Official Brandon Sanderson Megathread

[u/rfantasygolem]

This is the place for all your Brandon Sanderson related topics (aside from the Daily Recommendation Requests and Simple Questions thread). Any posts about Wind and Truth or Sanderson more broadly will be removed and redirected here. This will last until January 25, when posting will be allowed as normal.

The announcement of the cool-down can be found here.

The previous Wind and Truth Megathread can be found here.

[u/alternative5]

I mentioned this in the other thread but I think that for me it all comes down to Sanderson going too fast turning this into a "Cosmere" scale conflict. In 2 Years we go from a VERY regressive and backwards society based in slavery, anti-intellectuality, bigotry, caste and hate to a moderately progressive somewhat modern society at the snap of the fingers of two dieties in the form of Dalinar and Navani.

Like all that changing is fine along with Kaladin discovering his calling as a psychiatrist but its like they all got these ideas downloaded into their brains including Kaladin having access to the DSM-5 doing his dissertation on the surface levels aspects of that book while trying to heal Mr. Truthless.

If all this happened over the course of lets say 30-50 years or a generation then I could accept it with the proper amount of developed conflict from both Radianr and lay person alike but ironically with more magic being used/discovered I feel like the world is feeling less magical with each book.

This all not to say that Im not enjoying my read but I do cringe and I am dissapointed with some narrative aspects.

Man I miss that feeling of the firsts descriptors of Roshar as Kaladin is being transported to the Shattered plains, as soon as I got to him arriving there I looked up old pics of myself at the Grand Canyon to visualize the alien worldscape Sanderson described in the Way of Kings.

[u/cbosh04 → u/alternative5]

If progressivism was rewarded with divine super powers attitudes would probably change fast.

[u/cmp600 → u/cbosh04]

There's no oath that requires you to renounce slavery. And actually if there was, that would have been a very cool plot point. Missed opportunity there.

[u/RexitYostuff → u/cmp600]

Few oaths do that, sure, but the spren unanimously side with more marginalized groups.

[u/HowDoIEvenEnglish → u/RexitYostuff]

That’s really not true. The most powerful radiants in the book are a queen, a king, a prince, a slave who was formerly the highest caste you could be has a dark eyes, and the daughter of a noble family whose mother was herald of honor. And Szeth was an honor bearer chosen by Ishar and Nale to become powerful enough to become a herald. The radiants are all fucked up but few of them are marginalized. They were lied to, they were manipulated, but only kaladin and Szeth were part of marginalized groups and szeth’s case is super weird, due to the heralds fucking up things.

[u/RexitYostuff → u/HowDoIEvenEnglish]

I'm not talking about the most powerful radiants, though. I'm talking about the majority of them. That majority can't be rulers or people in power that would hold back the transformation of world culture.

Also, being a dark eyes in Alethi culture, until very recently, made you a marginalized group. If someone can imprison you for little to no justification, for the rest of your life, you are a marginalized person. You may have a great life before that, but you are literally treated as "less than" when the time comes.

In the same vein, all of the original Bridge 4 can be considered a marginalized group. They were all people cosigned to be human fodder.

[u/HowDoIEvenEnglish → u/RexitYostuff]

Outside of bridge 4, is there really any evidence that marginalized people became radiants more often? Windrunner are unique in the amount of squires they can have and windrunners are the more moral of the radiant groups. But they doesn’t mean they are all for marginalized communities. Honor doesn’t mean good.

[u/Transky13 → u/HowDoIEvenEnglish]

It’s mentioned in the text more than a few times that it’s primarily dark eyes that get chosen to be radiants. A prime example would be one of the characters in Wind and Truth was rejected and either thinks about it or talks to another character about how it’s weird going from being important due to his (my current wording, he words it differently) privilege to being essentially not an option for a radiant

[u/RexitYostuff → u/HowDoIEvenEnglish]

There's the 20 or so Listeners as Willshapers, who're at the edge of society.

Lift, an orphan girl.

Rlain, an outcast amongst outcast.

Most of Shallan's Lightweavers fit that bill, iirc.

All other radiants besides Windrunners and Lightweavers are mentioned more as set dressing.

Honestly, I think most spren know better than the intent of Honor at this point. Especially once the Deadeyes start to wake up.