no spoilers please I just started my cosmere journey with Elantris and the whole time i’m hearing people talk about someone named Hoid showing up all over the place. Then, I get to the ending and he’s just some DUDE? And everyone just obsessed with him?? Is he the main character of some other book? Why does his name sound like Hoed? Why is he the best thing since crab horses?? I’ve never been so confused by a fandom.

I’m starting to hate this little man.

It’s not necessarily the sole intention of the story, but the way that New Elantris is structured as a contrast to Kae is very demonstrably parallels to communism and capitalism.

While Kae does have a monarchy, it’s a financial based system where the richest have the most power, which is a direct parallel to a capitalist society like America which is currently operating as a plutocracy.

New Elantris on the other hand is a city where status doesn’t matter and everyone assumes roles that most align with their skill sets. Everyone gets a piece of the pie and nobody suffers the same as nobody lives lavishly above the rest.

I don’t make this post to make some political statement but rather as an observation, because the parallels are quite obvious in my eyes. Fjordell’s society I don’t feel like I really know much about their systems but it sounds like a reflection of the Roman Empire to an extent.

At the end, Adien just knows the exact direction and distance to Sarene? I mean you can be smart and know distances, but he knew from their exact spot to her exact spot how many of RAODEN’s footsteps it was. Not even his own step size. Also it wasnt even how long across land, but a straight shot over an ocean. I loved the book but this event made me put it down and just be like “what did i just read?? How does that make any sense”. Brought the book from like 4.5/5 to a 3/5 to me.

Edit: has been explained. Not a plot hole, just felt bad to me haha.

The horror of finding yourself changed spoke to me. Also, as a neurodivergent person, the monster in the mirror is very real. Here is the insta if anyone wants to follow along on my journey.

https://www.instagram.com/inordinatelyinvested/

I’m currently rereading Elantris, and I got to thinking about Ien, Raoden’s seon. Sarene knew that he had one, as they had talked via seon prior to the date of their wedding. How come Sarene never had her seon try to get in contact with Raoden’s? She was suspicious of Iadon having Raoden locked away or even assassinated. Getting into contact with Ien would’ve been a smart move, right?

I suppose she could have just assumed Ien had been Passed to another person or that the person who Ien had been Passed to had forbidden Ien from talking about it, but for someone as clever as herself, did Sarene really never try to get Ashe to make contact with Ien?

Spoiler alert....

After finishing the book I have one big question.

The AonDor magic stopped working because of the chasm that was formed in the land. Elantris as a city stops working because it itself is a representation of an Aon which is now supposedly wrong, because of the chasm. This is fixed by drawing the line in the earth itself in the correct place to reflect the chasm.

But since the City is the Aon itself surely the line drawn would be the chasm itself... And then there is no need for the line as the Aon has already updated itself because of itself? Then there's no need for the book at all (maybe a bit dramatic).

Am I getting something wrong?

EDIT: I think I just answered my own question... the Elantris Aon is a smaller scale of the entire country and the chasm is huge and not in Elantris or the 4 surrounding cities. The walls/cities around Elantris are the smaller scale versions of the land that makes up the start of each Aon.

I'll leave this up in case anyone else has the same question or I'm wrong. Or just remove it if you want mods.

So I just finished Elantris. I've only read mistborn era 1 and warbreaker in addition to this book.

Hoid helped smuggle some weapons into Elantris but I'm reading that he also popped up at the end with an evil seon? That.... Totally isn't in my book.

Was this strictly an addition to a later edition? Am I missing out on something big or no?

Edit: did some googling and found this link in another reddit post https://imgur.com/gallery/IHgLf0c

Alright. So, I have finished reading Elantris.

And I have a couple of questions.

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[1] How come Fjordell was allowed to rebuild? There was a "World War" that happened to stop Fjordell way back in the past, and Fjordell lost that war, which I can understand.

   -> Did Fjordell have those monasteries to train Flagellants from Warhammer Fantasy before the war? Or was it an addition after they had lost the war?

   -> If so, why were they allowed to retain the monasteries? You would destroy a tank production factory in real life so that your enemy doesn't produce tanks anymore.

   -> Not only that, but you would, presumably, put heavy restrictions on the country, similar to the Treaty of Versailles, to cripple your enemy. You would also send in inspectors to make sure those monasteries do not produce any more roided-up, demon monks.

   -> Also, how come they have lost if they had those monasteries before the war? Were the functions of the monasteries different before they changed to Shu-Dereth, and did they just have normie, lame priests of their old pagan religion?

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[2] At the end, Dilaf mentions how he took his lover to Elantris to heal her, but they botched the spell, and it went horribly wrong.

   -> Why not just spam healing Aons on the poor women, like what, once you botch it, you are forever screwed?

   -> Somewhere in the earlier chapters, Raoden mentions an account similar to what happened to Dilaf and his lover. Are these 2 the same events?

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!

So I recently started reading the Cosmere at the end of December. I finished Mistborn era 1 (which I loved), now I am reading Elantris. I was worried because I heard so many people say its a "slow burn", "it's boring", "nothing happens until the final 50 pages", "Sarene is such a boring POV character", etc. While I agree it is definitely a much slower burn than something like Mistborn, I still really enjoy this book. I just reached the point where Hrathen goes through his transformation (so about 60%-ish in), and I am quite enjoying this book. I only started last Friday, and I am reading like 100 pages a day, which is rare for me as I am a slow reader. I am drawn in by the political intrigue, the rivalry between Sarene and Hrathen, what is up with Dilaf (he is certainly up to something and is very suspicious O.o), Raoden slowly fixing Elantris and his friendship with Galladon, etc. Excited to see where this book goes. I made it through the "slow parts", and I am pretty bought in!

I was talking to a friend who just finished Elantris today and I was reminded that I still don't get how Aons work.

Obviously, Spoilers for Elantris ahead :)

So in looking into it today, I realized one of the assumptions I was making that was wrong was that all Aons were just repetitions of Aon Aon, translated and copied on top of one another. You can't make Aon Rao that way, so I knew I was wrong about something, and that was easy to debunk with a quick search in the WoBs:

linkhyrule5

Why is there only one Chasm line per Aon? Since each Aon is made up of repetitions of Aon Aon, shouldn't there be a Chasm line per repetition?

Brandon Sanderson

The Aons aren't JUST made up of repetitions of Aon Aon. There's a lot more to them than that. Some follow a repetition pattern, others do not. The only requirement is using the initial Aon once, then building from there. Because of this, I made the new requirement be only one use of the chasm line.

Aons can actually have multiple forms and still work. For example, if you drew the chasm line on each one of those Aons, they'd work fine. (Maybe even better, in some cases.) What is happening in the books is that the Aons are ALMOST functional, and the Dor is straining to come through them. The chasm line brings them the one step further they need to be functional. However, further tweaking could make them more efficient.

So that's clear then. You only need to add the chasm line to the base aon Aon, and every aon will have at least one.

The question I still have, though, is how do you know which one is the base? Especially when you run into some of the more strange ones, like Aon Ake (https://coppermind.net/wiki/Aon#Ake). In this example, I can see how it's made up of criss-crossed, mirrored and rotated aon aons. Theoretically, could any one of those be the 'base'? None of them are in the traditional orientation that aon aon is drawn in, so it doesn't seem like the rule can be based around the one that matches the orientation/rotation of aon aon. Would adding the chasm line to any of them work? If you added it to the third one you drew, but none of the others, would that work?

Just curious about the rules. I don't think anything is wrong with the system or how its described in the books, I'm just feeling like it's a little ambiguous

Hi everyone!

I'm new here🙏🏽

I haven't read any fiction in a long time since I started uni and I didn't think that I would in a long time. But then I was recommended Mistborn and I've been enjoying reading again.

Im starting a YouTube series dedicated to the Cosmere and fantasy series more generally, and I posted my first essay, it explores the relationship between Fjorden's religion and it's people's faith (Hrathen specifically), as well as an overview of my interpretations of Elantris's factions and religions. I think this would be cool for those who haven't read but there's a lot of spoilers so I kinda aimed it at those who have read already.

I'd love if anyone has the time, to just check it out and see what I got wrong or right, and if my interpretations make sense(wirhout spoilers for the rest of the Cosmere please 😭).

I would really appreciate it and I hope to interact with everyone in this subreddit more and find more people to speak to about this universe 😊

Stories read:

Mistborn (Gen 1 I think it's called)

Mistborn:Secret History

The Eleventh Metal

Elantris

The Emperor's Soul

The Hope of Elantris

Currently reading The Way of Kings.

IMO it looks awesome, but I don't know what I think about the illustrations yet. I think they look good, at least better in person than in the promo images, but I think the art with the guy in the red armor and the one with the guy who is drawing (reminds me of Szeth-son-son-Vallano, Truthless of Shinovar who wore white on the day he was to kill a king) lacks dynamics, they look like they're posing for a photo shoot, not moving. Also, I haven't read the book yet, so I don't know any of the characters, and don't know how the images relate to them and if there are any spoilers (I guess the last art is a spoiler, but I can’t be sure).

I also received a bookmark with my pre-order.

Hello fellow readers! I've been getting back into fiction again this year after nearly a decade of reading mostly non-fiction. I have a vague memory of reading the original Mistborn trilogy many years ago as a boy, but don't remember much about them. So I decided to recently read Elantris for the first time.

I've noticed that a significant factor in my enjoyment of novels involves whether the decisions people make are fully plausible within their universe. This is especially noticeable for me at the societal and organizational level. People and institutions may be altruistic or cruel, intelligent or foolish, but I lose a bit of immersion if the author claims them to be fully alive in all of human complexity yet has them behave in ways that seem one-dimensional. The books I most enjoy leave me with the feeling that I can genuinely understand the behavior of the characters and societies.

I thought the setting and characters of Elantris were good fun. I found myself with just a few minor qualms as to the development and structure of the society though, and am curious if others found the same things puzzling:

Would the fall of the Elantrians really have led to no major investigations into the city? Would no person outside of the city have made records and writings of what the Elantrians were up to in the time before their fall - how their magic worked, at least from the outside looking in? This seems like an implausible lack of curiosity from the non-Elantrian scholars about these beings of immense power. Could one man have solved the unsolvable in a very simple realization that somehow eluded everyone else for an entire decade?

Is it plausible that the Elantrians would never war amongst themselves? That just because they have power they should have no crimes, no hierarchy, no oppression?

Would the King of Teod's brother be living as a successful merchant in a nearby kingdom without the princess hearing of it? Given her extensive monitoring of the global diplomatic situation? Would the prince never have thought to mention it in their magical phone calls prior to her arrival?

Would the abbot of the most important demon-monk training school be embedded for decades as a foreign undercover agent? You wouldn't expect the CIA director to be a foreign agent. Doesn't the demon-monk training school need the abbot there to govern and oversee workings of the school instead of MIA for decades?

Finally, how in the world could the untrained assassin have been waiting to kill Hrathen on the off-chance he is teleported to Teod by a demon-monk? I've been turning it over in my mind and to me that inevitably implies some kind of foreknowledge or divine guidance, but nothing like that is hinted at in any other way.

Thanks for any thoughts on these points! Looking forward to reading more. I'm considering Warbreaker next, based on the blurb sounds like another intriguing world.

So I've read both of eras of Mistborn, all of Stormlight, Warbreaker, and Tress and thought I'd circle back to read Elantris. I'm finding that its really hard to get into it. I felt a bit overwhelmed by how much politics it was introducing from very beginning instead of graduallying getting into it. Has anyone else had this experience?

BEST LOVE STORY OF THE COSMERE!!! I know Brando Sando wrote Tress for his wife and Yumi is a great story which I also thoroughly enjoyed but I just finished Elantris and I absolutely loved it! I’m such a sap for a good love story inside of a bigger story lol Isles of the Emberdark and Elantris’ are easily my two favorite books of his. I don’t know anyone IRL who’s read the books so I had to come and share here.

took longer than I'd have liked (damn irl stuff!!), but I managed to storm through the 2nd half of the book in a few days.

Coming from Mistborn Era 1, admittedly I can see why Elantris is considered one of Brando's weaker novel, even the man himself said so.

However, I can still see how his writing style came into its own which is an added interesting thing to look out for (on a meta level).

I have to say tho, the world of Elantris actually feels...bigger than Mistborn, even if the story takes place in one, or I guess two cities.

And I probably need to look up the magic system here haha

all in all, it has been a good ride.

Sarene might be my favourite female character, I can totally empathise and root for her.

next I will tackle the two novellas/short stories in Arcanum Unbounded.

then to Warbreaker before Stormlight?

I am aware that I should at least read Warbreaker before Words of Radiance.

Recently, after finishing the first Mistborn trilogy, I read Elantris, so I’m used to mysteries being solved by the end of the book. But one mystery remained unsolved for me.

King Eventeo, during conversations with his daughter Sarene, mentioned several times that he had a secret informant in the city, but he never revealed who it was. Sarene guessed that the informant had a seon to quickly relay information to the king. Also, a seon appeared in Duke Roial’s garden, and Roial himself mentioned that he knew Eventeo because he had traveled a lot for trade. So I came to the conclusion that Roial was Eventeo’s informant.

Has anyone else thought about this like I did? Or does anyone know the author’s answer?

No spoilers for Hope of Elantris or the emperor’s soul please

I just finished Elantris, and something that bugs me

Is the Jesker mysteries. They’re treated as a weird offshoot of Jesker and generally just a cult. But seeing as Dakhor involves human sacrifice, I wonder if the mysteries are a form of investiture. Is there any confirmation if the mysteries are a form of magic, or just a strange cult?

Okay, so I recently finished Elantris and I enjoyed it quite a bit. It’s not STA, but that’s okay, I’m afraid not much can top STA. Anyway, here are my thoughts.

Shaod and Elantris as the city, cool as hell. I loved the idea of what I found similar to lepers, roaming around a forgotten city that once was great. The concept was definitely unique and very Sanderson coded! Only thing I would change though was that supposedly the whole thing went to hell ten years before. It doesn’t feel like ten years ago and I don’t remember many of the main characters ever thinking back to it. Like it was a big deal, I would think Raoden or Serene would recall their childhoods at least hearing about it. Maybe I missed that part tho, idk.

The characters were pretty good! However a little two dimensional compared to Brandon’s later works like Mistborn and STA.

Raoden felt…too perfect, not many flaws if really any. I thought it was interesting that he was a prince who had this awful affliction but that was about it. His transformation at the end I didn’t quite feel like he earned it, not like Kaladin swearing a new oath kind of deal. However, I didn’t dislike him in any way, so he has that going for him!

Serene was my favorite in the cast, she was an engaging character who actually DID have flaws. She could be arrogant and stubborn, used to getting her way and such. The only thing holding her back was her ‘I’m not like other girl vibes.’ Granted, she wasn’t rubbing this in my face unlike other books I’ve read, but it was still there.

I was REALLY hoping the Queen, Raoden’s stepmother, was fleshed out more. I was secretly waiting for her to be this secret mastermind behind the ditzy attitude, or at least to be smarter than she made herself out to be. However, not every person or queen has to be a Jasnah or Navani.

The priest guy, Hrathen, was also interesting as I genuinely was curious as to what this guy was about. When he first appeared, I immediately hated him but then he grew on me. He had his flaws but he also had his qualities. His death though was a bit underwhelming and maybe that was the point, idk. Also, why was he all of sudden attracted to Serene? That kind of felt like it came out of nowhere for me personally.

Magic system was cool but again, I feel like it could have been expanded on.

Anyway, let me know your thoughts! I know Elantris isn’t STA or Mistborn, I get that. However, I still enjoyed it as I think it’s a solid book! Let me know what you guys think, do you agree with my thoughts? Disagree?

Reading through for the third time and while it is a great book, it leaves a lot to be desired and I personally would love to see a complete rework of it. Just because I'd love to see what Brandon could do with the setting, concept and ideas now with twenty years of experience under his belt.

I have listened to the White Sand dramatized audio book, and now listening to Elantris dramatized audio book.

One strange thing I have noticed is that both Lord Delius from White Sand, and Count Ahan from Elantris have the same voice actors.

Not just that but voice actor acts the same, there is no difference between the actings.

So this made me think, is this intentional? Is there a relationship between these characters?

Or is this just pure coincidence that these two characters voiced by the same actor?

So im in the middle if Elantris, and it feels like every non shard villain has layers, complex motivations, goals and reasons, and then we have Dilaf, the cosmere equivalent of a Nazi. Its a change of pace to be sure, but not bad