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butterflydm · 2 years

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wot reread: winter’s heart (chap 28 - end)

Spoilers for Winter’s Heart, with a section at the end with spoilers through A Memory of Light, separated out with spoilers space

Current book ranking (strongest to weakest): The Fires of Heaven; Lord of Chaos; The Shadow Rising; The Dragon Reborn; The Path of Daggers; Winter’s Heart (standalone); A Crown of Swords; The Great Hunt; the Eye of the World; Winter’s Heart (series).

Why is Winter’s Heart in two places? ‘standalone’ WH means if I’m taking the book as it is, without using my memory of the future books to ‘cheat’ on my feelings about it, if I’m assuming that the stories set up in it lead to payoff, essentially. And ‘series’ WH is how I feel about it in light of my reread, taking into account what I know about how the storylines set up here will play out in the future. It’s really the only book so far where knowing the endgame retroactively makes the book worse which is... a thing that happened.

My memory of WH was much better than my actual experience of rereading it. The main things I remembered from WH were the four-way bonding & Elayne and Rand finally reuniting, and then Rand and Nynaeve cleansing saidin. And, well, those are still things about it that I enjoyed? Much like ACoS, Winter’s Heart is an erratic book for me -- what I enjoyed, I did like a lot, but what I hated, I... well, despised.

And there was more of the dislike than the like, in this one for me. Hated Mat’s plotline (with a couple of standout moments that were good); hated Perrin’s plotline; found most of Rand’s plotline unlikeable until the very end when we actually do the cleansing (with a brief-stopover for him finally!! seeing Elayne and Aviendha again). Elayne was basically holding this entire book up for me by herself, lol, and even her plotline had some iffy parts. Kinda ominous, because I remember CoT and KoD being worse/slower than WH. But we shall see! idk if we’re ever gonna get anywhere near the peak of TFoH-LoC-TSR again tho. But a key element of why Winter’s Heart is tainted for me in my reread is pretty spoilery, so I’m going to plop it at the bottom, marked off with spoiler space.

1. In what appears to be a helpful ta’veren coincidence, the day after Mat makes all those promises to the Aes Sedai to help them escape. Tylin announces that she’s going on a week-long tour of “what I now control of Altara” with Suroth via to’raken. It is not a helpful ta’veren coincidence.

2. Instead, we are going to spend three chapters on a plan that fails so that Mat will still be in the city to say goodbye to Tylin when he finally leaves. What’s the point of having Tylin leave if Mat’s plans get delayed long enough for her to be back anyway? We might as well have started with the fourth of these chapters, when he actually starts his ‘for real’ escape plan. Things that matter in these three mostly wasted chapters (which should have been condensed into one much shorter chapter):

Mat carefully watches Ryma Galfrey, one of the women who was captured in Falme, and reluctantly concludes that she’s been so deeply broken that she would call for help if he tried to add her to the rescue plan. She laughs and claps her hands when praised by her sul’dam.

Mat tries not to be tormented by the thought of all the enslaved Atha’an Miere that he doesn’t have the power to save.

We get more Hints that Noal is important.

The gholam is still around in the city.

Tuon’s stalking of Mat creeps him out and he wishes she’d gone with Suroth and Tylin.

I think this is the first time the narrative actually mentions that a ‘week’ is ten days.

This is the first time we learn the goddawful nickname that he’s being called by the Seanchan in the palace: Tylin’s Toy. They consider him ‘half-way’ to being da’covale. And Mat is terrified that by the time Tylin gets back from her tour, she might be Seanchan enough to shave the sides of her head and genuinely make him da’covale or sell him to Tuon.

Mat is very aware of the ugly realities of life under Seanchan rule here -- how harsh they are on people who step out of line, how badly they break their slaves, how dangerous it is to speak out against them, how easy it is to be condemned to lifelong slavery.

Setelle Anan confirms her strong anti-slavery stance and says she can see the Seanchan for what they really are (and disapproves).

After his one plans fails, Domon catches up with him and they have the New Plan ready to be planned.

Mat finds out about the existence of the black a’dam that can be used on men and that it was last in Egeanin and Domon’s possession. “Light, if the Black Ajah had gotten that on Rand’s neck, or the Seanchan had...” Honestly it would have been neat to tie Mat into Rand’s plot here by having THIS be the reason Mat was trapped in Ebou Dar and not the pointless wife prophecy. But Rand is only allowed to hang out with Min (even after Nynaeve joins Rand’s plotline, it seems like they barely spend any time together?) so we all know why THAT doesn’t happen.

3. Okay, we are finally pulling the trigger on the escape. Once they are up in the ‘kennels’ to free Teslyn and Edesina, Mat goes and has one of his best scenes in the entire damn series: freeing one of the captive Windfinders before he makes his own escape. This short scene is genuinely so good and so emotional and such a showcase of what makes books 1-9 Mat such a good person & a good character. Nestelle calls Mat a “great and good” man here and it is such a true statement about books 1-9 Mat. He is both good and great here. Like, Mat’s storylines have unfortunately been such a depressing drag through this book and the last one that he was in, where he has been the person who has been faced not just with trauma but trauma that both other characters and the narrative itself has LAUGHED at. Like, Rand faces trauma too but the narrative always takes his trauma seriously. Mat’s trauma has straight-up been mocked in the books and undermined in ways that have been frustrating as hell to read. But Mat himself -- at this point, as of book 9 -- he’s a good person. He’s a genuinely good person. He certainly has his flaws, but he’s a good person here. As of book 9, Winter’s Heart. And he deflects the praise, of course, because that’s what he does, telling her that he’s ‘just a gambler’. THIS MAT. I love this Mat so much. When I think of Mat and I talk about how much I love him, I’m thinking of books 1-9 Mat. That’s my Mat Cauthon. “If he was going to do this, then he might as well make sure it was done right.”

4. For some godforsaken reason, Jordan forces us through another goodbye between Tylin and Mat. He pulls the exact same trick that he did in ACoS -- throughout the entire book, it has been obvious how generally miserable Mat has been in Tylin’s company but now, when it is time for them to part, all of a sudden Mat ~likes her and is genuinely going to ~miss her. Like I think I mentioned last time, this especially sucks because people tend to remember the ‘final note’ that a storyline ends on the best, so when casual readers (like Sanderson was for Mat’s plotline imo) think back on Mat & Tylin’s ‘relationship’, the ‘final note’ is Mat genuinely thinking he’ll miss her and Tylin suddenly being willing to let him go, and not all the horror that came before it and all the times she forced him to stay in Ebou Dar.

5. Tuon sees Mat leaving and immediately tries to establish ownership over him -- she uses “Toy” instead of his real name (a slavers’ trick to break people that the Seanchan commonly use on damane) and tells him that she cannot ‘allow’ him to leave. They fight as she tries to stop him from leaving, and Noal eventually shows up, and they can overpower her two-on-one. Tuon likes learning that he’s capable of holding his own against her (physically). Mat’s plan is to leave Tuon in the stables on their way out. He knows she’ll be found in the morning, so there’s no actual danger to her life in doing this.

6. Then Egeanin shows up and we have the big prophecy reveal scene (for Mat, anyway. It was revealed for readers in Tuon’s intro chapter) as she blurts out that it’s a “death by slow torture” to lay hands on the Daughter of the Nine Moons. So, yeah, this scene really points out what an incredibly silly theater of virtue that Tuon was putting on when she donned the veil -- EVERY SEANCHAN KNOWS WHO SHE REALLY IS (Egeanin is a literal brand-new Low Blood nobody and she recognizes Tuon on sight). They’ve all just been playacting that they don’t in order to assuage Tuon’s wounded ego/pride. But the second there’s actual danger to Tuon, Egeanin abandons the show without a second thought and calls Tuon by her proper non-veiled title. Mat says that Tuon is his wife three times and impulsively decides to take her and her slave Selucia along on their escape, without there being any actual reason given in the text for his change of heart about not wanting to be anywhere near the DotNM and despite him being creeped out by her reaction to saying they would take her (and her slave) along. Honestly, if I said “I’m taking this woman with me” and then she smiled in a way that creeped me out, she would be going straight into the hayloft. No one has time for that kind of drama in their lives.

7. Well. That’s Mat’s plot done for this book. My reread really pointed out to me how ridiculous the plot contrivances are to keep Mat stuck in this plotline. The amount of character and plot-warping that needs to be done in order to keep Mat trapped in Ebou Dar and hook up with Tuon is honestly so rickety and unbelievable once a closer look is taken at it:

First of all, we set the scene with Tylin’s obsession with Mat. The only reason that Mat is trapped in Ebou Dar after the invasion is because of Tylin’s obsession and her unwillingness to let him go.

Olver abandons the ~bosomy lady that he’s been obsessed with in order to wander the city so that Mat needs to be stuck there long enough for the Seanchan to invade.

a building falls on Mat, so that he’s injured badly enough that he’s trapped in the city for almost a month before he can be healed enough to begin planning his escape from Tylin’s clutches, thus making Tuon show up before he’s well enough to get away from his abuser

despite how he has always wanted to run away from tDotNM; he impulsively takes her along when he finds out who she is. It’s literally just reversing his characterization without giving an in-text reason.

It’s also an illustration of the same terrible Fate Says So relationship decision-making that drove Min to turn herself into a new person in order to make a guy she barely knew fall in love with her. Why does Min want Rand to love her? Because her viewing said that she would love him. Why does Min love Rand? Because her viewing said that she would love him. Why does Mat take Tuon with him? Because a prophecy said he would marry her. If Mat had never heard the prophecy, he never would have kept Tuon with him (making a marriage difficult) which makes it less a prophecy and more of the Aelfinn deliberarately creating their own version of the future. A self-fulfilling prophecy, yes, but also something that literally could not have happened without the existence of the prophecy. Seriously, if Mat hadn’t heard the prophecy, then he would just have left Tuon (& her slave) tied up in a hayloft and never seen her again.

when Rand assumes Mat is with the Band of the Red Hand & Egwene, Nynaeve doesn’t correct him and Rand drops the subject (BOTH things that go against their previous characterization)

When Rand brings it up a second time, in front of Elayne, Nynaeve, Lan, and Aviendha, all of whom know that Mat is NOT with Egwene, none of them correct Rand’s assumption.

Nynaeve not only says nothing in this scene (and it is even implied that she’s withholding the information on purpose???), but will continue to say nothing about it in all the scenes she shares with Rand in the future. She doesn’t tell him in Far Madding. She doesn’t tell him before, during, or after the cleansing. She persistently doesn’t tell him that his best friend is potentially in extreme danger. We don’t get a reason for this when we are in her PoV chapters. We never find out why she wanted to withhold this information from Rand (because the only reason is Mat Needs To Be In Ebou Dar For The Plot).

Elayne, who feels responsible for Mat as one of her ‘subjects’, doesn’t mention him to Rand at all during their time together either, despite a devotion to duty and responsibility being two of her primary traits. She has explicitly said to Mat that she wanted the opportunity to ‘save him’ in exchange for him saving her and said at the start of this book that she prays daily for Mat’s safety, but when there’s an opportunity to make that happen, she fails to do it. Her ‘reason’ for not doing it is because she wants Egwene to do it instead, despite there being absolutely no reason for her to believe that Rand and Egwene are talking any time soon and despite ‘shirking responsibility’ definitely NOT being a character trait of hers. She even notes ‘if’ they can talk, Egwene will tell him but, like, you could tell him! Right now!

Aviendha says nothing, despite being the first person in Ebou Dar to respect Mat as a person (saying they should ask him to help them find the Bowl).

Lan says nothing, despite the fact that he’s been willing to speak out before when Nynaeve didn’t want him to, when he told Mat that Moghedien killed two of his men.

Egwene has been having prophetic dreams of Mat in pain, such that she feels “agonies of grief” over sending him to Ebou Dar and is fully aware that he was “left behind” during the Seanchan invasion... and yet does absolutely nothing about this information, despite being able to contact the Wise Ones and also literally having Mat’s army following hers. She could have used either of those avenues to potentially get a rescue launched for Mat with absolutely zero risk to herself. Talmanes has to hunt her down to get her to (reluctantly) confirm that Mat is in Ebou Dar, though they’ve been feeling a tug in that direction for weeks. And even at that point, she tries to argue him out of going south!

If the Band had left when they first felt the tug, they would have possibly arrived in time to help him, at least maybe before the Return arrived. This is the most excusable though, because they’ve never felt a ta’veren tug before.

Overall, if you have to break the story and characters this badly in order to make a plot point work, maybe it’s a bad plot point. There’s ta’veren and then there’s... whatever all this was. Rand, Nynaeve, Elayne, Aviendha, Lan, Egwene, and Mat himself all get warped as characters to create this narrative. I mean, Mat’s character is going to continue to warp in unrecognizable ways as we move forward, so I guess we gotta get used to it here.

8. Ugh, no, we’re back in Far Madding. Rand’s side-quest might be the shortest out of the three ta’veren boys but wow do I find it irritating. I just want to get to the cleansing already. We spend three more chapters in Far Madding here and none of them serve any purpose going forward, because Rand has ALREADY suffered this same kind of trauma and Cadsuane ALREADY saved him and this is all just very repetitive. Should be snipped out entirely. Points of importance or frustration in chapter 32:

It’s been a week. Nynaeve still hasn’t told Rand about Mat being left behind in Ebou Dar.

Lews Therin implies that Rand is actually delaying doing the cleansing on purpose, because he’s worried about going mad while using the Choedan Kal. First time this has been mentioned or hinted at.

Verin tells Rand that the Seanchan forces have crossed the border into Illian again (I suspect this is her way of trying to goose him into action and get him to leave Far Madding; Verin MVP).

Rand grits his teeth and prepares to grovel to Cadsuane because of Min’s viewing that he needs her.

See, I would like to tell Rand that he’s wrong to feel suspicious of Nynaeve but! she is deliberately keeping a huge secret from him about his best friend being in genuine danger of his life! really hate this choice on Jordan’s part to ruin all these characters in his need to Keep Mat In Ebou Dar

Lan also hasn’t told Rand anything about Mat being left behind in Ebou Dar. So it’s not just Nynaeve letting Rand down here. Lan’s characterization also got butchered on the altar of Mat’s Plot Is In Ebou Dar. We also find out that Nynaeve does forbid Lan to tell Rand things. *sigh*

Min continues to blame Rand for her own choices and continues to attempt to control his choices and actions (she attempts to burn a letter that was sent to him).

9. Points of importance or frustration in chapter 33:

Min continues to play with knives around Rand to show her displeasure and I continue to have Tylin flashbacks. She literally throws a knife into the door in front of his face. He doesn’t flinch but he also has a death wish so I’m not even sure if that’s about him trusting her. Then she threatens to beat him with a three-tailed strap/whip, which is apparently something that comes standard in every guest room in the inns in Far Madding, because Jordan has decided that all the new cities are Abusive Wife Cities. Women are encourage to beat men here if they like, just as they’re encouraged to hit or stab men in Ebou Dar if they like. Rand probably would have let her beat him, just like he let the Maidens beat him, and then gone and done what he wanted to do anyway.

Rand’s hair is nearly shoulder-length, Min confirms.

Lews Therin liked buying meat pies in the country when he was young.

Fain is still trying to kill Rand. But neither of them kill the other and we’ve had several of Fain’s attempts on Rand’s life at this point and I’m Tired.

Lan’s BOOTS slip on the ROOF. and that’s how they get caught. WHAT. He is a WARDER. I feel insulted on his behalf.

10. Points of importance or frustration in chapter 34:

We finally get another Nynaeve PoV! ...she does not think of Mat a single time, so we still have zero insight as to why she is withholding the information about his location from Rand.

Rand ‘re-hardens’ himself in the small cell that Far Madding has put him in; completely unnecessary. He was already hardened.

Min’s loose lips apparently struck again off-page -- she’s told Cadsuane about her bond with Rand and is currently babbling about the state of his mind to Cadsuane, a woman that Rand still doesn’t trust. “Along only because she was a link to the boy”; Min’s new purpose in life is to be Cadsuane’s compass and connection to Rand I guess, now that Alanna is Off On A Mission.

11. Chapter 35, we are finally leaving Far Madding behind, hopefully forever! We were there for much less time than we’ve been in Ebou Dar, but wow I’ve hated our time there! Anyway, Rand says he’s grateful to Far Madding for reminding him that he needs to be super-duper hard at all times. A rock-solid boy. A boulder. And yet still ‘too weak’ to send Min to safety, despite there legit being no reason for her to be at the cleansing (except for Cadsuane to take advantage of her inability to keep her mouth shut, I guess) and everyone else in his life being someone he “loves too much” to put them in danger if he can avoid it. The Min Double-Standard makes no sense! She really does get treated like a plot device and not a character. If Rand’s characterization were being consistent, he would have left her in Caemlyn back in chapter 12, like he left Elayne and Aviendha. Like, I don’t think he should be avoiding ANY of them, I want to make that clear, but avoiding only TWO of them is Just Weird. This is part of why it feels like the whole Far Madding detour was pointless -- nothing in Rand’s character or choices seems to actually change as a result of his ‘re-hardening’.

12. Rand tells the rest of his companions here that he plans to cleanse saidin using the Choedan Kal, linking with Nynaeve (the only Aes Sedai he trusts to link with, he thinks, because Elayne doesn’t exist anymore, I guess. Like, I love that Rand trusts Nynaeve? But he’s BONDED to Elayne yet not willing to trust her? wtf). They go to Shadar Logoth for the actual work itself. The Aes Sedai with Cadsuane are nervous about the potential consequences but Cadsuane herself doesn’t argue against the idea.

13. Yeah, when I thought about Winter’s Heart in the past, the bits that I really remembered were the bonding near the beginning, along with Elayne and Rand (finally!) getting to sleep together, and then the cleansing itself at the end. I didn’t even remember Rand’s sideplot about the traitor Asha’man until he was attacked at the end of TPoD. The other thing I remembered about Winter’s Heart was Tuon’s arrival, which I felt a lot more mixed about. She’s a potentially interesting character on her own, but desperately needs character development in the upcoming books to be a worthwhile time investment.

14. So now when Rand experiences the dizziness that happens when he releases or takes hold of saidin, he sees the blurry vision of a man’s face.

15. Rand and Nynaeve link, so she experiences saidin (and the taint?) and he experiences clean saidar. Rand weaves a conduit made of untainted saidar to connect saidin and the city of Shadar Logoth, so he’s essentially using the evil of Shadar Logoth as a filter to catch the evil of the taint and remove it from saidin.

16. All the people who came with Rand (other than Nynaeve) now get prepared to defend him. Except Min, of course, who can’t channel and also has never shown any genuine fighting skill with her knives. Amazing that she survives this battle tbh. Does anyone even target her? I don’t remember.

17. We get some random PoVs that let us know that the giant crystal orbs being held by the actual Choedan Kal are being lit up, one near Cairhien and one in Tremalking.

18. All the Forsaken feel the vibe of all that power being used and realize that Rand has pulled the trigger on cleansing saidin and it’s time for him to be captured or die. I enjoy their misery in this chapter a lot. It’s very amusing to me. They are big ol’ failures.

It’s confirmed that Cyndane is Lanfear, still ABSOLUTELY obsessed with LTT, if anyone was wondering. She feels like him using the Choedan Kal with *gasp* another woman is a huge betrayal. Oh, Lanfear.

Demandred is busy reassuring himself that, ACTUALLY, he is much more brilliant than Lews Therin, even if this is quite a clever plan about how to remove the taint from saidin lol, god you are so obsessed with LTT too. It is confirmed here that Demmy definitely isn’t Taim, because he doesn’t recognize Damar Flinn. He’s so surprised when the ~old man is actually an Asha’man. My official guess on when Jordan decided they were separate characters is TPoD, I think. That was when Taim’s vibe changed for me.

Dashiva/Osan’gar/Aginor is not having a good time. He’s a SCIENTIST! Not a SOLDIER. lol he must have been so miserable when he was campaigning with Rand against the Seanchan. He also confirms that Moridin is Ishamael for us all.

Verin spots a woman in a streith gown... probably Graendal? Ah, yes, golden hair is mentioned. Graendal. And she’s inverting her weaves, it sounds like, and hiding her ability.

Aran’gar is figured out by Eben, who tosses himself towards her (she has been using ‘she/her’ pronouns in her internal narration) and warns the two Aes Sedai that he’s linked to.

Moghedien is figuring out a place she can hide during the battle so that she can technically be there but also survive. haha good for you

Semirhage is Lady Not Appearing In This Battle

Mesaana is also Lady Not Appearing In This Battle.

19. I like the actual battle to defend Rand too. Feels very cinematic & I approve. Cadsuane’s ass-pull ter’angreal come in handy lol. But I agree with @essie007 that we deserved more of a reunion than Rand & Nynaeve here. Should have been an ‘all hands on deck’ situation. LOVED her idea of having Egwene & some rebels (maybe her oathsworn sisters?) helping instead of Cadsuane. And this could still lead to there being tension between Rand & Egwene, because she would disapprove of HIM having oathsworn sisters (I imagine it would be Merana or one of his other oathsworn sisters who would reach out to Egwene... or the sister reaches out on her own, arguing to herself that it’s for Rand’s own good and doesn’t break her oath). And Mat would be great here too - it could help bring his story with Shadar Logoth to a close by him getting to witness the destruction of the city & he can hold his own against channelers because of his medallion. And Elayne and/or Aviendha could be there just by having Rand actually idk BE HONEST with his other love interests and tell them things rather than dipping after sex.

20. Okay, I do Not Understand the renaming thing in these books. So many characters get forcibly renamed and then just... think of themselves that way in the future. Obviously, the damane are tortured and trained into it, but why does Lanfear THINK of herself as Cyndane and not as Lanfear? I guess this is yet another point of commonality between the Seanchan and the Shadow. Forcible renaming. Okay, let me go over that list again. Seanchan & Shadow connections:

forcible renaming

ravens and moons as big important symbols

mindtraps vs a’dam (ways of controlling channelers)

attractive slaves in translucent robes

big on slavery and mind-breaking in general

treating people like objects in general

you gotta Grovel to higher ranking Darkfriends/the Blood

Spies everywhere (ravens & rats vs the Listeners & Seekers)

encourage paranoia and reporting on each other

The Return (Seanchan) vs The Day of the Return (the Chosen)

Oooh, just thought of this one: the Crystal Throne vs Shayol Ghul -- both make you feel a thirst to worship and bask in the overwhelming presence of your ultimate dictator

HAVING an ultimate dictator who must be worshipped on pain of death

Kadere the Darkfriend vs Karede the Seanchan: fight! lol this one isn’t serious btw, I just think it’s funny

21. I can’t believe that Min’s only purpose in this scene is to be Rand’s mood ring for Cadsuane. I mean, I CAN because she has absolutely no skills that can be put to use here, but it’s hilarious. Cadsuane doesn’t even need to know how Rand’s doing -- now that this has started, he’ll succeed or he’ll die trying. Literally Min only came along to Far Madding in order to give away yet more of Rand’s secrets to Cadsuane, I swear. lol she was literally put into a hole in the ground to keep her safe. and the Atha’an Miere ambassador who insists she must go along with Rand everywhere is in the hole too. haha

22. Forsaken updates:

Elza murders the fuck out of Dashiva. And we find out in her internal narration that she’s Black Ajah, so that’s hilarious, because she doesn’t know he’s one of the ‘Chosen’ and she’s just all... well, the Dark One will forgive me for just killing one of the minor Darkfriend Asha’man flunkies. I kinda enjoy Elza tbh. She just fireballs him to death. Amazing. Love it. Gold star to Elza. Some misunderstandings really are hilarious. She’s a Darkfriend so I’m sure she does terrible things in the future, but this moment is amazing.

Moghedien figures that everyone else has been killed or run away by now, but she stays there quietly to watch what happens. She gets dragged along in the wake of the collapsing bubble that was engulfing Shadar Logoth and thinks about how she’s not sure if she’ll ever be afraid of anything ever again after this.

23. The female access key is destroyed but the male one is intact, so Cadsuane appears to have stolen it (after making a big deal about disapproving of thieves earlier in the book too). Let’s see if she ever returns it. Callandor is ‘secured’, whatever that means.

24. The butcher’s bill on Rand’s side:

Kumira

Eben

Not bad! Cadsuane is like, ugh, could be better. Y’all were facing the FORSAKEN. You did good.

25. But no, that remained a very intense scene that I enjoyed a lot. Good finale. Does not make up for how boring and/or frustrating so much of the book was, but that was a Good Chapter.

26. Oh no, here comes a big point of frustration: Jahar joyfully says that saidin is clean (Damar confirms it) and Cadsuane is (x) doubt. Rand goes to SO MUCH TROUBLE and EFFORT and now she doesn’t even believe that he really did it. I’m gonna kick a wall. It honestly bothers me so much that Rand undoing the Dark’s One’s counterstroke in the previous battle -- you know, getting rid of the taint that literally led to the Breaking of the World - doesn’t get the attention it deserves (CoT was absolutely NOT the sort of attention it deserved lol). Anyway, we end with her being kinda weird and possessive about Rand.

Mat mentions:

Rand x4

Nynaeve x1

Elayne x1

Talmanes x1

Tuon refuses to call Mat by his name:

Toy x1

Unnecessary scenes (this section):

Mat-Tuon ‘courtship scenes’: 1 (7 pages)

Mat-Tylin horror show: 1 (2 pages), 1 (4 pages)

Repetitive attempts to leave Ebou Dar: 3 (51 pages)

Far Madding trauma conga line: 1 (17 pages), 1 (15 pages), 1 (12 pages), 1 (4 pages)

Mat mentioned by (whole book):

Elayne x3

Rand x8

Min x1

Mistress Harfor, First Maid x1

Nynaeve x1

Mat mentions (whole book):

Nynaeve x6

Egwene x1

Talmanes x2

Elayne x6

Rand x16

Perrin x2

Asha’man in general x1

Plot-threads started here or carried over from the last book:

Rand & Nynaeve: cleanse saidin (1 book wonder). COMPLETED.

Elayne: Become queen of Caemlyn (first book of task) - NOT completed.

Mat: Escape Ebou Dar and return to the Band of the Red Hand and Rand (first book of task) - NOT completed.

Egwene: Go to the White Tower with her army, confront Elaida, and heal the Tower (fourth book of task). - NOT completed.

Perrin: Gather up Masema and his Dragonsworn and bring them to Rand (third book of task). - NOT completed.

Plot-threads carried into Crossroads of Twilight:

Elayne: Become queen of Caemlyn (2/?)

Mat: Escape Ebou Dar and return to the Band of the Red Hand and Rand (2/?)

Perrin: Gather up Masema and his Dragonsworn and bring them to Rand (4/?)

Egwene: Go to the White Tower with her army, confront Elaida, and heal the Tower (5/?)

Rand: ???

Nynaeve: ???

Unnecessary scenes (whole book):

annoying Atha’an Miere nonsense: 2 (16 pages)

relationship drama nonsense: 1 (4 pages)

Shaido nonsense: 5 (87 pages)

Mat-Tylin horror show: 11 (48 pages)

Repetitive attempts to leave Ebou Dar: 3 (51 pages)

Far Madding repetitive trauma drama: 8 (113 pages)

Elayne treated as fetus vessel: 3 (6 pages)

Mat-Tuon subplot begins: 1 (7 pages)

Total pages: 332

Winter’s Heart has 766 pages in my version. That is 43.3%.

SPOILERS for a memory of light; insert disclaimer that this is all based on my memory, etc. and so forth

First, the easy thing:

This is really the book where the ‘pointless side quest’ vibes started jumping out at me during my reread, and I am NOT for dealing with side quests at book nine of a series. Faile being kidnapped by the Shaido is something that pads the pages, but ultimately does not have any huge impact on the endgame that couldn’t have been equally well-served by a shorter and less fetish-based subplot. Also, the Shaido should not even be here. They were a good antagonist in TFoH; they were... okay in LoC (but the Aes Sedai were the main course at Dumai’s Wells). They are completely unnecessary at this point. They only exist to serve up torture and humiliation porn at this point and to remind us that only evil women like to show off their breasts.

Same thing with Rand’s side-quest about the traitor Asha’man - no, absolutely not, this could and should have been a single chapter and not involved Far Madding at all. Everything about Far Madding’s plotline was a retread of earlier plotlines (Rand is powerless and put in a box to potentially be sent to Elaida; Rand needs Cadsuane to save him from his own recklessness; Rand playacts at being married to Min in order to trick a group of people -- all things that already happened in the story and didn’t need to be redone).

After Rand goes and picks up Nynaeve specifically to do the cleansing of saidin, his next plot point should have been... the cleansing of saidin. Not a side-quest about taking out the traitor Asha’man and Jordan showing off another city in his worldbuilding. One of the big issues in The Slog (imo) is way too much focus on side quests. It’s like we’re playing The Witcher 3 and going around to play Gwent with everyone before we head to the next plot marker: this is okay to do in a game but it’s terrible to do in a narrative. We need to find Ciri, Geralt! Stop playing Gwent! (I absolutely played All The Gwent lol).

The ‘point’ of Rand’s stint in Far Madding seems to be to harden him further but it just seems unnecessary - it’s just excessive trauma at this point imo, since he never gets to process the trauma that he’s already received anyway, just gets more heaped on his head to also not process. It doesn’t actually seem to impact his character choices at all. Again, I feel like it’s mostly just here to pad out the timeline so that Mat and Perrin have time to do their (also pointless) side-quests. Rand could have taken care of the traitor Asha’man in a single chapter and that would have been fine. It didn’t need *waves hand* all this. Winter’s Heart-Crossroads of Twilight-Knife of Dreams could and should have been a single book. Cut out the Shaido. Cut out this side-quest here. Cut out Tylin (just have her die in the invasion; idc). Condense the other plotlines. example: we don’t need to see Mat’s failed attempts at escaping; just his successful one.

Now, to move on to the big thing that really tanked my feelings on this book. I’ve mentioned to @essie007 that this is the first time I’ve reread Winter’s Heart since A Memory of Light was published. And, wow, knowing how this story ends really had an impact on how I felt about this book in a way that it didn’t for any of the earlier ones.

This book has aged much more poorly for me in my reread than the previous books and I think it goes back to broken narrative promises. Winter’s Heart is a horror show of a book in Mat’s storyline but I didn’t mind that as much the first time around because it seemed like the horror show was setting up a compelling narrative:

the secret of the sul’dam is heavily focused on in this book (in both Mat & Elayne’s plotlines)

the horrors of Seanchan slavery & their system of government is heavily focused on in this book

we get several Seanchan characters questioning their way of living and their system of goverment and oppression, from Alivia breaking free of her damane programming after 400 years in a collar all the way down to Bethamin and Egeanin, who are desperate to preserve their own freedom and know that their beloved Empire would enslave them if they knew the truth about them and their actions

the heir to the throne is a woman who is capable of learning how to channel(!)

her fated mate is someone who, in this book, is viscerally disgusted by slavery and who confronts it over and over in a very personal way -- he is treated as property himself by Tylin, threatened to be turned into da’covale, threatened to be bought by Tuon, given what is essentially a slave name (Tylin’s Toy) and even when he is at his most desperate to escape, he makes certain to do his best to bring down as much of the Seanchan power base as possible by freeing one of the Windfinders and teaching her how to free others

this woman who has a future where she is either the most powerful person in the empire (the empress) or one of the least (just another enslaved damane) ends up captive by this man who loves freedom and who has only just now escaped from his own cage

Of course, I assumed that the sul’dam secret would actually matter! Of course, I assumed that Tuon being capable of channeling would matter! Of course, I assumed that Mat would actually STAND UP against Tuon re: slavery and have an impact on her! All of those are things that flow naturally out of the narrative presented in Winter’s Heart.

And then Crossroads of Twilight immediately starts undercutting that potential narrative (with Mat inexplicably softening his stance on slavery and also, in general, because it focused way too much on navel-gazing about 'romance’ and not on the actual relevant plot questions), only for the narrative to get a stake through the heart in Knife of Dreams (when Tuon dismisses the idea that the sul’dam secret matters and ‘marries’ Mat without having ever questioned any of her assumptions about how the empire works). And the Seanchan get to stand victorious and vindicated at the end of the Last Battle, when they use their slaves to help win the war (Tuon even directly uses the ‘argument’ that freeing her slaves would make them useless as fighters iirc).

All of the horror that we were shown in Winter’s Heart (and previous books) just gets dismissed like it didn’t matter. Tuon never comes to a place where she needs to question herself because Jordan never lets Mat genuinely challenge her during their journey together -- she always has a buffer or protectors to shield her from Mat’s perspective on the world, she always has a devoted slave by her side to reassure her that slavery is actually awesome, she always slips out of any potential consequences of her actions, or Mat will inexplicably soften his previously-stated views so that she skates out of any negative reactions to her horrific choices and behaviors -- she is NEVER forced to confront the reality of her existence and is allowed to glide to the end of the series untouched by the reality of the world around her, safe in her slaver-bubble. What is the point of having her removed from her position and going on a journey if her bubble stays intact the entire time?

So while it was kinda obvious in a first read that Perrin’s side-quest was going to be pointless, it’s something of a surprise for me on my reread to realize that Mat’s entire prophetical marriage with the Daughter of the Nine Moons ALSO ends up being a side quest that has no major impact on the endgame of the series. It has some implications for post-canon, don’t get me wrong. Depressing implications about a fourth age that will inevitably need to deal with this can that has been kicked down the road. But the actual endgame events of the book series are not appreciably impacted by Mat and Tuon’s ‘romance’ (and, again like the kidnapped wife subplot, it did not require three books... I did just realize that, technically, BOTH Mat and Perrin are doing ‘kidnapped wife’ subplots) because Tuon as a person is not appreciably impacted by Mat as a person.

While Mat is used as a plot device to have Rand and Tuon talk again, there were any number of other ways to have that happen, and there is absolutely nothing that Mat and Tuon actually bring to each other’s endgame narratives -- Mat’s plots in the final books are about saving Moiraine (which is the key to bridging the gap between Egwene and Rand) and being the General of the Forces of Light (which he already had sewn up as of TFoH/LoC due to his memories and friendship with Rand), so neither of those plots required him to marry a slaver. Tuon’s actual plot in the last three books is based around Egwene and Rand, and on making deals with THEM about the Last Battle; Mat is literally just there to get a baby in her, which, again, is all about post-canon baby-trapping Mat into the Seanchan Empire and has nothing to do with the actual endgame storyline. Rand and Egwene are still the ones who have to do all the legwork when it comes to making deals with the Seanchan.

I do think this may be a place where Sanderson’s assumptions about Mat (imo he viewed Mat as a GENUINELY selfish and cowardly wastrel and interpreted Mat not being bookish as Mat not being intelligent) killed a potential story that we probably would have gotten if Jordan had written the the final books -- Mat probably would still be inexplicably ‘in love’ with Tuon by the final book and inexplicably conditionally okay with slavery, because that’s pretty in line with how Jordan wrote the majority of his romances (love is a leash around your neck to yank you to places you wouldn’t choose to go otherwise and you don’t get to choose who leashes you) and with where he decided to take Mat in CoT & KoD re: slavery, but he would likely still been smart & loyal to Rand as well, just with an inexplicable soft spot for the slaver empress. I’ll know better for sure on that one when I get to the end of KoD in my re-read but I do suspect that if Jordan had written the final books, Mat would have at least been somewhat involved in the actual negotiations, but I do think it’s probable that the actual ending still would have been fairly depressing for Mat, because Jordan was the one who inexplicably started softening Mat’s stance on slavery in CoT & KoD.

In any case, in the actual books we got, Tuon behaves the same way in AMoL that she does in WH: she still immediately wants to own any person she finds interesting (she tries to buy Mat in WH and attempts to straight-up abduct Min as a slave in AMoL, I believe); she has the exact same opinion on marath’damane as she did in WH; and iirc Mat does absolutely nothing to try to weigh in on the Westlands side of things during Rand’s negotiations with Tuon (which makes their fate-arranged marriage useless as a ‘marriage alliance’). Their marriage served zero narrative purpose. The fact that the outriggers were potentially supposed to exist at some point doesn’t matter to me -- they do NOT exist and they never will.

So, in the narrative in its completed version, Mat and Tuon’s ‘romance’ comes across as a waste of time, just like Faile’s kidnapping. Mat could have taken Tuon as a hostage for insurance purposes, they could have vaguely impressed each other as allies by the time he released her back to the Seanchan once he felt safe (and that she was safe, etc), and the narrative would have been served equally well.

Or, in an easy fix that keeps the marriage and makes the Mat x Tuon scenes from WH-KoD have a point: instead of Mat accidentally giving himself away for nothing at the end of Winter's Heart and their marriage being entirely on Tuon's terms, with Mat making a fool of himself trying to get Tuon to fall in love with him because he's already given away his choice… actually have CoT & KoD be a genuine marriage alliance negotiation where MAT (rather than Rand and Egwene in AMoL) is the one to hammer out a deal with Tuon and thus is able to reunite with Rand being able to hand him a treaty with the Seanchan.

This would require Tuon being treated as a real character in the world rather than an untouchable slaver-goddess who gets given whatever she wants and is treated with kid-gloves, but it would have made the Mat parts of The Slog feel much less pointless and sloggy and would have saved tons of narrative time in the endgame, because Rand wouldn't need to do all the work of allying with the Seanchan himself while Mat stands there uselessly.

There are just so many references in Winter’s Heart about the importance of sul’dam realizing that they CAN channel, yet we get cheated out of that story for Tuon -- that’s another thing that might have made the entire circus storyline for her worth spending the page time on it; if it had ended in her having the genuine honesty and strength of character to see the truth about herself rather than staying crystalized in Empire propaganda. Just another place where Tuon feels like wasted potential. And I feel like we don’t even get a solid story out of that for anyone? Though maybe we do and I’m just forgetting it; maybe Bethamin, Renna, or Seta has that story. I guess I’ll find out. But this was really THE story with the Seanchan that we have been promised since book 2 and Tuon seems like the obvious vehicle for that story, so this is just another place where Tuon is a narrative disappointment, lol. Like, even if a secondary or tertiary character ends up getting this storyline... it SHOULD have been Tuon.

Tuon is kinda a constant disappointment after this book, from what I remember. This book specifically really does imply that we SHOULD have gotten a specific narrative from her about realizing she could channel and what that would mean for the future for both her and the Seanchan empire... and then that entire plotline just gets tossed in the trash so that we can have Mat & Co softening their stance on slavery instead (what happened to Jordan in between writing Winter’s Heart and writing Crossroads of Twilight? My theory is that this is when he decided to write the outriggers, so he threw Mat’s character under the bus as an excuse for not writing the sul’dam story yet; if Mat stops caring as much about slavery then Tuon doesn’t need to confront what it means to be a slaver while being marath’damane and that story can be held off for the sequel trilogy instead (the sequel that never happened). If Mat cared as much about slavery in CoT & KoD as he did in Winter’s Heart, we would have profoundly different books).

Mat’s strong anti-slavery stance in this book just makes me WEEP with how Jordan & Sanderson butcher his character in the future to prepare him to be a loyal husband/yes-man/bullyboy/bedslave for the Empress of the Slavers (which starts in the very next book, iirc, with Mat starting to think that Slavery Isn’t So Bad when it happens to annoying people, whereas HERE his stance is “even genuinely awful people don’t deserve to be turned into slaves and it honestly seems like a fate worse than death”). Winter’s Heart Mat is both a good and a great man. Crossroads of Twilight-A Memory of Light Mat may still qualify as a ‘great’ man due to the ancient memories that allow him to be the General of the Light in the Last Battle but he stops being a good man, for the most part (I don’t recall the exact moment when it happens; it might be one of those changes that takes place between books. We’ll see).

And I deeply mourn the loss of that good man, and how he was killed off because he never would have been willing to play the role that ‘Knotai’ is required to play due to the Aelfinn prophecy and Jordan’s choices about what that prophecy had to mean for his character.

Mat is also definitely more sexist in this book than in previous books but, tbh, all three of our ta’veren boys seem more sexist these days. Rand is off making lol Women, AmIRight? jokes with Dobraine and has heavily backslid on respecting women’s right to agency and choice, Perrin determinedly ignores the intelligent women trying to give him advice (only his wife is allowed to give him advice), and Mat’s internal narration just gets more and more negative towards women as a whole and objectifies them more and more as well.

I hate to end this section of the reread on such a downer note! I am... holding out hope that the show will do better on all of this. We will know more when we see how they treat the Seanchan in the narrative next season.

#wot #wheel of time #wot reread #winter's heart #wot book spoilers #wot spoilers #this one is kinda a downer sorry guys #i ended up liking winter's heart so much less than i remembered liking it in the past #mat cauthon #slaver empress tuon #seanchan culture content warning #tylin content warning #ironically the less i like the book the faster i read it #when i'm really enjoying a book i linger over it more #the wheel of time

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