OB: Part Two: New Beginnings Sing (Chapters 33-57)

[Geoff]

Part Two: New Beginnings Sing

Please keep all discussion and speculation to the events up to and including Chapters 33-57.

No spoiler tags required. Though it would be highly appreciated if you Uncheck Add to my Update Feed to avoid accidentally spoiling things for your good read friends.

Please do not discuss events from later sections/books. Referring back to events from a previous section/book is fine.

[Rob, Mayor of Ghost Town]

I'm up to about page 500/ Chapter 51 of Oathbringer:



Dalinar bringing people into his visions has been really interesting. Even more interesting was when Lift showed up uninvited. Why she was with the young king would make no sense without reading Edgedancer, so maybe that's why he recommended it? I hope we see more of Lift in this book though.

My favorite part of part 2 so far is the bridge runner chapters. Especially the Moash chapters. Those poor Parshmen are being punished for Kaladin. It sounds like Moash stepping in might make things better. I'm curious to see where his story goes.

Shallan is starting to feel schizophrenic. She's treating her different personas like they are different people. I loved her defending Renarin. She seems a better matches to him than Andolin too.

[Geoff]

Full comments for all of part 2





Lower stakes in Part 2 but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I’m not sure how deliberate this was from Sanderson, but a lot of part 2 was the characters searching for their rightful place in this new & changing world.

Bridge 4 – Bridge 4 gets established here as the group of misfits where everyone is allowed to fit in.

Moash – Did not expect to anything from his POV, let alone this much. Despite being hard on himself for his betrayal and showing some positive character progression, it seems he’s aligning with the Voidbringers.

Shallan – A bit frustrating to watch her slide back into the teacher-student dynamics with Jasnah again. Shallan seems so desperate to find a place for herself, I think she will end up stretching herself too thin eventually.

Jasnah – Disappointingly she didn’t tell anyone about the story of her time away. She did mention some knowledge she gained from Wit/Hoid. The gem library that Renarin discovered will be useful, I’m sure. And, as a child, she went insane. What could that have been about?

Dalinar (flashbacks) – He’s not a great husband, father, or person. He was addicted to the Thrill of battle and then tries to fill that hole with drinking, fighting & drugs. How deep will this go before it goes bad?

Dalinar – Using the visions to influence the other kings is a great idea. And it allows them to examine the visions for knowledge. Now that Dalinar has allies, what will he do with them? And I think he was dangerously close to releasing Odium. I don’t think Dalinar, or us the readers, have any idea what would happen then, but it would assuredly be terrible.

Why, in the last scene, was Odium startled by (or maybe even afraid of) of Lift?

[Rob, Mayor of Ghost Town]

Yeah, I'm thinking he's going to turn Moash into one of the main villains based on what we read in this section. I kind of hope not though. He seems convinced that mankind deserves the Voidbringers though.

I'm hoping that Shallan's plan to leave with Kalladin and the king to spy will help her.

I agree about Jasnah being a bit disappointing. I'd like to know more about what happened to her, but I'm not sure how much he's not telling us and how much is stuff I just don't recall from previous books.

I'm really loving Lift. I do wonder about the bit with her and Odium too. Not only that, but she seems to have held the vision after Odium left.

Have we heard about this 3rd god before now? I already forget her name.

[Geoff]

I don't think you missed anything with Jasnah. There's not much there, and I think she knows more than she lets on.

The third god is Cultivation aka the Nightmother. Not much has been said about her.

[Rob, Mayor of Ghost Town]

Ah yeah. I knew it started with a C. I must have missed the alias though.

[Daniel]

Those replies were probably Endowment, Autonomy, then Harmony. I'm quite sure about the latter two, but I don't know about Endowment.

[Daniel]

Bavadin is strange. After the Ars Arcanum came out, there were a lot of questions because Bavadin had been referred to as "he" before, and is called "she" in the Taldain intro. Someone asked the author about it at a Q&A, and he said that Bavadin is a one-person pantheon. There are male and female gods that are both actually Autonomy. There are polytheistic religions where all of the gods that they worship are in fact just Autonomy. In that context, the second letter has to be from Bavadin. I'm sure that I read that on the 17th Shard--probably from a book signing report.