The Not a Book Club Club discussion

Please keep all discussion to the events and speculation to the Second Interludes.

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.

Kaza – At the start, I thought this might be a companion interlude with the lighthouse keeper. Is soulcasting causing her to fade away? Or something else? What was she looking for on the island?

Taravangian – It’s not exactly fair to change your prophecies. His advisors would seem to agree.

Venli – Venli is wrong, again, about changing forms in the Everstorm. She’s now lost her sister and her former mate. Although (time for a theory), I think that spren she is seeing is Eshonai. And that Venli will become Eshonai much like her friends became the old spren.

I'm most interested in the cook/who was keeping Kaza and the rest from the Island. Is that where the previously mentioned 3rd god is hiding out?

I had forgotten all about Taravangian and his intelligence thing. I want to look up what I forgot about him, but I'm worried about spoilers. When he shows up earlier in the book, I forgot he was the one who sent the assassin after Dalinar.

Interesting theory about the Spren being Eshonai. I don't remember whatever it is you're referencing about her friends being the old spren though.

We know very little at all about that island.

Yeah. That was just speculation on my part.

The cook appears to be a Dysian Aimian. The only other Aimian we have seen so far is Axies the Collector, but he is a Siah Aimian, a different race from the same island. If you haven't read Edgedancer--and I would definitely recommend it, as the events contained therein have major implications for OB--that is where you can find more info on the Dysian Aimians.

I did read it, but back in April, so I guess I don't remember the Aimians.

They call themselves the Sleepless, which is the only name you see in Edgedancer itself, but there was a lot of hinting about Aimians being weird previously, so everyone figured it out right away, and the author confirmed. Axies the Collector is a Siah Aimian, and he can rearrange his body parts at will (e.g. when he first appears in TWoK, he rearranges the inner workings of his nose to cut off his sense of smell because he just woke up in a pile of garbage).

Dysian Aimians appear to be something like hive minds, and their bodies are made out of cremlings. When Dalinar brings Gawx into a vision of Aharietam and they are walking through the fields of the dead, Dalinar notices: "One spot they passed had a whole heap of strange cremlings, burned and smoking. Who would have taken the time to pile up a thousand little crustaceans?" (pg 438, US hardcover). This is certainly a Dysian Aimian.

Another fun fact: just about everything in the series is drawn from some in-world source. Usually, authors have no control over the back-of-book blurbs on the books (hence the occasional spoiler and/or terrible plot summary one sees on the backs of novels), and I always assumed that the strange wording of the Stormlight blurbs was due to someone copy writer who thought he was all creative. However, it seems that they're quotes from the Sleepless.

I never read the blurbs. I'll have to check them out.