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Just finished the SA books and ... the magic system ?

So, finished RoW, I did not read the halfs (yet?) Edgedencer & Dawnshard - instead I cheated a bit and looked up the summary for these (Dawnshard mainly) as I was too hungry for more "spice" of the SA story so I wanted to continue with next SA book straight away. I did read all of the current Mistborn series we have before SA though about a year or something ago

So I do have some notion about the...

shards, investiture and stuff but... I am still confused how the Cosmere magic works in general - I know that magic (Investiture) is different for each planet/system of the Cosmere and guessing it has something to do with the specific shards of that system... ?

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Well, if anyone wants to chime in with pointers I would be very thankful!
Meanwhile I will be scouring the wiki and WoBs to get a better picture.

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  • The more of the Cosmere you read, the more things will connect and the clearer the picture will be. Every time I re-read SA, I see new connections I'd missed before. Some of that is familiarity with the magics of other planets, because that changes your read from "character did a weird thing" to "hey! that's magic from this other planet; why/how has it turned up here?"

    In the earlier books, the crossovers between worlds/magics and the underlying "how things work" are more subtle and you'll miss things on first read. In more recent books, it's more overt.

    Some of that is because of how much the protagonists themselves understand. For example, in the first Mistborn trilogy the characters really don't understand what's going on on their own planet, so of course you don't get a good explanation. In Secret History, the POV character does run into people who know quite a lot about what is going on, so when Secret History revisits the events of the main trilogy you're able to understand the forces driving those catastrophic events.

    The characters in SA started off thinking magic wasn't real and knowing nothing about realms and worlds beyond their own. They are learning a lot through their spren and Hoid, but there is still a lot that they don't know. And you as the reader are learning along with them.