of TLM Forgers no longer need to understand the object they're forging, they just use a magic stamp to do the thing. After all they're just communicating with the object rhough Cognitive Realm the same way Soulcasting does! Nevermind that that limitation made the magic system more interesting. Unsealed metalminds are a whole can of worms (only made worse by the fact Brandon still hasn't told us how they're made) because they rely not on a clever application of Feruchemy specifically but fuckery with vaguely defined Cosmere-wide rules like Identity, and they feel like a new premise you have to just accept rather than a logical continuation of Feruchemy. The same force of Connection is somehow responsible for both the Oathpact and Sel's magics being country based. The list goes on but my point is explanation of magic systems is shifted from "this is how the system works, watch our characters work around these strict rules" to "the system is actually based on much vaguer rules we can just bend".

TL;DR magic systems being more interconnected removes the limitations that made them good.

So we know that stormlight healing allows a transgender Knight Radiant to transition to the sex that fits their gender because that's how they mentally percieve their body. So if a transgender Feruchemist healed using gold metalminds, would they also transition? If yes, would the act of storing large amounts of health cause them to de-transition?

I'm not usually one to make posts complaining about books, but wow. This is seriously a drag, especially after reading Sanderson's WoT and SLA books.

I find the Elantris stuff pretty good though. I really like the concept of the city and the mystery behind it. But the rest of the book? Meh...

I feel like I remember reading/hearing Brandon saying something about he isn't a fan of Elantris, and I think it's awesome how much he's improved as a writer. I'm going to finish it anyway, then I'm gonna move on to Warbreaker because I want to get more into the Cosmere, but MAN!!! Does it ever start to pick up? I'm on Chapter 8, so I'm still pretty early

I won't go into to much detail, because I want to make another, much more detailed list. I will give spoiler free reasoning for some of my choices.

My TOP 5 Cosmere books, in order are:

5. The Bands of Mourning (Just a really big fan of the characters *cough* *cough* Wayne. This was just the most interesting of Era 2 for me.)

4. Tress of the Emerald Sea (Just a really fun story, cool magic system, LOVE Tress)

3. Wind and Truth (I do not understand why people don't like this one. I loved experiencing the major climaxes of all the characters I have come to love. So good)

2. Isles of the Emberdark (I will die on the hill that this one is AMAZING it is such a mystery to me why people criticize this one so much, also, W birds)

1. The Sunlit Man (Peak, also Sigzil; goated)

My 5 LEAST FAVORITE of the Cosmere. I will say it here as to not repeat it, I do not think there is a single bad Cosmere book, these just happen to be the weakest in my eyes. I have thoroughly enjoyed every Brando Sando book I have read, despite what I might say below:

5. Elantris (This one hurts me. I actually really like Elantris. The magic is really interring, I LOVED the characters, and the cult stuff could've been an interesting Cosmere tie-in at some point. All that being said, the pacing of this book killed me, I know that is a common issue here. Elantris is only at 5 because everything else is just so good, if Elantris had better pacing it would be much higher on my list. A reluctant 5.)

4. The Hope of Elantris (Just kind of mid, I like WHY it was written but I cannot see myself ever going back to it.)

3. Allomancer Jak and the Pits of Eltania (I skipped every Jak insert in the Era 2 books, this was an extended one of those. The reason it is 3 is because of how short it was. This is the only Cosmere piece I would even get close to considering bad. Jak is just so unlikeable.)

2. White Sand (I am including all 3 volumes so my bottom five isn't clogged with sand. Desert politics was not very interesting. I really only read these to finish up the Cosmere. I love the sand magic, and I loved to cool sand critters, it's just a shame there wasn't a lot of diversity in what was done with them. The dark side sounded pretty interesting and I am a little sad we never got anything from that side of the world. Dark side characters were fun and likeable.)

1. Yumi and the Nightmare Painter (Please don't leave me for the highstorm here. This book was just so boring to me, I constantly noticed myself losing focus and having to go bad and re-read. Characters where so-so/very average, except for my boy Hoid and the GOAT Design. Magic system here was really cool though.)

I feel like my opinion is opposite of what I always see and hear about the Cosmere (looking at you Emberdark, my beloved). It may just be that the popular take is what always pops up on my feed, I would just love to seem some love for my favorites too! (I know I still have popular Cosmere books in my top favorites, but that is beside the point.)

Not sure what exactly is considered a spoiler, so I did my best to hide any specific things.
Thank you for letting me rant :)

I'm half way through Alloy and I do not like it. The writing is average. I don't understand how this is in the same mist born universe. The original era has so much darkness and mystery. There were deep characters. This seems like fan fiction.

What is your best argument for me to continue?

Note I have also read all of the stormlight archive so I know how well Sanderson is capable of writing.

I feel like we need to change Stormlight Archive from SA to SLA for obvious reasons.

But this is coming from someone who's a big fan of high fantasy where the magic usually feels more like magic than a completely precise science. And I get that many people actually love this aspect of his books. And I'm a gamer myself. It's not something that bothers me a lot, just something I don't care as much for.

Yup. Y’all know who I’m talking about. The guy named Moash. I just read the Stormlight Archive for the first time ever in anticipation of Wind and Truth. I started in June, just finished the last week in August.

When Elhokar’s death happened in Oathbringer I was surprised by how upset I was. I actually excused myself to a different room and cried a bit. But after a break and some thinking, I knew I just couldn’t hate Moash for killing him. Elhokar had it coming, and justice was done. He bore a good deal of responsibility for Moash’s grandparents death, and Moash was never, ever, going to get justice under the Alethi system. The royal family knew about the wrongful deaths, as we learn from Dalinar, and instead just swept it under the rug, pretending exile was enough. We all know it wasn’t. I burned with anger at what happened to his grandparents, knowing they died a pointless and gruesome death through an abuse of power. Moash also finally did what no one else had the guts to do, and that was kill Roshone, a man responsible for 3 deaths. Heck, he got off easier than he deserved. Honestly, I even cheered for Moash when he told off Navani in Rhythm of War when she called him a traitor. She was never a queen of Alethi, only Alethi light-eyes and Moash had every right to be mad at her. She was the Queen when it happened, while Elhokar was just the prince, and might even had helped pushed the whole incident under the rug. She wasn’t innocent. The Alethi system of government and society in general was deeply flawed under Elhokar, and in fairness under Gavilar and most light-eyes, and justice demanded something happened.

Don’t get me wrong, Moash has done some definite wrong and he isn’t a hero or good guy any longer. Turning his back on humanity as a whole, which included Bridge Four, was wrong. In my opinion, he should have stayed in that refugee camp and over thrown the light-eyes, starting some sort of societal revolution. He also crossed a definitive line into villainy with Murdering Teft near the end of Rhythm of War. That death hurt just as bad as Elhokar. Hopefully he will be met with justice for that just as he dished out.

Shoot the messenger if you want, but I just can’t hate Moash for what he’s done. I sympathize and pity him, but this was the almost natural result of Alethi society at this point and I applaud him for getting the justice he and his family were denied simply for the color of his eyes. If something like this didn’t happen I would be disappointed. His story and actions are some of the most important in the Stormlight Archive and I’m very excited to learn about him in Wind and Truth.

My only gripe about the otherwise wonderful cosmere books. Why should one need to dig into that and spend time reading coppermind articles instead of getting it from reading and re-reading the books, which is the enjoyable part for me?

Lol like are Honor, Cultivation, etc. roughly on par with gods like Zeus, Posiedon, Thor, etc? Weaker? Stronger?

Marked spoiler in case people ask deep lore questions.

A little bit too whimsical, light, quirky for the sake of being quirky.

It reminds me of the remake of Alice in Wonderland and that style of dialogue

I'm up to chapter 9

Does it get any better ? Or pretty much same onwards ?

I finished the first book in the Mistborn series and loved it 👍😊 Been hearing a lot of buzz around Stormlight, but their length seems a bit intimidating.

(Heard the World building is superb)

OH my goodness! I just finished reading this book, and I am SO overwhelmingly frustrated with the ending of this book, that I need to vent! I was VERY much enjoying the book up until the end. I was like, WTF? All this time building the characters in a certain way in my imagination, and the ending just didn't fit with what was built up to that point. It didn't make sense. I guess it felt clumsy and rushed, and uncharacteristic for our characters. Clearly, some things really needed to be fleshed out further and built up in the world. And then the ending... my gosh... the ending just needs to be redone!

EDIT: clarifying that I really enjoyed the book. I couldn't put it down, the characters drew me in and were all very intriguing. Nothing was as it seemed; everything was a surprise. I greatly loved the characters, and my point is that they all deserved a better ending, better resolution. It was the ENDING of the book that angers me, hence the title of the post "dissatisfied in a book's ending".

Take Lightsong for example. He's solving a mystery. Through the whole book, he is (we are) trying to figure out who he really is -- what's important to him, what isn't, what does he want? Is he capable of loving, or of caring for anything else besides himself? Finally, the momentum gets going and he is (and we are) really starting to like who he is becoming. It looks as though he is actually going to be given the chance to be something other than the self-hating lacsidasical "not-a-god" and make a difference and... oh, he's dead. He just gives his power to somebody else and he's gone. I liken this to, let's say, a WWII story, where you have this young inexperienced man who is promoted to a high rank, and he knows he doesn't deserve it, but somebody sees something in him that he can't see in himself. But because he is, at his core, an incredible person, he quickly learns how to lead, getting everything figured out. Finally, he has earned everyone's respect (including the reader's), and he is sent to the "big battle", his defining moment. He takes his army and goes charging to the enemy... only to trip on his shoelaces and land on a landmine. Sure, the resulting explosion kills all the bad guys too, but he didn't get his moment--he didn't get his resolution. It was SO anti-climactic. Lightsong gives up his life... and for what purpose? So Susebron can have his tongue back. Lol! That's essentially it! And now that Susebron has his tongue back-- its simply just bam! -- Easy Button.

I absolutely hated Blushweaver's demise. It just didn't fit! For what purpose did she die? What purpose was there to killing her or not saving her serve? She was a goddess. Couldn't Lightsong have been able to save her before giving up his own life? That would have been so much more satisfying. And I still have no idea what her motivations and goals were. Was she helping or hurting behind the scenes?? She was a person that we meet and get to know; she has a place in our imaginations and our hearts! She wasn't some no-name off the streets. She deserved better treatment than to be discarded like trash. She got the same treatment as Old Chapps--now, HE was a no-name (with a name) off the streets.

What was up with Vasher? So, he's one of the Five Scholars. That's cool! But what does that mean for him? What should it meant to us? Only that he knows a lot about BioChroma, or should there be something more? I mean, how long has this guy lived!? What have been his struggles? His accomplishments? Apparently he is BOTH Kalad AND Peacemaker? Can we get more explanation on that please? So, he starts a huge war, and then decides to end it. But WHY!? Why did he change? And really, why did he really kill Shallandra (or whatever Denth's sister's name is). The motivation given for killing her just felt weak.

Speaking of weak motivation--Denth. Man, HE was a great character. That betrayal ROCKED me! Oh, got me good. Good plot twist! But then, when all is said and done... why is he helping to start a war? For money? Denth is the best swordsman that ever lived. He is one of the Five freakin' Scholars, his knowledge about BioChroma is superior to all other's save for Vasher, and he has lived for hundreds of years. And he is trying to start a war because of lots of money? Yeah, I'm not buying it. And his one true motivation -- revenge on Vasher -- isn't a reason to bring devastation on two kingdoms -- he doesn't need to go through that whole rigamaroll to get his revenge on Vasher. So what then? Why is he doing it? I can't understand his motivation, and this broke my "suspension of disbelief" for this character.

What happens to Siri and Susebron? There's no resolution to their story. I hate just assuming "happily ever after" here. Especially considering there's still the whole Idrian Kingdom and her father, and her sister. I mean, Vivenna's and Siri's reunion was almost parred down to one line-- "oh, there's my sister Vivenna; she looks different".

Which brings me to my biggest disappointment: Vivenna. Abandoning everything and leaving with Vasher I felt was extremely uncharacteristic of Vivenna. Indeed, she has had to do a lot of growing, changing, and understanding herself. But she takes everything she learns, all of her growth and maturing, and walks away from it? She just leaves with Vasher. WTF!? THAT was SO aggravating. SHE is the one who was supposed to go back to Idris and confront her father, and take everything she's learned and become the next super awesome leader of Idris, reaching out to establish peace with Hallandren and her sister Siri, and create a new dynamic with the displaced Idrian people--I really thought that's where this was heading. She lived in the slums with them! She knows what its like to be forgotten by King and Country. SHE is supposed to take that and help! She even essentially says that to one of the impoverished Idrians at one point. But nope, she just walks away. She started this whole journey to save her sister, and then really doesn't even interact with her once she's safe!?; She just walks away!? NO!! FIX IT! I cannot get over this. I have NEVER been so disappointingly dissatisfied with a book's ending.

How on eath did Adolin manage to block a fucking SWORD with a fork? Even if it were a normal sword and he were SUPERHUMAN and even IF he had stormlight (which he clearly doesn’t have access to…) HIS WRIST WOULD SNAP AT THE VERY LATEST ON THE SECOND PARRY. Though the gimick of the fight was cool tbf