Timewaster's Guide Archive

So there's this shelf in the BYU bookstore where they keep all of Brandon Sanderson's books.  Nice big happy display.  Hardbacks, paperbacks, signed and numbered copies of Warbreaker, The Gathering Storm, Alcatraz, it's all there.  I walk by here from time to time, just so that if anyone happens to glance at them going by I can heartily recommend them.  Now the tragedy.  I went by today, and while the pile is still there, the shelf has now been invaded by a pile of Stephanie Meyer's books.  Brandon Sanderson and Stephanie Meyer, on the same display shelf.  Maybe I'm making too big a deal about this, but this is eating my soul.

Don't name the Dark One!!!

Elend with Mist metals FTW!

There are a few things that if you have read Dragonsteel it will change how you look at it.  Whether it ends up being a canonical consistency or just a current coincidence I'm not sure, but there is one HUGE magic thing that is shared between the two.

Oh, ah, uh... Dangit!  I'm trying to figure out what it is you're talking about.  Certainly a basic understanding of Realmatic Theory comes from reading Dragonsteel, but I can't recall anything from the prologue that made me think of Dragonsteel.  Maybe if I read Dragonsteel again...but I just started the WoT.

70+ hours?  How do you find time to be a Brandon Uber fan?  What do you do?

Oh, he blogged about it.  It's just not right smack dab in the middle of the site.

From what I remember, Vin, Elend, and Tindwyl are all in the same place, and Sazed has a limited ability to contact them, but cannot be with them.  Kelsier stuck around and Sazed has the constant pleasure of his company.

I've never heard the whole "Everyone lives three times" thing.  Most likely this is a corruption of Realmatic Theory, which states that everyone and everything exists simultaneously in the Spiritual, Cognitive (maybe called The Shadesmar) and Physical Realms.  Elysium is the term for Space Brandon used in his unrelated Sci-fi short story that you can find at the top of his Website.  I can't remember where the word itself comes from, but it isn't from LDS theology.  LDS Theology states that there are three degrees of Heaven, but that's as close as it comes to your theory.

As for where Elend, Vin, and Tindwyl are...  Hmm... Perhaps when one dies they continue to exist in the Spiritual and/or Cognitive Realm?  But which and why, and what do they do there?  I think I'm just dead wrong.

Anyone think that the drunk with the black and gray beard sitting in the doorway of the Servant's Quarters looked vaguely familiar? I think that if I was a planet-hopping shard-searcher, I'd want to be there at the treaty signing/king's assassination.

That was my initial thought as well, but I dismissed it.  Doesn't he usually have a white beard?  Then again, it is odd that of all the people there, he is actually described.  Maybe I'll rethink this.

Here, we're getting a *lot* of information dropped on us -- kingdoms and castes and religion and glimpses of complicated backstory, and in the middle of it all, a complicated fight and magic system we don't know.  This resulted for me in a choppy flow, because there were pieces that I picked up fast, but other pieces that were just confusing.  (And that's not why I read Brandon -- if I feel like reading something arcane-and-confusing, I pick up some China Mieville or Steven Erickson.)  So overall, for me, it made the fight and the magic system much less of a "wow" moment than either Mistborn or Warbreaker.  Sorry 'bout that.

One thing that I thought Mistborn TFE did perfectly was the gradual magic system reveal.  It starts out with just glimpses -- Kelsier burns down the noble's house, and we don't know how.  We realize that the magic is awesome, and then we're drawn into the world, and we're slowly primed to understand the back story, and ready to enjoy the magic system when it hits us.  Warbreaker does jump right in with the magic, but the flow and the new information rush seems more carefully calibrated.  We get glimpses of backstory, but it's not a drink from the firehose.  Here it just seemed like a little too much going on.  I'm vaguely hoping that this isn't really the prologue, but one of those fake-prologues that often come up as teasers.   (As I recall the paperback teaser that was used for Martin's ASOS was something like 8 chapters into the actual book.) 

I'm looking forward to the series, though -- it sounds like it's going to be very interesting. 

I guess that with the scope of a project like this, the names of these kingdoms and treaties and such IS gradual exposition.  And we've got three things to do with Lashing.  There might be more to it than that, also making this relatively gradual.  I tend to ignore confusing things as I read, assuming I'll pick up on the details later.  The important part was Szeth and the King, and I'll figure out the rest as it comes into greater focus.

Also, I'm pretty sure Kelsier burned down the manor with fire.  Killing everyone inside is another thing.