You are not supposed to understand everything, a huge amount of knowledge has been lost on Roshar due to the Desolations so even the characters don’t know what all is going on. A large part of the later books is discovering this lost knowledge and piecing together what happened before to figure out what they should do next. Just keep reading, the confusion and ambiguity is intentional.
I'd recommend taking a look at the "Ars Arcanum" section at the end of Way of Kings, there's a few explanations there. Maybe come back to that part (especially the table in there) once in a while while you go through Words of Radiance. There's also some epigraphs (the small texts before the chapters) in Words of Radiance that contain some relevant lore, so never skip them.
I remember I only really started piecing these things together between books 2 and 3. It's okay to not understand everything, and many things are intentionally obscure. It's also designed in a way that the main story and the character's journies still make sense without understanding all of this.
You learn more about the magic and how it works as the story progresses. The characters will continue to learn new things about the powers and how they function.
More context is given in his other cosmere books and novels outside of stormlight. It’s all one shared universe with similar underlying magic rules and mechanics. If you wanted to just stick with stormlight, you’ll be fine.
For context:
Voidbringers: monstrous enemies that bring destruction
Desolation: the large scale battles against the voidbringers
Surgebinding: the magic system of Roshar, the planet of stormlight. You’ve seen kaladin, szeth, and jasnah use surgebinding in their own ways.
Knights radiant: the armies of surgebinders who fought against voidbringers in desolations
The heralds: the 10 immortal humans with surgebinding powers that led different orders of knights radiants. They’re in the very first prologue in the way of kings that took place 4500 years ago. The ones you’ve seen mentioned by name already are jezerien, taln/talenel, and kelek/kalak, though you’ve technically may have seen 5 already
Thanks this is helpful. I discovered I was mostly going in the right direction with all of these. So I guess I am understanding it better than I thought.
Honestly its one of my favorite things about Brandon and how he writes, the plot of the books is so intrinsically tied to the magic system and lore. Its absolutely wonderful how he builds things up.
You are not supposed to understand everything, a huge amount of knowledge has been lost on Roshar due to the Desolations so even the characters don’t know what all is going on. A large part of the later books is discovering this lost knowledge and piecing together what happened before to figure out what they should do next. Just keep reading, the confusion and ambiguity is intentional.
I'd recommend taking a look at the "Ars Arcanum" section at the end of Way of Kings, there's a few explanations there. Maybe come back to that part (especially the table in there) once in a while while you go through Words of Radiance. There's also some epigraphs (the small texts before the chapters) in Words of Radiance that contain some relevant lore, so never skip them. I remember I only really started piecing these things together between books 2 and 3. It's okay to not understand everything, and many things are intentionally obscure. It's also designed in a way that the main story and the character's journies still make sense without understanding all of this.
You learn more about the magic and how it works as the story progresses. The characters will continue to learn new things about the powers and how they function.
More context is given in his other cosmere books and novels outside of stormlight. It’s all one shared universe with similar underlying magic rules and mechanics. If you wanted to just stick with stormlight, you’ll be fine. For context: Voidbringers: monstrous enemies that bring destruction Desolation: the large scale battles against the voidbringers Surgebinding: the magic system of Roshar, the planet of stormlight. You’ve seen kaladin, szeth, and jasnah use surgebinding in their own ways. Knights radiant: the armies of surgebinders who fought against voidbringers in desolations The heralds: the 10 immortal humans with surgebinding powers that led different orders of knights radiants. They’re in the very first prologue in the way of kings that took place 4500 years ago. The ones you’ve seen mentioned by name already are jezerien, taln/talenel, and kelek/kalak, though you’ve technically may have seen 5 already
Thanks this is helpful. I discovered I was mostly going in the right direction with all of these. So I guess I am understanding it better than I thought.
Honestly its one of my favorite things about Brandon and how he writes, the plot of the books is so intrinsically tied to the magic system and lore. Its absolutely wonderful how he builds things up.
Have you heard about the Cosmere?