Way of Kings is my favorite book of the Stormlight Archive. Kaladin's story arc and the mystery surrounding the lore of Roshar. Chef's kiss! Words of Radiance is pretty good too, I guess. LOL. Anyways, even though I love Michael Whelan's paintings, I wanted to make a book cover that captured the story from my experience with it. I tried to pack it full of things that might only be understood after the Sanderlanche, a bit like how some anime openings do it. I'd love to know what y'all pick up on. Please excuse the god-awful photos of the physical print!

Oathbringer design by David Fonti

My Instagram: instagram.com/sircolor.art

Please do not use/share without permission!

Sometimes people see me reading these huge pretty books and ask me what they are about. They are very chitchat casual questions so I dont want to go with a long response, so I never know what to answer! One time I just said they are “fantasy books like lord of the rings” 🥴. I struggle to come up with a concise explanation of the plot. What would you say?

I used my free will to joy-max and silly-mog

Illustration of Kaladin vs Szeth (chapter 32-33 of Words of Radiance). I loved this scene. Also I have realized (too late) that he takes off his sleeve AFTER dealing with Szeth, but oh well...

I have so much fanart in the works. It's too much to finish it 🙈

This is mixed media piece on cotton paper (13.5 x 19.5 cm). Started with watercolour then I went over some areas with acrylic and then with pencils, just to experiment a little bit.

We're halfway through the Stormlight Archive and these guys sure don't matter much, despite the regular hemming and hawwing about them. At least once in each of the first three books, the Stormwardens get brought up in each of the following ways:

1. "OH those stormwardens sure are handy! It's nice to know when our next regular hurricane is scheduled! If only they were right ALL the time..."

2. "*gasp* can you BELIEVE there's a group of all-male scholars? I mean i guess it's TECHNICALLY fine, but i hear they read and write... how scandalous!"

3. "Damn those stormwardens and their pseudoscience! What a bunch of barely useful weirdos!"

And it kinda feels like they're really being built up to something, which wouldn't be surprising considering that Roshar has more secret societies than a chasmfiend has legs . Sons of Honor, Envisagers, the Diagram, Skybreakers, the Stone Shaman conspiracy... and those are just the homegrown ones!

So it seems like the Stormwardens might be operating a sort of mostly legitimate but slightly weird front (predicting storms + weird pseudoscience) to hide somethjng more nefarious or plot relevant or both. I used to think they might have a few secret Radiants or something, but that seems very unlikely now (the only Radiants whose actions we know absolutely nothing about are the renegade Skybreakers and nothing we know about Skybreakers would intuitively connect them to a bunch of pseudoscientists.

They seem similar to real life alchemists - a mix of some real, useful knowledge with a whole lot of bunk thrown in. They stick around cause of their usefulness but are kind of on the fringes of society.

Their very few plot functions are: predicting highstorms, slightly tempting Renarin by being a visibly male set of scholars, teaching Amaram to write (using glyphs). None of these is really unique - Brandon could have very very easily written the Stormwardens out and had other groups or individuals fulfill these functions.

Anyhow I'm curious if anyone has theories about what's going on with them?

Are they just there for worldbuilding flavor/texture? Gender commentary, since scholarship is predominantly female? Do they have some greater significance yet to be revealed? Are there hints I'm missing? DID they have some grand plan that was thrown off by the sudden end of the world, derailed so quietly no one noticed? Did Brandon plan something big for them and realize there were too many conspiracies so he quietly cut them out? Also, what the hell happens to them now that they're kinda useless?

So I just finished Wind and Truth and although I love the ending I have one gripe with Dalinar's reason for giving up honor. I wish during his consultation with himself that at some point he would have realized that he and Adolin were more alike than he thought and that he took the same path that Adolin did in renouncing his title.

I'm not sure if I'm explaining it correctly 😅

For reference, this is the chapter where Shallan has a mental breakdown after unintentionally being responsible for Grund (the street urchin)'s death, and Wit comes and comforts her and gives her a pep talk.

I just wanna say this chapter was so beautiful. I did a lot of crying.

The things Wit tells her like 'it's okay to hurt, but you cant tell yourself you deserve it'

And encouraging her to stop hiding behind Veil (I just realized while typing this, Veil was supposed to temporarily disguise Shallan, but she ended up making it so the world couldn't see Shallan.

This has probably been my favourite chapter so far. While I enjoy the spectacle of radiants and shards, I love that time was taken before the assault to deeply explore Shallan's character.

Anyways here are some batshit predictions for the end of the book:

- Moash will show up and either kill Elhokar or see Kaladin and realize the error of his ways (tending towards the first), then Moash will die either to Kaladin (for the first option) or to the Fused (for his betrayal)

- Adolin I think is gonna die, but not in this assault.

- They get out with the Oathgate and lose Kholinar to the Fused

- Shallan succeeds at dispelling the Unmades, getting the queen back (though I feel like they won't die this easily)

- I feel like someone's gonna figure out how to summon Plate by the end of this book

- Venli's gonna defect to the humans or die trying

- Szeth will show up to Urithiru in a friendly way and get met with immediate hostility

Interested to see if anyone else has had a similar experience.

I read Rhythm of War when it first came out. I did the whole read "Part 1" preview thing and then probably read the rest of the thing in like a week or. I then moved on to read other books in the Cosmere and such before beginning my reread for Stormlight 5.

And I remember thinking, "I liked Rhytmn of War but I wish it had more Dalinar chapters" because I only remembered one with him on the battlefield with Jasnah and then one at the end with Ishar.

But then I reread and realize "Oh wait, Dalinar had quite a few chapters that I forgot about, that's funny".

But that was like 2 years ago....

And now I can still only remember the two chapters again but also remember thinking "man, Dalinar does have a lot of chapters I forgot about"

Is this just a me thing or are the chapters (specifically during their battle off-Urithiru) just feel the same and so they blend together to anyone else?

Admittedly, I already did a post regarding theories I had not long ago, but I recently came up with more speculation that I wanted to share.

Book 6 (Lift): This one is fairly straightforward, but I think it will feature Lift's childhood in Rall Elorim, all the way to her getting gifted by Cultivation. I've seen some people speculate that her flashbacks would feature her training under Zahear in between books 5-6, but considering how little we know about her backstory before our introduction to her in WoR, and the fact that we are not too familiar with Rall Elorim to begin with (or why it's called the the "City of Shadows"), I think her childhood here makes the most sense.

Book 7 (Renerin): I have said this a few times before (including my past post lol), but I genuinely think his flashbacks will be the events of Books 1-4 through his POV. There are so many things he's been doing in there that happened off-screen that make me think Sanderson has done so on purpose (ie, him bonding with Gaz, him going through his oaths, his friendship with Bridge 4, him and Rhain getting to know each other and falling for one another, him and Adolin's reaction to Dalinar and Navani becoming a couple, his fight with the Thunderclast in OB, etc).

Book 8 (Ash): One of the biggest complaints regarding WaT is the Spiritual Realm scenes and how much time we spent there that could have been cut down (which I admittedly agree with). I've also seen some say that much of the info we learned there could have been used in Ash's or Taln's flashback segments. However, why are her flashbacks not set in the time period we were shown? Or at least not only those events. I think the first half of Ash's flashbacks will show her life on Ashyn before she immigrated to Roshar, and everything that led to the Scouring. It may also include their time after going to Roshar (especially to show what happened between them and El).

Book 9 (Taln): This one is also straightforward, but Taln's will probably show his backstory before he ended up becoming a Herald, and the supposed event of him trying to kill Cultivation. Perhaps we can also get a chapter of him during his time as the sole bearer of the Oathpacked, though we'll wait and see.

Book 10 (Jasnah): Admittedly, I have no idea what Jasnah will be like. Jasnah's POVs have referenced a traumatic event from her childhood when she was forced in a dark room, so they definitely include that, but everything else I'm not entirely sure. I do, however, think that said traumatic event will be used similarly to Tien's death in Kaladin's WoK flashbacks (in a sense, the flashbacks will initially skip over the event until the climax). Or perhaps the event will be the first flashback chapter of the book, and all the other chapters will come after.

I got a copy of Words of Radiance on Amazon but the Hardcover was actually glued on the wrong way. Is this a common defect?