#like I live for Egwene in LOC etc but holy shit does TSR slap

[birgittesilverbae]

I just got to The Road to the Spear/The Dedicated and these chapters really don't pull any punches do they

Rand with his outsider's perspective, having already had his worldview destroyed once already and being stronger for it, just detached enough that he can take the hit of betrayal after betrayal, every reveal of just how far the Aiel have strayed from what they were before

the way every new perspective drives it home again and again, how What Came Before is held up in comparison to What Is Now. two generations gone and they can't remember snow. the cultural shifts and schisms stemming from simple choices, how the meaning behind tradition has been lost but the tradition itself holds firm

"I had a son, once, with a face like that. I do not wish to see it on a killer" and so he veils his face so that the mother who can't even look at him anyways won't see, and so do his descendants and his descendants' descendants, a loss of innocence for an entire bloodline. but he also veils his face and proclaims himself Aiel

and Tzora, "trying to turn him with their bodies and a song", standing facing someone who was once an ally and doing no more than singing, singing despite their people being slaughtered around them, the last one standing singing because what other way is there to save him from his own actions, what else do they have but song

and the perversion of that across millenia, Aiel warriors still unafraid to face the lightnings, unafraid to die, but only singing when they wash their spears in blood

I just... this is all so brilliantly written and I don't know that I've ever appreciated it this much on a read-through and I just have a lot of feelings

#wot #wot book spoilers #this book really does not have a right going this hard #and I haven't even gotten to Perrin's homecoming yet which is a whole other thing #like I can go on for ages about the way the disconnect is written #TSR really is the best book huh #like I live for Egwene in LOC etc but holy shit does TSR slap #the shadow rising #wot 04 tsr #mywot