"The Way of Kings" reactions

Finally I get to start Stormlight Archive! I’ve been waiting like a month for this, which is like 20 novels or something. All I knew going in was:

• Epic fantasy
• Everyone says it’s better than Mistborn
• It’s Travis Gafford’s favorite series
• Kaladin is miserable the entire novel

Well, Kaladin is certainly miserable. Poor Kaladin. And goddamn this series is better than Mistborn. Certainly epic fantasy. And I think it may indeed be my favorite series.

I don’t know what I was expecting exactly, but it was certainly not quantum mechanics of magical creatures. Holy shit I love this book.

Way of Kings itself doesn’t really require reading any other Cosmere stuff first, but by the time you finish it you’ll want to start Words of Radience immediately, so if you have the patience for it, you should read the other stuff first anyway. But this is just so, so, so much better than all the other stuff that I wouldn’t blame you for ignoring reading order and starting it first anyway.

That’s all I’ll say for the non-spoiler part.

Poor Kaladin. What a story. He finally gets to the Shattered Plains, only to find that the highprince he was fighting for all along is even worse than the general he was fighting for who was supposed to be noble but then killed all his friends after indirectly causing the death of his brother. After he went to war instead of becoming a surgeon.

Oh, and by the way, the city he would have become a surgeon in? Turns out that hospital actually just kills everyone too. Good thing he doesn’t know that (yet?).

At least he’s now fighting for Dalinar, who seems like actually what Kaladin expected a noble lighteyes to be like.

“A life is priceless,” he said immediately, quoting his father. Dalinar smiled, wrinkle lines extending from the corners of his eyes. “Coincidentally, that is the exact value of a Shardblade. So today, you and your men sacrificed to buy me twenty-six hundred priceless lives. And all I had to repay you with was a single priceless sword. I call that a bargain.” “You really think it was a good trade, don’t you?” Kaladin said, amazed.

I was surprised to see Chekhov’s abdication plan not come to fruition. Like, super surprised.

On the other side of the world, Shallan’s story was NOT AT ALL WHAT I EXPECTED. Though I guess I should have expected a story like this after Mistborn started out as a heist novel lol.

She would apprentice herself to Jasnah Kholin, scholar, heretic. Not for the education. Not for the prestige. But in order to learn where she kept her Soulcaster. And then Shallan would steal it.

Me: Woah, what!? This is also a heist novel!? But of course, the heist does not go as expected, either…

“We didn’t destroy the Voidbringers,” Jasnah said from behind, her voice haunted. “We enslaved them.”

Yep, sounds like humans. God I love this book.

Oh, and the “quantum mechanics” of flamespren -

“The spren change when I measure them, Ashir,” she said. “Before I measure, they dance and vary in size, luminosity, and shape. But when I make a notation, they immediately freeze in their current state. Then they remain that way permanently, so far as I can tell.”

This had better become relevant later.

Additional experiments I’d like to do:

• Deliberately mis-calibrate a measuring stick (to a known quantity).
  • Write down the number measured. Does it lock the spren?
  • Write down the calculated number. How about now?
  • What if you round to a different amount from the amount by which the calibration is off?
• Invent a new measuring system (obviously some of these are dependent on earlier experiments working).
  • Write down the number measured.
  • Tell someone who doesn’t know the system, what the number is.
  • Tell someone who doesn’t know about the experiment, what the number is.
  • Write down the number as a dimensionless quantity.
  • Write down the number with the wrong units.
  • Measure in one system, convert to the other, and write down the new number. Erase the original.
  • Measure in an existing system. Write down a random number. Define a new measurement system so that the random number is the value in the new system. Erase the original.
  • Repeat, but with someone else’s number.
  • Repeat, but don’t tell them you’re defining the system.
  • Repeat, but have someone else write down a random number beforehand, and define the measurement system afterwards.
• Redefining “writing”
  • Does it work if a spanreed copies the number and then you destroy the original?
  • What if no one is observing the spanreed? (What if it’s in the middle of a forest?)
  • Does it matter if the observer is able to read?
  • What if you describe to someone who can’t read or write, how to draw the shapes of the correct numbers, but they’re meaningless to this person? This may overlap with the understanding of an alternative measurement system.
  • Does it have to be an abstract representation of a measurement? Can it be a physical line drawn that’s the correct size?
  • Does it have to be drawn? What if you just place your fingers at the correct position on a measuring stick temporarily?
• Cyphers
  • A rotational cypher, where numbers are swapped for each other, known only to the measurement taker
  • Depending on those results, how many people need to know the cypher?
  • An entirely new writing system, known only to the measurement-taker
  • Depending on those results, how many people need to know the writing system?
• A written-down measurement by the original measurement-taker, but with deliberately-ambiguous handwriting
• In the following experiments, you will at random tell one true measurement and two lies to a second participant who will write down one number at random. The experiment will be completed a number of times, so that probabilistically at least one trial with a true value has been recorded. Will a spren ever be frozen? If so, then repeat the experiment in a double-blind environment, i.e. with an intermediary relaying the three values to the final writer.
  • Three measuring devices, only one of which is calibrated properly
  • Three measurements, one of which is true and two of which are fabrications
  • The right measurement, but with three different units
  • Measuring three different objects, only one of which is a spren at all

I’m kinda wondering if you can build a computer out of spren by recording & unrecording them, but I don’t really think so. The mechanical process of how to record would need to be powered and if you could do that, you could just…build a computer. But yeah, super cool anyway.

God I can’t wait to start reading discussion forums.