Author Topic: ***SPOILERS Official Hero of Ages Spoilers Thread. Includes Q&A w/Brandon****  (Read 335750 times)

hamateur

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Re: ***SPOLIERS Official Hero of Ages Spoilers Thread. Includes Q&A w/Brandon*
« Reply #225 on: October 21, 2008, 06:22:16 AM »
Yes, iirc Vin did turn Spook down.  By calling that situation a love triangle, I only meant that he carried a torch for her for quite a while afterwards.
Hemalurgy - don't try it at home

Dalenthas

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Re: ***SPOLIERS Official Hero of Ages Spoilers Thread. Includes Q&A w/Brandon*
« Reply #226 on: October 21, 2008, 06:24:31 AM »
Buisness Calc probably won't get anywhere near as complicated as my previous post implied. I was using as many complicated sounding calculus terms on purpose to sound complicated. I used to tutor calculus, and really, if you can do algebra, then calculus is a walk in the park, especially Business Calc.

Chaos

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Okay, here's a question for Brandon: Can you tell us what the rest of the Feruchemical abilities are, for those higher metals?
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op6

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Re: ***SPOLIERS Official Hero of Ages Spoilers Thread. Includes Q&A w/Brandon*
« Reply #228 on: October 21, 2008, 07:45:23 AM »
The discussion of Hoid and the possibility that many (if not most) of your novels take place in the same universe started me thinking about the epigraphs in Mistborn.  Put that together with your current project, and...

MISTBORN and THE WHEEL OF TIME are one and the same universe!  Sadly, that doesn't boad well for Rand Alendi.  ;D




But, on a serious note, when reading Mistborn I was struck with the incredible similarities between Alendi's quest and the Wheel of Time.  While the WoT is certainly not unique in its common "common man discovering he is the hero prophesied to save the world" theme, that plot, when combined with early admiration for the WoT, seems like too much of a coincidence.

1.  Because MISTBORN, at least in its marketing, was based on the premise of the hero failing in his quest, and your current project to finish the Wheel of Time series, have you felt any guilt over the past year in writing a series that in many ways is based on attacking that very cliche?


Of course, I am a long-time fan of the WoT, and as I new fan of your works, I would note that I would not place any blame or suggest any guilt (I am only wondering if the thought had at one point crossed your mind).  Indeed, while bookstores these days are filled with that common cliche (really, I am suprised that the names don't run together already, considering the number of similarly themed fantasy novels), Robert Jordan's works are among the the truly great in that category, and likely are among the reasons there are so many copycats (by the way, I find your works uniquely original and creative).

Among the many virtues that I have seen in your novels, the ability to tie together every last thread (something I had not experienced in the Fantasy genre until reading Elantris), none of them loose for a moment, at least in retrospect, reaffirms my faith/trust (I've got to admit, I saw that one coming through my entire reading of Hero of Ages, and was captivated by Sazed's struggle) in your ability to finish WoT.

Of course, the size and scope of the series will by necessity leave out some minor details.  Of that, however, I am content.  You need not worry about tying in every little, out of the way, colorfully named inn with the resolution of the story.  "The Queen's Blessing" and its ilk will always have a special place in my heart regardless.

trytoguess

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I'd like to join the chorus in thanking you for one of the most gripping trilogies I've ever read in my life.

And since no first post is ever really complete w/o the "throw crazy theory at audience and author” here’s mine.  It seems that the world has come full circle, in more ways than one. I think the original act of breaking off the shard of Preservation in order to create sentience is what caused the unity of the two powers to the broken. With Ruin dominant in the unified entity the dark force's primary goal was to probably split itself from the whole since killing a God ranks pretty high in ruinous actions, and it would give the force greater autonomy to not have to share a mind with its opposite twin.

Perhaps after the break the intelligence behind the forces died and they just reminded abstract powers until like minded people drew them in. Which might explain why the Gods had human bodies.

Hm, though now that I think about it, a fair amount of canon states Creation and Ruin were separate when humans were created...

Astra

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Re: ***SPOLIERS Official Hero of Ages Spoilers Thread. Includes Q&A w/Brandon*
« Reply #230 on: October 21, 2008, 12:42:38 PM »
Just finished reading this yesterday, and have let it percolate for a day. Loved the book, and personally I think the ending just fits with the story - as Ruin and Preservation were in a sense ended, so were Vin and Elend. With all the other balances and symmetry, it just has a certain kind of sense to me (Although I'd love to see some mention of them having come back in any future thing!). But I do have a question or two that occurred to me (apologies if these have been answered or i missed something in the book itself):

1) If metal interferes with Ruin - he can't read messages in it, and so forth - then how is he able to modify the Keeper's coppermind memories?

2) If I'm following right, as Atium was the body of Ruin, the metal that the Preservation 'beads' that create Allomancers is composed of was (part of) the body of Preservation. Where did these 'beads' that create Allomancers come from, and is there any particular reason why that metal is so much rarer in the world than Atium is? And if Atium slowly, over centuries, regrows, why (apparantly) does the Preservation metal not?

darxbane

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I thought of a few more questions today:

1) Why did the Inquisitors need to rest so much in book one?  There wasn't anything else mentioned about it afterwards.

2) Exactly how did Zane's cutting himself help to block Ruin's voice?

3)Does Marsh still have an Atium spike?
I wanted to write something profound here, but I couldn't think of anything.

firstRainbowRose

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I thought of a few more questions today:

1) Why did the Inquisitors need to rest so much in book one?  There wasn't anything else mentioned about it afterwards.

Actually, it meantions something about that in one of the epigraphs.  I'm thinking it was towards the end of the series.
"The custom of royalty in referring to oneself is to naturally employ the royal 'we'.  We are very happy, we are very sad, we are bored and suffer from ennui.  For a royal prince there's no such word as 'me', It's always 'we'.  So rightfully I should be two or three, don't you agree?"

Chaos

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Yes, that's what I seem to remember. They need to rest so much because of their healing Feruchemical ability. They need to rest so much in order to charge that up, so they seem that much powerful when they need to do actual fighting.
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Reaves

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Re: ***SPOLIERS Official Hero of Ages Spoilers Thread. Includes Q&A w/Brandon*
« Reply #234 on: October 21, 2008, 07:53:22 PM »
Wow. Simply amazing book.  Reading it felt like being in a thunderstorm the last few chapters. Simply amazing. Congratulations on a beautiful work of art.

Most of all, you made me think.
But I'm also shocked that no one else seemed to have figured out that Sazed was the Hero of Ages. I thought it might be him when I started the book, but it could as easily have been Vin or Elend.
http://www.timewastersguide.com/forum/index.php?topic=6132.0

teh heh heh!! My theory of Sazed as hero is correct...right down to the fact that the copperminds would be useful for rebuilding the world....although that wasn't quite the way I meant it!!

I also just want to announce one more time that it was NOT Rashek who wrote the epigraphs!! And while the bet between Andrew and I didn't force me to put forth Sazed as writing them, I said somewhere that I thought he would be the author.

Ok. Now you can all make fun of me for my ridiculous hemalurgy theories.

« Last Edit: October 21, 2008, 11:49:57 PM by Reaves »
Quote from: VegasDev
RJF: "AHA! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Cairhien, but only slightly less well-known is this: never go in against a warder when he is only the distraction! Get him Rand! Buzzzzzzz!

darxbane

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That's right.  What was I thinking?  They needed to store health.  OK, forget the first question.
I wanted to write something profound here, but I couldn't think of anything.

Chaos

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Re: ***SPOLIERS Official Hero of Ages Spoilers Thread. Includes Q&A w/Brandon*
« Reply #236 on: October 21, 2008, 10:29:15 PM »

Wow. Simply amazing book. Reading it felt like being in a thunderstorm the last few chapters. Simply amazing. Congratulations.

But I'm also shocked that no one else seemed to have figured out that Sazed was the Hero of Ages. I thought it might be him when I started the book, but it could as easily have been Vin or Elend.
http://www.timewastersguide.com/forum/index.php?topic=6132.0

tee hee hee!! My theory of Sazed as hero is correct...right down to the fact that the copperminds would be useful for rebuilding the world....although that wasn't quite the way I meant it!!

I also just want to announce one more time that it was NOT Rashek who wrote the epigraphs!! And while the bet between Andrew and I didn't force me to put forth Sazed as writing them, I said somewhere that I thought he would be the author.

Ok. Now you can all make fun of me for my ridiculous hemalurgy theories.



I can't help but notice, Reaves, that you don't have any Hemalurgy theories in the Final Theories topic :P

Of course, most of my theories were destroyed, but I am blaming this on the fact that I had so many theories that naturally, most would be eliminated. Yup, it certainly doesn't have to do with the fact that I think way too hard.

However, if you look at the Countdown thread, one of my last ideas was that the atium cache was the thing Ruin wanted. I didn't know how it worked, but hey, it's the principle of the thing. I called that one out.
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Reaves

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Re: ***SPOLIERS Official Hero of Ages Spoilers Thread. Includes Q&A w/Brandon*
« Reply #237 on: October 21, 2008, 10:45:41 PM »
lol actually I did have a hemalurgy theory. However, I was so far off that I put it under MIST-BURNING. All I can say is I was deceived by Ruin.
Quote from: VegasDev
RJF: "AHA! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Cairhien, but only slightly less well-known is this: never go in against a warder when he is only the distraction! Get him Rand! Buzzzzzzz!

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I can't say enough good things about this book. There really isn't a word that adequately describes how wonderful, spectacular, and amazing this book is. It answers all the promised questions, and takes you on a crazy philosophical and emotional rollercoaster.  There were several times that I made verbal exclamations as I was reading the book--that was how physically and mentally I was into the story.  I was in no way disappointed, even though I was sad about Vin and Elend.  I understand that it just needed to happen that way.  But it adds to the emotional poignancy of the book.

This isn't really specific to HoA, but I'd love to see some kind of pronunciation guide for Mistborn terms and names.  The first time I met Brandon, I was terrified I was going to slaughter pronunciation.  For instance, is atium pronounced with a long "a" or a short "a"?
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
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Roader

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***SPOLIERS Official Hero of Ages Spoilers Thread. Includes Q&A w/Brandon****
« Reply #239 on: October 22, 2008, 12:05:33 AM »
Well, I am a newbie and I know that I am going to get Flamed for this, I apparently am going against the flow here, but:

I HATE IT!!         Well not really, but I do hate that the two best characters that I came to know over the last 3 books gets killed!

Come ON.     Haven't they Sacrificed enough?      Say three books worth?

Sure, I know that it is necessary to occasionally kill great characters to give a story a more realistic feel and to give it the atmosphere of a dangerous world and add to the suspense.        But to kill the two MAIN characters right at the end for no reason other than to shock - does not ring my bell.

Sorry, but the "well I've talked to them and they are happy where they are and they need a rest" thing did not help me.       If death is so good let's all go out and jump in front of a few trains, so we can all be happy and rest also.

I understand Kel (except that he did not even fight), Doc and Clubs dying,   Those happened at normal places to (as I said before) give a story a more realistic feel and to give it the atmosphere of a dangerous world and add to the suspense plus for plot progression.        But with Vin and El I just think that they could have been incapacitated in other ways to accomplish the same end.        It's your book and your story though, but next time around I think that I'll wait until the whole set is out and then read the reviews first to see if they say something similar happens before I invest my time, and emotional well being.

Other than that, it was a SUPER book!           



A few OTHER points:

1.     Why if Vin had to be "Tuned" to Preservation" by the Well - did Kesler and Sazed (the real HoA) not have to be?

2.    Why after Preservation "died" (after he visited Elend) and Vin had sent her erring into Marsh's head, then she went directly out to help Elend and the army kill Kloss (without the erring) did the Mists not do the massive surge into her at that time?

3.    If Sazed was the HoA all along and he never had a spike in him, why did the Mists not go directly into him much earlier in books 1, 2 or 3?      Why wait, he was available ALL that time and was in the mists many times, what kept them away?

4.    Why would Atrim Mistings take extra time to heal from the mist attacks compared to other Mistings?     I would have thought it would have been Mistborn that took longer.       I think that it would have made the fight at the "Homeland" much more believable if they were all discovered to be Mistborn so that they could have had "Pewter" to give them strength and endurance as well as the Atium, because even with massive Atium they would have quickly become too exhausted to fight.        If they were all Mistborn it would have made it much more realistic (to me).

5.    Why did Sazed not “Heal” Marsh from the spikes?    And the Kanda/Kloss back to Humans?        Did he heal all the Terris eunuchs and the injured soldiers?      What about all the people in all the villages that were not near a cavern?

6.    Back in WoA the OreSeur / TenSon swap had too many clues for me  -  Actually I guessed that one immediately and then it had about 5 more clues that kept pounding away at it.

Other than that - It was truly a SUPER trilogy and I really hope you do another based 20 – 100 years out.    I really think that there is a lot more to explore in this world BEFORE you do the modern one.     Especially, with the Terris (Feruchemists) breeding with Allomancers.

I was really surprised that you did not have a few (very skilled) Coinshots doing the flying thing.      They would have to be much more skilled than the average Mistborn to keep from landing too hard but as long as they had coins/bits of metal they should be able to do it.


I can’t say enough praise for how you invented the four related magic systems and linked the magic and story all together excellently!!


BUT YOU KILLED THEM!!!      I can’t get over that!!!      I have therapy scheduled every day for the next year – I’ll send you the bill.   ;)