Timewaster's Guide Archive
Local Authors => Brandon Sanderson => Topic started by: Stormblessed on October 07, 2010, 01:52:49 PM
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Down here in Australia (and I assume also in the UK) we have the Orion version of WoK in trade paperback form, and unfortunately (and incredibly frustratingly) the images on the inside front and back covers of the US Hardcover version of WoK do not appear (I am of course referring to the two diagrams of the double eye of the almighty - one is brown, the other blue - as well as the map of Roshar and Shadesmar).
I was wondering if anyone could post up good quality pictures. And when I say good, I mean big pictures where it is easy to make out the small detail. That would really be appreciated a lot!
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Look here:
http://stormlightarchive.wikia.com/wiki/
under photos. I think the only one missing is an inside back cover. I have a low rez one but don't have the book avail to scan it in again.
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Shadesmar and Roshar maps look good. Missing blue double eye of almighty (from back cover). The brown front cover double eye of almighty is somewhat blurry, hard to make out the faces of the heralds in the borders.
@Peter Ahlstrom: Do you by any chance have any good quality versions of these pictures you could post up? Long shot I know, but thought I'd ask.
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The first thing I did when I bought my copy was gape at the inside cover art and try to wrap my head around the complexity of the glyphs and faces and maps. Actually, just the maps at first because I was in way over my head with the glyphs. Just seeing these endpages convinced me that all the hype was totally justified. (Then the story blew me away, but that's a different topic).
Anyway, thanks to the great analysis of the herald pictures in another thread (http://www.timewastersguide.com/forum/index.php?topic=7910.0) I feel like I have a handle on the glyph/herald bit, and I'm revisiting the pattern I saw that first day. I'm going to just describe it in text and let someone with better image skills than mine take care of posting illustrations/scans.
Others of you have probably noticed that the glyphs on the brown Roshar page and the blue Shadesmar page are the same, just permutations of each other. Not just stylized versions, though--they follow the symmetry rules of Roshar in interesting ways:
The gem glyphs (the smaller circles) in Shadesmar are the Roshar glyph with the right half inverted vertically. The herald glyphs (the larger circles) are a different kind of inversion--the blank space and character space change places. That is, the Shadesmar herald glyphs are like a negative image of the Roshar glyphs. Invert the colors of one and you get the other, with allowances for style and script.
It took me a while to figure this out, partly because of the similarity of some of the herald glyphs to their inverted counterpart, but mostly because I had the schematic oriented wrong. In both cases the map page defines "down" for the double eye of glyphs.
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Bit of a tangent, so this gets its own post: These relationships should give us hints about how Shadesmar and Roshar are related. Since it has been said that Shadesmar is the cognitive realm of the cosmere, this should also help us figure out how it interacts with the physical realm. Note the obvious inversion in the map of land and sea. There's probably more that I'm missing, and the existence of disparate rules in inverting the two classes of glyphs hints at a fair level of complexity.
By extension, we also have potential related "inversions" as we overlay the spiritual realm (still very off-screen) on the cognitive and physical. Hopefully we can extrapolate what we learn about Shadesmar in the next several books to teach us something about the nature of the cosmere as a whole.
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We just don't know what the glyphs do. Are they just symbols, or do they have power? Why are the glyphs in the two worlds different? What is the connection? The information we have at the moment is just not enough.
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Except that the glyphs really are the same. Maybe I didn't explain it well enough. If no one beats me to it then next time I have access to a scanner I'll put together a side-by-side of the glyphs, along with the color/spatial inversions I'm talking about.
I agree that we don't know enough, but that hasn't exactly stopped us from wild speculation before. :)
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Sorry, that was my mistake. When is said different, I meant, why have they been inverted a certain way, why the other glyphs have been inverted a different way?
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The first thing I did when I bought my copy was gape at the inside cover art and try to wrap my head around the complexity of the glyphs and faces and maps. Actually, just the maps at first because I was in way over my head with the glyphs. Just seeing these endpages convinced me that all the hype was totally justified. (Then the story blew me away, but that's a different topic).
Anyway, thanks to the great analysis of the herald pictures in another thread (http://www.timewastersguide.com/forum/index.php?topic=7910.0) I feel like I have a handle on the glyph/herald bit, and I'm revisiting the pattern I saw that first day. I'm going to just describe it in text and let someone with better image skills than mine take care of posting illustrations/scans.
Others of you have probably noticed that the glyphs on the brown Roshar page and the blue Shadesmar page are the same, just permutations of each other. Not just stylized versions, though--they follow the symmetry rules of Roshar in interesting ways:
The gem glyphs (the smaller circles) in Shadesmar are the Roshar glyph with the right half inverted vertically. The herald glyphs (the larger circles) are a different kind of inversion--the blank space and character space change places. That is, the Shadesmar herald glyphs are like a negative image of the Roshar glyphs. Invert the colors of one and you get the other, with allowances for style and script.
It took me a while to figure this out, partly because of the similarity of some of the herald glyphs to their inverted counterpart, but mostly because I had the schematic oriented wrong. In both cases the map page defines "down" for the double eye of glyphs.
Oh wow, that's a great catch! I thought there was something about the two sets, but I never would have figured that out. I feel so slow on the uptake now. ^^; And now my interest's renewed, I'm going to go steal my copy back from my sister and microscopically examine the diagrams for a few hours...
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Damn you Orion, why couldn't you include that artwork in the book? I can't even compare these pictures to see what you are talking about!!! >:(
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Okay, here is the comparison. I've used the simplified names from Ars Arcanum. A few things to note:
The large glyphs are the symbol for each herald and his/her order of Radiants. Jes' glyph is the one that is pressed into the front cover of your book, looking like a sword.
The small glyphs represent a power accessible to the two adjacent orders (e.g. Windrunning, Soulcasting, etc.). A few of the other threads have been postulating about what each of them are, but this thread is about the art so I will refrain.
If I have made any errors in this, let me know and I will correct it.
Now that they are all next to each other, a few of the herald symbols (esp. Palah) seem a bit of a stretch for my background/foreground inversion theory. Others (like Jes) seem to fit. What do you guys think?
(http://lh5.ggpht.com/_F6aA9Hjs8Hc/TLMsPhyXm8I/AAAAAAAAA0Y/S6nfJrATYPE/s640/glyph%20edits.jpg)
I'll try to get a higher-resolution image uploaded soon.
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This is all really good. Something that should be pointed out, however, is that the two center glyphs on the Shadesmar side are not connected to any of the small glyphs like their counterparts on the opposite side.
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The small Roshar image - Back cover small glyphs are duplicates of the Roshar images, then split in half and 1 half is a mirror image.
(https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/Photos/Small%20Glyphs%202.jpg?w=8a520b7f)
By taking the Shadesmar image and flipping it horizontal and then again vertical the small glyphs align.
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covers aligned with small glyp's
Flipped Shadesmar - Horizontal then vertical
(https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/Photos/covers%20aligned.png?w=2f4c8a59)
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Your links don't show FollowYourMuse, stick them in public on your dropbox. :)
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I really don't see the Herald inverse pictures, but that might be just be.
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This is all really good. Something that should be pointed out, however, is that the two center glyphs on the Shadesmar side are not connected to any of the small glyphs like their counterparts on the opposite side.
Note that while they are not directly collected, but those 4 glyphs are highlighted by some sort of lightning/blue fire that is behind it. (I don't really know how to explain it) Those 4 glyphs seem to be connected to the 2 herald glyphs by the red gem behind it.