Theoryland of the Wheel of Time

I did leave it open. But that's partially because I feel that part of any good book is the indication that the characters continue to live, the world continues to turn. I want readers to be free to imagine futures for the characters and more stories in the world.

For Mistborn, I'm not planning—right now—to do any Spook books. I do have plans to do another trilogy set in the world, though it would take place hundreds of years later, once technology has caught up to what it should be. Essentially, think guns, cars, skyscrapers—and Allomancers.

The last two metals are Chromium and Nicrosil. We'll reveal what they do on the Allomancy poster. Suffice it to say that in the next trilogy, the main protagonist would be a Nicrosil Misting. And, to make a Robert Jordan-type comment, what those two metals do should become obvious to the serious student of Allomancy... (It has to do with the nature of the metal groupings.)

HAPPYMAN

If I read the poster correctly, and have the correlations down, these metals are the external enhancement metals.

The simplest idea is that they do to another person what Aluminum and Duralumin do to the Allomancer burning them. If this is true, then Chromium would destroy another Allomancer's metals (useful skill, that, especially in a group of Mistings fighting a Mistborn) while Nicrosil would cause the target's metals that are currently burning to be burned in a brief, intense flash. This could be used either to enhance a group of Mistings or to seriously mess up an enemy Allomancer.

PETER AHLSTROM

The other metals do not have exact one-to-one power correlations like that, so it seems more likely to me that they would work differently. It could be like an area effect weakening or enhancing spell. You would want an enhancer in your party, and you wouldn't want to go up against a weakener.

Nicrosil is a rather more complicated alloy than the others. It's an interesting one to pick, rather than something simpler like nichrome (though I guess that's actually a brand name).

BRANDON SANDERSON

Nicely done.

Ookla is right, the others don't have 1/1 correlations. But I liked this concept far too much not to use it.

In a future book series, Mistborn will also have become things of legend. The bloodlines will have become diluted to the point that there are no Mistborn, only Mistings—however, the latter are far more common. In this environment, a Nicrosil Misting could be invaluable both as an enhancer to your own team or a weapon to use against unsuspecting other Mistings.

DOUGLAS (17 OCTOBER)

I take it either Spook did not have children or Sazed made him a reduced-strength Mistborn rather than giving him the full potency of the 9 originals and Elend?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Spook is a reduced power Mistborn.

CHAOS (16 OCTOBER)

Very interesting about the Nicrosil.

So, if there is no more atium, then that would mean in any future trilogy, there would only be 14 metals, right? Somehow, that doesn't seem right, but maybe that is because it irks me that one quartet to be left incomplete with the absence of atium.

Would it be possible for Sazed to create a replacement metal, by chance, or will the temporal quartet remain inherently empty? It doesn't seem like it's too far of a stretch for Sazed to make more metals: after all, the metal Elend ate was a fragment of Preservation, and now Sazed holds Preservation.

BRANDON SANDERSON

That's a RAFO, I'm afraid. Suffice it to say that what the characters think they understand about the metals, they don't QUITE get right. If you study the interaction between the temporal metals, you might notice an inconsistency in the way they work...

PETER AHLSTROM

Uh-huh. That was already noticed by theorizers in the forums here. Gold works like Malatium and Electrum works like Atium. Yet they're on opposite corners of the metal square.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Ah. I wondered if that had been noticed.

I like it when my characters live on in people's minds. I have no plans right now to write any more books about Spook or Breeze, though what they do in the next period of time will create the history for the next series. However, there's a chance I'll change my mind on this. However, this ending was not set up for another book specifically. I just wanted to tell the best ending I could, and this is how it turned out.

PETER AHLSTROM

(cross-post)

Brandon does want to write more Mistborn books, but not with the same characters. There would be two more trilogies. The second trilogy would be set a few hundred years later, in a modern day–type setting, when the events of the first trilogy have passed into legend. The third trilogy would be set a few more hundred years later, in a future, outer space–type setting.

It's such an audacious idea I wish he would write it right now because I want to read it, especially the third trilogy. But Brandon has announced his next project (pending Tor approval) will be Way of Kings, a 10-volume epic fantasy. He'll sprinkle in a book from another project here and there, so the next Mistborn trilogy might start before Way of Kings is ended, but it will be years yet before there is any more Mistborn.

KAIMIPONO

But Ookla, he already wrote that one!

PETER AHLSTROM

I know. :)

The real story is that Brandon was writing (or revising?) Way of Kings when Tor offered to buy Elantris. Brandon signed a two-book contract for Elantris and Way of Kings. Then Brandon realized he wasn't in the point in his career yet where he could write Way of Kings the way he wanted to, so while he was supposed to be revising Way of Kings he secretly wrote the first Mistborn book instead, which he then sold to Tor as a trilogy, replacing Way of Kings in the original contract.

But for some reason Amazon already had a listing for Way of Kings, with a release date. Thence the fake reviews.

I've read an early draft of the first book, and it aims to be very epic. (No, Elvis is not involved.) I do wonder, though, whether when it actually comes out, the fake reviews will get attached to its Amazon listing. :)

BRANDON SANDERSON

This is all true. Note that the book would not be named The Way of Kings. Most likely, I'm going to make that the series name. So I guess the book "The Way of Kings" must be some kind of parallel novel or prequel or something... ;)

PETER AHLSTROM

Oathshards is out, eh?

You're such a tease, Brandon. All these details about the next series will make everyone hungry for it, and then we'll all have to wait.

Of course, any other book you put out in the meantime will still be awesome, so we should be content, right?

BRANDON SANDERSON

I don't think Oathshards is as strong a name as "The Way of Kings." Plus, that's really what the series is about.

Glad you liked the book, Rainbow!

You may want to note that the moment Preservation dropped out and let the last of his consciousness die, someone was waiting in the Cognitive Realm to seize the power and hold on for a short period until Vin could take it up more fully. You'll find him using it to whisper in moments of great stress in the book, to one person in specific in two places. (I'll bet someone on here has already found them.)

He never could just let things well enough alone....

Jedal. After his father.

Which is the reason why Spook didn't like using it.

Oh, and by the way. People often ask me how far ahead I plan my novels. Well, I've noted already in this annotation that some things—such as the Kelsier-Marsh-Mare relationship—come to me as I write. They appear when I need something to fill a particular hole in the story. Other things, however, are quite well planned. Want an example?

Kelsier's warning about not flaring metals too much is a foreshadowing for book three of the trilogy. You'll see what I mean in a couple of years. Also, there's something very important about Vin's brother that will be hard to pick out, but has been foreshadowed since the first book...

You've mentioned Spook being a bit of a 'stud' before, because I get oddly curious about this, how many children did he have?

A pretty weird question I know, but he does have a LOT of descendants.

and I love your writing and books so much, glad you're a non human writing machine :D

Spook has a lot of descendants, it's true. He had over a dozen children.

Spook is based very loosely on a person I knew from the timewastersguide forums. Zack—or Gemm, as his nick was—is very good at posting random gibberish which, if you look at it very closely, actually reads to be rather poetic. I wanted to do a character who spoke with a dialect that had an interesting rhythm, yet was difficult to make out.

Hence the character of Spook. Normally, I don't like dialects. Yet, something about this one was very intriguing to me. I like the way his sentences sound, even when they're completely unintelligible. I do realize, however, that some people really don't like reading what he has to say. Don't worry, he begins to speak more and more intelligibly from here on out.

So, here's a little of the jovial friendship that I mentioned in the last annotation. One of the things I like about these books IS the way that the characters can get along and relax. It's a bit tougher to pull off in this book—with Kelsier gone, and with everything falling apart—but it's still there, where I can squeeze it in.

Spook is a character I groomed through the first book to do more than you might originally expected from him. He doesn't really come to his own for some time yet, but you should be able to see changes start to appear in him—subtly, of course. You'll see a lot more from him later on in the series.

Tags

Question

So the Shard wouldn’t be able to heal…?

Brandon Sanderson

Well, the Shard...Like, here’s the thing we have to get at with this, what we’re getting at, which is the question of, for instance, is Kaladin’s depression a flaw in him that needs to be healed? And that is a question for philosophers. There are certainly people in the Cosmere and outside the Cosmere that say yes, this needs to be healed, but what about somebody who’s...say, someone who is autistic, and their mind just works in a different way, and this way allows a certain bond to happen that couldn’t otherwise happen? Is that a flaw, or - is it a bug or a feature, to speak in coding terms? Is what’s up with Kaladin a bug or a feature? I know that my wife would probably get rid of her depression if she could, but it’s also fundamental in how she sees the world and who she is, would that change her into a different person? And things like this. So, I want you when you discuss this, to be very careful about treating mental illness as a flaw as opposed to an aspect of a human personality that allows certain different things to happen. Does that make sense? [Applause]

Question

The way I was sort of thinking, was, could Odium say, “Oh, I’m just going to fix this” and then [...]?

Brandon Sanderson

Right, right, yeah. If he - if there was - that is possible, but it would be hard to do without the consent of the person, but that is possible. You can fix somebody in a way that they didn’t want to be fixed, and it would ruin things.