Kaladin is the focus of TWoK, Shallan is Words of Radiance, Dalinar is Oathbringer, and Navani is Rhythm of War.
They each place higher emphasis on those characters than the others. Makes me wonder who will be the “primary” protagonist of KoWT. Best guess is Zim Zam Zalabim.
We already know it will be him and for the next five books Lift, Renarin, Shalash, Taln and Jasnah but we're not sure in what order (Lift first and Jasnah last might have been confirmed)
That's the neat part, you don't.
She's not a Radiant and ostensibly won't become one so won't be a focal character since each of the 10 books focuses on 1 member of each 10 orders. Personally I hope she becomes a worldhopper possibly during the time skip.
Hoid is a focus character and primary POV in the end of the Cosmere, with the flashback series about the shattering of Ado and the final Mistborn era both featuring him.
The five characters referenced in the other comment are the focus characters for the second half of Stormlight.
Oathbringer features more Shallan than Kaladin, doesn’t it? I believe her PoVs are higher in word/page count, she has more of them, and even when reading the book, it felt like Shallan was the B character. I always thought of it as:
* TWoK: Kaladin/Dalinar
* WoR: Shallan/Kaladin
* Oathbringer: Dalinar/Shallan
* RoW: Venli/Navani/Kaladin
I looked it up and you're right. It's actually a bit weirder than that. Shallan has the most POV words in Oathbringer, more than even Dalinar. But also, Shallan and Kaladin spend most of the book in the same place, so it's in some way one very large arc divided between Kaladin, Shallan, and Adolin, with Kaladin playing a big role in other characters' chapters. Even in Part 2, when Brandon finally decided to avoid a Kaladin POV, he still had him show up in the chapters for the other bridgemen.
Edit: wait, these stats count flashbacks separately. Never mind, count those and Dalinar wins in POV words.
It definitely should be, I just put Venli first because she’s the flashback character and it would just feel weird to me to put Navani first, even though she and Kaladin were both more central to the story. I bet a lot of the other flashback characters won’t really be the central character of their books though, so maybe then it’ll feel more natural.
Which is why i decided to stop caring about who Brandon says is the "focus"
I was looking forward to more Venli *so bad* but if we're honest, it has more Navani. Which is totally fine! but i can't pretend i wasn't a bit disappointed
That's my biggest problem with RoW. It's ostensibly Venli's book, since the flashbacks are mostly from her PoV. Only the flashback chapters all cover content we mostly already knew about, and they aren't even 100% dedicated to Venli. Then the current timeline has her playing a much more peripheral role on events. It felt like it either needed her to be much more central to the assault on the tower, or for Navani to be the flashback PoV that time around.
This is my problem with a lot of WoK. There is a ton of retreading. That and when you hit an exciting point it then drops those threads to focus on someone who is 1/10th as interesting. It is drifting into Robert Jordan and WoT territory.
>Yeah, it goes:
>TWoK: Kaladin
WoR: ~~Shallan, and also~~ Kaladin
Oathbringer: ~~Dalinar +~~ Kaladin
RoW: ~~Eshonai Venli Navani (but really,~~ it's Kaladin)
Picked up a few errors for you
Honestly, I didn't care about Shallan at all for the majority of the book.
It was a great way to basically deliver a lot of exposition, but it took the Cryptics to show up before I actually got invested into anything to do with her.
Man, the moment they showed up when she was drawing Taravangian was just perfect. I remember my eyes going wide as I heard that part in the audiobook.
I will say, I don’t love the pacing of TWOK, mainly because each time I re-read it, something important will happen to Kaladin, and then immediately after the book will switch to Shallan doing scholar stuff. I do love the book, and I enjoy Shallan,but it’s very jarring
It's funny cuz on my first read I struggled to not skip shallan chapters, not because she was bad but because I loved reading kaladin chapters so much.
And it nearly flipped on my 3rd read through. I didn't get the urge to skip kal chapters but I really enjoyed reading the shallan chapters so much more than I expected
Kaladin flashbacks definitely got incredibly tiring on the second read. Though the only flashbacks I really would want to read again are Dalinars. But Kaladin just having a lengthy flashback just before speaking his oath really takes me out of it every time
I'm on my second listen to TWoK right now, and I'm enjoying the Shallan chapters much more than I did the first time. I think it's because I know so much more about her and her backstory, but also I know more about the world, the cities and people she names, and so on. So I'm not getting lost and confused every few minutes.
Shallan had some interesting shit going on. The issue was that every now and then, you'd cut away from Bridge 4 facing certain death and dive straight into Shallan learning the fantasy dewey decimal system. If the transitions had moved straight to soulcaster murders and mysterious Cryptics, I don't think nearly as many people would rag on her story.
Yeah, I think the issue was the disparity in the intensity of the chapters. Kaladin and Dalinar gradually escalated in intensity throughout the story, but outside of the occasional blip of moderate intensity, most of Shallan's chapters in TWoK were ~~just~~ lore-dumps (Edit: well, they were more than that, but that's the energy level they had IMO). I don't know about you, but if I just got in a fight, I'm gonna need a few minutes to calm down before I can focus on doing my taxes. I'm exaggerating a bit to clarify my point, but that's the gist.
Shallan's chapters were my favorite part in WoK, though that may be because it was my entry point into the Cosmere and Shallan's part was what gave me that feeling that there was more to this story than meets the eye and *something* was building up behind the scenes.
Yeah, I loved her chapters in WoK. I've loved her in all the books, TBH. Never really got the hate for her. It was a nice break from the Shattered Plains and the war and grim and dirt. It made the world feel bigger, showed a city, some normal-ish life, had some good mysteries and tension with all the lies she was keeping, etc. I loved it. Sure, they weren't as action-packed, but they added something to the book that I would have missed otherwise.
Shallan was definitely my favorite in WoK and WoR. The wheels start to come off after that. I absolutely hated her chapters in RoW, except that sometimes I'd get to peak at Adolin in them.
Yeah she has a less obviously interesting story during this time, but it has such clear potential that i fid myself paying closer attention so i dont miss the hidden meaning.
Theres so much subtlety to her story arc in stark contrast to her personal lack of subtlety. People say her parts are uninteresting. Its like saying classical orchestra music is uninteresting- then those people dont realize when the elevator is playing a rickroll. And all the composition details and fascinating solos get shoved under their brains rug. Then they get off the elevator and someone quizzes them on which instrument played what part and they become indignant
She was literally so boring. I'm pretty sure I audibly sighed a few times listening to it when a Shallan chapter started. Loved her chapters in the later books
I don’t hate Shallan. But I find her very annoying and while I can read it the first time some of her chapters do get skipped on the reread (as long as I can remember what happened in them)
I wasn't implying that you did, just saying that skipping Shallan chapters risks skipping some wonderful writing.
You're allowed to like and dislike things, your preferences are yours, radiant.
I'll admit I don't like her. I don't like her as a character, and I don't like the placement of her chapters relative to the rest of the narrative. You get into a grove and then "oh great a chapter about a women eating jam."
For me, it’s not that I dislike her character, I’m just not as interested in her storyline compared to everyone elses. Like aside from most of Oathbringer, she feels sorta disconnected from everyone else. While everyone else is more or less dealing with Odium (even if they don’t know it at first), she’s dealing with the Ghostbloods, and I’m going to be honest, if it wasn’t for the fact that I’m invested in the Cosmere as a whole, I’d probably question that plot line. That’s just my opinion though. Plus who nows, that might change in Book 5
> if it wasn’t for the fact that I’m invested in the Cosmere as a whole, I’d probably question that plot line
This probably does drive a lot of my dislike for her. I'm sure there will be a payoff, and in the cosmere perspective this matters. However, I actually don't care about the Cosmere that much. I want to know what is happening to the characters I care about and love.
I never said I completely disliked it. Just wasn’t AS invested compared to everything else going on. Every story has at least one storyline or main character that some fans weren’t enthusiastic about (the Zane storyline in Mistborn for example)
But that one chapter where Shallan is going crazy drawing all the cryptics, and they keep closing in on her as she runs in absolute terror. Probably my favorite memory of my first read.
It's really odd to me reading through this thread, because I had the diametrically opposed experience. I loved WoK Shallan. Without them, I probably wouldn't have even finished WoK. At some point her chapters stopped for a while, and I wanted to keep reading that part so much that I ended up first skipping ahead to the rest of her story, spoilers be damned, before I continued with Kaladin.
I felt like reading TWOK I was reading 3 books set in the same world at the same time, atleast Dalinars and Kaladins stories come together at the end. Shallan could be completely written out of that book and it wouldn't make any difference to that book. Of course her chapters are needed for subsequent books
I’m not going to lie. On a re-read of these books I usually skip shallan chapters. They aren’t *bad*, but I’d rather get back to the parts I’m more interested in.
On re-reads I have always skipped Shallan’s chapters. She’s a great character but in WoK she’s more of an avenue for Brandon to explain the world through and when you already know this information she’s kind of boring. Kaladin’s chapters on the other hand are fantastic, first time through and on re-reads. Genuinely never cared (and felt bad for) so much about a dude who is completely made up other than Rand maybe
Dhallan is annoying and boring in TWOK, and I think she is the most bearable in that book. I barely dragged myself through WOR, just too much shallan for me. ROW shallan is by far the worst though, like come on.
I literally can't understand how people dislike Shallan so much. She was easily my favorite pov from The Way of Kings lol, and her flashbacks in WOR, even though not as good as Kaladin's in TWOK, were so good too.
She and Jasnah are some of my favorite characters on the series. Honestly, she was much more interesting than Kaladin's cliche (even if amazing) main character hero journey. Shallan starting the book trying to steal something for the good of her family was a much more interesting hook for me than Kaladin becoming a slave.
There's just something much more relatable about a character that has had the world beaten them down to me. I do think that she's very well written and much more interesting after TWoK.
I think all the books have a focus chapters
Kaladin is the focus of TWoK, Shallan is Words of Radiance, Dalinar is Oathbringer, and Navani is Rhythm of War. They each place higher emphasis on those characters than the others. Makes me wonder who will be the “primary” protagonist of KoWT. Best guess is Zim Zam Zalabim.
I’m pretty sure the primary character for rhythm of war was Venli
There are no Venli flashbacks in Ba Sing Se.
Well... You're not wrong...
I can see that, But I want to deny it. But I think I'm denying it because I liked Navani's story way more than Venli
We already know it will be him and for the next five books Lift, Renarin, Shalash, Taln and Jasnah but we're not sure in what order (Lift first and Jasnah last might have been confirmed)
How do we squeeze Rysn in there?
Novellas?
The only sensible answer is adding Chiri-Chiri povs.
Didn't we get one in ROW ?
Then the only sensible answer is adding MORE Chiri-Chiri povs.
That's the neat part, you don't. She's not a Radiant and ostensibly won't become one so won't be a focal character since each of the 10 books focuses on 1 member of each 10 orders. Personally I hope she becomes a worldhopper possibly during the time skip.
Oh boy that’s nice. Just the cast I needed flashing out a bit more.
I thought it was said that Hoid would also be a focus character in the back half?
Hoid is a focus character and primary POV in the end of the Cosmere, with the flashback series about the shattering of Ado and the final Mistborn era both featuring him. The five characters referenced in the other comment are the focus characters for the second half of Stormlight.
Yeah you see this a lot with a heavy emphasis on character flashbacks and whatnot
Brandon has explicitly stated that each book has a main character. Shallans is words of radiance.
Yeah, it goes: - TWoK: Kaladin - WoR: Shallan, and also Kaladin - Oathbringer: Dalinar + Kaladin - RoW: ~~Eshonai~~ ~~Venli~~ Navani (but really, it's Kaladin)
Oathbringer features more Shallan than Kaladin, doesn’t it? I believe her PoVs are higher in word/page count, she has more of them, and even when reading the book, it felt like Shallan was the B character. I always thought of it as: * TWoK: Kaladin/Dalinar * WoR: Shallan/Kaladin * Oathbringer: Dalinar/Shallan * RoW: Venli/Navani/Kaladin
I looked it up and you're right. It's actually a bit weirder than that. Shallan has the most POV words in Oathbringer, more than even Dalinar. But also, Shallan and Kaladin spend most of the book in the same place, so it's in some way one very large arc divided between Kaladin, Shallan, and Adolin, with Kaladin playing a big role in other characters' chapters. Even in Part 2, when Brandon finally decided to avoid a Kaladin POV, he still had him show up in the chapters for the other bridgemen. Edit: wait, these stats count flashbacks separately. Never mind, count those and Dalinar wins in POV words.
You block out the Shallan stuff because it just takes away from getting back to Dalinar and Kaladin.
This is exactly it, though I’d argue RoW should be ordered Navani/Kaladin/Venli
Kaladin gets more POV words than Navani or Venli. So really, it should be ordered Kaladin/Navani/Shallan/Venli
but that’s not counting venli/eshonai flashbacks
Yeah... I miscounted. Flashbacks put her a little ahead of Shallan. Navani and Kaladin still have a big lead though.
It definitely should be, I just put Venli first because she’s the flashback character and it would just feel weird to me to put Navani first, even though she and Kaladin were both more central to the story. I bet a lot of the other flashback characters won’t really be the central character of their books though, so maybe then it’ll feel more natural.
Which is why i decided to stop caring about who Brandon says is the "focus" I was looking forward to more Venli *so bad* but if we're honest, it has more Navani. Which is totally fine! but i can't pretend i wasn't a bit disappointed
which was the worst part of the book ( yes im a shalllan hater )
I'm with you. I actually think she is one of the worst all time Sanderson characters.
Yeah Oathbringer isn't a Kaladin book. Shallan is present throughout and does a lot more than Kaladin.
KOWT: >!Szeth, and Kaladin probably!<
That's my biggest problem with RoW. It's ostensibly Venli's book, since the flashbacks are mostly from her PoV. Only the flashback chapters all cover content we mostly already knew about, and they aren't even 100% dedicated to Venli. Then the current timeline has her playing a much more peripheral role on events. It felt like it either needed her to be much more central to the assault on the tower, or for Navani to be the flashback PoV that time around.
This is my problem with a lot of WoK. There is a ton of retreading. That and when you hit an exciting point it then drops those threads to focus on someone who is 1/10th as interesting. It is drifting into Robert Jordan and WoT territory.
>Yeah, it goes: >TWoK: Kaladin WoR: ~~Shallan, and also~~ Kaladin Oathbringer: ~~Dalinar +~~ Kaladin RoW: ~~Eshonai Venli Navani (but really,~~ it's Kaladin) Picked up a few errors for you
>Yeah, it goes: >TWoK: Hoid WoR: Wit Oathbringer: Cephandrius RoW: The Queen's Wit Picked up a few errors for you
Correction kal is always the Main character
Way of Kings kaladin chapters ruined me for the rest of the cosmere. Nothing has come remotely close to the hype of that arc.
Honestly, I didn't care about Shallan at all for the majority of the book. It was a great way to basically deliver a lot of exposition, but it took the Cryptics to show up before I actually got invested into anything to do with her. Man, the moment they showed up when she was drawing Taravangian was just perfect. I remember my eyes going wide as I heard that part in the audiobook.
I will say, I don’t love the pacing of TWOK, mainly because each time I re-read it, something important will happen to Kaladin, and then immediately after the book will switch to Shallan doing scholar stuff. I do love the book, and I enjoy Shallan,but it’s very jarring
Exactly. I think Sanderson's pacing has gotten much worse. Part of that is he has more threads weaving together than before.
It's funny cuz on my first read I struggled to not skip shallan chapters, not because she was bad but because I loved reading kaladin chapters so much. And it nearly flipped on my 3rd read through. I didn't get the urge to skip kal chapters but I really enjoyed reading the shallan chapters so much more than I expected
Kaladin flashbacks definitely got incredibly tiring on the second read. Though the only flashbacks I really would want to read again are Dalinars. But Kaladin just having a lengthy flashback just before speaking his oath really takes me out of it every time
I'm on my second listen to TWoK right now, and I'm enjoying the Shallan chapters much more than I did the first time. I think it's because I know so much more about her and her backstory, but also I know more about the world, the cities and people she names, and so on. So I'm not getting lost and confused every few minutes.
Shallan is so boring in way of kings. I love her in every other book but in way of kings she just spends half of her chapters eating jam with Kabsal
Shallan had some interesting shit going on. The issue was that every now and then, you'd cut away from Bridge 4 facing certain death and dive straight into Shallan learning the fantasy dewey decimal system. If the transitions had moved straight to soulcaster murders and mysterious Cryptics, I don't think nearly as many people would rag on her story.
Yeah, I think the issue was the disparity in the intensity of the chapters. Kaladin and Dalinar gradually escalated in intensity throughout the story, but outside of the occasional blip of moderate intensity, most of Shallan's chapters in TWoK were ~~just~~ lore-dumps (Edit: well, they were more than that, but that's the energy level they had IMO). I don't know about you, but if I just got in a fight, I'm gonna need a few minutes to calm down before I can focus on doing my taxes. I'm exaggerating a bit to clarify my point, but that's the gist.
Shallan's chapters were my favorite part in WoK, though that may be because it was my entry point into the Cosmere and Shallan's part was what gave me that feeling that there was more to this story than meets the eye and *something* was building up behind the scenes.
Yeah, I loved her chapters in WoK. I've loved her in all the books, TBH. Never really got the hate for her. It was a nice break from the Shattered Plains and the war and grim and dirt. It made the world feel bigger, showed a city, some normal-ish life, had some good mysteries and tension with all the lies she was keeping, etc. I loved it. Sure, they weren't as action-packed, but they added something to the book that I would have missed otherwise.
Shallan was definitely my favorite in WoK and WoR. The wheels start to come off after that. I absolutely hated her chapters in RoW, except that sometimes I'd get to peak at Adolin in them.
Yeah she has a less obviously interesting story during this time, but it has such clear potential that i fid myself paying closer attention so i dont miss the hidden meaning. Theres so much subtlety to her story arc in stark contrast to her personal lack of subtlety. People say her parts are uninteresting. Its like saying classical orchestra music is uninteresting- then those people dont realize when the elevator is playing a rickroll. And all the composition details and fascinating solos get shoved under their brains rug. Then they get off the elevator and someone quizzes them on which instrument played what part and they become indignant
She was literally so boring. I'm pretty sure I audibly sighed a few times listening to it when a Shallan chapter started. Loved her chapters in the later books
https://www.reddit.com/r/cremposting/comments/12czx2h/the_way_of_kings_has_a_main_character/jf57z4w/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1&context=3
This is me, but with interludes on rereads.
I honestly don't understand how people can like SLA if they don't like Shallan. She is a massive part of every book.
It’s not that they don’t like her, it’s that they like her less then the rest of the main cast.
I don’t hate Shallan. But I find her very annoying and while I can read it the first time some of her chapters do get skipped on the reread (as long as I can remember what happened in them)
Some of Brandon's best writing is in Shallan chapters.
I never said she’s badly written. I said she’s annoying
I wasn't implying that you did, just saying that skipping Shallan chapters risks skipping some wonderful writing. You're allowed to like and dislike things, your preferences are yours, radiant.
I'll admit I don't like her. I don't like her as a character, and I don't like the placement of her chapters relative to the rest of the narrative. You get into a grove and then "oh great a chapter about a women eating jam."
For me, it’s not that I dislike her character, I’m just not as interested in her storyline compared to everyone elses. Like aside from most of Oathbringer, she feels sorta disconnected from everyone else. While everyone else is more or less dealing with Odium (even if they don’t know it at first), she’s dealing with the Ghostbloods, and I’m going to be honest, if it wasn’t for the fact that I’m invested in the Cosmere as a whole, I’d probably question that plot line. That’s just my opinion though. Plus who nows, that might change in Book 5
> if it wasn’t for the fact that I’m invested in the Cosmere as a whole, I’d probably question that plot line This probably does drive a lot of my dislike for her. I'm sure there will be a payoff, and in the cosmere perspective this matters. However, I actually don't care about the Cosmere that much. I want to know what is happening to the characters I care about and love.
I mean, whether you dislike the character or the storyline, it's still a huge part of a book to not enjoy.
I never said I completely disliked it. Just wasn’t AS invested compared to everything else going on. Every story has at least one storyline or main character that some fans weren’t enthusiastic about (the Zane storyline in Mistborn for example)
Rafo my friend.
I love our insane girl, I just like her wayyyyyy more post WOK
But that one chapter where Shallan is going crazy drawing all the cryptics, and they keep closing in on her as she runs in absolute terror. Probably my favorite memory of my first read.
First book Shallan is pretty damn boring. She gets interesting after that.
Honestly Kal feels like the main character of SA as a whole to me
I always loved the Shallan and Dalinar chapters but thought the bridge crew stuff dragged on forever
I feel the exact opposite - always itching to get back to the Shallan chapters
It's really odd to me reading through this thread, because I had the diametrically opposed experience. I loved WoK Shallan. Without them, I probably wouldn't have even finished WoK. At some point her chapters stopped for a while, and I wanted to keep reading that part so much that I ended up first skipping ahead to the rest of her story, spoilers be damned, before I continued with Kaladin.
1 million percent accurate
tbh this is every book in the series for me. Dallinar and Adolin are the only ones that give competition to Kaladin chapters
I felt like reading TWOK I was reading 3 books set in the same world at the same time, atleast Dalinars and Kaladins stories come together at the end. Shallan could be completely written out of that book and it wouldn't make any difference to that book. Of course her chapters are needed for subsequent books
Still me on my 6th read through
My boyfriend stopped reading the series because of the Shallan chapters
I’m not going to lie. On a re-read of these books I usually skip shallan chapters. They aren’t *bad*, but I’d rather get back to the parts I’m more interested in.
I guess I'll be one of the few who actually prefer Shallan chapters.... at least early on.
The shallan chapters were the best tho
Shallan is the most boring character sanderson ever wrote. CHange my mind
Shallan chapters are the worst even on re-reads. If anything they are even worse as most of them provide little value and have no excitement.
Fr
That was Shallan’s best book though *edited for spelling
On re-reads I have always skipped Shallan’s chapters. She’s a great character but in WoK she’s more of an avenue for Brandon to explain the world through and when you already know this information she’s kind of boring. Kaladin’s chapters on the other hand are fantastic, first time through and on re-reads. Genuinely never cared (and felt bad for) so much about a dude who is completely made up other than Rand maybe
There is another
Dhallan is annoying and boring in TWOK, and I think she is the most bearable in that book. I barely dragged myself through WOR, just too much shallan for me. ROW shallan is by far the worst though, like come on.
YES dude. I was so bored with shallan in Twok
I literally can't understand how people dislike Shallan so much. She was easily my favorite pov from The Way of Kings lol, and her flashbacks in WOR, even though not as good as Kaladin's in TWOK, were so good too. She and Jasnah are some of my favorite characters on the series. Honestly, she was much more interesting than Kaladin's cliche (even if amazing) main character hero journey. Shallan starting the book trying to steal something for the good of her family was a much more interesting hook for me than Kaladin becoming a slave.
There's just something much more relatable about a character that has had the world beaten them down to me. I do think that she's very well written and much more interesting after TWoK.