We have seen Wit tell stories that others told incomplete versions of earlier in the book. Is this an in-world coincidence? Or is he aware of those stories being told?
It is a little of both. Nothing mystical in here; he doesn't automatically know if a story is being told. But he keeps an eye on things, shall we say, and finds out things that he shouldn't know.
Can a Radiant join multiple Orders?
This was not done in the past.
Or become a squire of a different Order?
It is actually not impossible for this to happen; it simply was not done.
If Dalinar became a Lighweaver squire or had the Lightweaver Honorblade, could he create the Roshar map himself?
This is going to depend on factors. It is possible, but highly implausible, following another highly implausible set of circumstances that would actually allow him to actually do that. (Though getting the Honorblade would not be as difficult.)
Of all the magic systems, would Awakeners most quickly be able to utilize acquiring a Dawnshard?
RAFO!
Is there only one seon for every given Aon?
Yes, there is. Now, there is only one Seon for every Aon, but there are Aons that you don't know about, yet.
At long last, after two years of hard work, I’m pleased to present to you Rhythm of War, the fourth book of the Stormlight Archive. I won’t give you a pitch on the book, since by now I suspect you know whether or not you’re going to be reading it. (And if you’re not certain, you’d start with Book One anyway.) Instead, I present to you a few little tidbits about the story.
Part OneFavorite chapter in Part One: Chapter Twelve
Most difficult chapter in Part One: Chapter Seven (Getting the foreshadowing and viewpoints right required a lot of revision.)
Part TwoFavorite chapter in Part Two: Chapter Thirty-Four
Most difficult chapter in Part Two: Chapter Twenty-Four (This is one of the new chapters I had to add late in the process, in order to make this viewpoint sequence work.)
Part ThreeFavorite chapter in Part Three: Chapter Sixty-Six
Most difficult chapter in Part Three: Chapter Sixty-Seven (This viewpoint character had a lot of revisions through the process to get them right.)
Part FourFavorite chapter in Part Four: Chapter Eighty (This is actually my favorite chapter in the book.)
Most difficult chapter in Part Four: Chapter Ninety-Three (Probably the single most revised chapter in the novel, and it required a lot of continuity, delicate foreshadowing, and help from beta readers.)
Part FiveFavorite chapters in Part Five: a sequence that starts in 105 and ends in 110. This is actually a central sequence from my very early outlines, which I’ve mentioned I’ve been waiting over a decade now to share with you all.
Most difficult chapter in Part Five: Chapter 105. You’ll see why.
What was in the sealed letter that Elhokar sent with Shallan to Aesudan? Did it end up making it to her after Shallan got shot?
Still planning to do something with this, so RAFO.
So here's a bit of an oddity, in the RoW chapter 3 preview it says "They’d learned about the interactions between conjoined fabrials and aluminum from the Azish scientists." So was having Huio discover the aluminum trick a bit of a last minute addition, or am I missing a distinction here? Seems a bit extra odd since the aluminum trick is said to be the key to make the ship work, but it is already alluded to being under construction in Dawnshard before this.
Yeah, last minute addition. I thought we'd caught them all, but this is a problem with writing Dawnshard after. I was never pleased with the Azish thing--thought I'd cut it, honestly. Have a look at the released edition. It might not be in there.
It's a shame we didn't get to see Rushu interact with the Sleepless.
I generally don't have enough time for Rushu as I'd like, so agreed.
So now that we know at least one group of Rosharans are aware of the Sleepless (the Horneaters), are there other Rosharans who know of them as well?
By which I mean - have the existence of the Sleepless influenced Irialian religion and the belief in the One?
There have been Iriali who know about the Sleepless, though the Iriali religion predates their arrival on Roshar. (That said, it has evolved during their time here.)
So the idea of the One - a single entity breaking down into smaller, constituent parts in order to gain diverse and varied experiences - predates the Iriali's contact with the Sleepless?
And now that I think more about this theme of a single entity breaking down (splintering/fracturing?) into smaller parts... could the belief in the One and the Many be influenced by the fracturing of Adonalsium? Or is this general theme just a coincidence?
The general theme is not a coincidence, but the Iriali having this philosophy predates me bringing the Sleepless into the Cosmere from another science fiction book I'd written during my early unpublished years.
Have you chosen a flashback character for book two of Stormlight Archive yet?
Yes. I have chosen to use Shallan as the flashback character for Stormlight Two. I feel that her narrative is the best one right here, and so I pretty much filled out the first five, 'cause Stormlight's in two five-book narratives, where we're going to anchor it with Kaladin is the first one and Dalinar is the last one, and then we'll use Shallan, Szeth is number three, and then probably Navani is number four. That's the one I haven't nailed down yet. It's either Navani or a character I can't tell you yet.
Okay. The overarching story of all of my novels. I wrote thirteen novels in different worlds, all with their own different magic systems and own characters. But secretly I loved the grand epic, and so I started connecting all these worlds during my unpublished era, and telling a hidden epic behind them all that I was setting up for.
Well, eventually I sold book number six, and embedded in book number six was a bunch of this stuff for the hidden epic, of course, and six is actually one of the ones where I first started doing this. My first five were kind of throwaway novels. It was six, seven, eight, and nine that were really involved in this. Six was Elantris; seven was a book called Dragonsteel; eight was a book called White Sand; and nine was a book called Mythwalker, which eventually became Warbreaker, which I eventually rewrote and released as Warbreaker. So that four-book sequence was very ingrained in this kind of hidden story behind the stories. When I started publishing these books, I just kept it going, the hidden story, the hidden epic.
How has The Alloy of Law impacted your overall plans for events on Scadrial? Is it part of the original set of trilogies you had mapped out?
To worldbuild the urban fantasy trilogy coming up, I need to know everything that happened in the intervening centuries. Some stories popped up in there that I knew would happen, that would be referenced in the second trilogy. So I thought, why don't I tell some of these stories, to cement them in my mind and to keep the series going.
My understanding is that The Alloy of Law is intended to be more or less a stand-alone book. However, without giving too much away, it feels like there is a whole lot more of Wax's story to be told. When's the sequel coming?
I will most likely write a sequel. However, what you've got to remember is that I will be writing that future trilogy, the urban fantasy trilogy. The events in this book are of relation to what's happening in the future, so you will find out eventually the answers to the questions this book gives you, even if a sequel to this book never comes. But I more than likely will write more of these books over the next few years. The Stormlight Archive is my main focus following the Wheel of Time; I don't want to leave people hanging too much where that's concerned. But between books I will probably write more about these characters.
Do the political relationships between Idris and Hallandren have a model in the real world? Do you think authors of fantasy are free to deal with current political issues in their work or is that something of a no-go for you?
In fantasy, we can often approach things like this in a way that is non-threatening. We can change things a little bit and focus in a little bit more on the issue that is interesting to us. I won't say that I never do this, though again character and story are most important, but what I write about grows out of what I'm interested in.
With Idris and Hallendren, I noticed in my own work that I'd been painting religion in a somewhat less than favorable light in recent books; this is partially because I as a religious person think that the misuse of religion is one of the most purely evil things that can happen in the world. So I thought I wanted to play off of some of those sensibilities, and I built what I did in Warbreaker in part to actively show a different side of things. And when I was writing that book, the politics of the United States' invasion of certain countries and other things going on were not something that anyone could really ignore. So I would say that there are themes that grew out of that.
I didn't write the book to make a political statement. Yet at the same time the potential political statements of "Think twice about what you're doing" and of the nature of war and what it can do is something that I'm sure grew out of my own thoughts on the issues.
Regarding Elantris, I read a while back that you had no intentions of writing any sequels, but then you had a change of heart. I know that you've been busy with a lot of other projects, but has there been any progress at all on a possible follow-up, or maybe ideas you could share on an Elantris sequel that have been bouncing around in your head?
I doubt I will do a sequel that begins just after Elantris ends, at least not with the same characters and in the same place. There are lots of ideas I want to explore in the world of Elantris, though. I might do something about the Seons, or focus on a different culture, or write about something that happens many years after the story of Elantris.
What can you tell us about the new Stormlight Archive novella you have outlined?
I can't tell you a lot about it, but I'm planning on calling it Wandersail.
Will we see Kelsier in the Stormlight Archive series?
You are not likely to see Kelsier in the Stormlight Archive series. I'll just say that. Not likely.
Is the plan still for ten books [for the Stormlight Archive]? How much ahead are you with the overall plan?
The plan is still for ten books, which is two arcs of five. The first five are very well plotted and nailed down in my head. The back five, I know the endings of each of those, but I’m not 100% sure on all the elements. Once I finish the first five, I will sit down and create the second outline in much more detail. Because they are divided in my head in such a way that they are two smaller arcs that have a big gap between them, I’m really focused on the first five right now.
All right, I'm gonna pull upon the cloud here, and I'm gonna go to my archive, and let's see what I can find in here that I have outlines for that I haven't written.
There's one I know of for sure. I'm not gonna tell you what that one is. It's a secret project. One that I haven't talked about.
I don't know if we count Death By Pizza. I have a full outline for that. But that's a book I didn't write, and then I passed the worldbuilding off to Peter Orullian, who was writing a book based on it. Not using my outline, because the outline had some problems. But that would probably be number two.
Dark One became a graphic novel. So I don't know if you count that. That's, like, half of one.
Starburner would be number four-ish. That's the first full outline that doesn't have a book attached to it right now.
Don't know if you count Stormlight Five. The outline for Stormlight Five is very detailed. Six through Ten is less detailed; I do have them, but they're more like a paragraph or two about each book, so I wouldn't count them as a full outline.
Five in my "Novels to Write Someday" one. Which, most of them, you guys haven't heard about. One's the magic that uses kites; I've talked about that before.
I've got "Totally Not A Rewrite Of Episode I" that I wrote nine years ago. I just could not help it.
I have the five I mentioned earlier. In addition, in their own folders, I have I Hate Dragons. (Which I actually outlined the whole I Hate Dragons book, but I only wrote the little piece of it that was a writing exercise.) I have... six.
Six plus five, so eleven outlines in my Novels to Write Someday. And then two half ones that I passed on to someone else. And then all the Stormlight and Mistborn and things like that that don't quite count. So there you go, eleven. It's eleven only, right now. That's not very many. I would say that I've got at least that many in my head, maybe a few more.
Oh, and Secret Project, so that's twelve. And all of those are Secret Projects in a way, I guess. You've heard about some of them. One of them is The Lurker, which became Adamant, which I wrote one novella of, but I have the outlines for the rest.
And they're kind of just for me. Because they're the paintings of the Heralds, which are characters that I know and have been telling stories in my head about for twenty years. But you don't know 'em very well. (You know Nale a little bit.) But most of the Heralds, you're like, "Who are these people? Why do you have these awesome pictures of people that aren't in the books?" Well, that's because they will be in the books, and they are the people that I wanted paintings of. Selfish.
Is the in-world The Way of Kings meant to be the exact opposite of The Prince by Machiavelli?
No. That is because, if you read The Prince by Machiavelli, it doesn't deserve quite the reputation it has. But it is meant to be an opposite, in many ways, to the "ends justify the means" philosophy that we kind of cliff-notes put upon The Prince. The Prince has got a lot more depth to that discussion that at least I thought before I read The Prince. But it is supposed to be a counterpoint to that idea, the ends justify the means. A counterpoint to that concept is, "What if the means are the point? Then the end will not justify them, because the means are more important in many ways than the point." So it is yes, but it's also no.
You've mentioned that Rhythm of War has a sequence that you've had in your head for a long time. Any other scenes (without spoilers) from Stormlight Archive that you are excited to have in the story?
There is a scene in Book Two that is one of these other foundational scenes, but I can't say it without giving spoilers about Book Two. Happens near the end of Book Two. There's a lot of them. So, the thing is, most of these are gonna be in Stormlight because Stormlight Archive is the book I started planning and then had in my head, the series, for ten years without being able to write it. Mistborn, I designed, outlined, and then wrote. And I'm really excited by how Mistborn turned out. But the original Mistborn, they don't have any scenes that I was planning for a decade, because I basically came up with the story and executed it. (Though I had done the magic system in a previous book, Mistborn Prime, which we'll someday release.)
So, a lot of these are in Stormlight. They're sprinkled all across Stormlight. There's one in Book Five, there's one in Book Ten, there's one in Book Eight. And these are just things when I originally conceived the Stormlight Archive that I was really excited to get to, and now have had to wait twenty years to write these scenes. So it's very fulfilling to finally be able to write some of these things. Because I wrote Way of Kings Prime, and then had to stop and not write Stormlight for seven years. So it built in my head with all of these things that I wanted to do.
There are some really cool scenes for Era Three of Mistborn that I've been waiting now probably for over a decade at this point to be able to share with you. So once I'll be able to get to that, then that'll be really exciting. But there aren't any from Wax and Wayne, because I conceived and executed Wax and Wayne. I thought of it and then wrote it, rather than having these decade-long waits to finally get the story written.
I assign one day a week to not do writing things and just do other stuff. That day, recently, a lot of that time (Thursdays) has been dedicated to a video game project, which I'm not at liberty to say what it is yet, I'm sorry. But that I've been working on for the last year. Some day that'll get announced.
Is Adolin left-handed?
Adolin is not left-handed.
Is there gonna be a cyberpunk Mistborn trilogy?
I have toyed with it. It's gonna depend if I'm ahead enough on things. If I am ahead enough on things, I will do an era between the 1980s and the future era. Those are cornerstones that I can't get rid of. I could or could not do a cyberpunk, a near-future science fiction. It's gonna depend on how things are looking once I'm around working on the back five Stormlight books.
Did Shallan manifest her Shardplate in the final battle of Book Three?
RAFO. Shallan has to be big RAFO. You'll understand why when you read this book [Rhythm of War]. Shallan is an untrustworthy narrator.
One of the things I'm most excited about with this book [Rhythm of War] has been what you described as being a foundational scene that you got to write that you've been thinking of forever. In the Cosmere and in your writing, has there been anything that you've done on that level? You have huge reveals and awesome scenes all over the place, but has there been one that's been cooking for so long and then you finally got to put it on the page? Or is this the first time you got to do that?
No, the first one of these was Kaladin taking the Shardblade at the end of Words of Radiance. That was the first really big one that I had been planning for a long time. Even stretches back to some things in Way of Kings Prime that I never got to write, because I never wrote the second book of that series. So that is one of those moments that just have been planned forever.
Most of these are Stormlight or Dragonsteel. Because Mistborn did not have as long of a cooking phase. So while there's cool moments in it, it's not like I spent ten years planning them. I spent, like, two years planning them. And so the ones for... there's one in Words of Radiance, there's one in this book, and there's one at the end of Book Five. (And there's one in Book Ten, also, but there's a bunch of them in Stormlight, the back five.) In the first five, we've got one in this book. (You'll know when you get to it. I think you'll know when you get to it.) And there's one in the next book that I first thought of and tried playing with an outline of... boy, it was, like, '98 or '99, before I even started Prime. After Five, we'll have a lot to talk about about that moment. But you'll find one in this book.
I actually am working on a project right now with someone that I am under NDA for (but a fairly large developer) where I am just providing lore for them and learning about how you write a game. They actually have writers on staff who are actually writing the game, and I am providing the lore. And I just get to sit in the meetings and listen and find out how people write games.
So, Rysn's Dawnshard was totally used with Surgebinding to make the Dawncities right? E.g. the giant windbreaks in Kholinar that everyone wonders "How did they make those?" that would seem outside the power-level of Radiant soulcasting.
Let's just say this is a linguistic connection I expected people to make.
Also, creation of the Dawncities (and Urithiru) is beyond the scope of what a Radiant, or even a group of them working together, could create via Soulcasting. (Though note, it's not beyond the scope of what Surgebinding itself could do.)
I'd like to solve the puzzle.
"Unite Them with Passion to Destroy Evil and make Positive Change."
Did I do the thing?
RAFO. :)
Why didn't the Sleepless have a guard watching the Dawnshard?
They did--but only a couple of hordelings to give warning. They never thought, in a million years, the intruders would absorb the Dawnshard. It wasn't seen as possible for a variety of reasons that, some day, might be clear.
Up until the moment realizing what had happened, they assumed they were in complete control, as the humans were locked into a place with no other exit and there were swarms blocking the way back out through the water.
I was wondering if you could clarify how The Sleepless communicate between all the members of their horde and each other? They are described as buzzing, so are they relaying messages from hordeling to hordeling across huge distances or do they have so kind of more specialized telepathy?
It's mostly telepathic; hordeling buzzings are more like emotional punctuation, like body language in humans.
While reading Dawnshard I remembered something...Dalinar's odd dreams about warm golden light that is very similar to what Rysn experienced.
Is there any connections? Maybe Dalinar is connected to another Dawnshard?
I will RAFO this, but it's a worthy line of conjecture.
The Polish publisher is working hard on RoW right now. (I had to give them the genders of certain named-but-unseen characters today to properly translate.)
Now that Rysn has secrets to keep, where do her alliances lie? She seems slightly skeptical of the Radiants, so would she be more patriotic to Thaylen City and potentially share her information with Queen Fen? Or maybe even Vstim?
Her loyalty is most likely to her babsk and others who have proven, in person, to her their merit.
You once told us that one of the Dawnshards was different from the others. As of the events of this novella, is that still true?
Yes.
So once Huio swears the ideal and the bargain is made, why not use the Oathgate? Did I miss something here?
The group isn't certain yet if they want to expend the military (particularly naval) might to secure the location just yet. It's not something you make on a whim; and now that the Sleepless have agreed not to attack them, Windrunners can fly back in a matter of hours, so they don't have to decide right now.
There's going to be more dawnshard stuff in the rest of the SA right? Like I couldn't bear it if you introduce this cool as hell concept of the literal words of creation, and then I have to wait like 10 years for more dawnshard goodness to show up.
So for the sake of my sanity can you just confirm that it's not gonna be another decade before we hear/see more about them?
There will be more, but not much more in the first five.
I'm particularly loving Cord and hope we see more of her in the future.
You will, but I warn you, her appearances in RoW are brief because I hadn't finished Dawnshard yet, and wanted the room to grow her as it felt natural in the novella, so I barely have her appear in the novel.
Since when did your start to plan this specific development for Rysn? Was it something that existed from her inception?
Rysn wasn't in my very first outlines; I decided upon this path for her when working on Words of Radiance, as I realized I really wanted one Interlude character that I returned to, and showed a longer story across several years for.
and the reason he (even still) cannot physically harm people
This point still confuses me. He quite handily puts Kelsier on his rear in The Well.
So he can harm someone if he's provoked? Or is it because he knows that regardless of what he does to Kelsier it won't actually harm him?
And a lot of "harm" is in the mind. Even without a corporeal body, it would still register as pain, thus harm?
And wouldn't it still be considered physical harm, if Hoid was there physically? Applying physical harm?
If you re-read that scene, Hoid himself is shocked he's able to do what he does there. Let's just say he himself doesn't quite understand the issue as much as he once assumed.
Can we assume he cannot harm a LIVING being, but Kelsier is at that point not a living being?
This is the conclusion Hoid came to, so it's a pretty solid assumption.
Chapter Nineteen
So, this brings us to the end of Part One, and you can fully see the reversed shape of the story here. Explosive beginning, contemplative ending. I went back and forth on whether I should end with Kaladin or Navani, as his decision to become a surgeon was the larger of the narrative arcs--but Navani's section better matched the thematic end of the part.
I fully expect some readers to be a little indignant about the fact that Taravangian is walking around free, while Szeth is imprisoned. I agree--it's unfair, but I also believe it to be (unfortunately) accurate. Taravangian is, despite his unassuming mannerisms, one of the most powerful people in the world. While it would have been great to toss Stalin into jail for his crimes, it wasn't really an option--and during the war, the allies needed him.
That isn't to say Taravangian is untouchable. Only that I felt what you read her to be one of the more likely outcomes to his outing. His argument that he didn't do anything worse than Dalinar did is a pretty solid one; if there hadn't also been suspicion he was working with the enemy, it's likely there would have been no relevant consequences to his assassination orders.
You'll be getting his perspective on all of this soon, as he has an interlude after each part of this book. (Like Szeth got in the first book, or Eshonai got in the second.)
Is the fact that Hoid has been a Dawnshard related in some way with the "bearer of the first gem" title?
Yes indeed.
I couldn't help but think about the logo for the Cosmere when I read the description of the mural [in Dawnshard]. Is the Cosmere logo related to it?
More that the Cosmere logo was built using some same fundamental principles. But yes, they are related.
Would hemalurgy on roshar require spikes to be made of gemstones?
RAFO.
Has Kelsier ever physically been on Sel?
RAFO!
Do Scadrians have a piece of Harmony?
Yup.
Are you willing to tell me anything about the history of the Vanrial community at this time?
What specifically did you want to know?
Well, is their eye color lighter than the typical Alethi peasant?
(after a long pause) I think I'll just stay away from this for now.
How much have you thought about the evolution of the biology on Roshar? It seems like the creatures we saw in Dawnshard attacking the crew (Sleepless aside, they're a whole other can of cremlings) are basically amphibious chasmfiends? Or some descendent of larkin? Or even an offshoot of hordelings?
I imagine there's a lot of aquatic Rosharan megafauna, as many prey species on the planet have literal sources of energy inside of them that (with the right biological adaptations) can be turned into calories. Mix the low gravity, high oxygen, environment--and the possibility for bonding spren for other adaptations--and there's some real fun to be had.
Rosharan Sleepless, as a species who can self-evolve over internal generations, have managed to interbreed with some species of cremlings to come up with specialized hordelings to do some remarkable things.
Is Chiri-Chiri's kind descended from Yolen dragons?
RAFO! :)
When the Sleepless refer to 'Surgebinding' with the Dawnshards do they mean it specifically in the Rosharan sense, or just because that is the word Roshar has for magic.
I.e. if this occurred on Scadrial would they still call it 'Surgebinding' or something else?
Surgebinding is kind of a catch-all for cosmere magic here, as you're assuming. Literally binding (using) surges (a word for what we would call types of magic.)
So, Rosharans would look at an Allomancer or Feruchemist and say, "Yep, that there is a Surgebinder," correct?
Many Rosharans. Many would also just think of them as some kind of voidbringer or other mythological figure, from local lore.
Wait, have mistborn been to roshar or am I reading this wrong?
What I mean is that someone like from, say, Bavland might have different stories they tell about creatures in the night than someone from Rira. So while they might call someone who uses strange abilities a surgebinder, they are probably more likely to talk about the local equivalent of something like a fae creature from local British lore.
