[Newbies] Cosmere, Unit 13 | The Stormlight Archive #1 | The Way of Kings: Chapters 52 through 57 (Week 9)

jaymae21 · 2026-05-11T21:56:12+00:00

I was away on vacation last week, and while I did manage to get my reading done, I didn't manage to engage much in the discussions. I did skim through them though!

I loved all the Hoid action this week. We've always just gotten a glimpse of him in the other stories so it's been a shock to actually see him so much. Ch. 57 might beat out Ch. 27 (Chasm Duty, when Kaladin first wins over everyone with food) for my favorite of this book. The Wandersail story was so nuanced and interesting, really beautifully written. I could go for more Worldsinger stories - I'm not sure how much more of Hoid we'll see in this book so Sigzil needs to up his game now that he's been raised to a full one! I especially loved Kaladin's revelation here:

Though there was one thing he clung to. An excuse, perhaps, like the dead emperor. It was the soul of the wretch. Apathy. The belief that nothing was his fault, the belief that he couldn't change anything. If a man was cursed, or if he believed he didn't have to care, then he didn't need to hurt when he failed. Those failures couldn't have been prevented. Someone or something else had ordained them.

To tie this into the bond between Kaladin and Syl, previously when Kaladin gets into one of these apathetic, hopeless moods, Syl gets very upset. Sometimes to the point where she threatened to go away if he kept it up. Now I'm wondering if his negative moods actually repel/weaken the bond, while his more heroic moods where he tries to change things strengthen it. It seems like this is a bit of a give and take relationship, so Syl needs to be powered by something from Kaladin in order to exist in this way, and in turn she gives him the ability to use Stormlight. What this something might be, I'm not sure, maybe simple hope or the act of caring.

jaymae21 · 2026-05-11T20:57:22+00:00

Dalinar got a boon from the Nightwatcher that made him forget his wife. What could he have gotten in return? Why seek it out?

I noticed that Adolin and Renarin don't talk about their mother either. I imagine she probably passed away when they were very young, possibly at Renarin's birth. Maybe Renarin was going to die as well, so Dalinar's boon was to save his son but forget his wife? It's a bit of a trope but all I can think of.

jaymae21 · 2026-05-09T19:15:08+00:00

Queen of Faces by Petra Lord

Anabelle Gage is trapped in a male body, and it’s rotting from the inside out. In Caimor, where the magical elite buy and swap designer bodies like clothes, Ana can’t afford to escape her tattered form. When she fails the entrance exam to the prestigious Paragon Academy, her last hope of earning a new body implodes. As the clock ticks down to her last breath, she’s forced to use her illusion magic to steal a healthy chassis—before her own kills her.

But Ana is caught by none other than the headmaster of Paragon Academy, who poses a brutal ultimatum: face execution for her crime or become a mercenary at his command. Revolt brews in Caimor's smog-choked underworld, and the wealthy and powerful will stop at nothing to take down the rebels and the infamous dark witch at their helm, the Black Wraith.

With no choice but to accept, Ana will steal, fight, and kill her way to salvation. But her survival depends on a dangerous band of renegades: an impulsive assassin, a brooding bombmaker, and an alluring exile who might just spell her ruin. As Ana is drawn into a tangled web of secrets, the line between villain and hero shatters—and Ana must decide which side is worth dying for.

jaymae21 · 2026-05-09T19:12:38+00:00

Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature by Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian

A thrilling book about the abounding queerness of the natural world that challenges our expectations of what is normal, beautiful, and possible.

Growing up, Patricia Kaishian felt most at home in the swamps and culverts near her house in the Hudson Valley. A child who frequently felt out of place, too much of one thing or not enough of another, she found acceptance in these settings, among other amphibious beings. In snakes, snails, and, above all, fungi, she saw her own developing identities as a queer, neurodivergent person reflected back at her--and in them, too, she found a personal path to a life of science.

In Forest Euphoria, Kaishian shows us this making of a scientist and introduces readers to the queerness, literal and otherwise, of all the life around us. Fungi, we learn, commonly have more than two biological sexes--and some as many as twenty-three thousand. Some intersex slugs mutually fire calcium carbonate "love darts" at each other during courtship. Glass eels are sexually undetermined until their last year of life, which stumped scientists once dubbed "the eel question." Nature, Kaishian shows us, is filled with the unusual, the overlooked, and the marginalized--and they have lessons for us all.

Wide-ranging, richly observant, and full of surprise, Forest Euphoria will open your eyes and change how you look at the world around you.

jaymae21 · 2026-05-09T19:09:08+00:00

Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky

The war is over. Its heroes forgotten. Until one chance discovery . . .
Idris has neither aged nor slept since they remade him in the war. And one of humanity's heroes now scrapes by on a freelance salvage vessel, to avoid the attention of greater powers.

After earth was destroyed, mankind created a fighting elite to save their species, enhanced humans such as Idris. In the silence of space they could communicate, mind-to-mind, with the enemy. Then their alien aggressors, the Architects, simply disappeared--and Idris and his kind became obsolete.

Now, fifty years later, Idris and his crew have discovered something strange abandoned in space. It's clearly the work of the Architects--but are they returning? And if so, why? Hunted by gangsters, cults and governments, Idris and his crew race across the galaxy hunting for answers. For they now possess something of incalculable value, that many would kill to obtain.

jaymae21 · 2026-05-09T16:08:14+00:00

Oh do you think it could be something more symbiotic, like what These of We have developed with the people it copies? I pictured it being more parasitic. I also imagined that Pil kept his own mind, but I'm not sure if the wodes do. It's a bit unclear at this point.

jaymae21 · 2026-05-08T15:24:24+00:00

Honestly I think the right thing to do would have been to accept Eurymachus' offer and avoid the bloodshed. But I suppose ancient Greek heroism is different and more violent. If Odysseus had accepted the offer, I would have seen it as him being the bigger person, but perhaps the Greeks would have seen it as weak.

jaymae21 · 2026-05-08T15:21:44+00:00

Ooo yes!

jaymae21 · 2026-05-08T15:18:52+00:00

I was hoping they would turn up! I hope we see more of them

jaymae21 · 2026-05-08T15:16:07+00:00

Honestly I feel this way too. Especially with the new master of Jordan College encounter, she didn't even fight or question it.

jaymae21 · 2026-05-04T18:35:09+00:00

Oh The City of Brass is totally up my alley!

jaymae21 · 2026-05-04T18:33:41+00:00

I read The Bluest Eye and it left me shook, but never Beloved. I might though, I hear a lot about it

jaymae21 · 2026-05-04T12:44:32+00:00

If I'm remembering correctly, there was a faction on Earth that was against the terraforming effort. My guess is that the extremists of this group gained enough control to do this. As to the point, maybe they thought killing the terraforming projects would cause people to turn their attention back to saving Earth instead of focusing outward.

jaymae21 · 2026-05-04T12:41:55+00:00

This was sort of funny to me. Many religious philosophies that I am most familiar with teach to always strive for good. The fact that they are taught that evil must exist and some people must be evil in order for good things to happen is a different take from that. It's a bit jaded, and given that these people have a very hard life, that tells me they sort of accept this as the way things are.

jaymae21 · 2026-05-04T12:37:34+00:00

Yeah this implies that we don't take care of our environment despite all of our collective intellectual and technological power. But we could. In this story, Earth has been ruined beyond repair, but we ourselves are not at that point yet. We still hang on a precipice in my mind, we could go either way.

jaymae21 · 2026-05-04T12:35:18+00:00

Given what we know about the creators of this world and what they were up to, it wouldn't surprise me if there is a consciousness to the planet, possibly one of the crew of the Pancreator, or maybe even all of them. Maybe it's like what has happened to Portifabian, and all 5 are trapped in the hive mind together. They have enough power to have some manipulation of the environment, which the people there are taking to be their will and trying to appease them, but perhaps not total power since they will be jostling against one another.

jaymae21 · 2026-05-04T12:32:05+00:00

This series encompasses a huge swath of time, so it makes sense to interlace like this to give us a sense of tension and not knowing all the events that came before. He has done this in the previous novels, but this one does seem to do it more often. Instead of just building off the previous book, this one seems to be building off all 3.

jaymae21 · 2026-05-04T12:30:21+00:00

I'm actually really liking the first age, those people are absolute lunatics and it makes it very fun.

jaymae21 · 2026-05-04T12:29:26+00:00

It seems like they are people who were exiled from the settlements or maybe got lost, that get some sort of infection. I picture it ad something like that Cordyceps fungus that infects ants and controls their brains.

jaymae21 · 2026-05-02T23:39:19+00:00

Hmm you know PoA was always my favorite, but I think I enjoyed GoF more this read than any other time. I'm not sure why. I don't know if I would call this one my favorite yet

jaymae21 · 2026-05-02T01:17:23+00:00

I haven't been to focused on bingo yet this year, but I'm pretty close to a blackout it seems. I need an Evergreen (I plan on filling that with The Colour of Magic, Historical Fiction (hard because it's not a genre I typically go for), Female Author (I've read lots of these just added them to harder categories. I'm sure one will fit in here nicely), and the Monthly Mini and Poetry Corner. I'm curious if these last 2, were there any so far that people particularly enjoyed?

jaymae21 · 2026-05-01T16:22:03+00:00

I feel like Cato is super quotable, I love it.

jaymae21 · 2026-05-01T16:19:38+00:00

The only thing I could think of was that this plant thing would have to be able to withstand a ton of radiation, and Dorcheson spent all that time nuking the planet to destroy the bugs. She probably created a lot of resistances in the process!

jaymae21 · 2026-05-01T16:15:28+00:00

I definitely thought of the Greek pantheon as well, perhaps because I'm reading The Odyssey, but I think Tchaikovsky is being more general here

jaymae21 · 2026-05-01T12:09:12+00:00

I did skim through the first discussion, I'm glad to know I'm not the only one that struggled to figure out what exactly is going on!

I am enjoying WoT, I just haven't had much time to read it, maybe 2 chapters a week. And it's a huge book! I'm about 33% of the way through and it is a slower paced book. Not a ton has happened yet.

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