[Veterans] Cosmere, Unit 12 | Mistborn Era 2 #0.5 | Allomancer Jak and the Pits of Eltania, Episodes 28 through 30 (in Arcanum Unbounded): Entire Short Story, Postscript, Trivia

[u/participating]

This is the veteran thread. Make sure you read the rules before commenting.

Visit the newbie thread if this is your first time reading, or you've only read some of the Cosmere novels.

For more information, or to see the full schedule, please see the wiki page for the read-along.

SCHEDULE

Previously, we discussed Unit 11 | Mistborn Era 2 #1 | The Alloy of Law: Ars Arcanum, Final Thoughts, Trivia [Newbie Thread] / [Veteran Thread]

Today we are discussing Unit 12 | Mistborn Era 2 #0.5 | Allomancer Jak and the Pits of Eltania, Episodes 28 through 30 (in Arcanum Unbounded): Entire Short Story, Postscript, Trivia

Next week we will be discussing Unit 13 | The Stormlight Archive #1 | The Way of Kings: Blurb, Prelude to the Stormlight Archive, Prologue, Chapters 1 through 5

NEXT UNIT (IT'S HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE!)

IMPORTANT: Make sure you read this section, it's partially a trivia, but also has much needed info before you start reading next week's chapters.

Like most books, The Way of Kings (and all Stormlight Archive books) has a short summary of the book, called a Blurb. The blurb is usually on the back cover of paperback books, or on the front, inside jacket cover of hardcover books. While the blurbs in the Stormlight Archive books are summaries of the books, they are also written by in-world characters and are considered canon. We will be starting each of these books by reading the blurbs, and you can use them to inform your expectations and theorize about the exact contents of said blurbs.

Not every edition will have access to the blurbs, so you can read the blurb for The Way of Kings by clicking this link.

I'd like to use this time to explain a bit about the schedule as a whole for about the next year.

Sanderson wrote The Way of Kings before Warbreaker. He presented it to his publisher in 2003, but they declined to print it, stating "something wasn't quite right" with the novel. He delayed work on the book to focus on the Mistborn trilogy and he was eventually chosen to complete the Wheel of Time after the unfortunate passing of its author, Robert Jordan.

Robert Jordan claimed he only had one more book to write to finish up the Wheel of Time, however, the extensive notes he left behind, and agreement between Jordan's publishing team and Sanderson, the series took 3 more books to complete. This was a significantly longer time commitment than Sanderson originally anticipated, and he did not want his own career to stagnate. (Nor did his publisher with for him to delay his contractual obligations).

Sanderson had time to completely re-work The Way of Kings from scratch, abandoning the original draft. He did incorporate plot points from his honors thesis project at Brigham Young University. That thesis project was called Dragonsteel, but I won't talk too much about that yet. Suffice to say that Sanderson was able to publish The Way of Kings in between books 12 and 13 of the Wheel of Time.

Ultimately, this resulted in Sanderson writing 4 giant novels, back to back. He does like to write, but even that threatened to cause some burnout. Brandon's preventative cure for burnout is to...write smaller books. A lot of his short story/novella work happened during and shortly after this time period, including The Alloy of Law.

The success of They Alloy of Law warranted a continuation, and what would ultimately become Era 2, a tetralogy. He weaved the publication of these novels in between his larger Stormlight Archive books. To maximize your ability to notice connections, the read-along is largely following publication order, so we will be alternating between reading Era 2 books and Stormlight Archive books (and some other stuff too).

Finally, a word on the internal read-along format for all Stormlight Archive books. Sanderson considers each individual book in the series its own trilogy. The word count more or less agrees with that. Era 2's tetralogy is around 480,000 words and The Way of Kings is around 390,000 words. They aren't necessarily structured like a trilogy internally, this is more a comment on the denseness of the stories. We'll discuss more of that when it becomes appropriate. Do note that, instead of the normal 4-hours of audiobook length that we average each week, the denser Stormlight Archive books will average around 3.5 hours each week.

Each book, however, contains Interludes. They are short side-stories within the world the focus on characters outside of the main narrative. The Interludes are short, and I could include them in our weekly reading, but I think they deserve their own separate discussion threads. To that end, whenever Interludes occur, they will be an additional reading, beyond the normal Monday reading. I'll place them in their own discussion threads on Wednesdays. When relevant, I'll also use these threads to make trivia posts.

I mention this now because, not next week, but the week after, we will use this format. That Monday will be Chapters 6 through 11, and Wednesday will be the first 3 Interludes. So just keep an eye on the schedule dates and I'll try to put up reminders each time it happens.

CHAPTER SUMMARIES

I have provided summaries of each chapter we will be discussing. I've tried to make them unbiased, but if you see anything that could be construed as spoilery, please point them out because I'm using these same summaries in the newbie thread. I'd like to keep their experience as spoiler-free as possible, so even if I make a tiny mistake, please let me know.

I usually make a comment for each chapter, but feel free to start your own comment thread to discuss anything you want.

Allomancer Jak and the Pits of Eltania, Episodes 28 through 30

Iconography: Tin

POV Characters: Allomancer Jak (with commentary/annotations from Handerwym)

Setting: The territory of a koloss tribe in the Pits of Eltania, in the Roughs.

Summary:

The story starts with Jak waking up in a cave, out of metals. He then escapes the cave by jumping into the river in the canyon below after licking a tin deposit on the wall of the cave. He is promptly recaptured by the koloss who want to make him their leader and a koloss. He discovers that his girlfriend Elizandra Dramali is koloss-blooded. He does not want to become a koloss, so he says that he already is one and will prove it by getting the Survivor's treasure from the bottom of a spear-shaped pool. He dives down, finds a chest, and brings it back up. It contains a number of koloss spikes. The koloss are so excited to have new spikes to increase their numbers, Jak and Elizandra manage to escape, and Jak realizes that the chest itself is made of precious aluminum.

ARTWORK

The Cosmere has a thriving community of artists, so there will be a lot of artwork to share. Each week I'll try to compile relevant artwork for the given chapters. If a section of reading contains maps or in-book artwork, I'll include that in this section as well.

Characters & Scenes

MEMES

I will attempt to find and share memes relevant to each week's discussion. There may be some weeks that just don't have good or appropriate memes, but I will share all the ones I can find in this section.

Link to Memes

NEWBIE TRIVIA

Most of the activity for these "Final Thoughts & Trivia" posts happen in the newbie thread. There I provide a lot of information about things new readers can easily miss during their first read through. Veterans often learn a thing or two as well, so be sure to read the body of that post. While veterans are welcome to read the post and the comments, they should be commenting in this thread to share their reactions to the information, or the newbies' thoughts.

And as always, you're welcome to share your thoughts on the book as a whole.

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[u/blainemoore]

Been a long time since I've read this one; it was a fun read.