With penultimate cheer, I welcome you back to the Wheel of Time Reread!
Today’s entry covers Chapters 47, 48, and 49 of A Memory of Light, in which conflicts are resolved, a revelation is reached, and an Age is ended.
Previous reread entries are here. The Wheel of Time Master Index is here, which has links to news, reviews, interviews, and all manner of information about the Wheel of Time in general. The index for all things specifically related to the final novel in the series, A Memory of Light, is here.
Also, for maximum coolness, the Wheel of Time reread is also now available as an ebook series, from your preferred ebook retailer!
This reread post, and all posts henceforth, contain spoilers for the entire Wheel of Time series. If you haven’t read, continue at your own risk.
And now, the post!
Chapter 47: Watching the Flow Writhe
What Happens
Her feet ruined, Aviendha weakly fends off Graendal’s weave as she tries to drag herself to the gateway. Graendal is not much better than she, dazed with blood loss, but she keeps attacking, and begins the weave for Compulsion. In desperation, Aviendha begins unweaving the gateway, hoping for an explosion like when Elayne had tried the same thing in Ebou Dar, to take both her and the Forsaken out.
“What are you doing?” Graendal demanded.
Aviendha picked faster, and in her haste, picked at the wrong thread. She froze, watching the flow writhe, setting off the others near it.
Graendal hissed, and began to set the Compulsion on Aviendha.
The gateway exploded in a flash of light and heat.
Shaisam engulfs the battlefield, searching for al’Thor, but hesitates when a piece of him goes blank. He searches for it, and finds a corpse on the field that looks oddly familiar.
The corpse’s hand reached up and grabbed Shaisam by the throat. He gasped, thrashing, as the corpse opened its eye.
“There’s an odd thing about diseases I once heard, Fain,” Matrim Cauthon whispered. “Once you catch a disease and survive, you can’t get it again.”
Shaisam struggles, dropping the dagger. Cauthon tells him he’s come to “give you your gift back”, and considers their debt paid in full. Then he stabs Shaisam in the heart with the dagger.
Tied to this pitiful mortal form, Mordeth screamed. Padan Fain howled, and felt his flesh beginning to melt from his bones. The mists trembled, began to swirl and shake.
Together they died.
Perrin finds Gaul wounded and nearly spent, but still on guard outside the cave entrance. He assures Perrin that no one passed him, and the Car’a’carn is safe.
“You did well, my friend,” Perrin replied. “Better than anyone could have expected. You have much honor.”
He shifts Gaul and himself to the Two Rivers camp in Merrilor and then the waking world. Grady is astonished, and demands to know how Perrin did that, but Perrin ignores him, fighting a battle with himself. He wants to search for Faile, but Rand is unguarded in the dream now.
He had to go look for her, didn’t he? Wasn’t that his duty, as her husband? Couldn’t someone else look after Rand?
But… if not him, then who?
Though it ripped him apart, Perrin sought the wolf dream one last time.
Moridin picks up Callandor, and laughs to discover that it can amplify the True Power as well as the One Power. Rand yells at him that it is death to channel the True Power here; Moridin shouts back that it is the oblivion he seeks, and he will take Rand with him. Rand thinks on how Min had been the one to discover why he had needed such a flawed and dangerous weapon, and as Moridin begins to draw on Callandor, he yells “Now!” to Nynaeve and Moiraine. The two women seize control of Moridin, exploiting that flaw, and link with Rand, directing the flow of all three Powers—saidar, saidin, and the True Power—to him, which he directs at the Dark One.
Rand punched through the blackness there and created a conduit of light and darkness, turning the Dark One’s own essence upon him.
Rand felt the Dark One beyond, his immensity. Space, size, time… Rand understood how these things could be irrelevant now.
With a bellow — three Powers coursing through him, blood streaming down his side — the Dragon Reborn raised a hand of power and seized the Dark One through the hole in Shayol Ghul, like a man reaching through water to grab the prize at the river’s bottom.
The Dark One tried to pull back, but Rand’s claw was gloved by the True Power. The enemy could not taint saidin again. The Dark One tried to withdraw the True Power from Moridin, but the conduit flowed too freely, too powerfully to shut off now. Even for Shai’tan himself.
So it was that Rand used the Dark One’s own essence, channeled in its full strength. He held the Dark One tightly, like a dove in the grip of a hawk.
And light exploded from him.
Chapter 48: A Brilliant Lance
What Happens
Elayne stands among countless corpses, watching numbly as the entire plateau of the Heights collapses in on itself, but then feels Rand gathering power and spins to focus on him. She gasps as a brilliant light shoots into the sky to the north, and knows the end has come.
Thom stumbles back as light pours from the mouth of the cavern.
Light it was, breaking out of the top of the mountain of Shayol Ghul, a radiant beam that melted the mountain’s tip and shot straight into the sky.
Min pauses in her tending to the wounded, feeling Rand’s agonized determination, and everyone turns to watch the brilliant lance of light spearing the sky to the north.
Aviendha blinks at the light, and rejoices in the strength she feels from Rand. Graendal turns an adoring gaze on Aviendha and begs to be allowed to serve her, and Aviendha realizes the Power explosion from her unweaving had caused Graendal’s Compulsion weave to backfire upon her instead. She ignores Graendal and watches the light, holding her breath.
A weeping mother thanks Logain for rescuing her son. Androl reports that the Heights have collapsed, and Logain wonders if he will ever be able to dig out his prize. He thinks he is a fool for abandoning that power to rescue people who would hate and fear him, but then looks around and realizes the refugees are treating him and the other Asha’man with gratitude and admiration, and no fear at all. The weeping mother promises to send her son to the Black Tower when he is of age, for testing. Logain notes that she calls it “the talent”, not “the curse”. Then light bathes them from the north, and Logain feels channeling of such power that it even dwarfs what he’d felt from the cleansing. Gabrelle says it’s happening.
Logain reached to his belt, then took three items from his pouch. Discs, half white, half black. The nearby Asha’man turned toward him, pausing in Healing and comforting the people.
“Do it,” Gabrelle said. “Do it, sealbreaker.”
Logain snapped the once unbreakable seals, one by one, and dropped the pieces to the ground.
Chapter 49: Light and Shadow
What Happens
Everything appears dead and crumbling in the wolf dream as Perrin approaches Shayol Ghul; oddly, he can see Dragonmount beyond it, as if the world is shrinking. He enters the Pit of Doom and finds Lanfear inside. She complains about the dreamspike, but Perrin says it keeps the other Forsaken away. She tells him “something amazing” has happened, and they go down the tunnel. He sees the man Rand had been fighting earlier holding Callandor, with Nynaeve’s hand on his shoulder. She, Moiraine and Rand are all facing the blackness beyond. Lanfear whispers that this is perfect, and instructs Perrin to kill the shorter woman while she takes care of the other.
Perrin frowned. Something about that seemed very wrong. “Kill…?”
“Of course,” Lanfear said. “If we strike quickly, there will still be time to seize control of Moridin while he holds that blade. With that, I can force Lews Therin to bow.” She narrowed her eyes. “He holds the Dark One between his fingers, needing only one squeeze to pinch the life — if it can be called that — away. Only one hand can save the Great Lord. In this moment, I earn my reward. In this moment, I become highest of the high.”
Lanfear grumbles to herself about being forced to use “such an inferior tool” as if she were Graendal. She reassures Perrin that she won’t make him kill the one from his village, and gets Perrin to “admit” that he hates the shorter one for stealing him away from his family, leaving them to be killed. Perrin looks at Nynaeve and Moiraine and Rand, and knows Lanfear will kill Rand too. He thinks he can’t let it happen, and yet he moves with her.
“I will count to three,” Lanfear said, not turning toward him.
My duty, Perrin thought, is to do the things Rand cannot.
This was the wolf dream. In the wolf dream, what he felt became reality.
“One,” Lanfear said.
He loved Faile.
“Two.”
He loved Faile.
“Three.”
He loved Faile. The Compulsion vanished like smoke in the wind, thrown off like clothing changed in the blink of an eye. Before Lanfear could strike, Perrin reached out and took her by the neck.
He twisted once. Her neck popped in his fingers.
Unable to wholly throw off the Compulsion, Perrin cries for Lanfear. He thinks that he had never thought he could kill a woman, but thinks that at least he took this burden from Rand.
He looked up toward Rand. “Go,” Perrin whispered. “Do what you must do. As always, I will watch your back.”
As the seals crumble, Rand pulls the Dark One free and into the Pattern, where it can be affected by time and therefore destroyed. It is vast, and yet Rand holds it in his hand and feels it is tiny and pitiful. He tells the Dark One that it really is nothing, and could never have given Rand the peace he offered. He feels himself dying, and prepares to snuff the Dark One out, but then stops. He realizes that while much of what the Dark One had shown him were lies, the vision Rand himself had created was true.
If he did as he wished, he would leave men no better than the Dark One himself.
What a fool I have been.
Rand yelled, thrusting the Dark One back through the pit from where it had come.
Using all three Powers, Rand weaves something which isn’t any of the five forms, but Light itself, and forges the Dark One’s prison anew.
He understood, finally, that the Dark One was not the enemy.
It never had been.
Moiraine pulls Nynaeve to her feet and they run, scrambling from the burning light behind them. They burst out of the cave and Moiraine almost falls off the edge of the mountain, but Thom catches her. She looks back at the corridor.
She opened her eyes, though she knew that the light was too intense, and she saw something. Rand and Moridin, standing in the light as it expanded outward to consume the entire mountain in its glow.
The blackness in front of Rand hung like a hole, sucking in everything. Slowly, bit by bit, that hole shrank away until it was just a pinprick.
It vanished.
Commentary
There was really no point in doing separate commentaries for these three chapters, so here we are.
Sooooo, okay. I’m going to get to Rand and the huge earthshattering (and more important) stuff in a minute, but first I have to address what is one of my largest problems with AMOL’s Big Ass Ending (although technically the entire novel could be considered a Big Ass Ending, but whatever), and that is the scene here where Mat kills Shaisam.
Because this scene really, really bugs me. It bugged me the first time I read it, and it bugs me even more now. It bugs me so much, in fact, that I seriously considered not really getting into it at all, because I was worried that it would come across as overly harsh and hater-y, especially so close to the end of the whole shebang.
But, well, this is at least nominally supposed to be a critique of the Wheel of Time, as well as a collection of my personal reactions and musings on it, so to avoid bringing up a thing because it’s too critical seems sort of like missing the point, a bit. So here goes.
I see what was being attempted in having Mat kill Fain/Mordeth/Whatever, but the way it was actually executed, in my opinion, completely missed the mark. The intended purpose (at least as I see it) was symmetry, because it’s been reiterated over and over again throughout the books that Rand, Mat, and Perrin are all crucial to winning the Last Battle. Rand is the most central, of course, but it’s been made very clear that he’s doomed to failure without the other two boys: “cut one leg of the tripod and they all fall”, or however that quote went.
So Mat showing up to kill Fain is an attempt to fulfill that foreshadowing in the most direct way: having all three of the Superboys at Shayol Ghul, defeating critical foes and ergo averting the apocalypse: Mat vs. Fain, Perrin vs. Slayer/Lanfear, and Rand vs. Moridin/the Dark One. Which is fine on the face of it, except that the way it was done, symmetry was exactly what it didn’t achieve.
The imbalance is clear just from what I wrote in the above paragraph, in fact, but it’s even more than just the fact that Rand and Perrin have multiple nemeses to defeat while Mat only has one: it’s that the “nemesis” status of Mat’s foe has, by comparison, practically zero set-up or backstory at all, and therefore has no emotional payoff either—or at least not nearly the payoff of the other two’s conflicts.
Rand’s conflict with Ishamael/Moridin and the Dark One has, of course, been extant throughout the entire series, and is kind of the entire point of everything, so I’m not really comparing the Mat-Fain thing with that (Rand’s payoff should be greater than the other two boys’), but where Mat-Fain really suffers by comparison is to Perrin’s conflicts, especially that with Slayer.
Because, Perrin and Slayer’s history of foe-dom has been set-up and developed at great length, okay? For more than half of the entire series, in fact. Their history of enmity is complex, nuanced, and has been very successfully built up emotionally for both the characters and the readers. The payoff in AMOL, therefore, when Perrin finally, finally kills Slayer, is the satisfying catharsis we all had been looking for re: that particular storyline for a very long time.
Even Perrin and Lanfear’s conflict, though not nearly of the duration as was his and Slayer’s, was set-up well in advance and heavily foreshadowed, being the fulfillment of a prophecy made all the way back in LOC.
And then there’s Mat vs. Fain, and… yeah, we’ve got none of that here.
Because yes, Mat arguably has cause to be pissed at Mordeth, whom he could view as being the reason he got his brain shredded and had to go through Aes Sedai Dagger Rehab, and all that followed from that. This is ignoring, of course, that in reality that whole thing was actually entirely Mat’s own fault, from failing to heed Moiraine’s instructions to suggesting they split up in the creepy haunted city (still not over that) to picking up the dagger in the first place, but arguably Mat could blame Mordeth for it anyway. Okay, sure. And also arguably, he could blame Fain for being the reason they left the Two Rivers and started this whole thing where he had to become a bloody hero. Again, I think that’s massively missing the point, but Mat does that sometimes, so fine.
But the thing is, there was no build-up for this theoretical enmity and showdown. Other than just a few chapters before this, where Mat had some (rather shoehorned-in) thoughts about the dagger and his addiction to it, as far as I can recall Mat hardly ever even mentions the dagger once he’s freed from it, much less pines over it excessively, and he mentions/thinks about Mordeth or Fain even less, post-TEOTW—possibly not at all, though I could be wrong about that. Certainly there is no history of direct confrontation or personal enmity between Fain/Mordeth and Mat throughout the series, the way there is between Perrin and Slayer.
In fact, Perrin has a much stronger case for being Fain’s nemesis than Mat ever did, considering Fain slaughtered Perrin’s entire family while leaving Mat’s relatives (more or less) untouched. The intensity level needed for the conflict between Mat and Fain, by comparison, just isn’t there.
Frankly, the whole thing just seemed to come out of left field. And not only that, but I’m not even sure it made sense. Exactly when and how did Mat discover or deduce that Shaisam’s Shadar Logoth-y mojo was like chicken pox to him? Did he just assume that he would be immune to it? Because even if he did and that’s what we’re going with here (and if so, wow), that was not set up or foreshadowed in the slightest as far as I can recall.
Basically, Mat vs. Shaisam was a conflict with no developed history and no tease or foreshadowing for the way in which it was resolved, which means it was a conflict with no build-up, no emotional investment for the reader, and therefore no payoff. And when set against the huge payoffs of the other two Superboys’ conflicts, it makes the whole thing seem… lopsided.
And that bugs me. From a narrative infrastructure viewpoint, if you will. Buildings that aren’t built correctly fall down, and this is also true of stories.
Not that I think AMOL (or WOT) actually fell down because of this, because one misfired subplot is not nearly enough to cause this behemoth to collapse, but it does make the end product just slightly shakier than it would have been otherwise. In My Opinion.
The counterargument to my complaint of asymmetry, of course (made to me by the lovely Aubree Pham when we discussed this in the Loose Threads panel at JordanCon), is that sometimes symmetry is not the point. As Aubree put it, life is messy and asymmetrical, so why should the apocalypse be any less so? Why should I insist that everything has to be tied up with a neat bow on it? Why I gots to be like that, yo?
(Okay, she didn’t remotely say that last part, but I find it extremely funny to imagine her doing so. Heh.)
And her point is well taken, and certainly I don’t think that everyone is going to find this asymmetry as distressing as I did, but I do argue that whether it bothers you or not, there is no doubt that it is there, and thus worth talking about.
But not for any longer, because enough already!
Strangely, although something of the same argument could be made re: appropriate nemesis matchage for the conflict between Aviendha and Graendal (in the sense that it would have been more appropriate for someone who’d actually been Compelled by Graendal, like Elayne or Nynaeve, to take her down than Aviendha), that conflict resolution didn’t bother me at all. Probably because the extreme appropriateness of Graendal falling prey to her own favorite weapon canceled it out—and also because avenging Rhuarc is more than enough cause for nemesisity on Aviendha’s part, if you ask me.
(“Nemesisity”. Seriously, what is wrong with my brain, y’all. Don’t answer that.)
[ETA: It’s been pointed out by several commenters that Elayne and Nynaeve were Compelled by Moghedien, not Graendal. Oops. So… nevermind then!]
Speaking of Compulsion, I felt mighty stupid at the scene with Perrin and Lanfear in the Pit of Doom, because I had totally not realized that Compulsion was in play all along during their little pow-wows until it was made obvious here. And then I facepalmed, because duh, of course that’s what was happening! Everything with them makes so much more sense now.
I kind of thought for a moment about saying something about how it should have been Rand who killed Lanfear, but on reflection I don’t think that’s right. Rand said his goodbyes to their conflict at their last meeting, and in a way, for him to have killed her after that would have cheapened that “moving on” moment. So, on reflection I have no problem with Perrin being the one to kill her. Plus, it was a nice little bit of symmetry (I like symmetry, if you hadn’t heard) that Lanfear was there (even if only as a corpse) for the closing of the Bore that she had been the one to open.
And wow, in the end it was Lanfear who turned out to be the most dangerous enemy of all, wasn’t she. Even the frickin’ Dark One had been basically defeated by this point, and yet she almost brought the whole thing down.
That’s… fitting, somehow. I’m not sure how but it is.
I remember being bothered at Logain’s scene for some reason when I first read it, possibly because I thought the refugees’ one-eighty on the subject of dudes who channel seemed a tad abrupt, but you know, even if it is a little too good to be true, it’s pretty believable that the refugees would be overly effusive in the heat of the moment. If I had just been saved from being slaughtered and eaten by giant monsters, I probably wouldn’t care about my rescuer’s day job right then either. Maybe later I’d be less enthused, but right then? Hugs all around.
I guess it’s a good thing Logain didn’t get too distracted by all his refugee-savin’ to remember to break the seals, though, huh?
Which brings us to the actual Big Ass Conflict and Rand (and Min’s) Big Ass Ploy re: Callandor. Which I can honestly say I did not see coming, though I was unsure at the time whether I could have seen it coming, because I did not at all recall being told before this point that Callandor could amplify the True Power as well as the One Power.
I don’t actually understand that, either, because why would the Aes Sedai we see in Rand’s trip down memory lane in Rhuidean make a sa’angreal that could do that? And how would they make it do that if they wanted to?
But whatever, I’ll allow that handwave, because even though it was not telegraphed very well and I’m not convinced it totally makes sense, the result was cool enough that I’m willing to let it go.
Because the result was, I think, very, very cool.
It seems sort of… I don’t know, unnecessary to declare Rand’s decision not to kill the Dark One and recreate its prison instead a Crowning Moment of Awesome, because I don’t really feel like it could possibly have been anything else, so saying so seems a little redundant.
But hey, for the record: that was totally a Crowning Moment of Awesome.
It was not surprising, once you got past the method (using Callandor and Moridin to create a new kind of Power), but that’s not a criticism in this case, for me anyway, because the lack of surprise wasn’t due to a feeling of predictability, so much as one of inevitability.
Rand’s revelation—that the true enemy he had to defeat was himself—was not surprising, but it was not supposed to be. This was how it was always going to go; the only question was how we were going to get there. Which, I guess, is now a question we have answered.
It’s been a year since AMOL’s release, and I’m still a little stunned about that.
There’s probably more I could say about it all, but… well sometimes there’s only just so much you need to say. So we will stop here.
Tune in next week for—gosh, the final episode. Wow.
Things move so much faster after The Last Battle.
Thank you for your years of dedication to the re-read. Can’t believe there is only one more to go…
All three at once Leigh?
That means it will be over sooner! :-(
Edit after reading:
Aubree’s right. Life is messy & there’s no balance. I also agree with @5, Mat didn’t have a plan. His plan and place in the second half of the LB was to bring the Heroes of the Horn & thus the Giant Sprit Wolves to SL so they could fight the Last Hunt. He got stab by killing fog, popped up alive and in time to kill Fain.
Fain who:
1) Caused him to leave the TR.
2) Caused him to chase across the continent where he became the Horn Sounder
3) Caused him the illness (in part) that wiped his memory, which made him obsess about filling that void. Which lead to the doorways and the Snakes & Foxes.
Do I wish he had thought about Fain a time or two in between? Yes. But Mat’s not the most “self-reflective” of people, unlike Perrin.
As for how Callandor was a TP conduit wonder if one of the creators was a Darkfriend and the DO ordered them to help create it. Thinking it could be used to trap the Dragon Reborn. Not help DR win against the DO.
Ny & Moiraine’s big moment, and it gets a one liner basically – sad. But have adjusted myself to it.
So I guess next year we can revisit to talk about all the new information from the Encyclopedia.
I will say, re the TP use of Callandor, that it was foreshadowed at least somewhat, as one major theory for the ‘3 becomes 1’ Callandor prophecy was it’s use in channeling din, dar, and the TP.
I don’t think Mat planned anything, he got stabbed through the back with Mashadar and decided to go for Fain when he didn’t die. While it does come out of nowhere, I think that’s almost the point (Fain showed up expecting to be a big climactic foe for the Dark One and Rand, the thing that tipped the balance, and instead he discover’s he’s a footnote that’s barely noticable.
No comment on the female Forsaken’s survival rate? Moghedien, Graendal, and Mesaana all walk away from the Last Battle, albeit in poor shape and sufering humilation etc.
Not everything has to be all big build up to a big conclusion. I kinda liked the red herringness of Fain. Plus, it reminded my of the Loki/Tony Stark moment … this usually works!
“Go,” Perrin whispered. “Do what you must do. As always, I will watch your back.”
this quote by Perrin, when I initially read it, hit me with so much emotion. If there is ever a movie, this scene would be POWERFUL!
Yeah, something about the whole Mat/Fain thing always bugged me, too. Actually, even Rand seemed to have more of a…nemesis…connection to Fain after Fain slashed him with the dagger, than Mat did even though both he and Fain had actually been possessed by the thing. Fain’s hatred, of course, was focused on Rand all along.
Which, come to think about it, might have been the point: Fain was so focused on finding and killing Rand that he was oblivious to the threat Mat posed to him, until he literally stumbled over it. I think this is something else that sort of got lost in the shuffle, between RJ largely ignoring Mat’s issues with the dagger after he was “healed” and Brandon essentially wrapping up Fain’s story almost as an afterthought.
That said: Even Mat proved to be capable of wisdom in the end, if he were hit with a big enough cluestick: “For once, a gamble even I don’t want to touch.” Heh.
The immunity to Shadar Logoth is forshadowed in TGH? when Fain cuts himself with the dagger and isn’t affected like the Seanchan whom Mat stabs with the dagger.
If you need a second enemy for Mat, does Demandred count? Demandred and Mat were directing the Last Battle against each other (though Mat didn’t get to be the one to kill Demandred).
Agree with @5, the Matt/Fain thing didn’t feel like a failed attempt at symmetry to me. It felt like Matt killed Fain because he was the only one that could. And as for the balance, I think Matt’s marshalling of the entire light-side army brings his contribution up to the level of the other two.
Regarding Perrin and Lanfear in the cave: Could that scene have been the payoff for that whole, long, interminable and excruciating Plotline of Doom? Because in the end, it was Perrin’s love of Faile that saved him (and, by extension, Rand.)
Is it possible that Callandor`s ability to amplify the True Power is an accident? From how Rand describes creating an angreal, putting part of your channelling into a seed for a while, creating a sa`angreal probaply involves a group doing the same thing. If it was still in production when saidin was tainted, it could have gotten its affinity for the True Power from the Taint.
Couple things:
I felt like Mat’s true nemesis was Demandred, and so his faceoff was basically the entirety of the book. But yes, the thing with Fain just felt like unnecessary filler. Fain’s target through the whole series has been Rand, and arguably Rand suffers more from the wound Fain inflicted on him than Mat did from carrying the dagger.
Graendal did not Compel Elayne and Nynaeve – that was Moghedien.
The “flaw” in Callandor may have been unintentional. Or perhaps it was crafted by one of the Forsaken/Dreadlords after the Bore was opened. After all, Callandor was in the Stone of Tear, while the various artifacts in Rand’s trip down memory lane were in Rhuidean (well, other than the ones people took/lost). There’s nothing (that I recall, anyway) to say that Callandor was ever one of the items being transported by the caravan.
When did Elayne and/or Nynaeve get compelled by Graendal? Moghedien is the one who compelled them while they were hunting Liandrin’s Black Sisters…
Also to chime in, I didn’t have a problem with symmetry either. I view Mat as having to deal with 2 foes – one Forsaken and one “wildcard/other”, just like Perrin. Just because his other foe didn’t happen to be at Shayol Ghul doesn’t mean it doesn’t count, does it?
I have to agree, Leigh. The plotline: During the Trollic Wars, Mordeth convinced the king of Aridhol to let him use the tactics of the Shadow to fight the Shadowspawn. This made the citizens hard and cruel, devoid of compassion. They lost their humanity. When they died their hate and suspicion created the fog of Mashadar.
Moiraine told Rand: “Padan Fain was the Dark One’s creature to the depths of his soul, but I believe that in Shadar Logoth he fell afoul of Mordeth, who was as vile in fighting the Shadow as ever the Shadow itself was. Mordeth tried to consume Fain’s soul, to have a human body again, but found a soul that had been touched directly by the Dark One, and what resulted….What resulted was neither Padan Fain nor Mordeth, But something far more evil, a blend of the two.”
With all this to work with, I think the plotline needed a more relevant and satisfying ending.
Yeah, I agree with you on the Mat/Fain thing. A big part of that was probably because, after Far Madding, Fain just sort of went his own way to consolidate power where he was basically divorced from the actual plot while he absorbed everything in sight and transformed into some sort of abomination.
I know you generally seemed to dislike Fain for most of his time in the books, but for me, he worked for a long time until they made him more like a comic book Lovecraftian monster.
a. Peddler who happens to be darkfriend — Cool
b. Gets possessed by ghost of evil advisor from the past — Cool
c. Becomes his own entity where he’s sort of an enemy to the light and dark — Really cool, as wild card characters can be intriguing. And with his connection to certain main characters from when he was sent to hunt them, it affords him the chance to be very present during a lot of key plot points.
d. Make him crazy as hell in the process — Not so cool, as it takes a lot of intrigue away from the “wild card” process. I mean, Slayer in this book, where his attitude is more like, “The only thing keeping me from saying ‘screw it all’ is that my Isam half really wants to keep hunting a couple of these Two Rivers-ers” is more “wild card” than Fain became.
e. Turn him into SHA-ZAM!…I mean Shaisam. — No, just…what the…no…
I guess, in a way, this makes me give Jordan and Sanderson a lot of credit. 14 books totalling over 10K pages (estimation) and that is the one big gripe I’d have with the whole thing as far as how specific arcs ended. I mean, there were a few minor arcs where I’d say I might have a minor quibble here or there with, but to me, this was the only thing that had me shaking my head.
It’s basically the act of turning a tangible threat to Rand and company into some amorphous, intangible force that due to bad luck, had no actual impact at the end. Kind of a lesser version of the Dark One, except this guy didn’t have the hordes of followers doing all the work in his name.
Fain was a wild card. I think it’s totally appropriate that he didn’t get much screen-time and build-up, as it would have ruined the mystery and unpredictability surrounding the role he would play in things.
That said I was still kinda hoping he would have a more significant bearing on things. Never mind though, AMoL and WoT as a whole are still both absolutely phenomenal.
On one hand Matt/Fain lacked symmetry but on the other hand, Fain needed killing and someone had to do it right?
(speaking of symmetry i remember a long time ago i thought Nynaeve would defeat Semirhage. Nyn being Yellow and Semi being Dark Yellow. but ehh.)
I would rather have seen a more in depth fight with Cadsuane and Graendal. Well really i would have rather seen more screen time with Cads period. I didnt really like the way BS wrote her but still i liked her character. She’s got the paralis-net, it would have been so great to see that in action.
I totally missed Lanfear’s Compulsion of Perrin until this point also. You know in some books and tv shows enemies sometimes have conversations. They don’t always try to kill each other on sight. That, coupled with Perrin’s unwillingness to kill/attack a woman, and Lanfear trying to get out from under Moridin… well I could see why she would be helping Perrin and why he wouldn’t just kill her out of hand.
Oddly enough, Avi’s gateway exploding in just light and sound but no damage was foreshadowed or i guess just said outright early on in the series (Path of Daggers i think) but still, I dont like how that solved the problem with Graendal, tho it was symmetrical for her to be Compulsed… seeing as she’s no danger now i wonder if they’ll execute her or use her to learn weaves from now.
i could go on nitpicking but overall i love the book and the ending lol.
Agreed with @9 and @10- I would think that the whole big blood and guts chess match of doom was as nemesisisticalishmentarianism as it gets.
Thank you Leigh for adding to much to my understanding of the Wheel of Time. I’ve followed your reread for years and am sorry to reach the end. I haven’t posted more than a couple of times, but I’ve looked forward to every post.
Thank you again!
I think the Fain thing would have been better if they’d ditched the attempt at symmetry and just played it out as random chance. Give Mat one more right time/right place coincidence.
Well, I don’t love this book, but Mat did more than Fain, he countered Demandred, he was basically the only one who could. If not for Mat, Rand would not have had the peace he needed, because any guardians at the entrance would have been overwhelmed long before.
I guess this settles the Lanfear really evil thing, I guess we still don’t know for sure if she drilled the bore on purpose, but she definitely joined up right quick and stuck with it for a long time.
in Re: Mat
The dagger also led to the holes in his memory, which led to his wish to fill the holes, which won the war. I think that is the fulfillment of Mat’s arc.
The symmetry I think is in Rand having his friends cover his weakspots. I’m not entirely sure Rand could have won the war, defeated slayer, or defeated Fain. He also seemed unable to stop Lanfear.
In a previous chapter, Mat gets speared through the chest with a tendril of Mashadar when he’s talking to Perrin. It’s probably how he found out he had immunity.
I totally agree that Mat’s killing of Fain/Shaisam was out of nowhere and felt completely disjointed from the rest of the ending. Fain was always primarily Rand’s enemy and it should have been Rand who dealt with him.
Mat’s problem in this book is that he already defeated his chief enemies in the last book, taking out the Golem and defeating the Aelfinn/Eelfinn. He really had no one else to fight, he was well ahead of the game.
Still, as far as symmetry goes, I think you discount the fact that Mat did have another enemy in this book, Demendred, fighting out the greatest battle in history. And if anything, the biggest problem with Mat is that he wasn’t the one to kill Demendred. As cool as it was to see Lan sheath the sword, the battle on the fields of Merrilor was a knockdown, drag out fight between Mat and Demendred and it should have been their fight that decided it. I was actually fully expecting it after Gawyn and Galad failed, considering Mat had beat them both back in book three and a big point was made about how the greatest swordsman in history lost to man with a quarterstaff. Mat killing Demendred would have been much better symmetry then Lan killing Demendred, which was kind of out of nowhere if really think about it and ignore the awesomeness of the scene.
I also have a big problem with Fain’s place in the whole killing the Dark One debate Rand is having. Why does killing the Dark One make it so people don’t have a choice between good and evil? There are other types of evil besides the Dark One, Fain/Shaisam/Mashadar is supposed to be exactly that. Maybe Rand should have killed the Dark One and then have had Fain takes his place in some manner? It would have changed the point of the whole book, and it is certainly not my story, but there are problems with the end that could have been resolved better.
With all that said, I still loved the end for the most part, and the rest of the story. Great job with the re-read, I have read form the beginning and you have certainly added to my enjoyment of the books.
Being a long-time reader/admirer of this re-read, and a very infrequent contributor, let me echo the thoughts of others in thanking you, Leigh, and you, Tor.com, and even you, the very frequent contributors, for so greatly and enjoyable expanding my appreciation and understanding of this phenomenal work. It is sad, indeed, to contemplate the nearing of the end, but I guess one can always go back and re-read the text and the re-read hand-in-hand and extend the experience a bit longer!
More to the point of this installment, I rather understand Leigh’s sense of imbalance in Mat’s role at the end, but when you add in his reeling-in of the Seanchan Empire and his leadership of the Collective Armies of the Good, his role, it seems to me, is equally important and neccesary to the final resolution, even if his particular actions in those final moments were somewhat less. And as for his immunity,I believe it became known to him in the moments following the mist’s attack, when he recognized it for what it was, rejoiced at the revelation that it did not kill him, and quickly deduced the why of it all and it’s implication for his ability to confront Mashedar/Fain.
Aviendha is awesome and it was great how she went up against one of the Forsaken and came out on top. I think my favourite thing about it was how Graendal’s Compulsion backfired. This will forever make Aviendha a legend in the eyes of the Aiel because she has essentially taken one of the Shadowsouled as Gai’shain.
Greandal never compelled Elayne and Nynaeve, that was Moghedien.
The lack of a final showdown between Moghedian and Nynaeve, and of a re-match between Lanfear and Moiraine really surprised me. I really thought, with Moggy and Cyndane established as Moridin’s personal minions and Rand needing two women with him, that the story was setting up for that.
So the storyline with Perrin and Lanfear really through me off, it does go back to The Dragon Reborn when she visits his dream, but I don’t recall any interaction between them past that.
I expected her final defeat to be at Moiraine’s hands. The fact that Moiraine got so little to do at Shayol Ghul, and frankly in the book in general, was one of things I found most disappointing abou AMOL.
For me, the true disappointment of the Fain vs Mat sequence wasn’t really about the long-term build-up, but about the execution in the moment. Since TEOTW, we’ve known Fain would be a thorn in Rand’s side, and as the series progressed I kept wondering if that plot would resolve at the climax of a book before the Last Battle. It never did, and the suspense of “What is Fain going to do to meddle with Rand’s plans” kept me going, interested, and awaiting a major moment of awesomeness. We knew it was coming, and Fain continued to grow more dangerous, especially in the mystery of what he was doing. When we saw he was heading for Shayol Ghul (can’t remember exactly when we were given/hinted at that fact), I expected a whole lot.
And to have such a short (relatively), anticlimatic, and uninteresting end to the Fain conflict was the true let-down. I think, perhaps, it’s the only problem I had with any of Sanderson’s work in the WoT, but it was a large hole in the end for me. I like that Mat took down Fain/Mordeth and find that appropriate, but the suddenness and blandness of Fain’s involvement in/at the Last Battle kind of felt like a very close football game that ends on a self-inflicted penalty that runs out the rest of the gameclock.
The other thing that bothered me about the Fain/Mordeth thing was narrative parallels with Gollum that didn’t pay off.
Leigh,
I have been apart of this re read since 2011. I am sad that it is almost over. (Unless you do it all over again with a new perspective- that of the series being done)
However, could this possibly mean two posts a week for ASoIaF?
I too felt that the Fain/Mat final showdown was bad. Especially the part where Perrin leaves Mat because he saw that Mat was ok with this or had a plan. I dunno the exact wording and im not blaming Perrin or any characters. Its That wording that bugs me.
In comparing Rand to the Dark One and Perrin To Slayer, you dont really have a nemesis for Mat really. He fought the boneless dude already and the Eelfinn/aelfinn.
And he cant exactly claim that the dice are trying to kill him. So…
I think this is one of those cases where the original outline of the story in Robert Jordan’s head had all the symmetry, but the series grew out of it and became messier.
Basically, you can see the three TR guys. Each has a specific battleground he has to win or the world is destroyed. Each has two specific foes to face on that battleground, one a Forsaken, one something weirder. None of them can substitute for the others. Each seemingly loses the fight, and then snatches victory from defeat.
Rand’s battlefield, of course, is Shayol Ghul. His Forsaken enemy is Ishamael/Moridin, first among them, closest to the Dark One, even frequently mistaken for BEING the Dark One in history. His “other” enemy is the Dark One. He’s the Dragon; no one else can stand in this role. Right at the climax, Moridin grabs Callandor from him, and all seems lost, but wait! It’s a trap! Victory for Rand!
Perrin’s battlefield is the World of Dreams. His enemies are Lanfear, explicitly pointed out as the most Dream-focused of the Forsaken, dark queen of Tel’Aran Rhiod, and Slayer, the deadly World of Dreams walking assassin. Perrin, as Wolfbrother, is the only one qualified to fight in the dream; no one else can do what he does. At the critical moment, we find out that Lanfear has ben Compelling him, and it looks like all is lost, but then he shakes it off and beats her in her own realm! Victory for Perrin!
Mat’s battlefield is the real, physical world. His two enemies are Demandred, the most martial of the Forsaken, and Padan Fain/Shaisam, working the Dagger taint. Mat was dagger-tainted, which set into motion the whole series of events that turned him into the Son of Battles, the greatest general ever, and got him the resources needed to win the physical battle, like the medallion and the Horn of Valere. Nobody else could have done what Mat did, meeting Demandred tactic for tactic and strategy for strategy long enough to pull out the win. Then, at the critical moment, Fain shows up and tags him with a deadly mist tentacle; all seems lost! But Mat is actually immune to Fain’s power! Victory for Mat!
In the outline, it’s all very neat.
The problem is that the series went on for 14 books, and the character development was very unevenly distributed for the antagonists. Moridin got lots, focused strongly on the rivalry with Rand. The Dark One was mostly a cipher, but what little there was, was Rand focused. Slayer got lots, focused completely on the rivalry with Perrin. Lanfear got a fair amount, mostly on Rand but spread around between all three guys. Demandred got almost nothing, and every bit of it was pointed at Rand. Padan Fain got huge amounts of character development, and most of it was pointed at Rand, with a strong side focus on Perrin, and almost nothing directed at Mat.
There was a strong symmetry built in, but then Mat spent a bunch of books having wacky adventures in Seanchan territory and the plot development ran away from him. By the time he catches back up, it’s the end of the world and he’s the only one of the three who hasn’t gotten around to having personal conflict with Padan Fain yet. Whoops.
The Fain v. Mat showdown (billed as Shaisam v. The Gambler on PPV) was out of nowhere, but then again so was Fain’s whole character. He never fit in the story, he never fit in the light vs. dark struggle, and he never fit in the last battle. So however you wanna kill him off, go for it, it doesn’t bother me too much, and at least they found something for Mat to do now that he no longer is the horn-blower.
@29 Completely agree.
I think that for Callendor & Min going through the histories to find out more about the weapon, and her revelations she found were the clues to Rand & Co. being able to take down Moridin & the hint of the True Power being channeled. I think the Aes Sedai who forged it in the first place did by design and accident created a conduit for the True Power. Remember that Callendor doesn’t have a buffer to stop Male Channelers from going over a certain limit? I think that that buffer is what prevents the True Power from being channelled. I think the True Power could not be channelled say from The Flute that Egwene used because that Sa’Angreal had a buffer. Anyway that is my theory anyway.
Just on the Mat question. I think the symmetry is there: first Mat has defeated a couple of big bad guys. He killed the gholam and he just out-generaled Demandred. So I think he had his share of action in the last books (which I still tend to view as 1 big book).
It also strikes me as right that he defeated Fain aka Mordeth aka Shaisam. RJ described Fain as a wild card and that’s just what Mat was too. Also, Mat represents Manetheran (before he got any other memories he had OT and memories that strongly suggest he was Aemon). Mordeth led to Aridhol betraying Manetheran so it’s fitting that Mat should defeat him. He’s also a symbolic lord of the underworld I think (with all his memories of the dead and Odin’s ordeal) so it makes sense he kills the undead Fain who by this point has a zombie army.
I do agree that it was badly delivered though. It was far too short – I guess because BS wanted to surprise us.
“He understood, finally, that the Dark One was not the enemy. It never had been.”
I may be alone, but I’m not a fan of this line. It takes what is a hugely complicated situation and seems to want to boil it down to an after school special moral. I get that the text was going for the fact that the last battle and the fate of the world always hinged in large degree to the choices Rand made in a “self vs. self” kind of way. But it’s hugely oversimplifying matters to state this to the exclusion of everything else. In many, MANY ways the Dark One is TOTALLY the enemy.
Maybe I’m not remembering it all correctly (I don’t have the book with me), but one thing I did like about the Mat/Fain scene was that Perrin could tell by the look on Mat’s face that he was okay and was going to take care of Fain. It just shows how well they know each other, what good friends they are, and how much trust Perrin has in Mat (to help sell the trick by fleeing, and expecting Mat to be able to handle it on his own). I would have liked to have seen him go back and make sure Mat was okay (or at least thought about it), but Stuff Was Happening at the time, and maybe it didn’t fit in the narrative.
I sort of agree that the Mat/Shaisam ending didn’t come off right, but I would have much preferred to have it end quickly, but without Mat’s conscious action. Like, Mat dodges an attack and brings his staff back to whack someone, but it hits something on the way, which just so happened to be Fain/Mordeth/whatever sneaking up to stab him with the dagger, and redirecting the thing into his/its heart. Then Mat says, “Huh, would you look at that?” and walks away.
@BraidTug, I think you may be right on the money when you suggest that Callandor may have been a trap created by early Black Ajah or something similar. It would fit very neatly into the theme of undercutting/trivilizing of prophecy (and the implications for the autonomy/determinism theme) if the Sword in the Stone turned out to be the very last Trap That We Have To Spring Anyway rather than a genuine identifying device by the Light for the Dragon Reborn. That is almost as ugly as some of the inversions in “River of Souls”. (Are we allowed “River of Souls” spoilers?)
@37, I do agree with you, and this is, in my opinion, the most serious flaw in the series. It’s impossible to tell without textual scholarship whether the problem was RJ’s, or whether his notes were not detailed enough for BS (who has, IMHO, generally not had the philosophical ability to develop cosmological content on this level, either in WoT or in the Cosmere when he got to write the system himself) to avoid muddling it. What is the Dark One? What is goodness? Why exactly is there something wrong with Rand’s version of a world without the Dark One? If the issue is the lack of autonomy, then that is potentially intriguing and resonant with the whole series (in which the most serious moral offenses, such as Compulsion, rape, forcible bonding, etc. have all been offenses against personal autonomy)? I suspect that may have been the intention, and it’s a powerful, well-set-up intention. But that’s not how it plays out. Rand’s version of the world “feels” off because he has taken away character elements like Elayne’s bad language, Aviendha’s violence, etc., not because he has taken away their chances to make moral choices. Again, my suspicion is that this was an issue of execution, not an issue of the original notes, but without a textual scholar to go through all the notes it’s impossible to be sure that RJ is off the hook for dropping the philosophical ball at least slightly in the end.
P.S. That said, when we get to the very end, if “autonomy” really is the center, then I think perhaps I can make a lot more sense of the final scene than BS admitted he was able to.
So, eye of the beholder, and all that. I was fine with the Mat/Shaisam thing, though I’ll freely admit that I look much more for personally-satisfying than for literarily-balanced in a situation like this. It felt okay to me. And, as I’ve said before, I was much happier with Mat/Shaisam than I was with Rand/Shai’tan – probably because to me, the latter wasn’t personally satisfying. (I’m not convinced it was literarily balanced, either, but whatever.)
KingofFlames @5 (and others) – I agree; I don’t think Mat went in planning to fight Shaisam or already knowing that he was immune. I think he got stabbed by Mashadar, and when he realized he wasn’t dead, he made the immunity connection.
Also, I rather liked Fain, with all his self-aggrandizement, meeting such an ignominious and unexpected end. It was… suitable.
birgit @9 – good point on the dagger-immunity. We saw it a long time ago, and were reminded of it several times throughout the series, IIRC, when Fain was all loving on it and cutting himself with it. Mat’s immunity shouldn’t have been a surprise – or at least, a facepalm kind of surprise where we suddenly realize we should have seen it coming.
Wes S. @11 – Very good point re: Perrin’s love of Faile. He was a bit freaked out by it, because he realized that he would be willing to do a lot of wacko stuff to get her back, but in the end it’s what broke him out of the Compulsion and saved him – allowing him to also save Rand, and eventually Faile herself.
KalvinKingsley @14 – “I view Mat as having to deal with 2 foes – one Forsaken and one “wildcard/other”, just like Perrin. Just because his other foe didn’t happen to be at Shayol Ghul doesn’t mean it doesn’t count, does it?”
Win.
Also, would that make Moridin Rand’s Forsaken and the DO his wildcard/other?
Bill M. @25 – “Why does killing the Dark One make it so people don’t have a choice between good and evil? There are other types of evil besides the Dark One, Fain/Shaisam/Mashadar is supposed to be exactly that.”
That’s exactly my reaction, and I haven’t yet seen a good answer to it. The only real answer is, “That’s what RJ decided to do with his story,” which isn’t very satisfying but is at least correct. My personal answer (in which I modify what I know RJ intended so as to fit both my taste and his world-building) is, “That’s what Rand believed, so he stated it as fact, but he’s only human and he was wrong.”
Of course, that leaves the implication that Rand, who really was just human, actually had the capacity to destroy the Dark One, which has problems of its own, but… yeah, well. Whatever?
plum @27 – “This will forever make Aviendha a legend in the eyes of the Aiel because she has essentially taken one of the Shadowsouled as Gai’shain.“
BAHAhahahaha! Good point! :D
Phigment @32 – Nice summary. And… you have a good point. One of the dangers of gardening, perhaps.
Ross @39 – That would have been priceless!! :D
Hey guys,
Whoops, y’all are totally right about Elayne and Nynaeve and Compulsion. Article has been edited. Thanks!
I haven’t read the comments yet, so this may have been already mentioned, but Leigh, you hit on a very interesting theme.
Mat really did have two nemeses, the same as Rand and Perrin – its just that they were defeated in Towers of Midnight. Mat defeats the Gholam, and then goes on to defeat the Aelfin and Eelfin. This really only leaves Mat with two unresolved plot lines.
The first of these is Tuon, and in many ways the last battle is as much of a conclusion as their plot comes to.
The second however is Mat’s desire to run from Rand which is a huge theme in the series. Because Mat’s nemeses are all finished for AMOL, he is able instead to be there in Rand’s place to counter first Demandred and then counter Fain, who were both Rand’s nemeses, not Mats! Viewed this way, I think Fain can be much more satisfying. Unfortunately the payoff isn’t really isn’t executed boldly enough to take advantage of all that setup, and instead focuses on Mat’s relationship with Fain. . .
Perrin does this too with Lanfear, but Mat is the one that really steps up in this book to finally be there for Rand.
Been following the reread off and on since 2010, so figured I better get in my first post before it’s over. I’ll lend another voice to thank Leigh for doing such an amazing job on all of this, and to the community for tracking with it so steadfastly. Your comments and insights definitely keep me from feeling like I’m reading alone! Thanks for all the awesome!
Re: Mat & Fain- It was mildly anticlimactic, but at the same time it was fitting. Honestly, Mashadar/Fain/Shaisam (is he part Machin Shin as well? I remember they encountered each other) had gotten so powerful by the end, that I don’t know if anyone else but Mat would even have had the ability to kill him. I thought it made a lot of sense that Mat dispatched him quickly and easily, because Mat hadn’t put a lot of forethought into the conflict or dwelt on Fain as a nemesis. If Perrin had been able to kill Slayer so easily it would have been a letdown, but this made sense. As many have stated, Mat’s main rival in this book was Demandred– and even though Mat did not personally end up killing him, I have no doubt that without his general-ship the Light Side forces would have been decimated.
There had to be a reason for Mat to still feel the tug toward Shayol Ghul– with him, Fain was a snap to get rid of, but without him, every person fighting there may have been lost. Not to mention he brought Olver and the Horn (and I could argue that without Mat taking the reigns when the Seanchan dude flying their creature got knocked unconscious, that Olver and the Horn may have fallen and been lost– and then the Darkhounds would have been all over everyone!).
Totally agree with you guys on wondering why killing the Dark One would have destroyed free will. But I can see how it would have derailed the whole cyclical nature of the Wheel of Time, so it makes sense in that way, but the reason Rand did it is still unsatisfying to me. His method, however, I thought was awesome– I never saw that twist coming with using Callandor to trap Moridin! Do you think Rand/Moiraine/Nynaeve talked and planned that offscreen, or would Rand have been too worried that forces of evil may eavesdrop and overhear? And, using the TP against the DO himself– what a clever way to guard against the taint!
The Mat/Fain thing was kind of cool, but so rushed, and did lack foreshadowing…I’d even kind of forgotten about Fain.
It kind of seemed like a ploy to get Mat to Shayol Ghul, more than anything. Mat’s true MoA was the whole last battle that he just directed and won, which was the majority of the book, so the symetry of the various Super Boys’ achievements at the Last Battle didn’t bother me.
I was confused on the Perrin/Lanfear compulsion thing too. Their whole “meet up” in Tel’aran’riod seemed odd to me. Had they even had any contact before this last plot twist with the Black Tower? It seemed appropriate that Lanfear would be the Big Bad of the Forsaken. She had the most contact with Rand after all, with all that emotionality going on with him/Lews. She was always very duplicitous.
I did love Rand’s MoA……his revelation that we are our own worst enemies, the shaft of pure white light, the revelation of Calandor’s true nature, the blending all the powers, the grabbing of Moridan by Moraine and Nynaeve and then them handing it off to Rand. Only Rand’s most trusted aes Sedai would give him that power. Wonderful.
And then I was most gratified when he rewove the pattern, as I predicted!! (Not that I was the only one that thought that ;-) )
I can’t believe we’re so close to the end of all endings. I do hope there’s a major wrap up post or two as well. WoT withdrawal will be awful!
MDMY@33:
You know, I agree with you there….Fain was really a wild card that never got played. Why was he even in these books?
I agree with you 100% about Fain and Mat. And it’s not even just because I like my symmetry too – the point about the apocalypse being messy and such, well, yes, but WOT has never really be like that. The storytelling in WOT has a lot of symmetry, so to excuse the lack of it here with “it’s the apocolapyse” seems like a bit of a copout to me.
It just wasn’t really set up properly, and just Mat having a run-in or two with Fain throughout the series would have helped. Rand had a couple of run-ins with Fain; doing the same with Mat wouldn’t have been too hard.
As to Perrin, if you had told me ahead of time that he would be the one to kill her, I would have been flabbergasted. They had like basically no interaction previous to AMOL! But they were set up well here in this last book, and Perrin being the one to kill her because he does the things Rand can’t is so, so fitting.
Mat’s extreme distrust (not just mildly healthy distrust that every non channeler has) of channelers likely stemmed from his Shaidar Logoth exposure. I know this has been mentioned by others. I always felt bad for the guy and I think that exposure is one of the reasons he can’t be a hero of the horn.
I like symmetry too Leigh. Mat fights for the here and now and the somewhat distant future by distracting Demandred and pulling a close victory out of his hat. Then he saves the day by bringing the HoV to counter the final Team Dark push that would have taken the Pit of Doom back. So there’s your twofer. Without this victory, Demandred would have ruled the world for years to come. With Fain it’s luck versus Wild Card with an unexpected result. I see the connection, but I didn’t really like the execution.
Perrin watches Rand’s back in TAR by defeating Slayer and then keeps Lanfear from becoming the Dark Queen of the multiverse. Although it would be fascinating if once she had seized the conduit of power and was the one doing the squeezing whether she would have been able to not pull that trigger being the narcissistic megalomaniacal power hungry fiend that she was. She always felt that she needed a partner to challenge the DO and the Creator, but if she took one out, then that evens the odds a bit.
Rand fights the philosophical and metaphysical battle.
Quick Side Note: This whole philosophy debate was like BWS was subconsciously channeling The Princess Bride as a rough guideline. Start out with a difficult climb up a mountain, then a sword fight, then the realization that he was wrestling with a primal giant force, then the battle of wits and Rand’s immunity to the DO’s poisonous offer, then a “to the pain” argument where Rand condemns the DO as a pitiful creature and doesn’t kill “Prince Humperdinck” with his friends when he’s all tied up with the OP/TP and instead jumps out the proverbial Mount Doom window and rides into the sunset.
Anyway, getting back on track here. This debate was just a classic albeit dramatic discussion of Determinsim (DO) versus Compatibilsm (Creator) with a Libertarian (Rand) wild card that can be played every 7th turn. The Creator’s like, “Hey, if you think you can come up with a better multiverse-then have at it. I’ll give you the philosophical opportunity once every 7 turnings. If you don’t wig out into annihilationism on Dragonmount or create your own form of Compatabilism by killing off the DO then the WoT will keep going as is. By giving you this very Libertarianistic gesture I will maintain my primal benevolence.” All that being said, I now have a hard time not imagining Rand dressed like some type of Philosophy undergrad hipster.
I had no problem with the Shai’sam/Fain/Mordeth thing.
It reminded me a little of how Darien could take out Rakoth Maugrim at the end of Kay’s Fionavar Tapestry. Maugrim (outside of the Tapestry/Pattern) raping Jennifer and getting her pregnant with Darien connected him to the Tapestry, which made him killable. There was a special dagger there involved too, btw.
In comparison (and I’m not saying there was copying ideas involved), IIRC, Shai’sam/Mordred/Fain had thoughts along the line of they could manifest more and more in Randland now, being merged fully now. In both cases, the Evil guys were blindsided. Unlike Mat, Darien didn’t survive though.
As for this coming from leftfield, it reminded me of this scene in the Extended Edition of Return of the King, where we see Gothmog (the Orc general) showing up at the site where Eowyn killed the Witch King, right after, and he’s slowly moving towards her, bent on killing her.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S6VzrQt4Eg
Yay Aragorn and Gimli ;)
As far as killing the Dark One and destroying free will…
I think of it more as stripping the free will from all the people alive right now, than annihilating free will as a concept.
Rand doesn’t just want some abstract world without evil. He wants his existing world, with his friends, his comrades, and the women he loves, but without evil.
WOT is cyclical, so destroying the Dark One now removes him from consideration at all times, past and future. What does that do to all the people in the series?
Elayne’s adult life has been dominated by fighting the Black Ajah. No Dark One, no Black Ajah. Strip out everything she’s done that’s at all related to that conflict, and how much is left?
Aviendha is an Aiel, whose entire culture revolves around preparing themselves to fight in the Last Battle. Take away the Dark One, break that causality chain, and you’ve literally removed every single influence that shaped her into the person she is.
If Rand kills the Dark One, he destroys the world, and substitutes a different world that won’t be very similar to the current world. If he then forces that world to be similar anyhow, in defiance of all logic and reason, then he’s certainly removing free will, because a free-willed Elayne in a world without the Dark One would have made very different choices and become a very different person than the Elayne he knows. And the same for every single other person he’s ever met, because everyone has been touched by the Dark One’s influence at this point.
Phigment@32
I agree with Wet. That was a nice summary.
I have heard the reason given, “well real life isn’t like that so why should a story necessarily be?”, But I think that is a copout. If you want to make something that is realistic, it will probably be a fairly tall tale.
If you want to put threads into your story, fine. Just tied the damn things up by the end!
Wow, can’t believe we are nearing the end. It’s getting a little dusty in here. I think back to when I joined this re-read and I’m pretty sure the boys and Egwene had not yet left the Three Rivers (Edit – I checked. I was there in the second post in EOTW – and Freelancer was there as well, that dog!) and Tor.com and its now robust re-read culture was just a shiny new toy for Stubby. So many great posters had their day and retired from the field, never to be heard from again, only to replaced by new, thoughtful voices, and then even more of them. Ah, the memories, the occasional flame wars, the off topic discussions, the poems and songs ….*sniffle*
Like many here, Mat did fine in AMOL. Demandred and Fain are pretty big apples as far as I am concerned.
The True Power thing didn’t bother me either. Three into one prophecy and all that. You do raise a good question why it was there in the first place….but it’s a mystery, my child. Darkfriends? Will of the ALL CAPS guy? Ta’verenicity? Any or all could suffice.
The part I questioned was Perrin sloughing off compulsion like it was nothing. Cool beans, true, but hard to imagine it actually working once the compulsion weave had been set. Has any non-channeler ever gotten out by him or herself? Another mystery, I guess.
I, of course, have other beefs with the unaddressed threads (how the heck Morgase became familiar with Three Rivers speech patterns back in EOTW, I’m looking at you!) but we can deal with those in the final post(s). For now, I’ll give thanks to Leigh for more than five years of wonderful entertainment and edification.
Rob
I just reallised with childish amusement that they actually did a Gilderoy Lockhart on Graendal, which is somehow absurdly fitting.
I should note. by the way, that I’ve always hated Fain as a character so he can die in a fire as far as I’m concerned. Glad he was dumped with minimal page count.
Lots of great work in the comments above. Avi taking Graendel gai’shin is priceless. FTW!
***Faile saves Randland!*** (WHOOOT!)
Loved that part.
And one great thing about that scene, is that it gives MORE of a personal purpose to Perrin’s great love for her. It also adds importance to the overall story’s plot, as it’s effect on defeating the Dark One. So all that ‘Faile is my home‘ from ToM, the ‘emo‘ from Faile’s kidnapping, and Perrin’s ‘annoying everybody around him‘ while returning with the group from Dumai’s Wells at the beginning of aCoS, serves more of a much bigger purpose now. This will really benefit re-reads where we will automatically know of it’s more important meaning of just some guy constantly fretting about the safety and well being of his wife. It now has a much, much bigger function.
Well done on that one Team Jordan. *BRAVO!*
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And Leigh, regarding you comments on the Matt/Fain shoehorned ending. I agee compleately. Spot on there. I remember when first reading it that I let out a grown at that one. In fact there was so much shoehorning going on in this book. that I kept thinking that they should have just titled the book, A Memory of Shoehorning.
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And regarding Lanfear’s earlier use of Compulsion on Perrin, the first hint of that happening, was when Perrin was afraid disapointing her(Lanfear) previously in this book when Perrin was still having problems battling Slayer-
“I…I can beat him.” Suddenly, the shame of having failed in front of her crushed Perrin. When had he started worring about what Lanfear thought of him? He couldn’t quite point to it. (chapter 34)
I was like, whoa! What the heck going on here! Hmmm…
Boy, looking back at the very early posts is fun! I had a brilliant theory that Thom had to be the Dad of Elayne and Gawyn, only to be shot down by Kate Nepveau. I did predict Thom would save Moiraine and marry her, so I at least get partial credit, right?
Sure. I’m impartial about partiality.
Lol RoB. Check the WOTFaQ on the Thom/Moiraine thing ;)
Duffy12@56 – You took the words right out of my mouth! The world would have ended without Faile. I love it. And I agree, it adds so much to all of her and Perrin’s story beforehand. I think that it is definitely an example of a thread being properly tied and satisfaction achieved. In agreement with Wes S@11, it was a great payoff.
Re Mat and Fain, I agree with Leigh. I did more or less expect that Mat would be the one to deal with Fain, but there was a complete lack of set up for it in the later books. (I really like rossnewberry@39’s idea that Mat should have killed Fain without noticing – that would really have been fitting.) I always expected more to made of Mat and the dagger – in the early books, I really expected him to be a much darker character (even post-dagger) and potentially betray his friends or some such. Such a big deal was made about the taint of the dagger… But not only did that not happen, he pretty much seemed to forget about it. I agree with Phigment@32 – I think this is something that just got lost in the expanding story.
I can accept this, because something I really enjoyed about the books was how they seemed to have a life of their own, with threads jumping in and out and plans changing and so on, but still with an overarching theme pulling it all together. I think it’s tricky to find the balance between having all these ever-changing threads (necessary because that’s what makes it seem real) and the symmetry and tying-up (necessary because that’s generally what we’re looking for in a story).
It may be that the Perrin/Lanfear conflict suffers from this too (although I much preferred their ‘showdown’ to Mat and Fain’s). Not on Perrin’s side, but Lanfear’s. She just so completely dropped out of the story. Even when she popped back up as Cyndane, she did nothing. I was disappointed, because she was set up as a really creepy and great type of villain, and then just nothing. But I was always expecting her to have some kind of plan at the end. I think the numerous books separating her set-up from the execution of her grand plan really took away from the impact.
On Perrin’s part, I loved it at the time basically for Perrin just being generally awesome and because of it meaning Faile totally saved the world. And I really felt for Perrin. But it’s only in reading this reread (and many other wonderful WOT things on the web) that I’ve developed a true appreciation for it. Because I always liked Faile, and because I read the books back-to-back, I never had the issues with angsty, Faile-obsessed Perrin that so many others have. I always thought it was only right that he was dedicated to finding her. But looking back, I understand his story more fully now – there’s loyalty and devotion, there’s a dedication to Faile, and there’s his whole big thing about doing what needs to be done.
I’m getting my friend to read the books and I recently read a bit of TEOTW with her, and I was struck by the bit where Perrin, Egwene and Elyas are chased by the ravens. When I first read it, I didn’t get why Perrin was so cut up afterwards – to me, of course he was right to consider killing Egwene rather than letting the ravens get her. But now I see why that would shake him so much – it really must be something to realise that you are fully prepared to kill your friend, no matter the situation. And Perrin then spent the series struggling to come to terms with the things he was prepared to do. He was just a blacksmith; that was all he wanted. Yet instead he had to deal with all this other stuff, and face who he really was. Could the Perrin of TEOTW killed Lanfear like that? I’m not sure. But the Perrin of AMOL did what had to be done, even the oh-so-taboo killing of a woman.
Okay, these thoughts could definitely be more coherent.
KilMichaelMcC@32 – I’m with you; I wanted a showdown between Nynaeve and Moghedien. That would have been great if Moghedien and Lanfear had been alongside Moridin – it would have given them something more to do in the book, for one thing.
Sian @60: Not sure it would have been much of a “showdown” had Moggy ended up coming face-to-face with Nynaeve in AMoL. By this point in the series, hasn’t Nynaeve moved well beyond even Moghedien in terms of both her ability to wield saidar and her accomplishments? Among other things, Nynaeve cured stilling, learned to heal saidin madness and Compulsion, and, oh yeah, went to Shayol Ghul with the Dragon freakin’ Reborn to stuff the Dark One back into the hole he came from.
After all that, wouldn’t facing Moghedien be a bit anticlimactic?
To add to/revise my previous comment: Even before Nynaeve went on to do all the things I mentioned above, she’d already beaten Moghedien twice in stand-up combat, back when she was just a half-trained wilder. Not much point in having Nynaeve put another whippin’ on her again…
(Speaking of Moggy: Now that the Dark One has been sealed away again and Moridin is dead…what about the mindtrap? Is it just a harmless piece of jewelry now…or not?)
Wes S.
It is no matter, since Moggy will be meeting the A’dam soon.
Robert @16, MDMY @33, and Tektonica @46 — I agree that after Far Madding, Fain does not have a significant role. He sort of just fizzles out. I suppose that no matter how he died, it would seem awkward and out of left field. I am not sure how Brandon could have killed Fain off without it looking like it came out of nowhere. But I do think this “out of nowhere death” was amplified by how Fain entered Shayol Ghul — the mist and the zombified Trollocs were taking out everybody.
I also think that Fain had to die. I do not see how you could have a new Age but keep the evil that Fain had become. I am not saying that evil had to cease to exist. Heck, we had a foretelling that after the Great Battle, there wouldbe more battles to come.
Query — could Fain have zombified some Darkhounds? What would happpen if the Darkhounds encountered the Mist.
Bill M @25 — I disagree that Mat should have killed Demandred. If he did, do you realize how many people would say — “here we go again; look at the Superboys. they can defeat anybody or anything.”
Lancer @35 — Vora’s sa’angreal (the one that Egwene used) did not have a buffer.
Thanks for reading my musings,
AndrewB
Leigh,
Thank you for this wonderful re-read and the many years you have brightened my enjoyment of the series. With the release of the last three books, you gave me a great sense of community, and made me choke with laughter.
I look forward to the time, probably soon in the future, where I will re-read the re-read.
Yeah, a year and more since this book came out. I started lurking in this reread somewhere in the middle, book 7-8 maybe. Haven’t been able to post much during the last 2 books or so. I’ll tell u what bothered me WAAAAY more than Mat taking out Fain was using the True Power against the Dark One. I was REALLY against that theory.
I understand the reasoning and their were soo many hints about the taint being a “film” on top of Saidin, I should have seen it as an elastic substance like a glove he would reach through. Kind of a pot-holder to keep from getting burned.
Still bugs me though. SUFFA!! Bring me some salt and pepper so I can eat my serving of Crow.
A few thoughts:
1)I also really disliked the ‘The Dark One was not the problem’ ending, but that’s mostly because my worldview does not require evil in order for free will or good to exist. So I just have to chalk it up to world differences and move on.
2)I haaaaaaaate the Padan Fain/Mat resolution – not so much for the symmetry thing, but just that the immunity thing made NO sense to me. This is partially because I used to be a serious microbiology student. Immunity (which is never perfect) works because our body recognizes the particles of things which have previously invaded our body and can mount a response to destroy them. I guess the fact that I have a very technical knowledge of immunity hinders me here becuase this just does not make sense to me with regard to the dagger evil? In the past, WOT hasn’t exactly been the type of ‘magic’ system to have a very technical explanation so I don’t really get how you can become ‘immune’ to that kind of evil and just….aaaaah, it really bothers me. Yes, Padan Fain can cut himself with the dagger but he’s also batshit insane and basically that evil IS him. I don’t know, the whole thing just fell really flat for me as incredibly handwavey and contrived.
3)I loved everything about Perrin in this scene. I loved that he was able to turn away from Faile to do what needed to be done, and that his love for Faile is what kept him grounded in reality and saved the day!
It’s been a while since I’ve commented here, but let me add my voice to the chorus: Thanks, Leigh, for bringing us along on this ride the last few years and few thousand pages. I found WOT fandom via the FAQ back once upon a r.a.sf.w.rj, and it’s been an honor to share the road with you for a while. Tai’shar tor dot com!
Fain and Matt, well, I fall among the camp of those saying “it wasn’t the best, but it didn’t really bug me.” The one who I felt was even more missing a crowning moment of awesome in this book was Moirane. I really had been expecting for her to do something amazing and critical in the final battle, and OK, technically yes she did seize control of Moridin, I’ll grant you that much. But that was more just acting as an adjunct to Rand, and it flew by in a sentence without really any drama in it or payoff for Moirane’s character. Here she is, her life’s work complete: she has found the Dragon reborn and brought him from his nowhere backwoods village to the last battle itself, and willingly sacrificed herself and come back practicelly from the dead to stand at his side and fight. I want to know what she thinks as she steps onto that battlefield, I want so see what the world looks like from her perspective. I’m guessing it’s pretty badass.
Faile saves the world? Yeah OK, I do appreciate how that scene with Perrin and Lanfear changes the significance of the PLoD – I hadn’t caught that nuance when I first read AMOL so thanks dear rereaders for pointing that out. But never mind Faile, it’s Min that truly saves the world. Rand says as much himself! Sexy smart book babes for the win. :-)
And there were definitely enough clues along the way to make Min’s ploy with Callandor and the True Power expectable, or at least guessable. There’s a passage somewhere where Rand/LTT reflects on the age of legends sealing of the bore, and wonders how could he do it again without touching the DO and allowing the taint? That was the clue that did it for me. But having Moridin save the world under Rand + Moir + Ny’s control, I didn’t see tht twist coming but it made perfect sense once it got here. All the puzzle pieces sliding into place.
Kudos to Robert Jordan for crafting this beautiful puzzle box for us all, to Brandon and Alan and Maria and Harriet for picking up the pieces and reassembling with care, and to Leigh and everybody else here for sharing the sheer fun of it all.
For Mat and Fain, here’s something I’d lke you do, easy if you’re an Angel Fan. Watch the last episode. Specifically what happened with Lorne and Lindsey. This is what Mat did to a T.
The thing that bothered me about Mat v Fain is that it’s not just fain, it’s mashidar the force that destroyed a city, betrayed manetheren (there’s Mats other connection) , slaughtered armies of trollocs, killed sammael and helped clean sadain and it’s defeated with one line of explanation and a stab. I think I would have preferred if it hadn’t been dealt with, just left roaming the world as an enemy for the next age or something.
I did love Perrins role at the end though and Logain’s resolution. In my mind it’s the first of Mins viewings that offered a choice. He could have gone for the sceptre and had glory through its power but instead he rescued the refugees and got a different sort of glory.
Wow…so close to the end, so much to say.
But not about Aviendha–I think what she did was not only foreshadowed by Elayne’s exploding gateway in TPoD (which Avi helpfully referenced), it was absolutely awesome and delicious. Awesome because Avi had never had a Forsaken of her own to combat (not that Elayne really did either, since Moggy was Nynaeve’s nemesis and Elayne was always more concerned with the Black Ajah), since her only other encounter with one, Lanfear at the docks in Cairhien, didn’t go well for her. Delicious because yes, having Graendal’s Compulsion backfire on her was hilarious and oh so fitting. Normally of course I wouldn’t condone Compulsion, but considering Graendal was the mistress of it (and thus deserving great punishment for what she had done to so many innocent minds and wills) and had been about to use it on Aviendha, I think that justifies both the punishment itself and my glee about it. Yes, at certain times (particularly in ToM) I found myself sympathizing with Graendal somewhat, or at least who she used to be. But not enough to undo the evils she had committed–and since she never repented or made amends…
The Mat/Fain scene…okay, I spoke at length about this last night and I’ll do so again now. I had no problem whatsoever with any of this scene. The only problems I had were the short length of the scene itself and the lack of foreshadowing (or rather, the long distance between when any foreshadowing occurred and the denouement, without further foreshadowing in between). But I don’t think either of those are as bad as people are making them out to be. I already stated I think Mat being matched up with Fain made perfect sense as far as them both being wild cards and Mat having been the one Mordeth tricked into taking the dagger. But I will further say that all the points people have been making in the comments–that Mat only realized his immunity when the Mashadar-mist stabbed him and otherwise had no plan, just taking advantage of an opportunity; that the ta’veren tugging to Shayol Ghul showed he had something important to do there (and not just bringing Olver and the Horn, it turned out); that Fain is indirectly responsible for everything that happened to Mat when he left the Two Rivers, including the Finn; that having been possessed by the dagger, Mat was the only one who could get close enough; Mat being a tie to Manetheren, which Mordeth had betrayed–all these points are only added to for me by the one thing most people seem to be complaining about. That him being the one to take Fain came out of nowhere, when it should have been Perrin or Rand.
My response to this is, that was the whole point. Not just that Jordan/Sanderson was trying to be unpredictable and surprise us, but that Jordan had always been good at pulling fast ones on us, doing things differently than we expected or not at all. Obviously sometimes the fans didn’t take this so well (Exhibit A: Taimandred, Exhibit B: the fulfillment of Min visions like those for Sheriam, Carlinya, Beldeine, and so on), but the point is, we know Jordan liked to do this. So I see what he did with Mat and Fain being the ultimate “Gotcha!” on his part. That after so many books of seeing Fain focused on Rand, with some side focus on Perrin, after having both Fain and Mat cease to think about each other or Mat’s time with the dagger (or never begin thinking of it, in the case of Fain toward Mat), to have Mat be the one to take Fain out was meant all along to be a swerve–to remind the readers of their history and connections, to pull the rug under out from under them by subverting expectations. Obviously most people don’t like when writers do this, but on the other hand a lot of people had complained WOT was, or had become, predictable. You really are damned no matter what you do it seems.
To be fair, of course, there’s a middle ground between absolutely no set-up and so much set-up it becomes obvious long before the denouement, and the great length of the series plus its myriad characters and plot threads put a lot of distance between what foreshadowing there was and the conclusion. Do I think Jordan could have improved on this? Yes–there’s no reason there couldn’t have been moments of Mat thinking about the dagger or Fain post-TSR (I single that novel out and not TDR because when news came of what was going on in the Two Rivers, Mat did think about whether he should go back, and I think he knew via Rand’s “he said he’d do it” line that Fain was responsible somehow); even one as lacking in introspection as Mat could have thought about him once or twice. There could also have been a few encounters between Mat and Fain–the guy was running around Andor in LOC and Cairhien in ACOS, so surely somewhere in there when Mat was working with Rand’s armies for the Illian campaign or traveling to Salidar he could have had a run-in or two. And this wouldn’t have undercut the surprise and unpredictability of the Mat killing Fain twist.
But overall, I think it makes sense, as both KingOfFlames and Wes S. stated, that even Fain himself had completely forgotten about/discounted/dismissed Mat as a threat, a fatal mistake on his part. That the immunity was foreshadowed in how Fain could cut himself on the dagger. And that someone who had been built up as such a wild card, such a disturbing and creepy danger, could be taken out by another wild card, and so swiftly and easily. We were all convinced he’d be a major threat, but the thing to keep in mind is, as many evils as Mordeth discovered, as evil as Fain became by combining him with the Dark One’s essence, such evil was still not on a level with the Dark One’s and never could be. The reason Shadar Logoth could be used to destroy the taint was because of the enmity between it and the Dark One, not because it was actually as powerful as him. Or even if it was as powerful, it was still (as Fain himself reminds us) fallible because it was tied to a mortal man, which the Dark One’s power was not.
So to have him meet such an ignominious end, taken out by the very one he had first tempted into taking a piece of his city, the one who had been possessed by his evil…well that is absolutely fitting and delicious. He thought he was a major threat and player, but he wasn’t. Thanks to focusing entirely on Rand due to being the Dark One’s Hound (the killing of Perrin’s family, I think, was just an afterthought/For the Evulz moment, since he never does anything else to him), Fain made the same mistake we did–forgetting about his connection to Mat and the reasons Mat would want to take him out, and could. Could it have been better executed? Probably, but I’m not sure we can place the blame on Sanderson–even if Jordan would have used more poetic (or lengthy) language, I expect he always intended Fain to go out with a whimper. We can debate if that was the right writing choice, or if even Jordan could have executed it well after he let his story get so long and complicated, but I don’t think we can say its abruptness or its execution are all or even partly Sanderson’s doing.
In any event, I laughed, and not in a bad way, when Fain met his demise–his whole bit of “no, this isn’t how a meeting with an old friend should go!” and how he was done in by his very own dagger, by the man who his previous self had first lured into temptation, was both satisfying to me in the literary and the character/plot sense. While I do wish the scene had been longer, and I agree that past encounters between Mat and Fain, and ruminations from at least Mat’s end, would have gone toward making this seem less out-of-left-field while still preserving the surprise twist, I don’t think Mat being the one to do it is wrong at all. Rand had so much to do already, and there really was no one else who could do it. I think now, upon reflection, that bringing up Perrin’s family was solely a red herring to distract us–not just from Mat killing Fain, but from the Perrin/Lanfear twist.
Again, whether it could have been executed better can be debated (more references to Mat and Fain, I think, could have offset the Perrin/Fain ones), but overall, it was to me just a delicious irony and I’m glad Mat got to make up, at last, for his idiocy in Shadar Logoth way back in TEotW. And really, we shouldn’t downplay how easy Mat’s killing of Fain was, or how small his role was. Because completely aside from him chessmastering the war against Demandred and him bringing Olver and the Horn, he is the only one we know of who is immune to Mashadar due to having been possessed by the dagger and then cleansed of it; no one else could have done what he did, what seemed easy for him would be impossible for others, and if he had not killed Fain, at the very least all the defenders, the wolves, and the Heroes would have succumbed to Mashadar, let alone what might have happened to Rand and the Dark One. So yes, Rand would have lost without Mat, and just because the battle ended up so easy for him due to his abilities and luck shouldn’t cheapen it or make him seem less important.
As far as the Callandor bit…that I do agree is a case of Jordan dropping the ball in terms of providing the proper set-up. We knew it would be important, yes; we knew of the “three-in-one” prophecy, the flaw, and “all that he is can be seized”; and we knew there needed to be a way for Rand to seal the Bore without saidin being tainted again, or saidar this time. In fact people had theorized that the True Power would be the key, especially after Rand became able to use it in TGS. (The objections at the time had been either that Rand wouldn’t use it any more once he was no longer Darth Rand, or couldn’t because the Dark One wouldn’t let him–but that was answered by having it come from Moridin–and that it didn’t seem possible Rand could use it against the Dark One himself without it being shut off…which was answered by having Moiraine and Nynaeve controlling Moridin, and there being so much of the Power flowing it couldn’t be stopped.) The only issue I have here is we don’t get how, in-story, the leap was made from the above facts and prophecies to “Callandor is a True Power sa’angreal“.
I get Jordan wanted this to be a surprise, but having Min’s reasoning happen off-screen also robs us of the explanation in-story for how she reached such a conclusion. The only thing I can think is she added them all together–if saidar and saidin are two of the things to become one, what other power is available to be the third except the True Power; the flaw lets a man be controlled by the women in the circle with him (we knew of this from Cadsuane’s information back in WH); the “him” to be seized could be Moridin or the Dark One, not Rand, thus explaining the onyx hand in her vision. Though there is also the possibility that, off-screen, Rand told her a) about his link with Moridin (she knew he met him in TGS but not that they were linked) which could allow Rand to control the True Power through him once two Aes Sedai were linked to him through Callandor b) that Callandor magnified the taint, which had to come from the True Power (though Cadsuane could have told her the first part) and c) that he had channeled the True Power when he saved her from Semirhage. With all this information, she could have figured out Callandor was a True Power sa’angreal. So it makes sense as far as that goes…but because we didn’t see her get the pieces or put them together, it comes across as clunky and without proper set-up.
All that said, the way it actually works and how Rand, Moiraine, and Nynaeve use it to win is absolutely breathtaking and awesome. I am just hoping we’ll get more details about this reasoning, and about how Callandor became a True Power sa’angreal, in the encyclopedia. There are really only two possibilities: that the taint did already exist when it was created, and the male Aes Sedai was the one holding the Seed at the time, thus attuning it to both saidin and the True Power at the same time; or that one of the group who made it was secretly a Black Ajah and put the True Power into it deliberately as a trap against the Dragon Reborn. Since Team Jordan has said Callandor was made during the War of Power (i.e. before the Strike at Shayol Ghul and the counterstroke), it has to be option two.
Though I am still not sure how the scene we saw with Callandor and Someshta in Rand’s ancestor memories could have been pre-Breaking; I always had the impression the Aiel weren’t sent off to Rhuidean until after the men started going mad and the world was breaking (that was the reason the One Power objects had to be protected, not because of the Shadow), and while Callandor wasn’t in their cache, the scene with Someshta implies the Aes Sedai were getting ready to make the Eye of the World too, a task specifically stated to have been done with the male Aes Sedai involved killing themselves to make sure the Eye was pure of the taint.
But perhaps Moiraine was wrong about how/when the Eye was made (wouldn’t be the first time she/an Aes Sedai was wrong about pre-Breaking matters), or it was a matter of only being slightly before the Breaking (as in, during the time after Lews Therin and the Hundred Companions headed for Shayol Ghul but before they actually got there), so that even though Callandor was technically made during the War of Power, it could still have been affected by the taint and attuned to the True Power the first time a male Aes Sedai tried to use it.
(Perhaps, for example, the wards which were around Callandor and made it unable to be touched except by the Dragon Reborn–some of them used saidin, so at least one male had to have been involved in setting them, and probably a male who knew Lews Therin so it could be attuned to him/his soul. By the time Callandor was taken to the Stone the taint would have existed, and if those wards simply touching the blade could have attuned it to the True Power, or they did more than touch since they had to tie Callandor to the Dragon Reborn alone…)
The scene with Logain is being ignored amongst all the other, admittedly monumental, meaningful (and for some, problematic) events, so let me just say again, as I have before, how much I enjoyed the resolution of his arc. The whole point of the series (or at least, a major one among many) was to redress the balance so the Wheel could turn and the Ages would continue. For that to happen, there had to be equality between men and women again. The fact it was the men who needed to be accepted and admired rather than women was just a factor of the gender roles and patriarchal society having been turned on their heads–in the end the lesson Jordan was giving is the same, that both genders are equal, and equality is something which must be striven for and maintained. The greatest feats of the Age of Legends required both, and we have seen how they were both required again to win the Last Battle–Rand could only win with two women at his side; Egwene took out Taim, healed the damage the balefire had done to the land/Pattern, and discovered when the seals should be broken, but it was Logain who had to do it; and there’s Pevara and Androl’s contributions. Not to mention how even non-channeling men and women both had to be part of it…Mat vs. Tuon and Fain, Perrin vs. Lanfear and Slayer, Lan vs. Demandred, Aviendha vs. Graendal, Min’s understanding of Herid Fel’s books, Olver and Faile’s part in recovering and using the Horn, and more.
So having Logain’s glory be related not to some One Power battle, not even with Taim, but to be about restoring all (channeling) men to the glory they had in the Age of Legends, and having it come about through saving the innocent like this, had me in tears. The whole scene was beautiful, so poetic and well-written (“The Black Tower protects. Always.”)…I loved the prophetic resonance with Logain noting the people were “weeping for their salvation”…and how amazing that something which once would have been a mark of shame, hatred, and fear, being the one to break the seals on the Dark One’s prison, will instead be a badge of honor, a sobriquet to be worn with pride: Sealbreaker. (How many want to bet this will eventually get translated into the Old Tongue and become Logain’s title in the Black Tower, replacing M’Hael?)
Speaking of crying…even though she did turn out evil in the end, even though she had to be stopped, I couldn’t help but join Perrin in crying for Lanfear. She was so arrogant and twisted, so misguided and flawed, but she was also one of the most human of the Forsaken and the one who seemed most capable of redemption after Asmodean. The fact she kept rejecting it over and over, either because she believed it impossible to attain or because she was too power-mad and proud to try and atone, only makes the whole thing more tragic. Bitch be crazy, right to the end…and while this made her such a compelling, three-dimensional villain, I can’t help but weep for what could have been. If only, if only… In any event, the whole scene was brilliantly but subtly foreshadowed, most recently by her interactions with Perrin in TAR, especially when he found himself being upset at being weak and a failure in front of her and wondering “when had he started caring what Lanfear thought of him?” but also by their interactions way back in TDR. Min warned Perrin to avoid that most beautiful woman, and she was absolutely right.
The scene was also pitch-perfect in how it fulfilled Min’s vision about the second time Perrin had to be there for Rand (she said at the time that even if he was there, the danger to Rand still might happen–little did we know that would be because he, under Compulsion, was part of the danger!–and we saw in the previous chapter how important it was he had to choose between going to Rand or looking for Faile), and how it retroactively justifies the importance of Perrin’s love for Faile (no wonder it was something prophecy decreed had to happen!) and the PLOD. And the final lines, where Perrin thinks of how he did something he never thought he could do, but that it was one test Rand would never have to face, that he would carry the burden, that he would always watch Rand’s back… *tears up all over again–THIS is why he loves Perrin!*
And then finally we have the bit with Rand’s thoughts about free will, killing the Dark One, and who the true enemy is. I don’t want to get too much into this since I know this crosses into real-life philosophy, morality, and religion and I don’t want to get into a flame war, especially with the fellow Christians who follow the re-read. And I’ve said my piece before on how I interpret this, and in the end it really all comes down to personal opinion and belief, and whether one thinks Jordan was wise to tell a story with this sort of moral, apart from how it was presented. So I’ll just say that yes of course, evil exists apart from the Dark One, we know this through Mordeth as well as other mortal sources like the Sharans, Couladin and the Shaido, the Whitecloaks, the Seanchan…
But I think the point Jordan was trying to make is that Evil as a monolithic concept, embodied in a being, is tied to free will because for him, it doesn’t make sense that one could be free to choose between Good and Evil if the concept of Evil didn’t exist to begin with. Not that the Dark One causes free will per se, but that in order to have free will, there have to be things you can choose between, and what is more fundamental than the choice of whether to be good or evil? Obviously this has different ramifications on a less-than-fantastic, real-life level, since not every choice one makes determines utterly if you are fully and irrevocably evil any more than good. But within the terms of his world he created, he is saying that yes, you can’t choose unless the choices exist, and they have to be compelling and critical options and choices for the free will to matter. At the same time, the fact that evil can exist apart from the Dark One is his explanation for how not every choice leads to the Shadow.
To put it another way, the Dark One is essentially Satan. For those who believe Satan exists, he is the Tempter who leads mankind to sin (and if the Garden of Eden story is both true and literal, the one who actually caused sin to exist in the first place). However, it takes two to tango. Satan (or the Dark One) can’t get anywhere if people don’t let him. Humans being flawed, making mistakes and bad decisions, being motivated by impure desires or emotions, allows him in. But those very same mistakes and decisions and desires are perfectly capable of causing evil without his influence. In-story, we know that the utopia of the Age of Legends was not as perfect as it seemed to be–even before the Bore was drilled there was envy (Demandred), pride (Lanfear), sadism (Semirhage) logic divorced from emotion (Ishamael), superiority (Graendal), cowardice (Moghedien) and more. Integrated Rand said to Aviendha that there well may have been war and conflict eventually even without the Bore. And the line he thinks here, that the Dark One was not the enemy and never had been, is not the dismissal of the Dark One people seem to think it is.
Remember why the Bore was made in the first place; Rand himself calls them “foolish men” here. On the surface it seemed altruistic–to find a way for men and women to accomplish great things together without having to be limited by the saidar/saidin dichotomy. But aside from that being against the whole point Jordan was trying to make about equality and balance, in the end it comes down to greed for more power. So while yes, obviously the Dark One is very much the enemy, must be sealed away and fought at all costs, and is the source of Evil, the real enemy is not just one’s own self (or Rand vs. himself), but humanity’s fallible nature. Even with the Dark One sealed completely away…even if, for those who believe in him, Satan’s temptations are resisted…our own weaknesses, flaws, and errors will inevitably lead to pain, suffering, harm, and yes evil if they are not carefully watched, controlled, and curtailed. It is an ongoing, lifetime-lasting task, one we must always be about whatever we believe in, however otherwise we might resist the machinations of evil entities out there, and it is the only way to keep such beings from inflaming our petty evils into truly monstrous ones.
We need to know evil exists so we can freely choose against it…but that choice is one that is never-ending, and will be a part of our lives no matter what Evil we do or don’t encounter. It’s a very important, humbling, and powerful lesson, and I’m glad Jordan wanted to impart it to us, however flawed some might find it or his telling of it. Because whether or not you believe in a higher (or lower) power, if you remember that there is (also) evil within us which must be fought against and turned to beneficial ends, then there will be more hope of keeping the world a better, if still flawed, place.
@5 KingOfFlames: There’s…a whole other debate to be had about the fates of the Forsaken and what it means (or implies) about Jordan that he keeps the women alive (but in various states of imprisonment, humiliation, and fates-worse-than-death) while just killing off the male ones. I’m not sure if this is more of Jordan’s not wanting to kill women thing (though see Lanfear, whose death is arguably one of the most unexpected and pivotal in the whole series, and on the Light side Egwene who died in a sacrificial and significant manner), or if it’s just a function of these particular women having such heinous crimes that he felt they deserved something worse than death. (Though I’m not sure about Mesaana; she may have created her Children during the War of Power but we never got to see that onscreen like we did the things Moggy and Graendal did, though she did set off the Tower coup and was presumably responsible for Galina’s plan with Rand and the box. Also note Semirhage who, while she was first humiliated and broken by Cadsuane ended up balefired, something that happened to no other female Forsaken.) But as Leigh would say…it’s a Thing.
@7 MikeyRocks: So very much yes.
@8 Wes S.: Just more of Jordan misleading us about who would take Fain out. Also @11–yes.
@12 lindwyrm: As I said above, Team Jordan tells us Callandor was made during the War of Power (i.e. before the Breaking and the taint). But see my thoughts above on how this could be reconciled with the taint causing it to be a True Power sa’angreal.
@18 tamyrlink: The irony is that Nynaeve was with Rand’s group when they met, fought, captured, and interrogated Semirhage. Granted she was more focused on trying to get Rand to help Lan and not go (more) crazy/dark, and then later on trying to unravel/Heal Compulsion so she could help him find and get rid of Graendal, but it’s odd she never even seemed to approach Semi or even think about her. You’d think she’d have been outraged. Then again, maybe Semi scared her, or she didn’t actually know she was a Healer in the Age of Legends.
Cadsuane and Graendal would certainly have been interesting! And I agree that Perrin and Lanfear’s interactions could have occurred without Compulsion; that’s what makes the plot so subtle and brilliant, because since we can come up with reasonable, plausible surface explanations, we missed the underlying truth.
I’m not sure, but even though Graendal is no danger any more, I doubt the Aes Sedai would keep her around at all, let alone interrogate her for Age of Legends information; Elayne and Nynaeve both knew they’d be in trouble for keeping Moggy around, as did Egwene later (that was one of the things Nicola and Areina held over her head), they never considered keeping Mesaana around, and while Cadsuane had no problem keeping Semi prisoner, she wasn’t exactly affilated with the Tower at the time. But who knows, the combination of her being Amrylin now, Graendal serving Aviendha (and thus being under Aiel jurisdiction), and the Aes Sedai desire for knowledge might make them keep her around and milk her for information.
@21 noblehunter: Actually they did, sort of. In the epilogue when Mat leaves Fain’s decaying body, he mentions that the dice had stopped rolling in his head (for the last time, it turns out). That implies the ta’veren tug wasn’t just about bringing Olver and the Horn to Shayol Ghul, and that some luck may have been involved in him being at the right place at the right time to get struck by Mashadar and kill Fain.
@25 Bill M.: Point, but remember that Lan couldn’t have taken out Demandred if he hadn’t had Mat’s medallion.
@27 plum: LOL! I absolutely had the same thought at the time, and agree wholeheartedly.
@28 KilMichaelMcC, @60 Sian17: The lack of a rematch between Lanfear and Moiraine, and Lanfear disappearing out of the story once she came back as Cyndane, are due to one and the same reason–the fact she was Cyndane, was Moridin’s minion. Because she had failed so badly before, Moridin knew better than to send her against Rand (note how annoyed/upset he seemed in AMoL when he found out Rand had encountered Lanfear again), and with the mindtrap he was able to keep her right at his side so she couldn’t wander around and do anything, against Moiraine or anyone else. In AMoL she was constantly having to disappear on Perrin because Moridin was watching her; it wasn’t until he got distracted by the fight with Rand that she was free to pull shenanigans on Perrin.
As to why Moridin didn’t have her at his side any more at that point, because a) he’d set her some other task, probably directing Slayer and b) again, he knew better than to pit her against Rand again. And considering what her ultimate plans were, it’s a good thing for him he didn’t bring her, eh?
Good for us too, since if she’d been there she’d have probably stopped Nynaeve from saving Alanna and even if Perrin had still come there in TAR, he might not have been able to get the drop on her once he shifted back to the waking world (what with the time dilation thing, and that in the real world he wouldn’t have his TAR abilities to protect him against her channeling or Compulsion).
@30 noblehunter: So…you want the series to be more like LOTR, and imitate it more closely? Funny, this was something a lot of readers complained about in TEotW, how Jordan seemed to be aping/stealing from Tolkien, and that the series got better once he strayed away from his LOTR roots. Personally I’m glad Fain didn’t turn out to be just like Gollum and I am pretty sure others have said that they are too.
@32 Phigment: Good synopsis, and good points.
@35 lancer: Good idea, but actually no, the fluted wand Egwene used didn’t have a buffer either, which was why when she fought Taim she ended up burning herself out and dying. Then again, Egwene never had exposure to the True Power or a way she could have channeled it, so there’d be no way to know for sure; it may be that a lack of a buffer lets a sa’angreal tap into it, but only one who already has, or has previously had, access to the True Power can actually use it in that way.
@36 SJ: I made the same point about wild card. vs wild card in last week’s post. And awesome, love your points about Manetheren and the underworld.
@39 rossnewberry: LOL! I can just see it.
@41 Wetlander: Agreed on Fain’s ignominy. :)
@43 Iarvin: Interesting point. And I wouldn’t say your view is entirely lost by the connections between Mat and Fain, since right before he goes to Shayol Ghul (and in fact the impetus for it), Mat is thinking about exactly what you just mentioned, how he had always been running from Rand (because of the crazy male channeling thing) and whether or not he’d been a good friend to him, bolstered by Amaresu’s comments to him about Rand. So even if he took Fain out for his own reasons, he was, in the end, proving he was Rand’s friend and could be there for him by taking out Fain, just as Perrin did with Slayer and Lanfear.
@44 Malkieri: Agree completely re: Mat and Fain. As for Rand and the women, I think they did indeed discuss this off-screen, based on how the sealing played out–his command to link and take control of Moridin/Callandor shows that they had a prearranged signal and plan.
@45 Tektonica: Yes Perrin and Lanfear had contact–remember her trying to influence/Compel him in TAR back in TDR, and Min warning him to run away from the most beautiful woman in the world?
Also I love your point about why it had to be Moiraine and Nynaeve there–because no one else would be powerful enough (Elayne and Avi weren’t) and trusting enough (Egwene wasn’t) to give him that much Power. They may not have done much else in the plot but at least this does justify why it had to be them, aside from Nynaeve saving Alanna.
@48 CireNaes: LOL at your Princess Bride connection!! And it makes eerie sense…
@50 Phigment: Well said, I agree completely. And this even explains how removing the Dark One could get rid of all evil–Mordeth and Aridhol came about as a means to stop the Shadow, the Seanchan became the way they did because of Ishamael turning Hawkwing against the Aes Sedai and him sending his son overseas (not to mention there wouldn’t have been rogue Aes Sedai trying to conquer things and creating a’dam to gain power if not for the Breaking and the death/madness of the male Aes Sedai, which again all ultimately happened because of the Dark One), the Whitecloaks formed in opposition to the Shadow, and so on.
@53 RobM: How could Perrin slough the Compulsion off? He says so himself in his thoughts: “in the wolf dream, what he felt became reality”. Or to put it another, familiar way: “it’s just a weave.”
@56 Duffy: I agree, love that Team Jordan managed to justify both Perrin’s love for Faile and the PLOD.
@60 Sian17: I love that moment from TEotW you point out–it really does highlight both how far Perrin has come, and what the center of his character arc has always been–how to protect while still using his strength and power to do harm, even to those he wants to help.
@63 Fiddler: True, and presumably her sul’dam will compel from her the secret of the mindtrap so that they can control her even more directly. (Or maybe not, they might want to break her themselves rather than control her through the mindtrap. But they will use ter’angreal, and they might consider this a faster method and even a better way to have a damane as their ‘pet’–not just on a leash, but with her soul literally in their hands…)
@68 Stargazer: I too would have liked more windows into Moiraine after her return. And she did do something, she badassedly took control of the meeting at Merrilor and got Rand and Egwene to agree so the forces of the Light could all work together. Not as badass as fighting with the Power, and some people objected to the way she succeeds by basically preaching the Prophecies of the Dragon at them, but it’s still there and pretty awesome I think. Plus as we know, with “the world not done with battle” it will be essential that the nations be able to pick up the pieces and work together for peace. There will always be disagreements and conflicts, but the amended Dragon’s Peace at least has a better chance of keeping those down to a minimum, and Moiraine made that possible.
@70 Gaiazun: There were other viewings which involved choices (like Gawyn and Egwene, or Siuan and Bryne), but I agree Logain’s and how it was resolved is awesome.
Leigh
re: Mat
Yeah, I agree that it was unfortunately anticlimactic.
However I disagree with your comment about a lack of Mat’s reasoning/deduction re: immunity. What exactly is there to reason/deduce in this scene? It’s all right there on the page.
“Hey, I got masha’dar-ed in the chest. Oh look, I’m surprisingly not dead. Seems my immunity is OVER 9000! Let’s go a-killin’…!”
There, all done.
re: Mat & the dagger addiction
I think I already said that before in an earlier chapter: I seem to remember that throughout the books Mat was occasionally mentioned as unconsciously reaching for the dagger that is no longer there.
Anyone who can confirm that via quote-magic?
There wasn’t much reaching for the dagger in later books, but Mat does sometimes think about rubies.
Oh well, Leigh and all of us can keep our eyes peeled for any dagger- and ruby-related reachings and thinkings in the inevitable re-read re-read.
mcaster@71 – I enjoyed reading your thoughts, and it’s very early here so I’m not really coherent enough to participate fully in a discussion, but one minor nitpick. At least from a Christian perspective, the Dark One is not Satan. WoT strikes me as a bit more dualist, in that the Creator and DO are opposing forces who just are the way they are (I don’t recall any indication that the DO ‘chose’ to be evil) and might even be considered equal forces, which is why they are both necessary for balance and I can accept that in ‘WOT-world’.
Satan is a created creature, not equivalent to the Creator, who was created as good and chose evil (and I’m not going to deny that, especially at 5 am, it’s hard to wrap one’s mind a bit about how evil is chosen the very first time – but that’s part of the idea that free will and the potential can exist before all that). Anyway. There are probably some more educated and less sleep deprived people who can talk about this more eloquently, but I never viewed the WoT cosmology as an analogy to Christian cosmology, although certainly some of the themes and morals are common and can resonate.
@40, I agree that your interpretation works (though I do still stand by my contention that autonomy is central to the ethics of WoT, although that makes it a little more Kantian than classic, Augustinian Christian in the end); however, I’m not sure that’s quite what ended up on the page. I think perhaps what you’ve done is laid out, a bit more clearly, what should have been. I agree that there is some intensely powerful ethical material buried in here, but I do regret the flawed execution. You are definitely right on with your observations that evil is possible without the Bore, and your poking holes in the Age of Legends (not to mention the Age of Myths), but I do still think that the vision of the world without the Dark One falls flat, and that this does significant damage to the endgame. Not nearly enough damage to invalidate the immense scope and achievement of the work, but it’s regrettable.
I meant @70. It’s too early.
hrmmm, come to think of it, why wasn’t Fain “immune” to the dagger when Mat stabbed him with it?
Since this is the penultimate post, I figured it’s a good time to come back.
Very emotional time, you know.
Anyway, my feelings about these ultimate moments of awesome are pretty similar to Leigh’s. The final defeat of Fain/ Mordeth at Mat’s hands was disappointing, though I’m fine with Mat being the one who did it.
I thought the sudden perspective change of the refugees was pretty pat and had the same thought that Leigh did about how it was a good thing Logain didn’t forget to break the seals. I was actually pretty hugely disappointed by the way Logain developed here at the end. I understand why he was all gloomy and obsessive but I didn’t like it. I wanted to like him a lot more in the end.
Definitely disappointed by how minor the roles of Nynaeve and Moiraine’s final moments turned out to be, even though they were still crucial.
Rand’s epiphany was good but…I don’t know. It felt a little lacking too. Clumsy. I’ve struggled with this sort of thing throughout these last few books. Big moments, especially with Rand seem somehow to be a let down in the telling. I think it’s just the way the scenes are written but I can’t really explain how I mean it. But as a contrast….
That brings tears to my eyes. Perrin was always my favorite, even though he became such a drag with his obsessiveness toward Faile. And this is the only part in these final moments where the writing truly moved me because it demonstrated so effectively the core of Perrin’s character. Combined with his thought that it was his duty to do what Rand could not. It just really worked for me. Very powerful stuff.
Anyway, the other thing that always comes to mind when I think of these final chapters is how much it hurts that we lost Robert Jordan in the first place. Sanderson did a tremendous thing in taking us to the end but I so wish it could have been RJ instead. It simply breaks my heart.
Tabbyfl55 @79:
hrmmm, come to think of it, why wasn’t Fain “immune” to the dagger when Mat stabbed him with it?
Fain/Mordeth/Shai’sam had become a physical entity, and Mat stabbed him in the heart. Mat was the only one who could do that, being able to survive his touch, thereby avoiding instant death.
Adding to that, I think this why it had to be Mat who took Shai’sam out. I am assuming Shai’sam had immunity to being channeled at, or he would have been dealt with long ago, with the possible exception of Rand, who was quite busy at the time.
Perrin certainly didn’t have the skills or tools to deal with him.
Tabby @@@@@ 79
There is a difference between getting a minor cut and getting stabbed ;)
toryx @@@@@ 80
“Anyway, the other thing that always comes to mind when I think of these final chapters is how much it hurts that we lost Robert Jordan in the first place. Sanderson did a tremendous thing in taking us to the end but I so wish it could have been RJ instead. It simply breaks my heart.”
Yes indeed.
I remember someone postulating pre-aMoL that Callendor could channel the TP. This was probably to shoehorn in to the theory that Rand would use the TP to seal the Bore, and would need some way to amplify it to be useful on that scale.
Even though I hated the idea of Rand using the TP to seal the Bore, that felt right to me at the time, and I tried to work out a way to satisfy the very questions Leigh asked:
Total speculation, but I think it has to do with the missing buffer on Callendor. What if all angreal and sa’angreal could access the TP, since the TP is inherently similar to the OP in a lot of ways? What if its the buffer that all other ‘greals come with that prevents access to the TP? This wouldn’t need to be something that the Aol AS even needed to know about. It could be an accidental byproduct.
Now, as to how MIN figured out that Callendor could channel the TP… I have no idea.
This was the most difficult part of the book for me, because it didn’t go the way I was sure it was going to go since LoC, and then I thought I even knew how Rand would survive it when he and Moridin started merging. I think I’ve shared some of this before, but this is the appropriate part of the book to put the whole thing, so here goes.
Here’s how I wanted Rand to defeat the DO.
I had thought that the “wall” between the Pattern and the DOs prison that Lanfear Bored through would be self-healing. That the Pattern could repair the damage the way a wound heals on the skin if left alone. I thought the DO, after the pin-prick Lanfear gave the “wall”, worried and gnawed the Bore like a rat or mouse does drywall, enlargening it, trying to get the Bore big enough that he could put enough of his power through to shatter that “wall”, and reality with it, during the War of Power.
I thought that LTTs patching of the Bore, to end the War of Power, actually functioned as a stopper that not only prevented the DO from getting through and destroying reality, but ALSO prevented the Pattern from healing the Bore, and sealing it permenantly.
So, when Harid Fel’s note came to Rand, that the rubble must be cleared away, I thought it meant that if the Seals were destroyed, the Bore would heal itself… as long as the Dark One didn’t have a chance to worry and gnaw at it any more.
I assumed that Rand would stand INSIDE the Bore, on the other side of reality, in the Dark One’s prison, and hold the Dark One there somehow while the Bore sealed behind him. I’ve thought this since at least LoC. I had no idea how he would live after that.
Then, when the Moridin/Rand merger started happening, it became apparent that somehow they would switch places, leaving Moridin trapped in Rand’s body behind the newly sealed Bore for eternity (or at least until some future researcher decided to try to find a new source of power). I also thought this would provide symmetry with the prolouge of the Eye of the World, and other parts, where Ishmael/Ba’alzamon is screaming at LTT/Rand about having never been sealed, unlike the other Forsaken. Well, he would be now, lol.
Then, Rand could ride off in the sunset on Bela (sniff) in Moridin’s body and wander the world as a traveling flutist and minstrel for a thousand years, playing for his supper and telling stories of the Heroes of the Third Age, Mat One-eye, Perrin Goldeneyes, Loial the Loyal, Egwene the Many-Colored, etc…
Alas, this ending was not meant to be. It became apparent after Rand used the TP that that particular plot point was obviously only put in to foreshadow using the TP at the Bore. I still hoped that he would be using the TP inside the Bore and it would play out as I predicted though. Oh well. Not the only thing I got wrong, that’s for sure! (Sniff, Bela)
Good recap. I agree that the Fain resolution was lacking, although my complaint was less a lack of symmetry, rather than being kind of pat and perfuctionary after all the build up Fain had from book one. Sometimes symmetry for the sake of symmetry just feels artificial. I think Callandor being a TP amplifier was foreshadowed by the whole “it magnifies the taint and wildness of the mind” stuff we’ve been hearing about since it was introduced. I believe RJ said there was a flaw in the making of it during the War of Power that had this side-effect, not an intention of its makers. What kind of came out of left field for me was the whole “two women can cease control of you while you wield it” thing. I realize Cads had told Rand that the only safe way to use it was in a circle with two women, with the women controlling the flows; but it is a far cry from that to just any two channeling women able to take control of someone using it. Why hasn’t Rand run afoul of this before? This was not foreshadowed at all.
I cant believe the reread is almost over… so sad. :(
I just wanted to chime in that I loved the Callendor trap used by Rand et al to win. that was a well done finish IMHO.
Also, I really thought Aviendha might buy it at the end (even though all foreshadowing seemed to indicate she would live), and it occurred to me that maybe Rand (or the light side) should have protected the people bonded to him better. A key part of Moridin’s plan was to kill Alanna… even though that didnt work out, Elayne, Min or Aviendha dying would have had the same effect. Moridin’s plan almost accidently worked.
Like everyone else I felt the Mat/Fain ending was unsatisfactory. It seemed unnecessary to give Fain/Mordeth a new name at this point. And then it was a little too convenient that Fain dropped the dagger and Mat could instantly pick it up and stab him through the heart with it. ::shrug:: I guess it had to end somehow. Nice touch that Mat was immune to the fog of death…
CiresNae@48:
Except for the fact that Hawkwing had the same fear and loathing of channelers. I’m trying to remember, but wasn’t one of Hawkwing’s advisers in the end Mordeth?
toryx @@@@@ 80 “Anyway, the other thing that always comes to mind when I think of these final chapters is how much it hurts that we lost Robert Jordan in the first place. Sanderson did a tremendous thing in taking us to the end but I so wish it could have been RJ instead. It simply breaks my heart.”
I think Sanderson would agree with this…
anthonypero @@@@@ 87
It was Moridin/Ishmael. IIRC he also had a key part in Hawkwing sending huge armies across the oceans, setting up the Seanchan Empire.
Fiddler@81:
Moiraine channeled and destroyed sections of Madashar in tEotW. So did Rand later on. Fain wasn’t immune from the OP… so unless the Black Wind was, I’m not sure why Shai’sam would be immune.
ValMar@89:
I thought that was earlier in Hawkwing’s reign. For some reason I thought after Ba’alzamon got sucked back into the Bore there was an Ordeith that advised Hawkwing. Don’t know where I’m getting that from though and can’t look it up here at work.
Tend to agree that Nynaeve and particularly Moiraine didn’t have enough to do in AMOL but I do think that Moiraine’s appearance in the tent at Merrilor and her subsequent convincing of Rand that he could not direct the armies against the Shadowspawn was a huge turning point in that part of the story. Rand still could have blown everything up with his insistence on not giving up or changing any of his demands.
I’m still not really sure why Fain/Mordeth/Shaisam was in the story in the first place. Yes, Fain was the agent that started the flight from the Two Rivers and Mordeth got Mat to take the dagger (that was STILL mostly Mat’s fault, IMO) and Rand’s second (dagger) wound was one of the things that helped him figure out how to cleanse Saidin, but then he disappears and shows up at the very end of all things and is summarily dispatched. No backstory (or not much of one to match his final appearance) and no real buildup to the climax either. But I always considered him a minor character and his ending a minor point.
Oh, and reading these comments makes me realize another reason the immunity thing bugs me! Padan Fain/Shiasam isn’t even the same thing as Mashadar any more! It was some weird hybrid of Fain, Mashadar, the Black Wind and whatever the DO did to him.
Mat getting exposed to Mashadar would confer the same type of immunity a flu shot would; flu mutates and the immunity doesn’t last.
I have no problem with Mat doing it or the way the story was structured, but the immunity thing took me straight out of the story more than anything else I can think of right now.
Sorry I keep harping on that!
So the last three villians faced by the boys are Moridin, Shaisam, and Cyndane aka Ishmael, Paden Fain, and Lanfear, the major protagonists from all the way back in book 2. I guess the wheel really does repeat itself if it goes long enough. It does feel appropriate that the boys finally take them out just before the end.
Ahem. NOOOOOOO!!!! FAIN!!!!! Fain’s been my favourite villian for pretty much the whole series so I was sad to see him go. It’s especially a shame that how it happened was one of my few major gripes with the book. I liked all of Fains scenes that were in the book but there simply wasn’t enough. It’s the missed dramatic potential that bothers me. Cutting some pages from the battle scenes could have allowed a much better build up to his arrival at Shayol Ghul. Having a few pages scattered through out the book as he marches on Shayol Ghul, slowly gaining size and strength as he devoures armies of trollocs in his path would have made the whole thing much more ominous. Sanderson himself actually said one of his regrets was that he wished he wrote more Fain. Oh well.
As far as Mat goes I don’t know whether I ever really noticed his part being less then the other 2, even with Lan saving him against Demandred and the lack of Fain build up. I think it’s because Mat has much more focus on him in the big battle so it still feels like he’s doing a lot.
Bye Lanfear. You were my second favourite villian so I’m sad to see you go too. I was pleasanlty surprised that she was able to finally get back to her manipulative best after so long on the sidelines. Her last second grab for glory and attempts to seduce Perrin was just so early book her.
One of my favourite lines in the whole series. I was on the fence about Logains story arc when I first read it but after some thinking I really came to like it. Kind of amusing that Logains glory is still to come.
And speaking of my favourite line
I absolutely love that line and Perrin being the last one to stand between Rand and defeat. Unlike most people in the series, Perrin wasn’t with Rand because prophecy demanded it, or because ta’veren forced him to, or just because he was the Dragon Reborn. He followed Rand because he was his friend and he wanted to help him shoulder the burden. Even one last time like this. Apart from Nynaeve and Min I can’t think of many other characters who were there for Rand the person rather than Rand the Dragon.
@96 KakitaOCU
Good call. I’m a massive Angel fan and I have no idea how I didn’t notice that before.
@90 Anthonypero
Actually Morraine specifically doesn’t channnel at Mashadar in tEOTW saying all it would do is draw its attention. Mashader does leg it whenever Rand throws balefire around though.
She did say it would draw his attention, but I thought she then did threw fire at it to make a path in the end because she had no choice… but I’ll have to look it up later. Not doubting you, just explaining what my recollection was.
Mac @72, responding to mine at @53:
RobM: How could Perrin slough the Compulsion off? He says so himself in his thoughts: “in the wolf dream, what he felt became reality”. Or to put it another, familiar way: “it’s just a weave.”
My issue is that if the Compulsion were done right (and Lanfear/Cyndane is highly skilled), Perrin won’t have the self-awareness to apply logic and use his wolf dream-fu skills to break the weave.
Mat’s nonchalant killing of Fain in many ways mirrors his disposal of the gholam. Here’s this creepy, scary, monster, and in one short scene he lures it into a trap then dispatches it – with a bit of quick thinking when the plan doesn’t quite go to plan. Same with Fain. Takes a wildcard to beat a wildcard.
I think of Perrin killing Lanfear whenever I see The Incredibles scene where Mr. Incredible gets fed up and grabs his boss by the neck.
KakitaOCU@69 and Evermore@94 – I am an Angel fan too but I totally don’t get the comparison here. Lorne acts under orders, feels betrayed by those orders, and can no longer take part in any of it. Mat acts under his own steam, is perfectly happy with his actions, and carries on. What am I missing? (Haven’t watched the episode in a good long while, so likely I’m missing something.)
Wes S@61 – Okay, maybe showdown was the wrong word. I just never liked that Moghedien always managed to slip away from Nynaeve in the end. Nynaeve bested Moghedien but never finished it off. I wanted that to happen. (…Does Nynaeve ever kill anyone?)
Perrin fan though I am, I must say I’m not so sure about that line that so many people love: ‘ “Go,” Perrin whispered. “Do what you must do. As always, I will watch your back.” ‘. I definitely agree with Evermore@94 (and others, I’m sure) about Perrin helping Rand because they’re friends, and, as I said already, I think Perrin’s whole thing is about doing what must be done. But the ‘as always’? That’s just not true, because of the whole long search for Faile and the Shaido, when he definitely would have chosen to continue that search and completely abandon Rand’s back. And I thought that was the whole point – that he learnt from that experience and made a different choice this time. So it’s really not ‘as always’.
Not surprisingly, the comments here revolve around Rand, Mat and Perrin, but I have to say that Logain’s breaking of the seals was one of the most powerful scenes in the book for me. I got choked up just reading the recap. The whole montage with POV’s from Elayne, Thom, Min, Avi, and then cutting over to Logaine, and then Gabrelle telling him to break the seals… it was extremely powerful and definitely movie-worthy and very emotionally satisfying. I found that whole section very well written.
I agree with most people that the Mat/Fain conclusion felt a little off and I was really happy to get Leigh’s recap of the Rand/Moridin/closing of the bore because it helped clarify everything. I can’t believe we’re at the end, really at the end. I’ve been following along for a few number of years (I think about 7) and just don’t know what I’m going to do with my time now that we’re coming to an end. Well done, Leigh, very well done.
OOH and I got the hunny, completely random!
anthonypero @@@@@ 91
I’m pretty sure the Ordeith fellow whispered his poison in Shadar Logoth and had nothing to do with Hawkwing. There was more than 1 000 years difference between the times of the two. The Shadar Logoth/Manetheren story was set in the Trolloc wars.
I think that there is a certain super symmetry to the way things went down with the bad buys near the end.
Yes, there were differences in how they were dealt with, but it would have felt forced if all of the conflicts got equal time post- last battle. I think that the Foxes and the Snakes are the second set of antagonists for Mat
Here’s my attempt to put the situation in tabular form. (Hopefully the formatting comes out reasonably. Rats – no easy way to make this look right.)
Protagonist | Antagonist | depth of conflict | resolution time | length of conflict
Rand
Dark One | the main conflict | end | since EOTW/previous turns of the wheel
Moridin/Ishy | medium | end | since EOTW/dormant in middle 2/3
Perrin
Slayer | deep | last battle | start 1/3 in?
Lanfear | shallow | end | started at ToM?
Mat
Foxes&Snakes | deep | ToM | started 1/3 in?
Fain/Shiaisam | shallow | end | since EOTW, but dormant for middle 2/3
Anyway, my main point is Rand automatically is going to break the symmetry, and I think that the way it worked with Mat and Perrin was actually helpful, since the main symmetry was already broken.
anthonypero
I should have explained that better. Regardless of Mat’s self professed and demonstrated “immunity” I’m of the opinion that his Shadar Logoth exposure makes his soul unsuitable for service as a Hero of the Horn. At least for this go around of the Wheel. That stuff is dangerous.
It may be over (almost), but Leigh is still our commander.
Wow! It’s only Wednesday evening and we’ve already passed the hunny. Anyone for 2-hunny?
Those two passages gave me chills, and I don’t get chills often these days. Bravo, BWS!
Lanfear clearly didn’t grok Perrin’s understanding of, and capabilities in, T’A’R–especially in view of his love for Faile. Even less subtle compulsion, ala Greandal, wouldn’t have overcome his prowess, IMHO.
Pre-AMOL there was speculation in our comments about Fain/Etc. taking over for the DO or otherwise being a major player during the LB, perhaps by helping Rand defeat the DO. How wrong we were. Another theory bites the dust. However, Leigh’s point about the Mat-Fain/Etc. battle fizzling to some extent has merit, again MHO. Mat did have other battles to fight, though, and while I don’t agree that symmetry was lost, as others have stated eloquently up-thread (ummm, Demandred), Fain/Etc. had to be taken out and Mat was likely the only one who could do it, even though treatment of the battle was given short shrift. I would have loved to have read a little more about Mat’s encounter with Fain, slanted toward what rossnewberry posted: What me lucky?
A while back (TOM re-read?) we were discussing Callandor’s interesting attributes and how they might have developed. Since that time I’ve had a loonie theory about Aginor being involved in the sword’s creation. The question remains on my list of things to ask BWS. Unfortuntely, it didn’t get asked at JordanCon this year. So many questions, so little time.
Regarding the surviving female Forsaken: Mesaana has a brain of jelly, Moggie meets the a’dam, and Graendal is compulsed (compelled?) and wearing white for the next age or two. Not a good “survival” rate in my book.
The Duck One is bound in Duckburg from the moment of Creation, together with Donald and Daisy Duck, Huey, Dewey and Louie, Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Morty and Ferdie, Goofy and Pluto, and others of that ilk. To say his name – Scrooge McDuck – is to call his attention to oneself, which is often fatal. Duckfriends call him the Great Lord of the Duck, because they claim to speak his name is blasphemous.
I found Rand’s “defeat” of the Duck One reminiscent of the Buddha’s “defeat” of Mara, the “evil tendencies” that tried to turn him away from his difficult path towards enlightenment. It’s fitting to note that the Buddha never “killed” Mara; he just ignored him and hung on until he “ended” the battle.
Sealing the Duck One back in Duckburg ready for the next iteration of Mierin finding a source of power she was interested in using, has a sort of symmetry to it, as well as fitting in with the overall “Buddhist-nature” of the whole series. (Though seals make indifferent guards; sea lions might have been better, or for a show of force, walruses …)
Now that the Duck One has been sealed away again, is it now safe to say his REAL name, Scrooge McDuck, in public?
Fain. Oh Fain! You’re the sizzle without the sausage. The drumroll without the punchline. If you were a football team, you’d be Arsenal – always promising, never delivering (prove me wrong in the FA Cup final lads).
Fain should be a great villain. He’s clever, creepy, insidious, insane, clever. He is fruit salad of evil ingredients, including icky superpowers. He threatens to be the Dark One’s nemesis/replacement. I imagined him using his anti-Myrdraal powers on Shaidar Haran.
But whenever Fain has a major role, he flops when it counts. In TGH he’s the primary, deliciously nasty antagonist. But he just disappears for the climax. It’s almost as bad in TSR, when he kills Perrin’s family, corrupts the Whitecloaks … and just ends up gnashing his teeth in frustration then running away.
Now, finally, he’s transformed into walking Mashadar with added Trolloc zombie minions, on his way to confront his two great foes – surely its his time to do something big!
And he gets killed off in a few lines.
LAME. I have no problem with Mat doing it, but it’s very unsatisfying. And no, it doesn’t work for me like Lorne thing in Angel does – in that Angel had defeated Lindsey earlier, so the climax of his story had passed.
@32 – yes, you nailed it. RJ’s biggest fault was too many characters and plots, which caused the problems of length and pacing the series developed and in AMoL, some poor foreshadowing (e.g. Mat vs Fain, the Callandor trap) and many rushed plot resolutions. RJ left BS too much to do.
Indeed, the whole climax is mostly a miss for me, which is a huge shame. The Lanfear-Perrin scene was very good – nice to see Lanfear back to being a threat after doing virtually nothing for 8 or so books. And if Sanderson’s Mat sucks, his Perrin is excellent.
But I’m with those who found the ‘Dark One was not the real enemy and killing him would be the wrong move’ unconvincing rather than revelatory.
The Callandor revelation feels like a WTF handwave solution, Nynaeve has too little to do and Moiraine even less, and the Logain sealbreaking just seems tacked on and undramatic compared to the really big stuff going on around it.
A shame.
@99 Sian17
I can’t speak for kakitaOCU but I wasn’t thinking of a Mat/Lorne(RIP) comparison but instead the Fain/Lindsey one. The mirrored indignation and disbelief of being taken out by a 2nd rater (in their eyes). Fain didn’t even consider Mat worth killing back in The Great Hunt. Big mistake.
As far as the ‘As always’ part of Perrins quote goes it reminds of those random hypothetical questions where someone asks if you can only save one person from X situation then who would you choose type thing. I mean I’m sure there’s a situation where Perrin wouldn’t have Rands back but for most practical purposes ‘As always’ is close enough. Of course when push came to shove BROMANCE(!) totally beat romance anway.
The intended purpose (at least as I see it) was symmetry,
I didn’t like the “mechanics” of the Matt/PF battle, but I don’t agree with Leigh’s analysis. There were alot of individual battles in the Last Battle that were carried out with no forewarning at all:
Ewgene vs Taim
Avi vs Graendel
Lan vs Demondred
Perrin vs Lanfear
I put Mat vs Paidan Fain in the exact same category as these match-ups. Matt went to SG to help Rand AFTER fulfilling his main storyline purpose…General in charge of the RL battle.
It’s not really fair to surmize a purpose and then claim that it wasn’t met.
Many others have already pointed out all but the last one of Mat’s major accomplishments:
Killing the gholam
Defeating the Finn
Matching Demandred in the Last Battle
Delivering the Seanchan to Rand
Getting the new Hornsounder to where he was needed most
Killing Fain and….
Saving Moiraine – remember Min’s foretelling
All directly or indirectly essential to preserving Rand’s victory.
So no. He does not fall short of Perrin as one of the legs of the tripod.
Evermore@107 – Oh, right, I’m with you! I like that. (Although I definitely prefer the Angel scene, which has a lot more impact, where as this one is just something we needed to get done…)
Scook@108 – But Egwene/Taim was White Tower/Black Tower, so that works, and Perrin/Lanfear was set up (if a very long time ago and mostly forgotten about). I don’t think every confrontation needs foreshadowing or symmetry or some deeper meaning, but Fain deserved more. And Mat/Fain did have some of that, it just didn’t play quite right in the end, for me.
Also, thinking about it, for my part, the Mat/Fain confrontation falls down when it comes to Fain, not Mat. Because as so many people have pointed out, Mat does a heck of a lot of a good stuff. Whereas Fain was missing that little something.
@109:
The OP, at least, wasn’t claiming he fell short as a member of the tripod, but that he fell short in this particular series of chapters that looked to try to be structured in such a way as to balance their contributions. The OP is saying that the structure didn’t work, because too many of those things you just listed happened before this moment, leaving Perrin’s and Rand’s storylines heavier in this section of the book than Mat’s. So the structure didn’t work out and felt off.
As this re-read is coming to an end I wanted to add my thanks to everybody who made this re-read such a wonderful and diverse experience for me – especially, of course, the wondrous Leigh Butler.
I am afraid that, while my English is good enough to deeply appreciate the books and this re-read, it will not suffice to tell you exactly how much this has come to mean to me and how much I enjoyed reading along with you all. But I will try anyway.
I bought AMOL pretty soon after it came out, but then realised that I needed to do a re-read of the whole series before starting with my shiny white new book. Somewhere through Winters Heart I had an accident and could for quite some time no longer hold a book. So I switched to the audio version of the books until mid-AMOL. Yet another thing to be thankful to WOT for: it kept me sane through some pretty bad nights and days while waiting for my body to recoup.
When I finally put AMOL down I felt lost, and very much alone. As the WOT readers among my family and friends had for different reasons not yet finished the series, I had no one to share with how it felt to be at the end of something that had been so important to me for a big part of my life.
So when I found this re-read, I went back to the beginning and read all the posts and many of the comments until I had catched up with the rest of you. It was like therapy, I loved every bit of it, and also the discussions in the comment section reminded me so much of those long ago times on listserv.
Now, again, an end is approaching. And this time I am better prepared than at the end of AMOL. But I will miss to read the writings of one incomparable Leigh Butler. This was my first re-read ever, and I only recently realised how much she had made it the great experience it has been for me, with her wit, her beautiful wording, her deeply touching anecdotes, her passionatly stated opinions, when I started reading another re-read, that is done nicely, but just did not do it for me like this one did. Hopefully there will be something else by her that I can follow later on.
(My secret wish would be for her to do a re-read on Gabaldons Outlander-Series – and I know I am not the only WOT-fan who also loves to get immersed in the universe of Jamie and Claire. But of course those books are not part of Tor, so probably my wish cannot be fulfilled, even if Leigh read and liked the books.)
I would first like to thank Leight and TOR for this reread that has been a fantastic experience that added much to the books themselves.
Secondly I concur with 32. Phigment in his interpretation of the probable intents. Symmetry is important and I assume RJ had a outline much like that.
I just… JUST… finished AMOL for the first time and had to find something to satisfy my craving for more. So I found this website. Way cool.
Just want to throw my $0.02 in about the DO never being the enemy. Randland is a dualistic universe, so the DO is not like Satan, but rather a equal but opposite force to the Creator. I see it kinda like a piston driving a crankshaft in a car engine. The piston fires, driving the power stroke, and then, to maintain circular motion (kinda like a WHEEL OF TIME) the back stroke provides compression for the next cycle. The Creator is the expansion stroke, the DO the compression. Turning the wheel of time. If Rand killed the DO somehow then the entire engine would stop turning. Heck, maybe the True Power has something to do with it too; I’m just making up the analogy as I go.
@@@@@ 112. lil.sister: Wow, glad you are better now. But guessing the healing process is still ongoing.
Everyone saying “Thank you” to Leigh, Tor.com, and the re-readers are making me happy/sad. It so great to see the outpouring of love and appreciation.
It’s so sad to realize that soon we won’t have this weekly gathering. I too found this page when I didn’t have anyone else to really share the story with. It’s been a fabulous journey, for which I can’t thank everyone involved enough.
For those on FaceBook, we have a group there “WoT Tor.com Rereaders.” Join us! It’s not the same, but we still have fun discussions, and can even hit hunny’s on a few threads.
@112, thanks for your story, and I’m glad the fandom has been able to help you a bit! I know it has been a boon for me as, well, especially in my younger days.
Anyway, I am not familiar with the series you mentioned (in fact, I totally read Jaime and Claire as ‘Jaime and Cersei’, hahaha) BUT, Tor.com covers things that aren’t part of the Tor publishing arm (for example, the Harry Potter re read) so you may have a chance :)
Outlander is more likely to be covered on Heroes and Heartbreakers, the romance version of the Tor website.
Lilsister@112:
I hope you are fully recovered, and I’m glad you found Leigh/Tor/us! Welcome.
btw….Leigh is doing another Read, not reread, on Tor….for The Game of Thrones series. It’s a more brutal series, than WoT, but well written, and Leigh is at her usual best!
I found this blog about 6 months after it started, I think, and haven’t missed a post since. I don’t always comment anymore, but rest assured, I am reading it all! Amongst my friends, no one else reads Fantasy, and this site/Tor/JCon have been a godsend for me!
I’ve met so many great new friends here, from all over the world, many of which I’ve had the pleasure of meeting in person at JCon!
I’m going to miss it, and all of you so much.
Regarding new projects to keep Leigh as exhausted as possible: Has anyone at Tor/Leigh’s considered doing a Mistborn re-read? Because that would be awesome!
Awesome, I say!
I clicked on that link and…wow. It was like stepping into bizarro world!!! (No offense to romance fans, it was just really weird to me! Familiar enough to fool me into thinking it was Tor.com, but everything was different!). Is Tor.com affiliated with this site, or do they just happen to use a common blog template?
Leigh has mentioned on her Jordancon posts that she hasn’t read Patrick Rothfuss yet, but she wants to. So maybe her next project is a Patrick Rothfuss read, like ASOIAF read? Normally all things Kingkiller Chronicle are handled by Jo Walton in this site, but I think the more the merrier.
Maybe when the Malazan re-read ends she can also do a read of the Malazan series?
LOL, maybe Leigh is looking forward to a chance to just read the books for fun and not have to worry about making posts. I think it was Jo who said it really is a lot of work (I never thought it was easy) and she would not do it again, as much as she enjoyed doing it for the Rothfuss books.
I also liked the Heroes & heartbreakers link. I actually like that genre and didn’t know about that site. They even have some posts on Orphan Black and Game of Thrones.
I say double YAY to a Mistborn re-read!
@122 Lisamarie
LOL, maybe Leigh is looking forward to a chance to just read the books for fun and not have to worry about making posts.
Your point being…? *ducks*
Yep, it’s a sacrifice I am willing Leigh to make ;) Though if a re-read, it’s on something I’ve read…
Oh, I won’t lie, I would be deleriously happy to see her do a Veronica Mars watch/re-watch – I think the glittering surface with a sordid underbelly/class war/feminism issues would be right up her alley.
@Ryanmano
A MBotF read does not really make sense for Leigh… too little potential for feminist outrage :-P
I’m well aware of the H and H site – especially good for Outlander news and for the Orphan Black recaps. I’ve looked at some of their other recaps as well (such as Bitten, which I’ve seen a few times).
I’d enjoy seeing Leigh do an Outlander read, especially given the TV show starting this August. Someone needs to take this on so why not our Leigh?
I’d prefer not to see her do Mistborn. Loved the first one, second one’s ok, and third one’s too much of a slog.
Other possibilities – Vorkosigan would be awesome. I’m a big fan of Robin Hobb, so the Assassin’s Apprentice series could be fun and underplayed on this site. Brust’s Taltos series would be great. Others????
I want the Taltos series, dammit!
Naomi Nivick!
anthonypero@83
This is explicitly contradicted by RJ in an interview – an interview that (in retrospect) left a tiny bit of wiggle room for a combined OP/TP angreal.
From http://www.wotdb.com/interviews/question/311:
Wiggle room notwithstanding, I still call “retcon” on Callandor channeling the TP – but there’s a few other places I’ve called “retcon” and I still love WOT. A 14-volume epic cannot practically be free of that.
Whether she blogs or not, I expect that Leigh would find a lot of pleasure in Rothfuss. The ASoIaF re-read is keeping her awfully busy already–and unless I misread her tone, is it maybe not something our beloved Leigh is actually enjoying? Her posts are always a lot of fun, but lacking in insight compared to her response to WoT, and I can’t help but wonder if the real reason is that. . .GRRM just really isn’t her cup of tea. She works hard on seeing what the fans see in it, but overall, it does kind of come off as something the editorial staff made her do rather than a heart project, and as she gets further into the series she, like many dyed-in-the-wool WoT fans (including yours truly), is finding that she can respect it but just. . .really. . .can’t. . .love it. I think Rothfuss would suit her taste better, whether or not she blogs.
Not sure about Mistborn either. It might really feel like BS overload, with Way of Kings already going. And I suspect that the elaborations of super-rational magic systems and cosmere stuff that you only understand if you hang out on the 17th Shard might not be her cup of tea/might distract her from social and character analysis, although I do think there are good characters in Sanderson.
@133 mutantalbinocrocodile
Her posts are always a lot of fun, but lacking in insight compared to her response to WoT, and I can’t help but wonder if the real reason is that. . .GRRM just really isn’t her cup of tea.
Maybe it’s the fact that unlike WoT she hasn’t read ASoIaF umpteen million times or participated in Wild Mass Guessing and the creation of Epileptic Trees for decades. One tends to have more insights for a series one can recite backwards by heart for the most part…
@132:
You lifted my quote out of context. The whole context states that the buffer might prevent TP access in a normal angreal. The quote from RJ contradicts this no more than it does what happens in the book. Callendor is a male angreal that Moridin can and did use to channel the TP. I’m trying to explain why Callendor can be used to channel the TP. I’m coming up with a reason that Callendor is different from other male sa’angreals. It has no buffer. That’s the only difference we know of. Its the only point of information from which to draw on while speculating.
Leigh would love the Gor series. : )
anthonypero@136
I see your point and agree that your explanation is no less likely given (as you point out) that we have indeed seen one male sa’angreal that allows channeling the TP.
I still call “retcon” on RJ, but you sir are off the hook :-)
And I totally called it. Yes.
Well, mostly. Let me just gloat in satisfaction as one of my less popular pet theories(that of Callandor being able to amplify the True Power and that it, along with Saidin and Saidar would be used to reseal the bore) is proven true. Didn’t expect the sudden takeover though.
I think I have to read the first books again After reading AMOL to find more foreshadowing. So many “minor” details that didn’t seem significant I completely forgot. Now, after AMOL, many ignored details now take on a whole new significance.
My Callandor theory is that it was made soon after the Bore was drilled. “woo hoo, new power source, let’s make a sa’angreal to help channel it”. It was just sitting on the table in Rand’s WayBack memories, they hadn’t just made it they were trying to figure out what to do with it.
I loved that Mat killed Fain. Mostly with his luck! Lucky that he got Mashadar-stabbed right then, lucky that Fain dropped the dagger right then…etc. Fain and the dagger were threads woven thru the story from the very beginning. Arguments could be made for any of the super boys killing him/it. in AMOL, Mat was having a conversation with ____ (can’t remember who) discussing his time of “dagger madness” and he automatically reached for the dagger. Just because I can’t remember all the forshadowy details doesn’t mean they weren’t there.
I’ve never understood why Leigh thinks the Aes Sedai in the flashback scenes had anything to do with making Callandor. Nothing ever says they did. The Companion, released after this reread, says it was made during the War of Power, but never used because it was flawed.
Myself, I had always thought that Callandor had been deliberately made to channel all three powers, because it was what they used to drill into the Dark One’s prison in the first place. Once it was understood that the true power was something you don’t want to use, Callandor was locked away until it was hung in the Stone during the breaking, with the intention that it would be used to re-seal the bore eventually.