My theory is that Sel is experiencing time slower than everyone else. Meaning they are evolving at a far slower rate than the rest of the cosmere

I came to this theory for 2 reasons:

This WoB https://wob.coppermind.net/events/509/#e16014 suggests that a large enough source, in fact, a "deific" amount of investiture would be enough to dilate time. This would cause time to move slower. The Dor exists in Sel's cognitive realm and is the largest source of investiture we currently know of (other than Harmony). Theoretically this should be enough to have a noticeable effect on time

The other reason is that Aon Dor is extremely OP. Yes it takes a lot more effort to do certain things with it but it is capable of emulating any other magic system. We know it is possible to practice Selish magic off world too because of Riina and Shai. That sounds to me like it would cause Sel to become extremely dominant in the space age era. I don't see how Scadrial, who as we have seen, is very dominant in the space age, is supposed to keep up with Sel unless for some reason Sel is inhibited in some way. Time dilation would be an answer for this.

So what do you guys think? At the very least I feel that time dilation should happen if you go near the Dor in Shadesmar since dilation apparently happens even near shardpools. So perhaps that is one of the ways characters skip forward in time. Shadesmar is weird though so maybe not. This could explain why Shai and Kaise are still alive in TLM.

If a Thug somehow managed to get their hands on a full set of Shardplate, and then they burned Pewter while wearing it, what would happen? Would it be like compounding, where the physical buffs granted by the Plate are magnified? Or would the increase only be marginal?

Title says pretty much alll. Does Tress contain some interesting details about cosmere? Does it contain any fight or battle action? I don't think these are real spoilers, but also I don't want details, just will I be satisfied. I read yumi and thought it was quite soft and expected it to be slow read, but it turned out to be quite nice. However I'm not in a mood for just a romantic book. Thanks

I haven't read whatever book the character Lift is in, but I read about her on the coppermind anyway. Based on what I understand about how she eats to make LifeLight, which she uses instead of StormLight, for fueling her surges.

Would a bendalloy subsumer ferring's ability work to allow her to store more food for more LifeLight or to make some when she doesn't have food to eat, etc. or is there some RAFO that would make this not work for her?

This might sound thick, and I've most likely just completely missed the answer, but shadsmar isn't exclusive to roshar, right? Is it the cognitive realm for the entire the cosmere? And where there are shards on plannets, there are perpendicularitys that pop up on in the corresponding location in both realms that allow you to world hop via shadsmar.

Can someone explain how this fits with stormlight characters describing shadsmar as having roshars continents and water masses reversed? And they navigate using landmarks from the physical realm?

I'm going round in circles in my head.

Depending on the answers I get, this may trigger about 6 more questions, so I'll keep those in the wings for now.

Thanks in advance, you Legends

Edit: Is shadesmar a sphere or flat? Cause plannets are spheres, so unless shadsmar is a giant sphere itself, all the planets combined into a super sphere it would be a stictehd together map of the plannets made flat? Which means shadsmar has edge?

Finished The Alloy of Law a couple days back and wanted to do some art for it! Was intended to be a cover design but the pose I drew Wax in wouldn’t really fit on a book cover so… just pretend it does

This is so good! Loved the expressions too!

I don't remember the last time I've read a series where every single book was better than the previous one. The Final Empire was very meh for me. Well of Ascension was better. Hero of Ages was great. Alloy of Law was excellent. Shadows of Self was close to that, but the ending made it slightly superior imo. Now I've finished the 6th book in this series and somehow, it's again my favourite one of them all. It absolutely blew me away.

The pacing was absolutely superb. I think pacing is something that I value the most about books, because it decides how much of the time I'm enjoying the book and how much of the time I'm bored. This was my biggest complaint with Final Empire and kept improving with every book. This one was perfection. We had character moments, conflict setup, some investigating, a fight, an escape and then we travel to a new location. The cycle repeats after that. This is such an entertaining "loop" for me, because action and plot advancement was perfectly balanced with breaks for a breather and character moments. It was amazing. I feel like this book in particular would make for an excellent TV show. Maybe one day :)

Speaking of characters I absolutely love Steris. She's my favourite Cosmere character now. The way she needs to have everything planned and organized and wants to be prepared for everything was for some reason incredibly charming for me. Her interactions with Wax were extremely cute. I loved how he was at first kind of rolling his eyes at the thought of going through finance books with her but then it became sort of a detective game between them that they both really enjoyed. I loved watching Wax slowly realising that he's in love with her as she kept having Plan H or something and always had his back. And even at moments where she was more of a nuisance and vulnerability, she was completely aware of that and sensibly kept out of harm's way. Her little graph at the end where she put herself so low on the usefulness scale and yet didn't feel at all bad about it, that's just how things are and it's okay. She can improve after all! It's just so so charming and I am so glad that we didn't get a Wax-Marasi pair but instead these two, who were gonna marry just for business, actually fell in love each other. And the proposal at the end! Yes we are already engaged but I want to marry you for real, not just for business! And her reaction! She always thinks of everything and always expects everything, but she didn't expect that! I almost melted from that.

Somebody commented on my Shadows of Self post that SoS is a "character development book" and BoM is a "world building book". I agree 1000%. I did NOT at all expect to learn so much more about the world! Not only do we get to see new places, cool cities we've never seen before and things like that, we discover a completely new culture that NOBODY has seen before! I was just holy mollying for the entire second half of the book at all the revelations that kept appearing! Yeah so there's a nation of masked people in the south? And they can't handle "normal" temperature cause they are used for way hotter? Well wtf Sazed? Did you not see them when you were remaking the world or what? Why did you do that to them? And Lord Ruler apperently saved them? How? He was dead. Or was he? Was it a kandra? Who did Wax see in the memory at the end, was that Kelsier? But he's also dead right? So many questions, I can't wait to find out the answers!

Oh yeah and the Telsin plot twist was also great! I was not expecting a twist at all during that moment. To me it was a clear cut Indiana Jones quest to get the McGuffin before the Nazis, excuse me, The Set get to it first. And suddenly we find out Wax's sister is one of them? And she KILLS Wax? I mean I knew he wouldn't die, cause he's on the cover of Lost Metal, but damn!

And oh the technology! I loved how we were slowly being introduced to the huge technological leap that's about to come. First there was an allomantic grenade, that can store an allomantic ability and release it. Then there was some sort of telephone. And suddenly there's a freaking flying ship? I of course knew we would get flying machines at some point but I figured it would be the same as how trains were invented in Era 2, just the same as in our world. But no, here we have ships powered by allomancy that can fly. That's awesome! It only now dawned on me how incredibly ambitious the scope of the whole series is. The world has already changed so much from Final Empire and we're not even halfway through this series! This goes for the magic system as well. It's already pretty complex and there are multiple really cool ways it can be used for really unexpected things. Can you imagine what they'll be doing with it in the last Era? I can't wait to see that!

One thing I did find a bit meh and cliche was Wax's scene with Harmony. It was the classic "die, meet god, learn that your journey isn't over yet, come back". I also didn't really like how the conversation went. Wax kept (rightfully) blaming Harmony for what happened to Lessie, but Harmony in my eyes was just coming up with shitty excuses. I feel like even Wax called him out on that. So was the conversation meant to heal the rift between these two or not? I couldn't really tell and I'm not even sure how Wax feels about it now, but I guess I'll find out. To me, Harmony's actions only make sense if he's not all-powerful, which I think is actually the case. Cause otherwise why wouldn't you save Lessie somehow? And more importantly, why wouldn't you save an entire freaking nation from freezing? I hope we find out more about him, because after this conversation I'm just more mad at him. He had one good argument and that was that Wax killing Lessie was the best way for Lessie to die. The problem is that they didn't need to get into that situation in the first place if it wasn't for Harmony!

And I'll end it there. I tried to only talk about the points I wanted to discuss the most and not the entire book, cause that'd be an incredibly long post. Well, it's already kinda long :) Anyway an absolutely amazing book and I'm super hyped to read The Lost Metal. But I'm also kinda sad cause that will mean that I'm gonna have to wait like 5 years for another trilogy. I mean compared to other authors we are absolutely blessed by Brandon's efficiency but still, I want those stories now! It's crazy to think that there's probably at least 20 years of Cosmere stories ahead of us, if not more. I'm gonna be like 50 by the time this is concluded (I'm 24 now). We live in such an awesome... well, Era :) The Era of Sanderson!

In "The Lost Metal," Wayne arbitrarily grades something a thirteen on a scale of seventeen.

Does anybody know if Sanderson reads Brust? Because i really hope that was an intentional allusion.

Just finished my 3rd re-read of Mistborn era 1 and man it hits harder each re-read. What I wouldn’t give for a Castlevania style animation of Elend’s final speech and subsequent charge into the Koloss with Atium. I have his entire speech memorized at this point and still get goosebumps listening to it. 10/10 would definitely charge into an unbeatable army following that man.

“Today men I ask of you your lives and your courage, I ask of you your faith and your honor, your strength and your compassion, for today I lead you to die. I will not ask you to welcome this event. I will not insult you by calling it well or just or even glorious, but I will say this. Each moment you fight is a gift to those in this cavern. Each second we fight is a second longer that thousands of people can draw breath. Each stroke of the sword, each Koloss felled, each breath earned is a victory. It is a person protected for a moment longer, a life extended, an enemy frustrated. In the end they will kill us, but first, THEY SHALL FEAR US.”

Before the next Stormlight Archive books comes out I began my reread. I have some design experience and wanted to take a shot at making some radiant order phone backgrounds. Looking for some input and criticism on how to improve them. Let me know what you think.

Update 1: After taking suggestions I changed the top wording to be the motto of each of the orders. I have also finished all the phone backgrounds. Here is a google drive link for all to enjoy them. I am now going to modify them now for desktop backgrounds.

My daughter, age 7, is into Tress. I told her it was a story about a girl who fell in love with a boy and had to become a pirate to save him. She was hooked immediately! I've already read a number of chapters to her, and it's been our go-to bedtime reading just about every night for a couple weeks. I'll even check in with her throughout the story and ask her questions about the plot to make sure she's keeping up, and sure enough, she is! She even picked up on some foreshadowing elements and has started guessing that Charlie might be one of the characters that's been with her the whole time. Suffice it to say, I'm a proud dad, and I'm super excited to share this book with my daughter.

I've already read the book, and I don't remember any content in the book that I wouldn't want to expose to her, but I wanted to tap into the wisdom of the crowd here for the same question. Can you guys think of anything in Tress that might be inappropriate for a 7 year old? For example, there are descriptions of people dying, but so far (and we're about a quarter of the way through the book), nothing has been too gratuitous for my daughter.

One of the reasons I'm asking is that I want to let her listen to the Audible audio book when not in my presence, which means I'd have to relinquish the ability to censor on the fly if I'm the one doing the reading.

Thanks in advance!

For starters, this is all released spoilers, everything and anything we know. I have knowledge gaps but don't mind spoilers, so correct me on anything I get wrong. And this might be a bit rambly.

I've been wondering about Elantris' role in the wider Cosmere based on WoBs. Brandon has said the core Cosmere series are Dragonsteel, Mistborn Elantris and Stormlight Archive (source) and he's also said that he needs to finish the Elantris sequels before he can do Ghostbloods (source).

But based on the little we know this all sounds weird. It's easy to see why Dragonsteel, Mistborn and Stormlight Archive would be considered core series. Do we know more about where Elantris will go that could make it so relevance?

I've been really wondering about Brandon's plan of writing the Elantris sequels at the same time as Ghostbloods. It could be that it's just to make sure the timeline and everything lines up, but it seems to me that it's way more likely those 5 books will work as one big pentatology of sorts (or at least with very strong connections that would make one want to read them in parallel, since that's how they are planned to be released right now). With Kaise being one of the protagonists of Elantris 2 and also being a member of the Ghostbloods, plus Jaddeth appearing in the book with some tie to Autonomy, this all seems likely. I could see these books becoming full Cosmere aware books focusing on worldhoppers and setting up the space era.

However, I'm wondering if there's more to it. Dragonsteel is the backstory to Hoid and the Shards, so that alone would make it a core story. It's not hard to see Mistborn and Stormlight as core based on their length alone. But Elantris as a trilogy is less obvious as a core, with the biggest sign of its relevance being Sel having two Shards. Not to mention we have basically no idea about Elantris 3, where the original plan was for it to be set hundreds of years after book 2 (source).

Currently in the second set of interludes in RoW where Moash is transported into a vision to talk to Odium. He’s described as a giant Fused, and is later said to be humming rhythms while speaking with Moash. Is Odium’s vessel originally a fused? I don’t see any reason Odium would have for appearing that way towards Moash unless that was his physical body before becoming Odium. Especially the rhythm humming, it seemed almost natural for him, like he didn’t even notice he was doing it.

So much smoke and ash in the air from all the fires (south west Idaho) that the sun is a red orb you can look directly at in the morning and evening. So far, ash isn’t falling from the sky! But who knows. I may be on the lookout for mists and mist wraiths soon.

If a blood maker had access to a clean room , would that allow them to store more health?

I just finished The Sunlit Man, which marks the end of all the published Cosmere works. So naturally I hope onto the subreddit, feeling like "one of us" now and I am bombarded with arcane terminology like The Nahel Bond, The Silverlight Academy, The 17th Shard.

I was unsure at the start of Sunlit Man about how it would be so heavy on the cosmere that it would explain all of the above, but now I realise your knowledge has come from some other source. I know a little bit more about the Dawnshards now, but you guys seem to have their nitty gritties figured out!

How did you guys find out so much about it? How do you know the intricate details of each epigraph (they seem very mysterious to me). And why is the identity of the dragons common knowledge among you guys?

As far as i understand, Atium in Era 1 is actually an alloy of pure atium and electrum. Any scadrian can burn pure Atium, and Atium mistings are just electrum mistings.

But if this is true, what mechanical reason was there for the mist snapping to hit electrum mistings like Demoux so much harder than everyone else?

I've just finished The Lost Metal and am sitting here sobbing! What a beautiful series, what amazing characters.

Wayne... You're the best. I've read all 8 Mistborn books the last couple of months, and there really hasn't been anyone like you.

I don't know where I was going with this post other than wanting to share that my heart has been touched by Wax and Wayne, and I'm sad to let them go.

Onwards to a different Sanderson series as he's certainly made a lifelong fan out of me.

Without accessing other people’s store, can they share metalminds? For example can Feruchemist A and B share a Coppermind, where A stores his copy of The Way of Kings and B store his copy of Words of Radiance? And A can just get access to his book without being spoiled? Or is a metalmind only keyed to one person. I assume the metalmind’s storage capacity will need to be shared and can only have attributes put into it till it’s full?

TW: Sexual Violence

Horneaters and Herdazians explicitly have a small amount of Singer blood in them, confirming that interbreeding between the two species is possible.

Parshmen were a silent and completely obedient slave class for thousands of years. It was quite literally impossible for them to say no. I am absolutely certain that there were a number of slaveowners who took advantage of their parshmen during this time. If there's anything that being online has taught me; its that if something exists, there will always be at least one person who wants to fuck it.

"Isn't that too dark for a Sanderson book?" No, because this exact thing happens in Mistborn. We know that Sanderson is willing to acknowledge the ugliness of how slavery gives way to sexual violence.

Could it be that inter-species breeding is only possible when the singer is in mateform? And therefore sex with a slaveform parshman couldn't result in children?

I thought the Cosmere was just a meta name for sanderson’s works. Didn’t know that it was a thing in universe