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« on: November 23, 2009, 03:09:40 AM »
Let me start off by saying that I am a huge fan of Brandon Sanderson's writing. I have read Elantris (twice), the Mistborn Trilogy (once, but I plan to start a reread next year) and I am on my second reading of Warbreaker. So please don't think of me as a troll. I think he is one of the two best writers of fantasy working today.
But, as I was reading Warbreaker yesterday, it occurred to me that the system of feeding breaths to the returned doesn't really make much sense. Why would they go out of there way to find your children to give up their breathes? Can you really picture Allmother turning some random child into a drab each week?
Wouldn't it make more sense to go and find old and dieing people and get their breaths. Nothing in the book says anything about breath getting stale, so you would think these breathes would be just as good. In fact, you would think a cottage industry would start up where almost no one would die without selling their breath for the benefit of their family.
And another thing, if Vivenna really wanted to get rid of all of her breath except one, she could have awakened a rope or something small, and then dumped the rest of her breath to someone or something and then retrieved the one breath from the rope.
The second point is just the math nerd in me, but I really think it would have made more sense if they were turning old people into drabs, rather the young children.
Any thoughts?
Michael