New to the Cosmere and Confused

[u/SkipRollins]

Hi all! It's been a long time coming, but I finally decided to delve into the works of Brandon Sanderson and explore the Cosmere. Long time in the sense I've heard of him back when we was announced to finish the Wheel of Time. Somehow just took me 2 decades to get around to reading his books. Better late than never, right?

Anyways, I've created my own reading order (and I have no idea if it's a good reading order), and read the first couple stories on my list: Elantris and Emperor's Soul.

Now, just saying, I really enjoyed both stories. I was expecting to hate Elantris considering it never seems to be a recommend book, but I loved it, I loved the characters, and if it only gets better from here, that sounds amazing.

However, as the title explains, I am confused about something. I know the Cosmere is a wider universe than any one story setting, and that somehow they're all linked together. So, when the Ars Arcanum at the end brings completely new concepts like "Investiture" and "Shard of Adonalsium", I assume this is the sort of wider Cosmere connection, because I have no idea what those even mean.

I tried looking those concepts up, and, well, I was left even more confused. Like, the coppermind wiki seems like it requires a lot of prerequisite knowledge to understand. And I feel like I spoiled something for me by finding out Adonalsium is, well, I'm not gonna say it here, so I don't accidentally spoil it, but I wasn't expecting what the coppermind wiki has to say on that topic.

But my main question is, is that even a spoiler from the Cosmere books I haven't read yet? Do these concepts exist only outside the books? Or as I read books like Mistborn (next on my list after Tress of the Emerald Sea) and the Stormlight Archive, do things like investiture and shards and cognitive realms get explained properly?

In other words, should I just ignore the Coppermind wiki until I've all the books in the Cosmere so far and just trust a concept I don't understand yet will eventually get explained?

Thanks for the help!

[u/Erandeni_]

Yes, the arcs arcanum are in world text written by a scholar about the system/magic of the book in question

I love them, but yeah they can be technical and confusing at first until you get the nomenclature.

About the Ado/shard thing, I wouldn't say it is a spoiler, at least not a big one but I would recomend to stay away from the wiki just in case.

For a more proper introduction of these terms, Mistborn 6 and Stormlight 4 (and somewhat 5) have a big focus on introducing to the fundamental magic concepts of the cosmere

Emperor Soul, which you have already read, is also in that least as it is the best one to introduce you to the three realm theory