Kaladin sending out his armor to save other people, is that something all Radiants can do or is that a Windrunner thing only?
I will RAFO that. Let's just say it's going to depend on a variety of things. Definitely other Windrunners can do it.
Could you create a fabrial capable of showing past events using a Radiant spren and a gold cage?
RAFO. Theorize further along those lines, but RAFO.
How would a person with a Cognitive Shadow, like Szeth or the Heralds, look to someone in the Cognitive Realm? Would they appear to be just another soul? Or different?
So the question is, are there differences about a Cognitive Shadow in the Cognitive Realm. The answer is yes, but the way they became a Cognitive Shadow is going to influence how they look. And there are other little things playing into that. You could generally tell this if you knew what you were looking for. So the answer to that is a yes, but a qualified yes.
Skyward Three Update Two
Hello! Brandon here again with another update on the third Skyward book, tentatively titled NOWHERE. This update might have slight spoilers for the first two books in the series. Find the previous update here.
I've been working away on this book, slowly but surely, with progress every week. As I said in the first update, my outline for this book was quite solid, which let me jump right into the story with very little lost time. Which is good, as Dawnshard took a little more time from me than I'd wanted, so timing is a little tight on Nowhere.
The good news is that the publisher (Delacorte, a Random House imprint) has agreed to publish the book Christmas 2021. This took some work on our part, and me agreeing to some pretty tight deadlines, as covid has caused delays all through the industry and the publisher wasn't excited by the prospect of me forcing a relatively early publication date. (Publishers would generally like an 12-18 moth lead time after book turn in to publication, and this one will have around ten months or so.)
However, I think it's best to push a little to get the book done in time for next year--as Skyward fans have been required to wait while I did a Stormlight book in between. However, I've acknowledged to the publisher that if the book needs more than normal revisions (IE, something pops up in alpha/beta that takes work to fix) and I miss any deadlines, I'll agree to a spring 2022 release instead.
So, how's that looking? Well, book is on target writing-wise. I'm at around 62k words as of last night, with a goal of having 90-100k done by January First. That should finish up the novel, save for the interludes, which I'm planning to do a little later. (For spoiler-ish reasons, I can't say why.)
This series has a bit of a strange organization. I'd originally planned a trilogy, but as I worked on the outline for the second and third books, I felt that three books would be rushing things. I wanted to take this third book as a kind of focused character book, looking at Spensa in a rather new environment.
Slight Spoilers: The reasons for this are twofold. First off, I really thought that by the end of Starsight she would need some time to work on a few things relating to her arc. Second off, I knew that coming off of a Stormlight book, I might need a book that was more of an isolated fun adventure--something very different from Stormlight, to help me have variety in my writing. It's working very well, though my big worry is that people will feel this book isn't as connected to the rest of the series (or the stakes aren't as high) because of it. I am doing what I can to mitigate this, as it really is the story I want to tell right now. Hopefully, you'll all agree that the little diversion in book three was worth the journey. Time will tell.
Regardless, thank you for your patience, Skyward fans. The book IS coming. I hate taking a year off of the series like I did, but I don't think you'll have to suffer another of those. I anticipate the final book coming out Spring/summer 2022. (Theoretically, I'll be writing it second half of next year.)
As always, I'll be turning replies to inbox off for this thread, in order to keep the inbox a little more organized. So I apologize in advance if I don't see to your comment/question!
Happy Holidays. Next update should come in the early part of next year, as I am working on revisions. I'll let you know how it goes for hitting those deadlines! (Also, watch for the State of the Sanderson in little over a week to talk more about the projects I'm working on.)
Brandon
Can you reveal something about Renarin that we don't know yet?
Renarin has a crush he hasn't told anyone yet!
Will Kaladin ever find love?
He's asking that same question, as well.
Is Wax a Cognitive Shadow, or did he really heal and come back?
Wax is not a Cognitive Shadow, good question. Wax did not every fully leave... the soul didn't leave the body. He didn't die, in other words. I should say that he didn't die and leave behind an imprint as a Cognitive Shadow. He could have been Invested in that moment enough to make one, so it's a good question; but he did not.
Any teases on upcoming LGBT characters?
I put some hints in Rhythm of War. I should be making those canon by Book Five for you. But it wasn't quite time. I actually tried writing them harder into Rhythm of War, and they felt like it stood out too much; it was unnatural. So go ahead and begin your theorizing. It's not gonna be a big surprise; I think that people will figure it out pretty easily. But I'm not intending it to be a big surprise; I'm just trying to let things like what happened with Jasnah in this book come out naturally as they fit the characters.
No big surprises, but for those who would rather read about it in the book when it happens, then I will leave it to Book Five.
Are Intention and Intent the same thing? And how does it work?
I consider them the same thing; those are synonyms in cosmere terms.
I added this aspect to a lot of the cosmere magics relating to Intent. Meaning you have to be wanting to do things to make a lot of the different magics in the cosmere work. Why is this? Well, there are narrative reasons, and there are writerly reasons (for a lot of the things I do).
The narrative reasons are: because I did not want the cosmere magics... it's just safer, it's a lot safer for people. And it allows those who are experts in the magic and who actually work with it to become better. Knowing what you're doing, and knowing and learning; I want there to always be an aspect of learning and practice to a lot of the magic systems.
A more narrative reason (that's kind of a narrative reason) is that there are a lot of things I want to do with the cosmere magic that, when they interact with the physics of the real world, I need some wiggle room. You see this with destructive interference in sounds in Rhythm of War. Where the way that it would work in the cosmere, thinking of something as destructive interference actually creates for it a feeling, an Identity, as destructive interference. Where, in reality, destructive interference, there's nothing inherent to it being destructive interference. It's the same sound, just played in a different way. But in the cosmere, we can add this element of Identity to it, through Intent, that it is specifically made to do something. Which just allows me more gears and levers to play with as a designer of a magic system to make the physics work. And, basically, a lot of these things are... Imagine Intent, narratively, as the converter between real-world physics and cosmere physics, the little adapter that you stick between them. By adding Intent, I have an adapter.
That works really nicely; it's very writerly to try to explain this, but it works really nicely for smoothing the line between real-world physics and cosmere physics in a way that makes it much more fun for me to write, and much more consistent with both things, real physics and made-up physics.
Does Gallant's eyes being rainbow have any cosmere significance?
It is an indication of his spren bond; it's a way that I was getting across that. A lot of times, when you see kind of mother-of-pearl or a rainbow shimmer of luminescence, that is an indication of something happening with Investiture in the cosmere. You'll see it in White Sand being used; you see it periodically in manifestations of the Nahel bond, and that sort of thing.
Any other cameos we didn't know?
There are minor cameos to future important people in the cosmere that will eventually be made known. Those are all RAFOs.
If you're talking about friend cameos, I do write a lot of people who are friends, or people in the company, in. I think we've talked about most of those on the streams, so I don't think there are any that you can't find out about very easily. My favorite one is still Dan Wells, who I periodically write into the Stormlight books as a guy who miraculously survives really dangerous encounters. Since his books are all about killing off his friends, I figured I'd let my friends survive, that that would be somehow thematically appropriate for Dan.
What would happen to a spren if someone with a Nahel bond Ascended?
It's a good question, and it is also a RAFO.
Has a kandra impersonated Mare?
RAFO; sorry.
What gender is Marasi?
Marasi identifies as a cisgendered woman.
Is Hoid your cameo character in the cosmere?
Good question. No, he is not. I'm actually not very much like Hoid. The thing I share with him is a love of stories. So the closest he will be to me is when he's talking about storytelling; that's the part of me that is in him. But personality-wise, we are very different. He is a main character in the cosmere; I don't consider him... he's done cameos in other books, but I don't consider him to be an author insert character.
The closest I've come to an author insert is probably when I put my sword into the Wheel of Time, the one that was given to me by Wilson, Robert Jordan's very, very close cousin of his who was taking care of the armory that Robert Jordan had. I wrote my sword into it, like Robert Jordan wrote himself in as a ter'angreal in one of the books. And I could see myself doing a cameo for myself in that sort of manner. I probably wouldn't do a human cameo. Though I do that for a lot of my friends, is I write them into the books as cameos. So who knows.
Can some spren fully form and become human?
No spren becomes human; they are a different race. And so, no, that is not a thing that happens.
But there is some stuff in Rhythm of War along the lines I think you're asking, that I will not talk about because of spoilers.
Are Parshendi/human hybrids possible?
They are. In fact, both the Horneaters and the Herdazians are descendants of human/Parshendi, human/listener hybrids. And there's very, very small remnants of it; they are mostly human. But they have a bit of listener heritage, just like a lot of us have some Neanderthal heritage. They, perhaps, have a little bit more in their past.
So, yes, this is possible.
Could there be a cure for diabetes in the cosmere?
Yes, there very much could be a cure for diabetes in the cosmere. Right now, if you become a Knight Radiant, that would be a solution. That's not a solution for everyone; that's a very narrow solution. But there would be other solutions.
Have you plotted Lost Metal yet? Is that still its name?
Lost Metal is still the name. I have my original one-page outline from my first plotting session, when I built Era Two to actually be an Era, rather than a little dalliance. I do not have the full multi-page outline, which I will probably be doing while my editor is editing Skyward Three early next year. And I'll get the Wax and Wayne Four book really into good shape with the outline, and then I'll go back and do the last revisions on Skyward Three, and then I'll start working on Wax and Wayne.
I'm guessing that the Wax and Wayne book, I won't start it officially until, like, March or April, will be my guess. Just because we need to immediately go into revisions on Skyward Three if we're gonna have it out for next Christmastime. (Which my publisher was very hesitant about agreeing to. But I really like to have at least a release every year. I don't like to skip years, whenever I can make it happen. So they agreed to, instead of doing it the following spring, to do it next year around Christmastime.) Which means that I need to do the revisions really fast. So I am going to work on that.
How's Skyward Three going?
It's going really well. I am loving writing Skyward Three. It is really fun to have a change of pace, to do a single viewpoint narrative in first person after working on the Stormlight Archive for so long. Epic fantasy is my first love. I really enjoy working on them. But by the time I'm done working with a Stormlight book, I need a change of pace, which is how my whole writing life is built around, giving me those changes of pace. And Skyward is the perfect break from Stormlight. It was designed that way. Just writing from Spensa's viewpoint is a blast, and it's fun.
And I designed Skyward Three to be a little bit more of a popcorn adventure than Skyward Two was (and then Skyward Four will be), just 'cause I knew I would need that after Stormlight Three. So if you're looking forward to a fun adventure fiction that does deal with Spensa's character arc in ways that are still meaningful, but most of the story is just me having fun, then look forward to Skyward Three.
Any news about Alcatraz Six?
I will have a publication date for Alcatraz Six announced in the State of the Sanderson. It looks like they are settling in at Tor to figure out how to do that. It's a little later than I wanted it to be, because they want to do reissues of the first books in paperback. (Which they've never actually, in the Tor editions, never been in paperbacks.) And so they're doing that, and Book Six will be released in conjunction with that.
What effects does a spren bond have on a Ryshadium? Sapience, or more?
It increases their intelligence a great deal and gives them a little extra hardiness to survive in Roshar. And in exchange, the spren gets pulled into the Physical Realm, which they really like.
Any news on an Elantris sequel?
No news. I want to do this between Mistborn Era 3 books, is do some Elantris. But I'm gonna have to see how things play out in writing those books. It depends on a lot of factors.
I do plan to do them, still, just like I plan to do one Warbreaker sequel. But I have to balance these things, because I also want to do some new stuff in the cosmere, with new planets. Like, we need to do the Aethers. They're relevant to space-age cosmere, so I need to have at least a book or some novellas to get you used to that magic system, as well.
Would a macaw be able to become a Radiant? Or do you need sentience?
You need sapience. A macaw could not become a Knight Radiant. A macaw could, theoretically, enter a symbiotic spren bond, which would have different effects. Like, Ryshadium or even most of the larger greatshells don't have sapience. But a lot of creatures on Roshar do have what I would term an in-between step between human-level intelligence and animal-level intelligence on Earth. Ryshadium are in this; chasmfiends, as well, are smarter than an animal can get on Earth.
If Roshar's years are 500 days along, and I say someone is twenty years old, how does that equate to Earth time?
It equates to actually about 10% difference. Because while the years are 500 days, the days are shorter, and there are fewer months. It all works out mathematically to about 10%. So if I say someone is twenty in the books, they are twenty-two in Earth years. So kind of keep that in mind.
It's a small enough difference, I feel, that people who don't notice it or know about it won't really be thrown for a loop. But I like to have things like that. And normally in fantasy novels I don't make big differences in things like time, units of measurement. Or other things, like Roshar has a lower gravity than Earth. I don't deal with that in a lot of the fantasy books; I like to have some of it on Roshar, because one of my pitches to myself in making Roshar was to come up with a fantasy book where the worldbuilding was a little more like a science fiction book's worldbuilding.
How long after Warbreaker do these events take place?
We have numbers in the wiki. We haven't canonized a lot of them in the books yet. Because my original plan for the cosmere involved more space between the series than I'm probably going to eventually do. What I've said is, that basically the books that have been released have all been chronological except for White Sand, which takes place before the other books chronologically. Wax and Wayne takes place after Stormlight Five, but before Stormlight Six. And that's all I'm saying about how far apart things are right now.
One thing you have to remember is, also, time dilation is a thing in the cosmere that comes up a lot more often than it does in our world, for various reasons, because of the way I am treating Investiture. So treat that how you will.
Stormlight Five's title?
Haven't decided yet. It needs to fit the naming convention of The Stormlight Archive. Which means it needs to be named after an in-world book, and it also needs to fit with the palindrome. I have some options I'm choosing between. You can go look at the various threads on fan sites where they are trying hard to guess.
A question about two of the characters from Warbreaker, whether they're still alive or not?
That's a RAFO.
Could new Orders eventually be formed?
This is plausibly possible but highly, highly unlikely. A lot of things are possible in the Stormlight Archive that are highly unlikely. So I rarely say "no," because I built the magic systems of the cosmere to be able to do a lot of things, 'cause I knew I was going to be writing in a lot of different worlds. Which means that very few things are completely off-limits. But there's a lot of things that are unlikely to happen.
Will there be a Stormlight 4.5?
Yes, the Rock novella, called Horneater, should be written to take place chronologically between Stormlight Four and Five. That'll have given us a novella between each of the books except One and Two. Maybe some day I'll fill in a hole there and put a novella between those two. I don't know that I'll do any between [Five and Six]. Likely, if we do an art book, that will be what's between [Five and Six].
Is there a plan to release an art book of the Stormlight Archive?
I would like to do this someday. I'd like to do something like what we call the Big White Book for Wheel of Time. And Song of Ice and Fire has one. I would probably release it after Book Five of the Stormlight Archive, which is a big break point. I'll finish Stormlight Five for release in 2023 (is the goal). That brings a lot of the major arcs to a close. Stormlight Six, then, will be a little longer of a wait. I'm gonna write the entire Era 3 of Mistborn in between. My goal is (we'll see how I stick with this) to start on those as soon as I finish Stormlight Five, and write them, all three, straight through, like I did with the first Mistborn trilogy. And then not release them until the whole trilogy is done, and then release them one a year. And then after that, work on Stormlight Six. So we'll see how that goes; that's several years off.
For right now, my focus is on getting the Skyward series finished and Wax and Wayne, Mistborn Era 2, finished. Those are my goals to have done by the time I start Stormlight Five.
And so, art book? Yeah, I bet after Stormlight Five, somewhere between Five and Six, we'll release an art book.
A character in The Stormlight Archive who eventually was able to heal of a wound. An old wound, and normally healing old wounds, with Regrowth, can't be healed.
This is a limitation of healing someone else, versus healing yourself. Healing someone else is a weaker method, at least as it's understood by the Radiants currently. Figuring out how to make Regrowth fix older wounds is more difficult. When you are highly Invested in such a way that you have a spren bond, then you are able to kind of rewrite your Spiritual self to better match your Cognitive self. Basically, what your soul is better comes to match your perception of your soul and who you are, and who you want to be becomes more important. And because of that, the Radiant bond is able to heal things and even change physiology that normal Regrowth wouldn't be capable of doing.
(maybe a novella for skar and drehy too pls)
Skar and Drehy SHOULD play heavily into the Rock novella, for reasons that the preview chapters make clear.
So at this point we either know or can infer the opinions of most of the Radiants spren on bonding humans, but I was a little curious on the exact position of Lightspren. We know there's some who are against it, considering Ico's opinion, but is that representative of the entire people, or just a significant number? Is Timbre the only one willing to bond someone, or is she one of a group of rebels like Syl?
This is a RAFO for now.
I assume a lot of people believe Taravangian's story that he killed everyone 'except Gavilar' is a polite fiction to prevent Dalinar from being honor-bound to kill him?
Yeah, I'd suspect that you are right.
I am a bit sad Lift didn’t tag along to Shadesmar.
I was actually going to send her on that mission, and wrote this chapter with that intent. Then I re-read what I'd written, and decided, "There's no way on Roshar Dalinar and Navani would send her on a delicate diplomatic mission." So I forced myself to revise the outline so Lift stayed in the tower.
There are some things that just stretch plausibility too much.
Speaking of sending Stalins to jail, will Dalinar ever face any consequences for his act of genocide in Rift?
Unfortunately, no. (Other than his strained relationship with Adolin and his own personal guilt.)
Problem here is that by our standards (and now, Dalinar's own) this was a terrible act of destruction. But by the standards of his society, this was just business as usual. A city in open rebellion against the crown? That's basically an invitation.
It's a tricky scene because the awful truth is that in our world, these sorts of things were extremely common in warfare--even up to and including the modern era. It wasn't until very recently that this sort of action was seen as a the war crime that it is.
To be more accurate, I probably should have had this sort of thing happen dozens of times in Dalinar's past. But I felt that wouldn't have made the point any stronger, and felt that one time was bad enough. That said, however, it's not the sort of thing that most rulers through history would have to bear any consequences for.
Has Vasher/Zahel done anything like this? Is that why he is as we see him in the Stormlight Archive?
RAFO for now, but the responses below this do have valid points [Manywar and Nightblood].
Would something like the 1474 trial of Peter von Hagenbach be possible on Roshar? And if yes, would this be something Skybreakers would get behind? It always seemed to be that they'd be interested in the idea of 'make law, not war' (I got that quote from Ben Ferencz).
This sort of thing would have been possible (and indeed inevitable in a situation like that) during the days of the Radiants. Not so much in recent history. Old Skybreakers would have been behind it entirely, new ones have some...different ways of looking at things.
Can we still expect a Rysn interlude in each book?
So, there's an interlude in this book for Rysn, but it's not from her viewpoint... (But you can expect one in book five.)
One question I've seen arisen about Taravangian I'm hoping for clarification on: Is he basically retreating from public eye whenever he's not having a "good" (smarter) day?
Navani notes in the chapter that he's dispensed with the doddering old man act, but we the readers know he's just as likely to have a not-smart-but-emotional day where he's not allowed to enact policy, and that could be on the day meetings with the monarchs occur. How is he managing his condition with being so much more in the public eye now?
There is more help with this in his perspectives, so I'll leave this at a RAFO for now.
I love the increased involvement Rlain is getting already in this book! Any chance we'll get a glimpse into his viewpoint?
Yes, there is at least one Rlain viewpoint in the book.
So there's speculation in this thread about whether the Singers have a Fishform relating to the Thrill getting tossed into the sea...
and that makes me wonder - are all Singer forms predetermined by whatever deity created them or evolution, or can new ones arise spontaneously when new spren are created?
New forms could exist.
Related to Kaladin's abilities and their application to medicine, is a Shard-scalpel possible, or does a Sylblade of any kind have to do the whole burning-eyes deadened-limbs thing that Shardblades do?
(actually, I bet this is going to be addressed in the book, unless my memories of lore are insufficient and this is a silly question that is already answered if I look closely enough.)
It's not a silly question--and while it's not answered in the books, the topic (or at least ones similar to it) is discussed. So I'll RAFO for now.
I got a question about this and last week's epigraph.
The metals Fused use. How come nobody knows, guesses or even suspects that aluminium and its alloys are Investiture resistant? They know you can Soulcast something into aluminium, so they should also know it's impossible to Soulcast aluminium into something else.
And once they know about metal that cannot be Soulcast, they start experimenting with fabrials - they used that in construction of Fourth Bridge - and then the logical step is to test it against Shardblades.Probably experimenting with alloys of aluminium, too.
Yet the metal Fused use to make weapons resistant to Shardweapons is a mystery to them?
I feel like I'm missing something here.
They're getting to answers here. Problem is, metallurgy just isn't a big science on Roshar. I feel it's one of those things that is more easy to see externally than internally--and do remember that there are things like god metals (Shardblades, for example) that also behave strangely around investiture. They have far more experience with those than aluminum, which is more of a little historical oddity to them than a big revolutionary part of science. Add to that the fact that some of the metals the fused are using aren't aluminum, and...well, I don't think it's as obvious a leap as you're making it out to be.
So the Fused's fabrials are not 100% aluminum based? Or they are and they are struggling to reach that conclusion?
I think what you're asking will be answered in the book, so I'll RAFO for now.
That line, about Kaladin trying to take on ardent job, then general one, and then on running away. Did you mean surgeon job being in certain way the running away way for Kaladin? Or you will leave it for readers to decide?
p.s. to me it felt like very sad decision tonally and probably the lowest point of Kal's regression.
So, right now, Kaladin views this as somehow giving in. That he should have been able to find a better option, a way to keep doing what he'd been doing. It is supposed to be sad tonally because Kaladin is sad about it.
However, this is partially Kaladin not being quite able to see clearly. So I suggest waiting for a little bit and seeing what happens next.
Someone posted about Kaladin spending 86 days as a bridgeman. Is this accurate?
That's a question for Continuity Editor Karen. She'd have the specific number of days.
You’ve mentioned a few times the concept of the “in-between” book. Did you plot the events of that time skip out in detail to give yourself the starting point when planning RoW? Or did you just know where you wanted the characters and the world to start from?
It's not as detailed as a full book outline, but at the same time, it's more than just starting where I felt was right. So kind of between the two ideas you offer?
Has Balat been healed? He isn't mentioned using a cane in the chapter, and he's in guardsman training? Did he get a session with Renarin or somethng?
No, not healed (wound is too old) but has access to much better things like physical therapy, and a little strength training to help. Plus, he's doing much better mentally.
The main concern I saw with people on this chapter [Rhythm of War Chapter Sixteen] is the whole thing with where The Thrill ended up. Do we just lack info, or did Jasnah allow something that powerful to be simply tossed away and hope no one finds it?
Betas had some questions about this too, and my team keeps pushing me to put more info about it--but I haven't found the right place. It's more secure than you'd think.
I am in the very small minority of your readers that finds Hoid obnoxious and unpleasant. So will we see more characters talk negatively about Hoid, or expose some of what he has done in the past? I bet there are a lot more people like Shai out there ...
There are a ton. But I don't know when exactly I'll be able to get to them. Suffice it to say that you wouldn't find yourself alone in that opinion in the cosmere.
I happened to notice that Aon Ene in AonDor, which is said to represent debate, is used to control timing in Aon sequences. Is this an intentional connection with logicspren, which are drawn to debates, being used for timing in fabrials?
Yes, it is. There are a few more connections like this in some of the other magics I hope to be able to get to before too long.
