Wheel of Time -- executive summary
Jul. 23rd, 2010 02:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jack1. Eye of the World
Moirane comes to the Two Rivers seeking Rand, as do some Myrddraal. I can't remember if there's any reason both arrive at the same time.
All through the book, shadowspawn pursue Rand, and the Shadow never really seems to make its mind up whether it actually wants to kill him, whether it wants him to live, whether it's pretending one or the other... agh. This is supposedly all explained later, but basically this uncertainty persists through the whole series.
I think, maybe, Ishamael is really trying to kill Rand, but lies about it at the end and says he wasn't in order to cow him, but then, three books later when he CAN'T kill Rand the dark one switches tactics and starts trying NOT to kill him but saying he IS. And he's REALLY REALLY trying not to kill him, not just not actively opposing him, but feeling free to balefire him in the back if the opportunity arises.
There are several different plot threads: travelling together until the ambush; Shaidar Logoth; Perrin, Egwene and Elyas; Thom, Matt and Rand; Matt and Rand travelling together; meeting Elayne, Gawyn and Galad for the first time; and finally travelling to Shienar, and into the blight.
It ends with a big semi-mystical semi-physical showdown with Ishamael. (Pay attention, this is going to happen for the first three books, and probably again towards the end of the series.)
There are some themes in this book that are sort of dropped. Like the blight: the blight is really, really creepy, but is then sort of dropped for the next twelve books. If it went into abeyance, but then started advancing again, that would imho have changed little but given a much better sense of panic to the events than they had.
But basically, an awful lot happens in this book, and many key ideas are introduced, and everything that happens in this book is interesting to read.
2. The great hunt
A pretty good sequel. It correctly builds on all the things that went into the first book. People split up for logical reasons, but at this point, everything that they do still feels like progress.
I'm deliberately leaving out things that are annoying all the way through the series. You know what they are, and like with all enjoyable books, you have to embrace them, accept them, or not. I think the things annoying in the first couple of books are the sort of "some people don't like, but don't necessarily hamper the books strengths".
Rand et al traipse after the horn. It switches sides several times, but it doesn't feel arbitrary, it still feels relevant and exciting on reread.
Egwene, Nynaeve go to the white tower, meet Elayne, and then get sent on some extra-tower mission for some thinly-veiled excuse, which happens continually for the next six books until (I think) Elayne finally gets people to take her seriously in Crown of Thorns, and thereafter goes to become queen.
The actual adventure here, where they go and meet the Seanchan is actually really moving. It's tense and creepy, but not gratuitously so. It's the convenience of the way Liandrin spirits them away, but just doesn't kill them, especially knowing they'll repeatedly be traipsing across everywhere for the next six books. And that here Liandrin is scary as "oh crap, there really is a black ajah" character, but that after this she sort of drifts off and vanishes, outclassed by all the later villains.
The climax, Matt blows the Horn, and Rand fights Ishamael in the sky. This isn't logically consist with all the magical rules laid down later[1], but that's not actually a problem, because it fits thematically, it just feels right and is generally awesome because after this, Rand is irrevocably proclaimed and although people still resist, he's indelibly branded as the Dragon Reborn.
3. The Dragon Reborn.
The book opens with Rand and everyone camped in "The Dragon Reborn's camp", still loyal to their friend but scared of his new powers. Rand runs off to the stone of tear to test if he can fulfil the prophecy and get it over with. Everyone else follows. We see Rand through their eyes, being both a scary Ta'veren and a bashful pipe-playing farm-boy.
This is awesome because it actually paints Rand in scary but not contradictory light. The only problem with it is that it isn't really kept up: after this book everything settles down into the pattens Jordan developed for the long haul, and the feel of these passages of "eek, what will Rand do" is lost. Rand's madness is also at a very high ebb here: where he slaughters the merchant and her camp is one of the brief but most moving moments.
Also, Elayne, Nynaeve and Egwene are sent to hunt Darkfriends by Siuan Sanche. Again, this plot development is not inherently bad, but is a little contrived. The trouble with all of their instalments is that a number of the individual things they do are very very cool, but whatever they're supposedly after never seems to make any difference to the overall plot[2].
At the climax, everyone ends up at the Stone of Tear (the last time everyone is together). Moirane balefires Be'lal, which is the last time a battle with the forsaken is "oh crap, how did they survive AGAIN" before they all start being "why did it take Rand so long, again?"
Rand fights Ishamael and really kills him this time (but not permanently). There are lots of Trollocs which fight each other, some of which Lanfear CLAIMS she sent to save Rand, but actually someone else sent to save Rand.
The first three books are generally pretty tightly written plot-wise and all on the same page. After this, despite many cool things, they start to wander.
[1] Why is the fight in the sky? Why are Rand and Ishamael tied to the horn heroes? Why does Ishamael fight with a staff rather than fireballing Rand?
footnote [2]
IIRC they:
(i) to Falme, get captured, escape
ii) go hunting black ajah to tear, capture some, but nothing really ever comes of it
(iii) follow a vague rumour from the black ajah to Tanchico, chase black ajah, try to destroy the male a'dam, clash with moghedien, but everything ends inconclusively (i mean, yes, they avert... stuff, but they ALWAYS avert stuff, the plot would work with or without it, which makes it less exciting)
(iv) traipse all across the world hiding in a travelling circus. In the end, they capture moghedien and make many supposedly great discoveries, but very few that are actually specific
(v) spend two books in Ebour Dar refighting moghedien and black ajah STILL to no conclusive effect, and find the the bowl of the winds to fix the endless summer, which is supposedly really important, but actually no-one mentions very often.
4. Shadow Rising
The titles start being less and less specific. Rand rules Tear, but spurns it, which is actually reasonable, but always looks arbitrary, to run off with the Aiel to the waste. Here, he becomes the Aeil chief-of-chiefs, has Coulin go mad at him, and battles and captures Asmodeon.
Once he has Asmodeon, he stops channelling purely on instinct and starts actually being able to channel fairly reliably.
Perrin goes back to the Two Rivers and saves it from Trollocs and Whitecloaks and Slayer, which is pretty cool, but doesn't have much impact on the large plot.
Elayne and Nynaeve do whatever I said they did in the long list of things they did that tied into the things later but didn't tie very specifically into anything at the time.
5. Fires of Heaven
I missed this one when I first read the series which was obviously confusing.
Rand leads the other Aiel after the Shaido and saves Cairhien from them. He originally intends to chase the most prominent forsaken, Sammael in Illian, but instead suddenly teleports to Caemlyn to battle Rahvin when he learns he's killed Morgase. (They couldn't have worked that out IN ADVANCE?) He spends another three or four books faffing around with plan of EVENTUALLY attacking Sammael before reverting to "teleporting there and balefiring him".
Once he conquers Cairhien, he becomes the de-facto ruler, and of Cairhien shortly afterwards. He still nominally rules Tear but doesn't go there, just puts up with the scheming of the worst Tearan lords he sent to Cairhein earlier. From here on he is in "ruler mode".
Matt becomes a super-general, which is quite cool, but once he's formed the Band of the Red Hand, nothing ever comes of it. In the next book, it's sent to visit the renegate Aes Sedai, with the intention of sucking up a lot of the problematic bandit dragonsworn, which it sort of does just by following them around, but Matt doesn't do any more generalling, he just makes an ineffectual attempt to get Elayne back to Andor[1], and then is sucked into their interminable "bowl of the winds" plotline.
Elayne and Nynaeve do whatever I said they did. I think this was the one that involved a lot of travelling, but at the end, Nynaeve captures Moghedian, then uses her to attack Rahvin from behind, which is not necessary to the ongoing plot (since it would be equally thematic if either she or Rand had beaten him by themselves) but is certainly part of it. But I don't recall they actually talk or anything, or even if she tells him she's there.
Perrin is entirely absent.
Moirane does something convoluted, then pushes Lanfear into the world of the snakes (or foxes), presumed killing them both, although we later find out, not quite.
[1] Which would have presumably saved lots of lives due to nobles rebelling less. OK, the bowl of the winds is arguably more important, if rather macguffiny, but surely SOME sensible person could have gone with Nynaeve to find it while Elayne stopped Andor falling into chaos? Or she could have popped to Andor for five minutes, said hi to Rand, got all the arguing about the proprietary of him squatting on the throne out of their system, assured the nobles she was still alive, and THEN gone to look for the bowl.
6. Lord of Chaos
All sorts of complicated and often bad things happen, which is sort of the point, but is often annoying. On the other hand, he acts bad-ass ruler, sets up Davram Bashere and Taim to run armies on his behalf and be all male-bonding with him, and in the last third, is captured by the White Tower embassy, and rescued by the Asha'man, Perrin et al, which to me was one of the most moving climaxes of the whole series.
And that starts his "not taking any shit from Aes Sedai" phase, which goes to pot as soon as he meets Cadsuane in the next book.
Now Matt joins Thom and Juilin following Nynaeve and Elayne around, and has some personally interesting moments but doesn't add much to the plot.
Perrin is absent for most of the book before he turns up and then in the end kicks off Rand's rescue.
At some point in one of these books Egwene is summoned to become Amyrlin, and then starts SLOWLY coaxing the rebel Aes Sedai towards the white tower to besiege it, and having lots of nice-but-formulaic machiavelian politics imposing her will on them bit by bit. This goes on for the next N books.
7. Crown of Thorns
Rand juggles lots of metaphorical balls in the air, trying to deal with the countries he's ruling, Sammael in Illian, Masema and other rogue dragonsworn, still hidden forsaken, etc, but this is all covered in about two sentences, and the rest covers the escapades in Ebour Dar and to a lesser extent the rebel Aes Sedai.
Towards the end, he spontaneously stops hesitating, stops ignoring the sea folk and goes to talk to them, who argue a bit but basically say they're destined to serve him, but he storms off before they can agree any details.
Then he spontaneously teleports to where the Cairheinan rebels are holed up, and apparently meeting the Tearan rebels. Since these are the people who were sufficiently committed to their country not to either (a) run and hide or (b) roll over and worship the dragon reborn they're amazingly sensible about it all. Some random magical shit happens with Padan Fain, and everyone hurries back to Cairhein to get healed, and trust him not to slaughter everyone.
When he wakes up, he spontaneously teleports to Illian to fight Sammael. OK, so he DID plan this, but he still does it immediately he wakes up whilst deliberately slipping away from all his guards, etc. Showdown is quite cool, after Rand and Sammael have spent four books sniping at each other with never-quite-engaging armies, although you feel it's a waste of all that supposed intrigue. Sammael dies in an annoyingly vague way, but it's still the first Rand-Forsaken battle where either seems to have any crafted plan at all, rather than just improvising stuff. (OK, maybe Rahvin sort of did, having a lot of lightning wards, and then planning to escape to the world of dreams.)
The Illianers are ALSO amazingly sensible about it, and immediately see Rand as generally a good guy, but a really bad guy to piss off, and his moral decision five books ago to order Tear to sell grain to Illian even if they were traditional rivals pays off as people actuallly thank him for it, and they offer him the crown, which he accepts. Which is quite a cool moment, even though he already rules Tear, Cairhein, Caemyln and the Aeil, even if he refuses to take a monarch's title, so actually calling himself King doesn't make much difference. And then he spoils it all by shouting "I'm king of the world. MUAHAHAHAHHAHA!" Pretty much (although not quite) literally.
Moirane comes to the Two Rivers seeking Rand, as do some Myrddraal. I can't remember if there's any reason both arrive at the same time.
All through the book, shadowspawn pursue Rand, and the Shadow never really seems to make its mind up whether it actually wants to kill him, whether it wants him to live, whether it's pretending one or the other... agh. This is supposedly all explained later, but basically this uncertainty persists through the whole series.
I think, maybe, Ishamael is really trying to kill Rand, but lies about it at the end and says he wasn't in order to cow him, but then, three books later when he CAN'T kill Rand the dark one switches tactics and starts trying NOT to kill him but saying he IS. And he's REALLY REALLY trying not to kill him, not just not actively opposing him, but feeling free to balefire him in the back if the opportunity arises.
There are several different plot threads: travelling together until the ambush; Shaidar Logoth; Perrin, Egwene and Elyas; Thom, Matt and Rand; Matt and Rand travelling together; meeting Elayne, Gawyn and Galad for the first time; and finally travelling to Shienar, and into the blight.
It ends with a big semi-mystical semi-physical showdown with Ishamael. (Pay attention, this is going to happen for the first three books, and probably again towards the end of the series.)
There are some themes in this book that are sort of dropped. Like the blight: the blight is really, really creepy, but is then sort of dropped for the next twelve books. If it went into abeyance, but then started advancing again, that would imho have changed little but given a much better sense of panic to the events than they had.
But basically, an awful lot happens in this book, and many key ideas are introduced, and everything that happens in this book is interesting to read.
2. The great hunt
A pretty good sequel. It correctly builds on all the things that went into the first book. People split up for logical reasons, but at this point, everything that they do still feels like progress.
I'm deliberately leaving out things that are annoying all the way through the series. You know what they are, and like with all enjoyable books, you have to embrace them, accept them, or not. I think the things annoying in the first couple of books are the sort of "some people don't like, but don't necessarily hamper the books strengths".
Rand et al traipse after the horn. It switches sides several times, but it doesn't feel arbitrary, it still feels relevant and exciting on reread.
Egwene, Nynaeve go to the white tower, meet Elayne, and then get sent on some extra-tower mission for some thinly-veiled excuse, which happens continually for the next six books until (I think) Elayne finally gets people to take her seriously in Crown of Thorns, and thereafter goes to become queen.
The actual adventure here, where they go and meet the Seanchan is actually really moving. It's tense and creepy, but not gratuitously so. It's the convenience of the way Liandrin spirits them away, but just doesn't kill them, especially knowing they'll repeatedly be traipsing across everywhere for the next six books. And that here Liandrin is scary as "oh crap, there really is a black ajah" character, but that after this she sort of drifts off and vanishes, outclassed by all the later villains.
The climax, Matt blows the Horn, and Rand fights Ishamael in the sky. This isn't logically consist with all the magical rules laid down later[1], but that's not actually a problem, because it fits thematically, it just feels right and is generally awesome because after this, Rand is irrevocably proclaimed and although people still resist, he's indelibly branded as the Dragon Reborn.
3. The Dragon Reborn.
The book opens with Rand and everyone camped in "The Dragon Reborn's camp", still loyal to their friend but scared of his new powers. Rand runs off to the stone of tear to test if he can fulfil the prophecy and get it over with. Everyone else follows. We see Rand through their eyes, being both a scary Ta'veren and a bashful pipe-playing farm-boy.
This is awesome because it actually paints Rand in scary but not contradictory light. The only problem with it is that it isn't really kept up: after this book everything settles down into the pattens Jordan developed for the long haul, and the feel of these passages of "eek, what will Rand do" is lost. Rand's madness is also at a very high ebb here: where he slaughters the merchant and her camp is one of the brief but most moving moments.
Also, Elayne, Nynaeve and Egwene are sent to hunt Darkfriends by Siuan Sanche. Again, this plot development is not inherently bad, but is a little contrived. The trouble with all of their instalments is that a number of the individual things they do are very very cool, but whatever they're supposedly after never seems to make any difference to the overall plot[2].
At the climax, everyone ends up at the Stone of Tear (the last time everyone is together). Moirane balefires Be'lal, which is the last time a battle with the forsaken is "oh crap, how did they survive AGAIN" before they all start being "why did it take Rand so long, again?"
Rand fights Ishamael and really kills him this time (but not permanently). There are lots of Trollocs which fight each other, some of which Lanfear CLAIMS she sent to save Rand, but actually someone else sent to save Rand.
The first three books are generally pretty tightly written plot-wise and all on the same page. After this, despite many cool things, they start to wander.
[1] Why is the fight in the sky? Why are Rand and Ishamael tied to the horn heroes? Why does Ishamael fight with a staff rather than fireballing Rand?
footnote [2]
IIRC they:
(i) to Falme, get captured, escape
ii) go hunting black ajah to tear, capture some, but nothing really ever comes of it
(iii) follow a vague rumour from the black ajah to Tanchico, chase black ajah, try to destroy the male a'dam, clash with moghedien, but everything ends inconclusively (i mean, yes, they avert... stuff, but they ALWAYS avert stuff, the plot would work with or without it, which makes it less exciting)
(iv) traipse all across the world hiding in a travelling circus. In the end, they capture moghedien and make many supposedly great discoveries, but very few that are actually specific
(v) spend two books in Ebour Dar refighting moghedien and black ajah STILL to no conclusive effect, and find the the bowl of the winds to fix the endless summer, which is supposedly really important, but actually no-one mentions very often.
4. Shadow Rising
The titles start being less and less specific. Rand rules Tear, but spurns it, which is actually reasonable, but always looks arbitrary, to run off with the Aiel to the waste. Here, he becomes the Aeil chief-of-chiefs, has Coulin go mad at him, and battles and captures Asmodeon.
Once he has Asmodeon, he stops channelling purely on instinct and starts actually being able to channel fairly reliably.
Perrin goes back to the Two Rivers and saves it from Trollocs and Whitecloaks and Slayer, which is pretty cool, but doesn't have much impact on the large plot.
Elayne and Nynaeve do whatever I said they did in the long list of things they did that tied into the things later but didn't tie very specifically into anything at the time.
5. Fires of Heaven
I missed this one when I first read the series which was obviously confusing.
Rand leads the other Aiel after the Shaido and saves Cairhien from them. He originally intends to chase the most prominent forsaken, Sammael in Illian, but instead suddenly teleports to Caemlyn to battle Rahvin when he learns he's killed Morgase. (They couldn't have worked that out IN ADVANCE?) He spends another three or four books faffing around with plan of EVENTUALLY attacking Sammael before reverting to "teleporting there and balefiring him".
Once he conquers Cairhien, he becomes the de-facto ruler, and of Cairhien shortly afterwards. He still nominally rules Tear but doesn't go there, just puts up with the scheming of the worst Tearan lords he sent to Cairhein earlier. From here on he is in "ruler mode".
Matt becomes a super-general, which is quite cool, but once he's formed the Band of the Red Hand, nothing ever comes of it. In the next book, it's sent to visit the renegate Aes Sedai, with the intention of sucking up a lot of the problematic bandit dragonsworn, which it sort of does just by following them around, but Matt doesn't do any more generalling, he just makes an ineffectual attempt to get Elayne back to Andor[1], and then is sucked into their interminable "bowl of the winds" plotline.
Elayne and Nynaeve do whatever I said they did. I think this was the one that involved a lot of travelling, but at the end, Nynaeve captures Moghedian, then uses her to attack Rahvin from behind, which is not necessary to the ongoing plot (since it would be equally thematic if either she or Rand had beaten him by themselves) but is certainly part of it. But I don't recall they actually talk or anything, or even if she tells him she's there.
Perrin is entirely absent.
Moirane does something convoluted, then pushes Lanfear into the world of the snakes (or foxes), presumed killing them both, although we later find out, not quite.
[1] Which would have presumably saved lots of lives due to nobles rebelling less. OK, the bowl of the winds is arguably more important, if rather macguffiny, but surely SOME sensible person could have gone with Nynaeve to find it while Elayne stopped Andor falling into chaos? Or she could have popped to Andor for five minutes, said hi to Rand, got all the arguing about the proprietary of him squatting on the throne out of their system, assured the nobles she was still alive, and THEN gone to look for the bowl.
6. Lord of Chaos
All sorts of complicated and often bad things happen, which is sort of the point, but is often annoying. On the other hand, he acts bad-ass ruler, sets up Davram Bashere and Taim to run armies on his behalf and be all male-bonding with him, and in the last third, is captured by the White Tower embassy, and rescued by the Asha'man, Perrin et al, which to me was one of the most moving climaxes of the whole series.
And that starts his "not taking any shit from Aes Sedai" phase, which goes to pot as soon as he meets Cadsuane in the next book.
Now Matt joins Thom and Juilin following Nynaeve and Elayne around, and has some personally interesting moments but doesn't add much to the plot.
Perrin is absent for most of the book before he turns up and then in the end kicks off Rand's rescue.
At some point in one of these books Egwene is summoned to become Amyrlin, and then starts SLOWLY coaxing the rebel Aes Sedai towards the white tower to besiege it, and having lots of nice-but-formulaic machiavelian politics imposing her will on them bit by bit. This goes on for the next N books.
7. Crown of Thorns
Rand juggles lots of metaphorical balls in the air, trying to deal with the countries he's ruling, Sammael in Illian, Masema and other rogue dragonsworn, still hidden forsaken, etc, but this is all covered in about two sentences, and the rest covers the escapades in Ebour Dar and to a lesser extent the rebel Aes Sedai.
Towards the end, he spontaneously stops hesitating, stops ignoring the sea folk and goes to talk to them, who argue a bit but basically say they're destined to serve him, but he storms off before they can agree any details.
Then he spontaneously teleports to where the Cairheinan rebels are holed up, and apparently meeting the Tearan rebels. Since these are the people who were sufficiently committed to their country not to either (a) run and hide or (b) roll over and worship the dragon reborn they're amazingly sensible about it all. Some random magical shit happens with Padan Fain, and everyone hurries back to Cairhein to get healed, and trust him not to slaughter everyone.
When he wakes up, he spontaneously teleports to Illian to fight Sammael. OK, so he DID plan this, but he still does it immediately he wakes up whilst deliberately slipping away from all his guards, etc. Showdown is quite cool, after Rand and Sammael have spent four books sniping at each other with never-quite-engaging armies, although you feel it's a waste of all that supposed intrigue. Sammael dies in an annoyingly vague way, but it's still the first Rand-Forsaken battle where either seems to have any crafted plan at all, rather than just improvising stuff. (OK, maybe Rahvin sort of did, having a lot of lightning wards, and then planning to escape to the world of dreams.)
The Illianers are ALSO amazingly sensible about it, and immediately see Rand as generally a good guy, but a really bad guy to piss off, and his moral decision five books ago to order Tear to sell grain to Illian even if they were traditional rivals pays off as people actuallly thank him for it, and they offer him the crown, which he accepts. Which is quite a cool moment, even though he already rules Tear, Cairhein, Caemyln and the Aeil, even if he refuses to take a monarch's title, so actually calling himself King doesn't make much difference. And then he spoils it all by shouting "I'm king of the world. MUAHAHAHAHHAHA!" Pretty much (although not quite) literally.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-23 03:26 pm (UTC)Er, what else do the supergirls do? Well Egwene has her whole thing where she was captured and made Damane (which makes her really hate the Seanchan later) and then goes to learn about being a Dreamer (which is very useful) and becomes Amyrlin and leads an army (I shall stop there because I forget where GS picks up on that plot)
Ny defeats Moggy more than once before they capture her (which is a bit silly), gets nearly dead, gets over her pointless character flaw, gets married, cleanses the Taint, (traipses all over the world a lot), goes off to join Rand's entourage, (and again, I forget where GS picks up)
Elayne learns how not to be such a spoiled princess, bonds Birgitte, figures how to boss people around effectively, makes a really huge explosion (the Seanchan are confused about this for AGES, LOL), claims the thrown, boffs Rand. Solves a murder.
There wanderings do seem to be very much in the "do this quest, oh now you've done that do THIS quest" with added random monster encounters thrown at them for a while though, yes (I like watching the scenery go by; apparently I'm weird...) :-) I think they compare favourably to Perrin's later "adventures" in being an idiot and doing nothing for several books.
Crown of SWORDS not thorns. Jesus on the brain?
no subject
Date: 2010-07-23 03:48 pm (UTC)Apparently, yes, but I think it's authors of fantasy novels that do, not just me :)
no subject
Date: 2010-07-23 03:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-23 04:14 pm (UTC)We were discussing "most famous person, by what standard" again, and I said "Jesus!" and someone said, "no, the most famous alive person" and I said "Jesus!" again :)
no subject
Date: 2010-07-23 04:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-23 04:08 pm (UTC)Obviously, it depends how genre-aware and able to suspend your disbelief you are -- different people will find different plots genuinely tensionful. But in general, some are, and some aren't.
So, it's probably partly that I personally didn't empathise with the non-Rand groups as much, but I think the difference is also in the books.
When they were in Falme, I was genuinely "eek, what's going to happen". And the first time I read, I thought the same when they encountered Moghedian, or even more so. But for some reason, the first now has more effect on me, and the latter much less so. And the whole Bowl-of-the-Winds even less: I'm not quite sure why, but in general I wasn't biting my nails over whether they'd succeed: I felt pretty sure they'd wander about for a book or so, and then find it, and they did, even if they did a number of cool things in the course of doing so.
Even though they have a fair number of individual moments of awesome in their plotlines, somehow the overall plots didn't grip me. Even though the books SAY people are going to start starving if the summer doesn't resume, we seem to actually spend little time seeing those consequences, other than mentions of how sweaty everyone is (possibly it's mentioned a lot more later on, I've not read further yet). It's somewhat unfair of me, because Jordan was obviously TRYING to make it matter, but somehow "kill male forsaken", "learn to channel", "go mad", etc, are OBVIOUSLY progressing the series whereas "find macguffin, avert vaguely defined evil", "find ANOTHER macguffin, avert ANOTHER vaguely defined evil", "defeat moghedian, but she escapes", "defeat moghedian AGAIN, but she escapes", "defeat moghedian AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN but she escapes" are not as satisfying!
It's not that the characters suck, it's that Jordan unfortunately didn't (imho) have a good plot thread in which they could shine. If they'd been raised the shawl immediately, but still had lots of powerplay, that would have been more interactive, or if they'd gone on duelling with the same black ajah, but slowly whittling them down, or hunting some macguffin over six books, but that would CHANGE things when they found it, I think I would have loved it a lot more.
(I don't remember the later books as well -- I didn't read all of them and haven't reread them yet. But I'm happy to agree Matt and Perrin got sucky plotlines too, and that Nynaeve et al got some decent ones.)
no subject
Date: 2010-07-23 04:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-23 05:24 pm (UTC)Yeah, I tried to separate what I personally preferred and what I thought was flawed; but yeah, they're a bit confused.
it feels a bit ticky-list a lot of the time
Yeah, that's very true. I remember my frustration when they were killing them off one-by-one, and then started reincarnating them and killing them off AGAIN. This time, I got some sense of Sammael being somewhat competent, but the first time I was like "why are you dragging this out? you killed rahvin and be'lal in about 2 seconds, why does Sammael take six books when he doesn't DO anything?" (Apparently RJ didn't think he was supposed to be all that, just a good defender if anything. I think.)
And I'm sure in some of the books, it was the other threads that most had my attention.
But, meh. It just seems a shame, that with the good stuff, there was so books where it's all sort of redundant.