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butterflydm · 2 years

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wot reread: a personal evaluation of The Slog (tm)

This does have spoilers through A Memory of Light, because part of how I evaluated The Slog was which scenes & plotlines didn’t end up mattering in the final books (to the best of my memory).

There are many complaints about The Slog in the middle-late books of the WoT series, as well as arguments about when The Slog starts and what it means. How I personally defined The Slog:

Books begin to run together in my head because they no longer contain discrete plotlines, as the major plot-threads spill from book to book. There is excessive padding in the form of storylines that either end up not serving enough of a purpose or are simply bloated and repetitive.

By my definition, The Slog begins during Lord of Chaos and runs all the way to the end of the Jordan books. It starts slow but really explodes in Winter’s Heart and beyond.

In the first five books, every single main plot was completed in that same book where it was introduced.

In this second set of books (comprising of 6 books), we have:

Egwene: Spends SIX books on getting to the White Tower, confronting Elaida, and becoming Amrylin and still has not completed it by the end of Knife of Dreams. She has one job and will do it as slowly as possible lol. But there’s enough variety and new stuff in her plotlines that she doesn’t feel too sloggy.

Nynaeve: Shares plots with Elayne and Rand but doesn’t have any solo plotlines. Almost drops off the page entirely in CoT & KoD.

Rand: defeats Sammael in two books. Fails to repel the Seanchan invasion in The Path of Daggers. Successfully cleanses saidin in Winter’s Heart. Final task (make truce with Seanchan) left incomplete in Knife of Dreams, as the baton is handed over to Sanderson, because Rand is barely on-page in CoT & KoD. Two successes, one failure, one left incomplete (and is on two books atm). Of the successes, one took two books to complete. He’s still mostly on track and not terribly sloggy when it comes to his plotlines.

Perrin: After saving Rand in Lord of Chaos, a quick one-book success, he spends the next FIVE books on his task to fetch Masema and bring him and his Dragonsworn back to Rand. And it is still left incomplete as of Knife of Dreams (and not looking great, as Masema has betrayed him and is in the wind again). So much slog.

Mat: fails at all the major plot-threads in this entire six-book section, being prevented from going to Caemlyn with Elayne by the Seanchan invasion, and then never returning to Rand’s armies by the time we end Knife of Dreams, also delayed due to the Seanchan, though he does finally reunite with the Band of the Red Hand. But he mostly just spends a lot of time failing in this set of books and dithering around.

Elayne: She manages to complete the Bowl of the Winds plotline in the first three books and the Queen plotline in second three books. Not as quick as Rand’s track record, but better than everyone else and she doesn’t notch up any failures.

Book by book, the rankings are:

LoC: One completed storyline; two incomplete storylines

ACoS: One completed; one failed; three incomplete

TPoD: One completed; one failed; two incomplete (no Mat)

WH: One completed; four incomplete

CoT: Five incomplete (none completed)

KoD: One completed; four incomplete

These six books could have easily been three books. Two if you aren’t precious about keeping all the major plotlines (I would have been willing to cut out the Shaido and Tylin-Tuon storylines entirely; instead have Perrin actually just deal with Masema and have Mat be part of Elayne’s plotline in Caemlyn; this would have saved tons of story space; since Rand is the one who is forced to do the Seanchan deal anyway and Mat brings nothing to the table there, just do that plotline without Mat).

Or, three books and keeping all major plotlines would give us: Elayne, Nynaeve, & Mat go to Ebou Dar in book one; use the Bowl in book two and Elayne and Nynaeve escape to Caemlyn; and Elayne completes her queen arc in book three. Perrin helps Rand in book one; goes after Masema in book two; saves Faile in book three. Mat works with Rand and then Elayne in book one; gets trapped in Ebou Dar in book two and escapes it, meeting DotNM; we endure Mat & Tuon in book three and he reunites with tBotRH (but maybe Mat actually is productive and worked out a tentative treaty/truce with Tuon). Egwene gets to Salidar and establishes herself in book one; gets to the White Tower in book two; puts the White Tower under siege and gets captured in book three. Rand gets kidnapped & defeats Sammael in book one (& I guess sleeps with Min); fails against the Seanchan & takes care of the traitors in book two; cleanses saidin with Nynaeve’s help (& does the group bonding) in book three. Every one of the books would have its own identity and not spill into the other books.

However, one of the profoundly disappointing things for me in this run of books was the number that it did on Mat as a character and, in general, how Jordan flips from showing us how horrible the Seanchan are, with touchstones of hope that they can potentially change (like Egeanin) to both Mat and Perrin basically deciding Slavery Is Too Hard To Fight, Better Make (genuine!) Friends/Lovers With The Slavers. It really did feel, as I did my reread, that the story was saying one thing about Seanchan and slavery in books 2-9, and then flipped to saying something completely different (nearly the opposite) about slavery in books 10 & 11.

My speculation on this (which I’ve mentioned a bit in my reread posts) is thinking that it was between writing Winter’s Heart and writing Crossroads of Twilight that Jordan came up with the idea of the Seanchan outriggers.

Because all the way up through the end of Winter’s Heart, it feels like the story of the Seanchan is going to be told in this story. We are given so much set-up in WH to the idea that Tuon will struggle with being a potential marath’damane in this story. Then, in CoT & KoD, it’s suddenly Someone Else’s Problem In The Future and Maybe Slavery Is Okay Sometimes and basically made me want to spit rocks every time we went into a Mat or Perrin section of the story. When I was doing my first read of the books, I absolutely did NOT expect Mat or Perrin to become Seanchan/slaver sympathizers, yet that happens for both of them by the end of KoD, with Perrin thinking his slaver friend is a good egg while she’s enslaving the Shaido and Mat thinking that Tuon, future head slaver of them all, is worth defending and protecting even when she is actively attempting to enslave and torture his allies that he already rescued from slavery once.

These two books are also where we get the horrific “both sides are wrong” rhetoric where the people who DON’T WANT TO BE SLAVES are treated as if they were just as ‘petty’ and ‘wrong’ as the person who WANTS TO ENSLAVE THEM and it’s horrifically out of character for Mat, who was vehemently anti-slavery in Winter’s Heart, which only takes place a week before his storyline in CoT starts.

Yet the story acts like this is just a petty dispute between characters and even falls on the side of supporting Tuon because Mat has decided ~her eyes are pretty~ and whatever other nonsense. We also get Seanchan PoVs that glorify Tuon and the Seanchan more in these two books, whereas pretty much every Seanchan PoV in earlier books pointed out the downsides of their society (not usually intentionally from the PoV of the character, but clear to the readers) by mentioning the constant unrest in the homeland, etc.

Here, when we get news of civil wars in Seanchan, it’s implied to be because the Imperial family is dead, but there were ALREADY constant conflicts in Seanchan -- we learned that in TPoD and WH. It’s more likely that now that the Imperial family is dead, it’s easier for news of the unrest to spread because the Empress isn’t able to immediately jump in to crush the rebellions and suppress the news of the unhappiness of her people.

An alternate plotline I floated with markantonys to make Perrin and Mat’s plotlines better (imo of course):

No Shaido. The Shaido are played out by LoC. But Faile & co could still get captured by the Seanchan. This would make sense, because Morgase can (just barely) channel, so if a sul’dam/damane patrol gets close enough to them, they would sense her ability and snag her up to collar -- likely sweeping up her companions as well for testing. We still get to see Faile being clever in a time of great stress but without the nonsense of the Shaido still being a threat and without Perrin buddying up with slavers and thinking they’re just swell at the end of it. If you want to deal with the remnants of the Shaido, have them also be captured by the Seanchan. Faile can even meet most of the same characters that way.

Meanwhile, in Mat’s plotline, he doesn’t just give Tuon an infinite number of free passes to be an asshole. Setalle Anan acts like a real person and doesn’t bizarrely side with the head of the invasion force against one of the people who helped her escape Ebou Dar. Let Mat actually stand up against Tuon and have conversations with her about slavery. Let the secret of the sul’dam actually MATTER in Tuon’s storyline (like if you have the horrific moment of Tuon collaring the Aes Sedai, the tables should then be turned on her and she should get collared in response, making her realize that she can be affected by the a’dam - this could actually be a moment of growth for one of the former sul’dam characters, having one of them, probably Bethamin, chose to collar Tuon to show her that she’s ‘just’ a marath’damane too, just like them). Let Tuon actually grow as a person. Selucia should not be here and should never have left Ebou Dar with Tuon. Tuon should NOT have her brainwashed slave BFF on tap to remind her that Slavery Is Great Actually.

Mat and Tuon could still get (politically) married to cement a genuine alliance between the Seanchan and Rand’s forces but then he has to send her back to Ebou Dar so that she can actually enforce said alliance. There is zero reason to have Mat soften his stance on slavery at any point in this storyline. All that does is trash the ‘great and good’ man that we knew in books 1-9.

How much more interesting the Mat & Tuon storyline would be if it were about two intelligent people on opposite sides trying to work out a compromise and coming to a treaty agreement. But as it is, the M&T storyline is so... pointless. Mat should have been the one to make a treaty with the Seanchan; it’s literally the only thing that would have made Mat & Tuon’s marriage worth the page time spent on it (and worth being a prophecy). And yet... instead it’s treated as a (toxic) romance. Absolute waste of time. (ah, also just thought! If Mat is the one to make a deal with the Seanchan, this frees Rand up to deal with the Black Tower, like he SHOULD have done; just scrap everything that Rand does that relates to the Seanchan in CoT & KoD and have him do a plotline about the Black Tower instead).

And the Rand & Mat reunion would have been so much more interesting if Mat had walked in with a complicated and messy alliance with the Seanchan that Rand has to make work. THAT reunion would have been more likely to have all the depth and complexity that I am used to getting from Rand & Mat in the earlier books.

And in this new dual storyline, we have contrasting elements in Perrin and Mat’s storylines -- in Perrin’s storyline, we are seeing The Institution of The Seanchan Invasion, while in Mat’s storyline, we are seeing individuals cut off from their system of government, figuring out who they are when they’re not being told who they have to be. Instead of both Perrin and Mat deciding Actually I Like Slavers Sometimes, have Perrin rescue the Shaido in addition to his own people and then show us a variety of responses to the idea of living out from under Seanchan rule over in Mat’s plotline.

...and while I’m thinking about it... in Rand’s plotline... I’ve already proposed that the Rand x Min storyline should be adjusted so that she doesn’t Change Herself For A Man. (I think the show will probably do this and we won’t see Min painting herself into skin-tight breeches and growing and curling her hair because she thinks it’ll appeal to him more). I would say that Nynaeve should be given more to do in Rand’s plotline rather than dropping off the face of the earth after she helps him with the cleansing.

My way of fixing the whole ‘Rand just drops the topic of Mat after Nynaeve doesn’t give him an answer’ would be to shift timelines slightly. Have Tuon arrive directly with the initial invasion of Ebou Dar and shift that whole timeline up a month, so that by the time Rand hears about Mat being in Ebou Dar from Nynaeve, Mat has already escaped the city itself (and maybe Rand is able to see this through the color swirl bond, that Mat is with a circus instead of surrounded by Seanchan, so he feels like it’s safe not to worry about him for now while he focuses on the cleansing).

I would say that Rand & Nynaeve’s post-cleansing plotline SHOULD have been the Black Tower and dealing with that issue rather than Rand having Yet Another Allying With The Seanchan Plot just like the other two ta’veren boys. Nynaeve has already been deeply involved with helping men who can channel - she Healed gentling and she helped cleanse saidin - so being one of the people who investigates the Black Tower would have been a perfect fit for her character arc.

Elayne and Egwene are perfect and don’t need to change. 😘😘 Haha, on a more serious note, I would make some slight adjustments: Elayne’s pregnancy should be a non-issue for her in these books; she is BARELY pregnant when we open up in CoT (it’s been less than a week since her sex marathon with Rand). I genuinely do not believe that Jordan had a single conversation with a person capable of being pregnant when he wrote Elayne’s storyline. But her actual storyline is solid and I wouldn’t change anything.

In Egwene’s storyline, I would say that instead of Talmanes hunting her down so that she can try to talk him out of rescuing Mat, actually have HER go to TALMANES and tell him that Mat is in trouble and let him know he should head south with tBotRH (with the timeline being shortened by a month in Mat’s plotline, this would work out). Everything in her own storyline is fine; just needs to be tightened up a bit. Otherwise, they are both perfect. 😘😘

IF Rand and Nynaeve have already dealt with the Black Tower AND Mat has already made a deal with the Seanchan, then you probably COULD have finished the series in one more book after KoD rather than needing three more -- Perrin would already be in place to be a better leader by choosing to save the Shaido alongside his own people; Mat would first have a plot of saving Moiraine and then take the reins on the Last Battle; Egwene could actually do her planned ‘hearts and minds’ plot from within the White Tower (or have Semirhage be the one to launch a Seanchan assault on the WT, before Tuon is back in charge), etc. Maybe two books.

But, yeah, the slog was pretty sloggy. In terms of plotlines dragging on, CoT was definitely the worst offender, as absolutely no one completed any major plotlines in the entire book.

Another way to evaluate The Slog is how much character growth occurs:

Egwene: grows into her role as genuine Amrylin over the course of six books and is confident at the end, even in the face of being captive in the White Tower.

Rand: spirals downward book by book. After the triumph of TFoH, LoC, ACoS, and TPoD all end on darker notes. Brief triumph at the end of WH, then back to spiraling down in Cot & KoD, though he doesn’t get that much screentime in those books.

Mat: mostly just gets traumatized over and over; is abused by someone in a position of power, is horribly injured; resigns himself fatalistically to his fate and just does his best to make it as palatable as possible by trying to get Tuon to fall in love with him. Decides that slavery is acceptable under some conditions. Ugly stuff.

Perrin: obsesses over his wife, buddies up with slavers.

Nynaeve: uses BotW! breaks her block! gets married! embraces being a queen! helps cleanse saidin!

Elayne: uses BotW! bonds Rand! wins over the nobles! gains a first-sister!

Rand, Mat, and Perrin all basically go through negative character arcs of depression, failure, and obsession while Egwene, Nynaeve, and Elayne all experience positive character arcs of growing into themselves as people (though Nynaeve does mostly disappear after the cleansing, which sucks). Which leaves Rand, Mat, and Perrin all needing to go through MAJOR character growth in the last three books because they have regressed so much from their mutual character high point of roughly the middle of Lord of Chaos.

On the... plus side? I did find in my reread that Mat’s character is destroyed so abruptly and with so little narrative justification in CoT & KoD that it’s relatively easy to sever that characterization away from his books 1-9 character. His character has been so blatantly warped to fit the ‘fall in love with a slaver’ storyline that he doesn’t even feel that much like Mat from the very first pages of his PoV (where he’s suddenly not insightful enough to retain an insight about the Seanchan invasion that he’d had back in Winter’s Heart). Jordan had to kill Mat’s compassion, his intelligence, and his stubbornness (THE Two Rivers’ character trait) in order to make him fall in love with Tuon, so merely adding those things back in fixes his character and his storyline, because books 1-9!Mat would make profoundly different choices in CoT & KoD than CoT!Mat did.

In terms of unnecessary scenes...

Obviously, which scenes are and aren’t necessary is going to always be a somewhat soft category that changes based on individual priorities. The things I judged on:

Does this actually Matter in the end? i.e. does this affect our endgame choices in the Last Battle, since this is a reread and I Know What Matters, lol (this is why I chucked a lot of the romantic subplots into here, because a. they ended up having no purpose and b. Jordan is not good at romance so there isn’t even good character development going on)

Is this just the repetition of an earlier plot? (Rand’s Can’t Hurt A Woman thing fits into here)

Are we just expanding on incredibly annoying characters who are not going to appreciably impact the endgame? (aka a bunch of Atha’an Miere scenes)

So these were scenes that, to me, felt unneeded in the end and could have been trimmed out in order to leave us with fewer books that had less padding. Mostly, this involved unnecessary subplots, side quests, or badly-written romances. I’ve been keeping track of them as I’ve gone through The Slog (though I didn’t start until ACoS but LoC still has a mostly good pace, so it probably wouldn’t be so bad), so this is just the sum-up of those percentages.

Unnecessary scenes totals:

ACoS: 91 pages (13.7% of the book)

TPoD: 79 pages (11.7% of the book)

WH: 332 pages (43.3% of the book)

CoT : 427 pages (51.9% of the book)

KoD: 338 pages (44.4% of the book)

Note that this does not include scenes that were simply too long and could have been trimmed down, which there were tons of in this six-book set.

But that does align fairly well with how much of each book felt like wasted space to me, honestly. LoC-ACoS-TPoD each had some minor bad/bloated plotlines that could be cut but WH-CoT-KoD were just... overstuffed with bad plots. And it was left in a bad place, too, with all the characters separated from each other. It was ridiculous, imo, for Jordan to think that he ever could have finished it all up in one more book, given how widely he’d spread everyone out and how much time he’d wasted.

Well, next up is my reread of New Spring, which will probably end up being two posts and will probably be... a lot more positive than most of my posts during The Slog (tm). And then I will be on to Sanderson’s books! I’m actually very interested to see what my opinion of them will be. The first time around, I liked his prose here enough that it got me into reading his own books, but I’ve definitely had harsher critiques for a lot of the plotlines in Jordan’s books than I remembered from earlier reads, so I’m interested to see if my feelings on the Sanderson entries change as well.

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