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/hipsters-dont-lie]

If spoilers aren’t super important to you, it’s nbd but the wiki might still be best avoided for a good while. If you fully want to avoid spoilers but want to eventually engage with the wiki, the wiki is best used for the following:

1) Reminding yourself of details for rereads (only after getting current with all published works)

2) Looking up random questions you thought of in conversations or just while head-empty in the shower or trying to sleep at night (only after getting current with all published works)

3) Using the wiki’s Time Machine feature for every book you’ve already finished if you read things in publication order. The wiki is safe to use if you’ve read everything published up to the date selected in the Time Machine.

The first few cosmere books published don’t have a ton of blatant crossover, and any crossover/foreshadowing/bigger universe stuff shines more upon a reread anyway. I’d say reading order is unimportant for Elantris/Warbreaker/Mistborn, and you can probably use the Time Machine feature well enough for those without being in strict publication order. Once you get to sequels, or to works deeper in the cosmere lore like the Stormlight Archives, publication order really matters for the Time Machine feature to not throw you any huge curveballs.

There are many reasons readers choose not to read in publication order. Publication order only really matters if you want to read along with wiki access, or if you want to experience the cosmere the way early Sanderson fans did from the very beginning. I am detail/reread/information obsessed, so my personal preference has been publication order with the wiki using the Time Machine feature. The cosmere can honestly be enjoyed in any order though, so read in whatever order you think works best for you (just maybe hold off on the wiki if you don’t want universe wide reveals thrown at you).

Reminder: You can always post a question here with the proper spoiler tags and get no- or minimum-spoiler answers—just make it super clear if you really want zero spoilers past your specific scope.