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Brandon Sanderson / Shattered Plain War Questions (Possible Spoilers)
« on: September 30, 2010, 08:53:30 PM »
Ever since I finished the book I've been confused about a seemingly trivial, yet illogical and (in my eyes) inexcusable, point about the battles on the Shattered Plains.
The war has been going on for 6 years and not once have the Parshendi shot fire arrows at the bridges and bridgemen? How is it that the armies can't set up permanent bridges too far outside of their camps for fear of the Parshendi burning them down during raids, yet not once in 6 years have the Parshendi tried to burn the mobile bridges assaulting their plateaus? That makes no sense to me at all and I hope that Mr. Sanderson will address this in a later book because it made the assaults completely unrealistic to me. I cannot imagine that the Parshendi didn't think of it, so what I'd like to know is why they never did it. Honestly, after Kaladin started wearing their dead and they saw how the arrows were pulled towards him and embedded into his shield, how could they have NOT thought of shooting some fire arrows his way?
While we're at it, in the final battle at the Tower, the Parshendi jumped across the chasm and fired on Bridge 4. Why didn't they ever do that before? The bridgemen were always unarmed and basically undefended. The Parshendi could have jumped across en masse and killed nearly all the charging bridge crewmen during every assault. And it wouldn't have taken many Parshendi to do it, maybe 4 or 6 per bridge. Kill 10 bridgemen and then leap back across the chasm. Why didn't they ever do that?
And why didn't anyone think to assault a plateau from underneath? Send a few hundred men into a chasm, they work their way around to the other side while the main army fights as usual and then, using ladders, they climb up behind enemy lines. No one tried that, even once as an experiment, during 6 years of war?
And one last thing. Why didn't anyone on either side have any siege weapons? No arbalests, no catapults, nothing. After all the years of fighting for what were basically towers surrounded by deep moats, no one thought of using a siege weapon to kill more foes?
Sorry for the little rant here, but this is one aspect of an otherwise awesome book that has had me pulling out my hair in frustration. I really hope Mr. Sanderson has an explanation for all this, because I really want to know.
The war has been going on for 6 years and not once have the Parshendi shot fire arrows at the bridges and bridgemen? How is it that the armies can't set up permanent bridges too far outside of their camps for fear of the Parshendi burning them down during raids, yet not once in 6 years have the Parshendi tried to burn the mobile bridges assaulting their plateaus? That makes no sense to me at all and I hope that Mr. Sanderson will address this in a later book because it made the assaults completely unrealistic to me. I cannot imagine that the Parshendi didn't think of it, so what I'd like to know is why they never did it. Honestly, after Kaladin started wearing their dead and they saw how the arrows were pulled towards him and embedded into his shield, how could they have NOT thought of shooting some fire arrows his way?
While we're at it, in the final battle at the Tower, the Parshendi jumped across the chasm and fired on Bridge 4. Why didn't they ever do that before? The bridgemen were always unarmed and basically undefended. The Parshendi could have jumped across en masse and killed nearly all the charging bridge crewmen during every assault. And it wouldn't have taken many Parshendi to do it, maybe 4 or 6 per bridge. Kill 10 bridgemen and then leap back across the chasm. Why didn't they ever do that?
And why didn't anyone think to assault a plateau from underneath? Send a few hundred men into a chasm, they work their way around to the other side while the main army fights as usual and then, using ladders, they climb up behind enemy lines. No one tried that, even once as an experiment, during 6 years of war?
And one last thing. Why didn't anyone on either side have any siege weapons? No arbalests, no catapults, nothing. After all the years of fighting for what were basically towers surrounded by deep moats, no one thought of using a siege weapon to kill more foes?
Sorry for the little rant here, but this is one aspect of an otherwise awesome book that has had me pulling out my hair in frustration. I really hope Mr. Sanderson has an explanation for all this, because I really want to know.