Path of daggers
Aug. 12th, 2010 01:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackIn Path of Daggers, excluding travel:
* Perrin has a brief conversation with Alliandre and with Masema
* Faile is kidnapped and paraded around naked in the snow[1]
* Nynaeve, Elayne and Brigette use the bowl of the winds
* Elayne arrives in Caemlyn
* Egwene maneuvers the hall to declare war on Elaida
* Elaida's dark-friend-hunters capture the Aes Sedai sent back to the tower from Salidar, plus one probable darkfriend
* Rand arranges all the least reliable most annoying leige-people he can find, and takes them off to fight the Seanchan. Massive carnage ensues on both sides, although honestly, it's not as much of a clusterfuck as you might have thought
* The Maidens of the spear beat Rand up for randomly going off to battle without them, after he'd promised not to[2].
* Taim has several Asha'man ambush Rand for reasons which are not (yet) ever specified. Dashiva joins them.
[1] My God, poor Morgase.
[2] On the one hand, he didn't actually have any particular reason for doing so, and kind of deserved a swift kick. On the second hand, he accepts it was wrong, but only in a "now I must be punished because woe is my, my life is all thorns" way, not in a "I'm not going to make this mistake in the following scene" way, and beating him may not make him more well balanced. On the third hand, it's wise to at least ASK someone if they had a good reason before beating someone up for something they did; even if you don't accept excuses as lessening their culpability, often they're actually INNOCENT. On the fourth hand, aren't there LOGISTICAL problems with attacking Rand from behind when he can't see? People have suffered serious injury and possibly even death by tapping martial artists on the shoulder at the wrong moment; suddenly attacking Rand will PROBABLY make him think "it's an Aiel thing, it's ok" but what if it makes him think "Agh! Paranoia! Quick, balefire everything!"?
I have the distinct feeling that, other than a lot of travel and Rand getting a lot madder, almost nothing happened. Which is not quite fair: some of the events OUGHT to be important, but somehow just don't feel it to me. I think possibly I first read most of the previous books quite fast, and then came back to this book, and so somehow it seems to me less canon than them.
Thoughts standing out in my mind include: Who arbitrates between Egwene and the hall? If the hall say "oh, that law doesn't REALLY mean that, you misunderstood," who decides? I'm sure there are parallel cases in real life, but somehow, while I was excited to see Egwene getting somewhere, it felt a bit arbitrary.
Rand really, really needs someone he can trust around him. OK, this is because he's getting madder, but it'd be so much better if he could share the "which people to trust" decision with Min, or one of the other women, or Perrin or Matt, or Lan, or Bashere, or one of the other people from Emond's Field (or his _father_), or even Cadsuane, or anyone else he seems to trust, but have sent away.
Why is the Asha'man attack on Rand so half-hearted? I'm sure there's some reason for it, but it still FEELS arbitrary, that the attack came right then, and was powerful enough to be really dangerous, but not actually planned in a way which would, you know, work (such as finding Rand, claiming to bring a message from Taim, preparing to open a gateway away, and then balefiring him.) There's supposed to be good reasons for all these half-hearted assassination attempts, but it still has an unfortunate tendency to read as if "kill Rand" and "don't kill Rand" plots are exactly calculated to balance out and produce an endless string of half-hearted attempts every book or so.
To balance things out, I should probably finish my post about things about WoT I thought were very GOOD.
* Perrin has a brief conversation with Alliandre and with Masema
* Faile is kidnapped and paraded around naked in the snow[1]
* Nynaeve, Elayne and Brigette use the bowl of the winds
* Elayne arrives in Caemlyn
* Egwene maneuvers the hall to declare war on Elaida
* Elaida's dark-friend-hunters capture the Aes Sedai sent back to the tower from Salidar, plus one probable darkfriend
* Rand arranges all the least reliable most annoying leige-people he can find, and takes them off to fight the Seanchan. Massive carnage ensues on both sides, although honestly, it's not as much of a clusterfuck as you might have thought
* The Maidens of the spear beat Rand up for randomly going off to battle without them, after he'd promised not to[2].
* Taim has several Asha'man ambush Rand for reasons which are not (yet) ever specified. Dashiva joins them.
[1] My God, poor Morgase.
[2] On the one hand, he didn't actually have any particular reason for doing so, and kind of deserved a swift kick. On the second hand, he accepts it was wrong, but only in a "now I must be punished because woe is my, my life is all thorns" way, not in a "I'm not going to make this mistake in the following scene" way, and beating him may not make him more well balanced. On the third hand, it's wise to at least ASK someone if they had a good reason before beating someone up for something they did; even if you don't accept excuses as lessening their culpability, often they're actually INNOCENT. On the fourth hand, aren't there LOGISTICAL problems with attacking Rand from behind when he can't see? People have suffered serious injury and possibly even death by tapping martial artists on the shoulder at the wrong moment; suddenly attacking Rand will PROBABLY make him think "it's an Aiel thing, it's ok" but what if it makes him think "Agh! Paranoia! Quick, balefire everything!"?
I have the distinct feeling that, other than a lot of travel and Rand getting a lot madder, almost nothing happened. Which is not quite fair: some of the events OUGHT to be important, but somehow just don't feel it to me. I think possibly I first read most of the previous books quite fast, and then came back to this book, and so somehow it seems to me less canon than them.
Thoughts standing out in my mind include: Who arbitrates between Egwene and the hall? If the hall say "oh, that law doesn't REALLY mean that, you misunderstood," who decides? I'm sure there are parallel cases in real life, but somehow, while I was excited to see Egwene getting somewhere, it felt a bit arbitrary.
Rand really, really needs someone he can trust around him. OK, this is because he's getting madder, but it'd be so much better if he could share the "which people to trust" decision with Min, or one of the other women, or Perrin or Matt, or Lan, or Bashere, or one of the other people from Emond's Field (or his _father_), or even Cadsuane, or anyone else he seems to trust, but have sent away.
Why is the Asha'man attack on Rand so half-hearted? I'm sure there's some reason for it, but it still FEELS arbitrary, that the attack came right then, and was powerful enough to be really dangerous, but not actually planned in a way which would, you know, work (such as finding Rand, claiming to bring a message from Taim, preparing to open a gateway away, and then balefiring him.) There's supposed to be good reasons for all these half-hearted assassination attempts, but it still has an unfortunate tendency to read as if "kill Rand" and "don't kill Rand" plots are exactly calculated to balance out and produce an endless string of half-hearted attempts every book or so.
To balance things out, I should probably finish my post about things about WoT I thought were very GOOD.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-11 09:37 am (UTC)I think the Aes Sedai are overall lawful neutral ('cept the clearly evil ones of course) and probably they aren't going to claim that the law doesn't hold. Not sure. Also the Hall are bound to at least act like Egwene is nominally in charge or else they look, er, stupid? or something and this whole rebellion thing fails and they get stilled and/or executed by Elaida which... not so good.
There is also the tedious Murder Mystery plot (it happens in the middle of some travelling, it gets resolved eventually in a rather unsatisfying way and, er, it was more interesting the first time around?).
IIRC at least one of the Forsaken does something interesting... /fx looks // ah, not much actually. Although some minor plotting.
(Btw - Leigh Butler's comments and also the encyclopedia wot summaries at this point contain some MASSIVE spoilers for tGS; just saying)