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Stormlight Archives 4: Rhythm of War (SPOILERS)


Rhom

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Knowing the nature of the internet and the fantasy community and their propensity to ship couples... I can't imagine that I'm the only one who somehow expects Syl to manifest fully in the physical realm and become Kal's love interest, am I?

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Drifted into the dangerous wormhole that is the Stormlight Archive sub Reddit.  Did learn that the general consensus seems to be that Thaidakar is Kelsier.  That was interesting.

In some ways, it’s refreshing to read people who just actually enjoy what they are reading.  

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7 hours ago, Rhom said:

Knowing the nature of the internet and the fantasy community and their propensity to ship couples... I can't imagine that I'm the only one who somehow expects Syl to manifest fully in the physical realm and become Kal's love interest, am I?

 

way ahead of you >:O

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Wandering down the Reddit rabbit hole is dangerous sometimes... I had no idea that most of the characters other than the Shin we interact with have an epicanthic fold.  :stunned: That's why the Shin like Szeth are described as having big eyes.

The further descriptions lose me there however.  Brandon has said that most of the races wouldn't exist on Earth and don't have a direct analogue. 

Who knew.  :dunno: 

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11 hours ago, Rhom said:

Wandering down the Reddit rabbit hole is dangerous sometimes... I had no idea that most of the characters other than the Shin we interact with have an epicanthic fold.  :stunned: That's why the Shin like Szeth are described as having big eyes.

The further descriptions lose me there however.  Brandon has said that most of the races wouldn't exist on Earth and don't have a direct analogue. 

Who knew.  :dunno: 

What? I thought that it was the opposite- that the Shin are 'Asians' of the cosmere. Every official or fan art that I have seen describes main characters as having 'Western' eyes.

Anyway, wouldn't that imply that people from all other worlds also have epicanthic folds, since there are numerous 'world hoppers', and folks from Roshar don't notice anything strange about their eyes, apart from maybe color, if I remember correctly.

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https://www.brandonsanderson.com/rhythm-of-war-is-out/

Since Rhythm of War’s release, it’s hit #1 on the New York Time’s List for the Combined Print and E-Book Fiction and the Hard Cover Fiction lists, reaching the #1 spot on Amazon, as well as hitting #2 on USA Today’s list (which isn’t subdivided like the NYT’s list).

We here at Dragonsteel want to give our immense thanks to all of you. We know you have to wait a few years between books and we all (especially Brandon) appreciate all the patience you’ve shown and continue to give us. We know many of you would prefer for Brandon to stop writing other series in the Cosmere—and outside it—but Brandon has developed this schedule intentionally. It’s at a pace that allows him to get new Stormlight books out fairly quickly without taking away his sanity or seeing a diminishing level of quality in the story-telling.

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7 hours ago, Gronzag said:

What? I thought that it was the opposite- that the Shin are 'Asians' of the cosmere. Every official or fan art that I have seen describes main characters as having 'Western' eyes.

Anyway, wouldn't that imply that people from all other worlds also have epicanthic folds, since there are numerous 'world hoppers', and folks from Roshar don't notice anything strange about their eyes, apart from maybe color, if I remember correctly.

Yeah, I was blown away in all of it too.  Definitely thought of Shin as the Asia equivalent.  There’s a few discussions on Reddit and a couple of times your specific question came up.  This was a response directly from Brandon 4 years ago:

Quote

It's a little more complicated than I might have made it seem.  Alethkar natives other than the Shin have the epicanthic fold, but the Alethi wouldn't look strictly Asian to you--they'd look like a race that you can't define, as we don't have them on earth.  I use half-Asian/half-arab or half-asian/half-Polynesian models as my guide some of the time, but Alethi are going to have a tanner skin than some of those.

Some Horneaters might look Caucasian to you--but then, most will not.  They'll seem like something alien, and not all of them have light skin; they tend to walk a spectrum between pale and coppery.  Reshi and Herdazians will look closest to something like an indigenous Bolivian.

Shin would look the closest to Caucasian to you, but again, they're not an Earth ethnicity.  So you might not be able to place them either.

A lot of the fanart has done a good job with this, and if you search through it, it might help you get an idea.

And then specifically as it regards WorldHoppers

Quote

I was under the impression that the eyes of some of the worldhoppers have been mentioned... I can find this bit in the Ishikk interlude:

The third man had light tan skin, like an Alethi. He didn’t seem quite right either, though. The eyes were the wrong shape, [...]

The description of Baxil's mistress is also interesting:

She had eyes like a Shin, but she was tall and lean, like an Alethi.

Got me thinking about all the internet rage that always boils up with TV casting decisions.  Like the cast of WoT being more diverse than normal was a point of contention.  It would be almost funny to see the anger over casting Asian actors as Dalinar and Kaladin with a white guy as Szeth. :D

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On 12/3/2020 at 2:23 PM, Rhom said:

Yeah, I was blown away in all of it too.  Definitely thought of Shin as the Asia equivalent.  There’s a few discussions on Reddit and a couple of times your specific question came up.  This was a response directly from Brandon 4 years ago:

And then specifically as it regards WorldHoppers

Got me thinking about all the internet rage that always boils up with TV casting decisions.  Like the cast of WoT being more diverse than normal was a point of contention.  It would be almost funny to see the anger over casting Asian actors as Dalinar and Kaladin with a white guy as Szeth. :D

Well, now it does appear to be on page evidence that they do have 'non-European' eye shape but many artists don't bother depicting them as such, or at least not prominently . Which is probably source of my confusion.

I'm not a native English speaker and yet I read mostly in English for years. Now, whenever I read a new book, I simply google any character that might be important  as soon as I come across them so I can see what they look like, instead of waiting for writer to describe them in detail. That way it's far easier to keep track of them, by remembering what they look like in pictures. Also, it's a good way to find out how important is the someone- if there is a ton of fan art for a certain character, then I better pay attention. Shalan, for example, in most depictions looks like she is Dutch or Belgian.

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15 minutes ago, Gronzag said:

Well, now it does appear to be on page evidence that they do have 'non-European' eye shape but many artists don't bother depicting them as such, or at least not prominently . Which is probably source of my confusion.

I'm not a native English speaker and yet I read mostly in English for years. Now, whenever I read a new book, I simply google any character that might be important  as soon as I come across them so I can see what they look like, instead of waiting for writer to describe them in detail. That way it's far easier to keep track of them, by remembering what they look like in pictures. Also, it's a good way to find out how important is the someone- if there is a ton of fan art for a certain character, then I better pay attention. Shalan, for example, in most depictions looks like she is Dutch or Belgian.

Oh I'm definitely terrible about picturing characters in my head.

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I just finished. It was ok.

I agree with the general sentiment that it was bloated and a lot cut of been cut without losing anything but long books don't really bother me and I feel like it was pretty explicit from the start that this series was going to be a 90s style overly long, fairly self indulgent one.

I liked the Adolin/Shallan sections. It was the part of the book that felt like it was actually moving the plot forward the most and I like Adolin in general. It's a bit of a relief to have a character with only a moderate amount of self flagellation going on. Honestly I though it was going to go a bit further with Maya and the other dead eyes recovering.

The Venli and Rlain bits were ok. It didn't progress things a lot but I think having sympathetic singer characters is relevant to were it's all going.

The Kaladin (and to a lesser extent Shallan) mental health stuff I've got mixed feelings about. Sanderson trying to include mental health issues is quite laudable but it did feel like quite a rehash of what's happened in previous books and to be honest I found it quite tedious to read. I think I'd have preferred to see it separated from the whole fight for Urithiru section.

I've come to the conclusion I don't really like Dalinar as a character. We're repeatedly told how amazing he is and I'm not really seeing it. Why was he in particular getting visions from Honor? As soon as he learns Radiants are back he just goes out and bonds the most powerful spren. Odium's apparently fascinated with him because, er, why?

Similar to that the Navani sections annoyed me. It was obvious from the start that she was going to bond with the Sibling it all felt a bit forced.

And, yeah, the Taravangian just becoming Odium thing felt a bit cheap.

 

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22 hours ago, ljkeane said:

And, yeah, the Taravangian just becoming Odium thing felt a bit cheap.

 

Why?  I thought the deal was much more forced as now it's pretty obvious Dalinar is going to lose and become the champion of Odium but peace reigns in Roshar.

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6 minutes ago, Slurktan said:

Why?  I thought the deal was much more forced as now it's pretty obvious Dalinar is going to lose and become the champion of Odium but peace reigns in Roshar.

Even if it's turned out to not ultimately be about that the whole series has built up around the impossible odds of a battle against Rayse(?) as Odium. He's thousands of years old and apparently immensely powerful then he visits Taravangian while he's in the same room as Szeth's sword and boom, he's dead and now Taravangian's Odium? I don't know, seems like a bit of a let down to me.

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40 minutes ago, ljkeane said:

Even if it's turned out to not ultimately be about that the whole series has built up around the impossible odds of a battle against Rayse(?) as Odium. He's thousands of years old and apparently immensely powerful then he visits Taravangian while he's in the same room as Szeth's sword and boom, he's dead and now Taravangian's Odium? I don't know, seems like a bit of a let down to me.

I dunno, I remember saying that I thought Rayse/Odium went out like a #$%&@ in Oathbringer and that I couldn't see how he was a legit threat going forward as the big bad for the series.  Taravangian?  Jury is still out.  I wonder how long before Hoid et al start figuring out its not their old friend Rayse?

This next book closes out the first five book sequence of Stormlight Archives.  Clearly, there was a lot of setup in this book that the big fight they are talking about is the fight for the cosmere not just Roshar.  So how this all ties into the grander narrative beyond this is also something to watch for.  Is Taravangian a real threat to the Cosmere?  Was Rayse's goal to destroy the other shards or was he wanting to go all Infinity Gauntlet on them?  If Rayse wanted to destroy them, will Taravangian work to obtain them all?  What is Cultivation's goal in all this?  

Speaking of Cultivation, there was a line early in RoW that said Cultivation had prepared Lift for this moment.  It made me think that her use of LifeLight would be key to lifting the tower occupation or wakening the tower, but it did not seem to be the case in the end necessarily other than providing a source of LifeLight for Navani to study.  So what was Cultivation's plan for her?

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Sanderson thinks that Rhythm of War's opening week could be the the biggest in epic fantasy genre since A Dance with Dragons. I wonder how well the final Wheel of Time novel did compared to RoW.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormlight_Archive/comments/k15tvm/1_in_our_hearts_and_on_the_charts/gdmzodv/

Final numbers for the opening week are going to land in the neighborhood of 350k. That will be 40-45% increase over the previous book, depending on how many we actually sold against projections. That was enough to land the number one spot on the NYT, though not on USA Today's list (which combines all genres together, which means I had to contend with President Obama's book... Which sold 1.7 million copies opening week. So, you know, it was a pretty close race.)

All in all, it's one of the biggest epic fantasy book launches ever. (Though I'm all but certain A Dance With Dragons holds the record.

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Finished Rhythm of War. Found it meh (except the ending), and feel that it is reaching the same stagnation point as the meh books in Wheel of Time. Except the last quarter, not much was interesting in it.


I love Hoid though, he outdid himself in being funny again. The two funniest moments of him were:


Shallan saying to Mraize to tell his leader that Hoid said to focus on your planet, otherwise I will come and slap you again. Quite clearly, that person is Kelsier.

Calling Rayne/Odium that you have always been an idiot (though obviously, he does not know that Rayne is dead and Odium is now Teravangian).

Kaladin is starting to annoy me. He is very much Rand al Thor. Dalinar and Jasnah are the most interesting characters in the series, and it is criminal that Jasnah is not getting much more time. She is so much more interesting than the young protagonists (Kaladin, Shallan and Adolin).
 

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  • 2 weeks later...

If you think about it, this was pretty much just a 1200 page novel about Navani figuring out how to turn on the lights.

On 12/8/2020 at 12:51 PM, Rhom said:

Speaking of Cultivation, there was a line early in RoW that said Cultivation had prepared Lift for this moment.  It made me think that her use of LifeLight would be key to lifting the tower occupation or wakening the tower, but it did not seem to be the case in the end necessarily other than providing a source of LifeLight for Navani to study.  So what was Cultivation's plan for her?

Didn't she save Kaladin's life?  And wake the other Radiants?

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