wot reread: a memory of light (chapter 38-epilogue)
spoilers for a memory of light!
Well, the rest of the chapters have fewer pages in total than chapter 37 did, so this is going to be my last full reread post, though I do have a couple of follow-ups planned.
My timing ended up being pretty good, even though my original intention was just to reread books 1-3 in anticipation of the second season of the show. And now I’ve still got over a month to get good and excited about everything the show will be bringing to the table.
1. We go back to Rand, still deep in his conversation with TDO. The chapter “the Last Battle” really revolved around the battle between the forces outside Shayol Ghul, because it ended when the commander of the other army finally was killed (though there are still a ton of his forces to take care of, the head of the snake was cut off and so was the person who fancied himself Demandred’s replacement).
2. The ‘let go’ that Rand is hearing in his mind is in his father’s voice, and the meaning expands here -- let them sacrifice. it is their choice to make. And then Egwene’s voice -- am I not allowed to be a hero too?
Because this is something that Rand has been resisting over the course of the books -- basically ever since he accepted that he will be the sacrifice, he’s struggled with knowing that he’s not the only one, with knowing that other people are sometimes even sacrificing just to get him here, to this place. And, I imagine, with his tentative plans to maybe even survive this ‘sacrifice’, that’s going to make him feel even more guilty about other people giving up their lives in this fight.
3. He talks in dialogue with Egwene’s voice in his head (given that he’s existing around and between reality, it might really be Egwene’s voice too). He is not in charge of protecting her. He decided to take that charge on himself, back in EotW, but it was never his to claim. Let us die for what we believe, and do not try to steal that from us.
4. And so Rand takes himself through his list again, backwards, this time, releasing his feelings of shame for failing to save them, releasing his need to protect them. Letting go of the mountain that has been crushing him for the majority of the series.
He hadn’t realized how large it had become, how much he had let himself carry.
...
Ilyena was last. We are reborn, Rand thought, so we can do better the next time.
So do better.
5. And now Rand, as he stands surrounded by all time and nothing at the same time, comes to understand that the Darkness was never a being, never an entity of its own. It is the between of everything. It can only win if no one is willing to keep fighting against it.
6. Mat gets the news of Lan’s reported death. As he did with Egwene and with Elayne, he swallows the grief and doesn’t let it show to anyone else, instead using the news to spur the army onward to attack the now-stunned foe.
7. Rand tells TDO that he can’t win, and TDO argues that it has Rand in its grasp right now, and Rand says that that’s missing the point, because it was never just about his victory. The people he lists:
Morgase (?) - a woman, torn and beaten down, cast from her throne and made a puppet
Thom - a man who remembered stories and took fool boys under his wing
Moiraine - a woman who hunted truth before others could
Perrin (?) - a man whose family was taken from him, but who stood tall
Nynaeve - a woman who refused to believe she could not Heal those who had been harmed
Mat - a hero who insisted with every breath that he was not a hero
Egwene - a woman who would not bend her back while she was beaten and who stone with the Light for all who watched
Rand realizes -- “it was never about beating me. It was about breaking me.”
8. Okay, I have to say. I have to! But this is... this is literally also how the Seanchan work. This is their philosophy of life -- to take people and break them to the Seanchan’s purpose. As I’ve said before, there really is no way around the fact that the Seanchan are going to be the Great Evil of the Fourth Age. There are just too many Shadow-Seanchan parallels! Maybe Mat and Min can slow the train slightly but I don’t think they can actually put the breaks on it.
9. But back to now -- Rand and TDO watch the battlefield, where Mat is fighting -- Tam at his side, then Karede and his suicide-slave troops, then Loial and the Ogier. “Outnumbered three to one”. Mat is shouting in the Old Tongue: For the Light! For honor! For glory! For life itself!
I will take a moment to be glad that, despite the first half of this book trying so hard to align Mat with the slavers for whatever fucking reason, he’s not fighting for the slavers in this battle. That he actually did become the General of the Forces of the Light, not primarily the General of the Slavers. Looking back, it really does feel like the change was signaled when Mat first took off his Seanchan clothes and put back on his Two Rivers coat*. That seems to have been a visual cue about his change in characterization -- how he started pushing back more against Tuon, forcing her into more compromises, and standing more aligned with the Forces of Light rather than pandering to the slavers all the time. idk, maybe forcing Mat over to Ebou Dar at the start of the book was Sanderson’s way of trying to finally create a synthesis between the horrible Mat of CoT & KoD and the non-horrible Mat of the earlier books, and he felt like he actually had to take Seanchan!Mat to his worst conclusion before bringing him out again? It still really sucks that the Mat and Rand reunion happened during our low point of Mat’s characterization, though.
(* which appears to have been triggered by the ‘not pleasant’ conversation that Mat and Tuon had after Tuon berates him for not telling her that Egwene was briefly enslaved by the Seanchan. After that (off-screen) conversation, Mat starts being much more combative re: the Seanchan -- after that conversation is when he has his bitter/sarcastic thought that he’s not done much to convince Tuon to stop using damane and when he suggests to Min that she mislead Tuon about her viewings to try to soften her stance on Aes Sedai; so I think we can safely give Egwene credit for the turnaround in Mat’s characterization -- I wish that that conversation between Mat and Tuon hadn’t happened off-screen! like so many important emotional moments!, but it seems like perhaps that was a watershed moment for Mat)
Rand and TDO watch, and TDO taunts Rand “the son of battles. I will take him [Mat!]. I will take them all, adversary. As I took the king of nothing [this is Lan, I assume]”.
10. Mat thinks about how he knows he can win this battle, despite the horrible odds. He just needs “a favorable toss of the dice”.
And, not too far away, with the Trollocs outside his hiding place, Olver gives up on the idea of trying to get the Horn to Mat, and lifts the Horn of Valere to his lips.
11. First Mat, and then everyone else, hears Rand’s voice -- he calls out Shai’tan as wrong, telling everyone that Lan isn’t dead. And just after he says that, Mat hears the familiar golden and clear note of the Horn of Valere.
...wow, the Seanchan feel so superfluous to requirements right now. They didn’t show up until after the final combat was engaged, after Rand had his final necessary epiphany, after the Horn was blown (they have still not shown up, technically).
I’m going to take a moment to daydream about a world where Tuon’s nature as marath’damane was revealed and accepted, so she really did flee with the Seanchan (so that she can try to recover from this blow to her powerbase) and the Seanchan never returned to the Last Battle. This would be a much easier way to de-tangle Mat from the Seanchan than whatever he’s gonna need to actually do post-canon.
12. The Heroes of the Horn return and our first sight of them is Birgitte coming to save Elayne from Mellar, with a shining silver arrow. 😍
Birgitte standing over her own corpse kinda cracks me up. Good for her! It’s also probably the first time she’s felt like herself in books and books.
“That was the bloody Horn of Valere!” Mat announces to his troops. “We can still win this night!” Inside, he marvels over how the Horn was sounded without him, showing that one of the things that he’d believed that he was permanently tied to isn’t tied to him after all.
Well, if that knot can be untied, Mat, maybe another one can be as well.
13. Between losing Demandred and the appearance of the Heroes of the Horn, the Shadow are now the ones who are on the defensive, with some Trollocs breaking and trying to run away.
The mist of the Heroes forms near Mat and he feels a moment of worry, wondering if maybe someone on the side of the Shadow summoned them. Hawkwing rides up to Mat, and tells him, “Do take better care of what has been allotted you. Almost, I worried we would not be summoned for this fight.”
I know, right? The lack of urgency in the Mat-in-Ebou-Dar half of the book about actually getting him to Merrilor to blow the Horn was really frustrating to me too!
When Mat confirms that this mean they’re fighting for the Light, Hawkwing tells him, “We would never fight for the Shadow.” The rumors about the Horn are wrong -- I feel like we learned this back in TGH as well but, you know, Mat was dying at the time, so I don’t blame him for not remembering.
Yeah, here’s the line: “We have come to the Horn, but we must follow the banner. And the Dragon.” So it was Rand, Perrin, and Mat who learned that. But, like I said, I don’t blame Mat for not remembering.
14. Hawkwing and Amaresu both scold Mat for not showing Rand enough appreciation for saving his life. Honestly, so fair and legit for Mat to finally be on the other end of a scolding like that. “I have seen you murmur that you fear his madness but all the while you forget that every breath you breathe - every step you take - comes at his forbearance. Your life is a gift from the Dragon Reborn, Gambler. Twice over.”
Mat feels so scolded. As he deserves.
He’s told that they can fight here because they have Rand’s banner and because Rand is... technically sort-of kind-of leading them... from a distance.
Amazingly, Mat takes a moment out of this encounter to marvel at how pretty one of the heroes is and then Remind Himself again that he’s married. He really does have to keep Reminding Himself. One of these days, he’s not going to remember to Remind Himself until after he’s already slept with someone else. It’s been more subtle in this book than in ToM, but Mat is still constantly checking out Every Other Lady around him.
15. Olver gets dug out of his hole by Trollocs but Noal, now one of the Heroes, arrives to save him. I don’t care about Noal, and Jordan definitely didn’t do enough to build up their relationship in CoT & KoD, but I still got a little misty at the tiny orphan child feeling grateful that one of the people who ‘abandoned’ him has finally come back.
16. haha, this next chapter is called ‘wolfbrother’ so I guess that Perrin is finally gonna wake up. But first, we have Elayne!
She’s able to wriggle lose enough to make the medallion copy shift away from her skin and fall to the ground, and now she can embrace saidar again. Elayne apologizes to Birgitte but Birgitte laughs it off, “Why do you mourn, Elayne? I have it all back! My memory has returned. It is wonderful! I don’t know how you stood me these last few weeks. I moped worse than a child who’d just broken her favorite toy.” Ah, yeah, that confirms that Birgitte’s spiral into bitterness was not meant to be a reflection of Elayne but on the dark place that Birgitte was in, with her loss of memories, I think. But it’s a shame that it feels like parts of the fandom just took Birgitte’s unrelated bitterness as a reason to slam on Elayne more. My girl gets so much undeserved hate.
And Elayne and Birgitte will ride back into the battle together. Not as Aes Sedai and Warder, but as friends. 😍 😍 😍 😍
17. Aviendha! I’ve missed you! Her timeline isn’t advancing as quickly as it has been for those further away from Shayol Ghul, so not as much as happened here in the valley. She can feel the channeling inside the Pit of Doom - “a quiet pulse”. Oh! The wolfbrother of the chapter’s title is actually Elyas, who Aviendha runs across now. The Darkhound Wild Hunt is happening, and hundreds of wolves have come to fight back against them.
Aviendha is about to go fetch channelers to help bring down the Darkhounds, when she spies Graendal a bit higher on the slope, with some Turned channelers, and Aiel guards under compulsion. Aviendha alerts her companions (Amys & Cadsuane) and then begins the fight against Graendal.
18. Elayne has a sword again. Where is she getting these swords? I’m just gonna assume it’s made out of Air or something. More useful than the sword, Elayne creates a banner with the Power, the red lion of Andor, lighting up the night.
19. [Mat] remembered, within those memories that were not his, leading forces far grander. Armies that were not fragmented, half-trained, wounded and exhausted. But Light help him, he had never been so proud.
...
This was the moment he had been seeking. It was the card upon which to bet everything he had. Ten to one odds, still, but the Sharan army, the Trollocs and the Fades had no head. No general to guide them.
...
Elayne’s death had been a lie. Her troops had been in disarray - they had lost more than a third of their soldiers - but just as they were about to be routed by the Trollocs, she rode into their midst and rallied them.
20. Catching up with Moggy! Hi, Moghedien. I bet your Last Battle is going pretty shitty. She kicks Demandred’s abandoned corpse. Oh, his devoted Shendla just left his body there to rot? Yikes. For Moghedien, she discovers that now that so many of the Chosen have been killed off, TDO is ready to let her have a taste of that sweet sweet True Power.
She disguises herself as Demandred and heads to the Sharan forces. I have to admit, given how open Min has been about her Talents, it’s kinda astonishing that Moghedien doesn’t know about her viewings. Min will tell anyone who stands still for five seconds, plus Tuon announced her as a Doomseer and has been plumping her up for the past whatever-number of chapters.
Moghedien starts to gear up for her role as Fake Demandred...
...and then she gets a blast of cannon/dragon-fire in her face from the Band’s part of Mat’s plan.
21. Instead of the Band leaving their caves to fight; channelers are opening them up brief windows to shoot through. Aludra is placed up on a high location with a spy-glass, giving orders to the channelers for the next locations for the booms. Honestly very clever.
22. As Aviendha fights in the valley, plants grow to cover her passage.
They had come right when she had needed them to hide her approach. Happenstance? She chose to believe otherwise. She could feel [Rand], in the back of her mind. He fought, a true warrior. His battle lent her strength, and she tried to return the same.
Determination. Honor. Glory. Fight on, shade of my heart. Fight on.
😍 😍 😍 😍 😍 😍 😍 😍
23. Aviendha kills a Compelled attacker, only realizing it’s Rhuarc after she has struck the fatal blow. She kills him moments before he would have killed her, and only her shoulder gets injured.
She does her best to convince herself that she only killed a shell. That Rhuarc was already dead.
There is a burst of determination from Rand (Strength, Aviendha) and her fatigue leaves her, and she refocuses on the fight.
24. Aviendha studies Graendal and decides on her approach -- she creates a spear made out of fire and light, and some other weaves in reserve -- and charges for Graendal. See, this makes a lot more sense that Elayne randomly having a sword, because this is a weapon and Aviendha knows and has trained in most of her life. I think that Sanderson Just Likes Swords tbh.
I really love the description here because of how it brings back Aviendha’s Maiden roots as she launches her attack on Graendal. The ground explodes underneath her (her legs get pretty destroyed, it sounds like), but she’s leaping up already aimed like a spear herself, and she sinks the spear into Graendal’s side just as Graendal is using the True Power to Travel... and because they’re touching, she goes along with Graendal when she Travels.
25. Mat rides with the Heroes of the Horn. He gets them to confirm that he isn’t one of them. He can see Elayne from where he is.
Mat saw Elayne’s banner glowing above them in the sky, crafted of the One Power, and caught a glimpse of someone who looked like her riding among the soldiers, hair glowing as if lit from behind her. She seemed a bloody Hero of the Horn herself.
26. And then the great battle is over, at least here on the battlefield.
He would have to thank Tuon for returning. He did not go looking for her, though. He had a feeling she would expect him to perform his princely duties, whatever they might be.
Hmm.
27. He does feel that tugging. Rand needs him. He tries to convince himself that this was his part, out here, and whatever is going on where Rand is... that’s Rand’s business. The dice are still tumbling in his head. This part here manages to capture Mat’s double-think in a way that I didn’t feel like came across in the actual chapter when we had the Rand & Mat reunion.
After trying to talk himself out of it, Mat ends up saying that he’s a fool because “I need to go to Rand.”
As a parting note, he asks Hawkwing to go have a conversation with “their Empress” (Tuon), and hmm, interesting. Okay, I need to break this down a bit.
So, one of the things that gave Tuon the big jollies back in the negotiation chapter with Rand was Mat referring to the Seanchan forces as “our forces”, which she basically interpreted as “haha you’re mine now, no take-backs”. And here, he does not call the Seanchan empress “my” Empress. He says she’s “their” Empress. The Empress of the Seanchan, who he is not currently identifying with, it would seem. So. That’s interesting.
We don’t get to see the conversation between Hawkwing and Tuon, of course, but what would Mat assume about what Hawkwing would tell Tuon? Why would Mat send Hawkwing to talk to her? The Heroes of the Horn follow Rand, pretty explicitly. They literally just recently scolded Mat for not appreciating Rand enough. They are aware of current events in the world and of the Seanchan Empire.
Which is to say... of course, Mat is assuming that Hawkwing will try to set Tuon straight on how to be an Empress without abusing millions of people under her power. Hawkwing told him that they would never fight for the Shadow. I think it’s reasonable for Mat to assume that he would disapprove of slavery. And Hawkwing’s hatred of Aes Sedai in his lifetime was canonically influenced by Ishamael, if I recall correctly, so the idea that Ishamael’s corruption is still influencing him in his Horn-form just seems like kinda silly to me. So. That’s my stance on that. Mat has clearly stated in recent chapters that he disapproves of the damane system, in particular, and that he wants to influence Tuon to soften her stance on Aes Sedai. So we know what Mat’s motivations are in sending Hawkwing off to talk to her. And it kinda fits Mat’s pattern of trying to use other people to influence Tuon to be less awful.
28. Rand has thought about Mat often, here in the battle with TDO. He thinks of him again -- Beneath them, on the battlefield, the Trollocs had fallen, beaten by a young gambler from the Two Rivers.
29. Oh, hey, Perrin just woke up. Page 853. He went to sleep on page 670. Nice long nap. Missed... a lot of stuff.
He learns that the battle at Merrilor has been won, but the battle at Thakan’dar, outside of Shayol Ghul, rages on. He gets his exhaustion washed away by one of the Aes Sedai and goes physically back into TAR (where he left Gaul to guard the cave where Rand fights).
30. In the waking world, Thom is the one guarding that cave entrance and he ponders the various ways that the ending of the world can be turned into a song, once this is all over.
31. Mat goes to Grady and tells him that he needs to be taken to Shayol Ghul. He’s brought Rand’s banner with him. Hanging out with Grady are Olver and Noal. The dice are still tumbling in Mat’s head. As far as I can tell, they haven’t stopped since Elayne asked him if he knew what he was doing.
Mat, on thinking about Noal/Jain becoming a Hero of the Horn:
Well, you wouldn’t find Mat trading places with him. Noal might enjoy it, but Mat wouldn’t dance at another man’s command. Not for immortality itself, no he wouldn’t.
Another data point that I’m placing into the pile.
Grady says that Traveling is wonky in that direction. Can’t be done.
Mat won’t accept that as an answer, and he gets Grady to take him (and Olver) as close as they can get -- a Seanchan scouting camp, a day away.
32. lol, we get a tiny glimpse into Fain the mist god-demon here. This just feels so anti-climatic, to still have Fain around at a time like this. Anyway, he’s basically a walking Shadar Logoth at this point. Fain kinda suffers from the same issues as Slayer, in that it feels like he’s a villain that the story grew past and yet he hung around anyway.
33. Gaul has been standing alone against Slayer all this time in TAR, fighting against him and protecting Rand, on his own, while Perrin was taking his restorative nap. But now Perrin is back to help. On the plus side, because of the time dilation stuff, only two hours has passed for Gaul in here.
34. Since he couldn’t take a gateway to Shayol Ghul, Mat is going by dragon to’raken. And, yes, Mat takes time out of his terror at being up so high to notice how pretty the morat’to’raken is, even as he thinks that anyone willing to do this must be “completely insane”. Olver, who is riding with them, is having a great time, though.
From up high, Mat sees a mist covering the valley below and gets a tingling that tells him... it’s about Fain and the dagger.
35. Then their to’raken gets hit by arrows, killing the rider or knocking her out. Mat undoes his straps and climbs over to take the to’raken’s reins. So he’s... he’s riding the closest thing that this world has to a dragon. Subtext, fun for the whole family.
He does his best to give them a gentle landing. It is not terribly gentle.
36. In the aftermath of the crash, Mat thinks that kidnapping Tuon (aka marrying her) is the worst decision that he’s ever made. Hmm. And this is after she ‘returned’ to the battlefield per their plan.
“That,” [Mat] finally groaned, “is the worst bloody idea I’ve ever had.” He hesitated. “Maybe the second worst.” He had decided to kidnap Tuon, after all.
And he doesn’t undercut that thought with any kind of caveat. He just lets it stand as he moves on to the next thing. Another interesting data point.
37. Mat literally panics when he realizes that Rand’s banner has gone missing during their dragon to’raken flight. Why does it seem like Sanderson is so much better at writing Cauthor-related scenes when Mat and Rand are separated from each other?
Olver points out that the swirling clouds above them are forming Rand’s sign, and then he blows the Horn again, for good measure.
38. Rand breaks out of his frozen battle with TDO and re-enters his own body. “From his watching of the Pattern, he knew that although only minutes had passed here since he’d entered, in the valley outside this cavern, days had passed, and farther out into the world, it had been much longer.”
He points Callandor at Moridin, and Moridin promptly throws a knife at Alanna.
Broke back to consciousness by Nynaeve’s herbs, Alanna pulls herself together long enough to release the bond she forced on Rand before she dies.
...I kinda feel the need to point out that Moiraine has done nothing but be a battery for Rand since she entered the cave with him.
I also feel bad for Alanna, who really disappeared from the story once Min was bonded to Rand and could take over as Cadsuane’s Rand mood-ring, and now is only here so that she can die. I have extremely large beef against Alanna for forcibly bonding Rand but it feels like the story really should have used that beat even more than it did, rather than it disappearing after WH.
39. Perrin kills Slayer. Finally. And then he pulls back out of TAR and is “on the rocks in the valley of Thakan’dar”, near where the Aiel are gathered.
40. Mat leaves Olver with the Heroes and meets up with Perrin at the mouth of the cave. So, yes, Mat and Perrin get another reunion. Why does Perrin! Get all the reunions! This is what I was talking about when I said how annoyed I was that Mat thinking about Rand tugging on him wouldn’t end up with any good payoff. All we get is yet another Mat and Perrin reunion.
That Rand is literally inside that cave and yet the three ta’veren do not reunite here is honestly somewhat infuriating for me. Genuinely those two things: the Emond’s Five reunite and the ta’veren three reunite should have been at the TOP of Sanderson’s priority list! There is a lot that I have enjoyed about AMoL but there are just way too many important emotional moments that were either skipped or didn’t happen at all but should have happened.
And, fuck, letting Mat and Rand have a scene that doesn’t take place during Mat’s weird Ebou Dar adventure. That would have been nice! Once Mat decides that he’s not going to be a lapdog for the Seanchan/Tuon anymore, his storyline and his PoV get so much better and so much more enjoyable and I am just... eternal bitterness that our only Mat & Rand reunion was plopped into our most lapdoggy-Mat era.
Mat came here specifically to protect Rand and then he never sees him! That is just fucking awful. They deserved a better reunion. What was the point of having the Heroes scold Mat if we didn’t actually get to see Mat and Rand interact again after it? This is kinda a place where the epilogue is mostly at fault -- Mat just strolling off to plan a fireworks show for Tuon post-Last Battle conflicts pretty hard with him spending time with his dying best friend, tonally-speaking -- but that really just makes it all the more frustrating that the only Cauthor reunion took place when Mat was in his worst Seanchan-era.
41. Aviendha attacks Graendal with an exploding gateway; and Mat kills Fain/Mordeth/etc.
And Perrin almost takes off to go searching for Faile but manages to resist the urge: If Rand died, then he would lose Faile. And everything else.
Yes. I have tried to yell this at the fictional characters so many times: if the world dies, then so does your sweetheart! It’s nice that Perrin finally listened.
42. And for his final trick, Moridin grabs Callandor, and Moiraine and Nynaeve spring their trap, using the flaw in Callandor to take control of the ‘circle’ that Moridin has accidentally formed with them. With Moridin having pulled the True Power, Rand is now able to enter the link, and Moiraine and Nynaeve can feed him all three sets of Power: saidar, saidin, and the True Power. Light explodes from him, and from Shayol Ghul, as Rand uses the True Power to protect himself as he reaches through the Bore and grabs onto the Dark One.
43. We get a quick beat of people reacting to the light:
Elayne is on the battlefield of Merrilor, as they search for the living among the dead. She feels the “swelling of power in Rand” and her attention focuses on him.
Thom shields his eyes as the light bursts from the entrance to the Pit of Doom.
Min appears to have managed to get away from the Seanchan for now, changing linens for the wounded, perhaps also on the Field of Merrilor.
Aviendha is drawn back from the darkness of near-death by the light and the warmth of Rand inside her, and realizes that her explosion twisted the compulsion weave so that Graendal compelled herself to worship Aviendha. Awkward!
Logain sees the light and knows that it’s what was meant by the message that Egwene sent, and he breaks the seals on the Dark One’s prison.
44. In TAR, Perrin runs across Lanfear. Together, they walk into Shayol Ghul, and we learn that she apparently compelled Perrin a little while ago? He’s able to pull out of it by reminding himself of his duty and of Faile, and he snaps her neck, killing her.
*squints at the scene*
Yeah, I mean. That’s certainly still what looks like happened? Sorry, Sanderson, I’m not seeing your hints here about Lanfear tricking Perrin and surviving.
45. Rand holds the Dark One in his hand. Or the representation of his hand. And, once again, when Rand tells TDO how pitiful he is, all I see are echoes of the Seanchan:
You would have enslaved me as you would have enslaved the others. You cannot give oblivion. Rest is not yours. Only torment.
Rand can feel himself dying, his life blood slipping away. Realizing that the world that he’d seen without the Dark One would have been the truth, he knows that he cannot kill it. So he thrusts TDO back into his prison, braids saidar and saidin together to reforge a new shield onto the Bore.
With this new form of the Power, Rand pulled together the rent that had been made here long ago by foolish men.
He understood, finally, that the Dark One was not the enemy.
It never had been.
(because it only reflected the evil that people were already capable of)
46. The black hole inside the cave expands, as Moiraine and Nynaeve run for the safety of the cave entrance.
47. And now we are at the epilogue.
Much like I did with The Last Battle chapter, I’ll take the epilogue in sections by character. Rand & co will go last, this time.
Perrin
The spirits of the dead wolves fade back into the dream. Perrin voluntarily worries about Rand? Wow, that feels kinda out of character for Perrin, who has always been way better at pushing away thoughts of Rand than Mat has been, but I guess let’s go with it. It seems to exist to tell us that Perrin no longer sees color swirls and no longer feels any tugging towards anything. “Those seemed like very bad signs.”
“Have you sent for the three?”
What a weird way to ask “do Rand’s girlfriends know that he’s dying?”
I’m going to take a minute and count up the PoV & page counts everyone gets in the epilogue.
Rand: 3 PoVs (4 pages total)
Mat: 2 PoVs (1 1/5 pages)
Perrin: 3 PoVs (6 1/5 pages)
Loial: 1 PoV (3 pages)
Moghedien: 1 PoV (1 page)
Nynaeve: 1 PoV (2 pages)
Birgitte: 1 PoV (1 page)
Tam: 1 PoV (1 page)
Min: 1 PoV (1/2 page)
Cadsuane: 1 PoV (1 page)
That’s a lot of Perrin, comparatively-speaking.
Anyway, Perrin finds Faile, happy ending, etc.
...oh, I just looked it up and Sanderson answered some questions about the epilogue (tor[dot]com/2013/01/23/brandon-sandersons-wheel-of-time-answers-from-torchat/)! He added Perrin’s and Loial’s scene(s). Ha! I knew that Loial was a Sanderson addition because he uses “Matrim” instead of Mat (that is, imo, by far the easiest ‘tell’ of a Sanderson scene -- someone using ‘Matrim’ when they normally wouldn’t). And the Perrin scenes make sense too because it really builds off of and finishes the narrative thread that was at play earlier in the book for Perrin, which was presumably all written by Sanderson.
Mat
Mat strolls away from the aftermath of having killed Padan Fain, calling the dagger “a gamble I don’t want to touch”. The dice stop rolling in Mat’s head after he decides not to pick up the dagger. Hmm. Mat avoiding becoming the new Fain for the Fourth Age?
After that, we skip to his scene with Tuon. And there are only those two scenes with Mat in the epilogue -- killing Fain and finding out that he’s been baby-trapped into the Seanchan Empire. Though Perrin confirms in his own PoV scenes that he no longer gets the swirls or the tugging, we don’t get the same kind of confirmation in Mat’s (very short) scenes.
I will say that there is more subtlety in Mat’s ending here than I had remembered -- I was extremely unhappy about his ending but this marriage is pretty troubled already in the text, and so it’s not really the book that tries to pretend this is a happy “babies ever after” ending for Mat; I feel like that’s maybe more of a vibe that I got from fans at the time, rather than from the text. There are a lot of “male power fantasy” fans who just really like that Mat ends up married to an Empress and commanding vast armies, I think, at least from what I’ve seen around the internet (and especially back when the series was originally published).
And Mat specifically forces a grin at the news that Fortuona is pregnant, so he’s not genuinely happy about it (and we got things in recent chapters like Mat thinking that kidnapping Tuon was the worst idea he’d ever had).
But, honestly, I do still hate that it happens. I hate it up one side and down the other. It sucks as an ending for Mat so much. Miserable marriage, awful wife, horrible shackles tying him to a terrible fascist empire built on slavery.
That being said... just Tuon’s rule is incredibly fragile, this marriage is also incredibly fragile (which is probably why Jordan slapped a baby in there to begin with -- otherwise, given his general misery level in many of the Seanchan-related scenes, it’s difficult to see how Mat could bring himself to stick with Tuon for long enough to do whatever plot-related things Jordan was imagining would have happened in the outriggers -- the baby is a trap for Mat, not from Tuon but from Jordan).
There are still so many things about the Seanchan that could end up being deal-breakers for Mat if he finds out about them!
(ex. Bodewhin Cauthon is never mentioned in the books after Knife of Dreams, so it is entirely possible that she is among the new damane who were taken by the Seanchan in recent days, and Mat might end up seeing his sister with a collar around her neck post-canon. How would he react to that? And to Tuon’s unwillingness to let her go?)
In addition to Mat potentially seeing people he knows and cares about in collars, we also have the possibility of him learning just how brutal Tuon’s attack against the White Tower was (there isn’t any indication that he knows about the attack at all yet); or Talmanes telling him about Verin’s letter and Mat realizing how damaging his fear of Aes Sedai has been for the world; or further in the future there’s Mat’s potential reaction to the lethal political wrangling that Imperial heirs are meant to get up to (he was disturbed enough that Galgan liking him only means that subpar assassins will be sent against him -- when he realizes that Tuon might well encourage their own kids to kill each other to win her favor, it’s very hard to see him brushing that off). Plus he’s regained his sense of disgust over the damane system. So there are a lot of powderkegs waiting to be blown sky-high for Mat, post-canon.
idk, Mat’s storyline is maybe the one where I most have to untangle whether I dislike it more because I feel like it was executed poorly or if I dislike it because it sets up a situation that will never get resolution. And how connected are those things?
A big frustration that I’ve had with how Jordan and then Sanderson handled Mat’s storyline over the course of the last few books of the series was how many shortcuts were taken with his character and how artificial forcing him into the Seanchans’ arms has felt to me.
a. Mat getting trapped in Ebou Dar and then all the characters involved taking a vow of silence when it came to telling Rand about it. Mat getting trapped in Ebou Dar is plot nonsense: relatively forgivable. But having multiple characters being given the opportunity to change that situation and just... not bothering to do it is... that’s a characterization issue. It severely impacted my feelings about Nynaeve for Jordan to turn her into the kind of person who just doesn’t bother to tell Rand that his best friend was left behind in that kind of perilous situation. Plot manipulations... that’s just how the plot works. But over and over, characters got broken or bent for the purpose of jamming Mat into the Seanchan storyline.
b. Setalle Anan is a minor character, so I get why people don’t care about her, but she’s a character who pretty much completely reverses her characterization between WH & CoT (in WH, she is anti-slavery and finds Mat charming and trustworthy; in CoT & KoD, she protects and waits on Tuon while treating Mat like the dangerous one, including betraying Mat’s secrets to Tuon -- and her betrayals are never acknowledged by the text in any way; she just keeps on being treated as if she’s a friendly supporting character) and, from what I could see, it’s just so obviously done in order to protect Tuon from ever having even a sliver of character growth rather than it making sense for Setalle Anan’s character.
c. We keep tiptoeing up to the brink of Actually Having A Plot Happen with the Seanchan and then backing away at the last minute without really having a good reason to do it. Incredibly frustrating. This was one of my main annoyances with CoT & KoD. And in AMoL, both Rand and Egwene inexplicably back down when they have Tuon on the ropes and off-balance.
d. Mat’s teleportation to Ebou Dar in-between Towers of Midnight and A Memory of Light. I’ve talked about this one a lot but yeah. It’s just... really bad? I do suspect that Sanderson couldn’t figure out any way to actually make it believable that Mat would go to the Seanchan and that’s why he had it all happen off-the-page. But the careless damage that it does to Mat’s characterization is just horrific. Mat gets ripped out of the action of the first third of the book, and doesn’t get to the Last Battle itself until the book is more than half over. Once Mat is actually engaging in the Last Battle, his characterization steadies a lot but especially those first four chapters with Mat, it feels like we’re only working with half of his characterization and the other half has vanished somewhere in-between ToM & AMoL.
(and if Mat hadn’t been cut-and-pasted from the Tower of Ghenjei over to Ebou Dar, then we would have had a full reunion at Merrilor. So I’m annoyed/bitter about that too)
I could keep going but... let’s keep it at four issues for right now so that we’re not here all day, lol.
All of those issues are problems that I had with the execution of the storyline.
I am not inherently opposed to depressing endings for characters that I love but... it has to be done well. It has to make sense. And Mat’s ending just... required cutting away too many parts of him (and other characters) for it to make sense to me.
But though it is not always handled well (to put it mildly), Mat’s storyline with Tuon (and Tylin before her) is an example of the ‘typical gender roles are swapped’ done in a way that is more down to the very core of his storyline than a lot of other storylines, which are more on the surface.
He’s much less politically powerful than his spouse and needs to use guile, intrigue, and manipulation to get his way and try to persuade her to a gentler and kinder path than her warlike nature naturally aligns towards.
He undergoes something of a gender-swapped version of “The Taming of the Shrew” storyline, in which a fiercely independent person gets coerced/’tamed’ into being a properly submissive spouse (or, depending on your interpretation, into pretending to be one) -- many of the tricks that Tuon and Tylin use are similar to what Petruchio does to Katherine in the play. Mat gets publicly humiliated and starved by Tylin into submitting to her (which is what Petruchio does to Katherine during/after their wedding), and isolated away from his past connections during his time with Tuon, where he constantly has to act to try to figure out how to appease her without provoking her temper (Petruchio compares taming Katherine to falcon-taming, but Tuon would probably compare it to horse-training or damane-breaking), and Petruchio changes her name from ‘Katherine’ to ‘Kate’, which fits pretty well with Tuon’s insistence on never once calling Mat ‘Mat’.
Plus Mat getting his name changed to indicate that he now ‘belongs’ to Tuon’s people fits into this general category -- and historically, in the culture that Jordan belonged to, that’s normally a role given to women, to be given a new name that shows that they are now of their husband’s people and not their father’s; it’s usually their last name but, in the not too-distant past (and maybe currently in some places as well, idk), at least in the USA, women were often referred to as Mrs. “husband’s first name” “husband’s last name” with none of their own name making it into the address.
But a lot of the issues that I have with how this was written is that it felt like Mat was behaving like his hand was forced even when it wasn’t. Which is definitely a writing issue -- it’s a similar issue to the one that I have with the Rand & Min romance, for example, where Min desperately chases after something even though she doesn’t really want it at the start. Prophecy gets used as a way to skip actually writing important character or relationship beats, instead of prophecy being one of many tools in the writer’s kit.
So, yeah, it really is the execution of the storyline that is the biggest problem for me with Mat & Tuon, and the way it feels like he is pulled away from his other attachments whether or not that makes any narrative or character sense.
I really hope that the show does better with them, and with Mat in his endgame (should we get there, etc.).
I will say that I do think that Sanderson handled the romance better than Jordan did; the main problem was that it was already fundamentally broken by how the relationship was written in CoT & KoD, imo (the KoD collaring chapter in particular made me despise them as a pairing and my feelings never recovered from that moment). But in Sanderson’s books, we actually see the effects of Tuon compromising with Mat during various points of the Last Battle (though we see don’t actually see their private discussions and/or arguments that lead to those compromises), and there’s always a throughline showing how miserable the Seanchan lifestyle is for Mat, and those are two things that were majorly missing from CoT & KoD for me, but that make sense as the only way to make the romance even half-believable for Mat’s pre-established characterization from WH and earlier.
The three big issues that I have with Sanderson’s Mat are: the terrible first chapter of TGS (with the gross sexism); the terrible first chapter of AMoL (now featuring inexplicable teleportation); and the deep deep disservice done to Mat and Rand’s friendship (Rand got a personal goodbye with EVERYONE important to him EXCEPT Mat! And Mat got a personal reunion with everyone important to him, except Rand! All they got was the negotiation scene that was ultimately all about Fortuona and the Seanchan treaty, with Mat and Rand’s friendship being the set dressing around the scene).
But the relationship with Tuon honestly... makes a lot more sense in this book than it did in CoT & KoD (once we work past the brain-breaking logistics of the first chapter or so). There are TONS of hints that Mat has uncomfortable vibes going on underneath his casual exterior, plus Tuon actually does make some attempts at compromising with him, and if the well hadn’t been poisoned by how much I despised CoT/KoD-era Mat & Tuon then... I might have had a chance at enjoying AMoL-era Mat & Tuon for the toxic trainwreck that it is.
But, like all the characters & relationships in AMoL, we skip some pretty big moments in the Mat & Tuon relationship -- we see the effects of them compromising but we never actually see them coming to that compromise in private, which I feel like we needed after how unyielding and frankly how annoying Jordan made Tuon about everything.
We do end up with a Mat & a ‘Fortuona’ who remain at cross-purposes -- Mat continues to think of and refer to her as ‘Tuon’ while Fortuona has kinda reversed from thinking of him as a ‘buffoon’ to instead believing that he has the same kind of practical motivations behind his choices that she does, which is also not accurate. But Sanderson did add in some actual give-and-take to their relationship, which Jordan never seemed willing to do, so the AMoL-era Mat & Tuon is a lot more genuinely engaging for me, even if I do still think that they are one of the most obviously doomed fictional marriages that I have ever seen.
Final Mat-related question for the moment: the Seanchan Empire is based on authoritarian governments throughout history, so does how the Seanchan Empire operates mimic the behavior of a cult?
The popular model for cults is the BITE model, which was developed by a man who was deprogrammed from the Moon cult in 1976 (Steve Hassan). It’s an acronym:
Behavior, Information, Thought, and Emotion control. BITE.
Do the Seanchan seek to control people’s behavior? (yes) Do they seek to control the flow of information that the people under them learn? (yes) Do they seek to have their members reject critical thought and only apply to the group-think? (yes) Do they manipulate the emotions of their followers, usually instilling fear or paranoia about outsiders? (yes)
We know from earlier books that the Seanchan culture =/= the Seanchan Empire. There are constant civil wars and uprisings in their native land. This is explicitly why they are such good soldiers, because they are always fighting each other. Yet they present themselves as a monolith when they come to the Westlands, bragging about how they’re here to bring ‘order’ to a lawless continent. What they say about themselves does not match the truth of what else we know about them.
How does the Seanchan Empire exercise its control over its people? Everything I included here is something I think we’ve see the Empire do, but I did bold ones that are particularly blatant in the text.
Behavior control: Control types of clothing and hairstyles; permission required for major decisions; rewards and punishments used to modify behaviors both positive and negative; discourage individualism; encourage group-think; impose rigid rules and regulations; punish disobedience by beating, torture, burning, cutting, rape, or tattooing/branding; threaten harm to family and friends; encourage and engage in corporal punishment; instill dependency and obedience; kidnapping; beating; torture; murder
Information control: Distort information to make it more acceptable; systematically lie to the cult members; minimize or discourage access to non-cult sources of information; ensure that information is not freely accessible; control information at different levels and missions within group; allow only leadership to decide who needs to know what and when; encourage spying on other members; impose a buddy system to monitor and control member; report deviant thoughts, feelings, and actions to leadership; ensure that individual behavior is monitored by group; extensive use of cult-generated propaganda
Thought control: require members to internalize the group’s doctrine as truth; adopting the group’s ‘map of reality’ as reality; instill black and white thinking; organize people into us vs them; change person’s name and identity; use of loaded language and cliches which constrict knowledge; encourage only ‘good and proper’ thoughts; thought-stopping techniques to shut down reality testing: denial, rationalization, justification, wishful thinking; rejection of rational analysis, critical thinking, constructive criticism; forbid critical questions about leader, doctrine, or policy; labeling alternative belief systems as illegitimate, evil, or not useful
Emotion control: teach emotion-stopping techniques to block feelings of homesickness, anger, doubt; make the person feel that problems are always their own fault, never the leader’s or the group’s fault; promote feelings of guilt or unworthiness; instill fear, such as fear of: thinking independently, the outside world, leaving or being shunned by the group; ritualistic and sometimes public confessions of sins; phobia indoctrination: inculcating irrational fears about leaving the group or questioning the leader’s authority, no happiness or fulfillment possible outside of group; shunning of those who leave; being told there is never a legitimate reason to leave.
“Destructive mind control can be determined when the overall effect of these four components promotes dependency and obedience to some leader or cause; it is not necessary for every single item on the list to be present.“ (in this case, that would be to the Empress, ~may she live forever~)
(all taken from freedomofmind(dot)com -- not linking because sometimes outside links make tumblr act weird about posts)
On the page, we witness the slow process of Leilwin née Egeanin pulling away and deprogramming from the Seanchan Empire, and then in this book, it feels like Mat has begun that process as well. And it feels like they started the same way -- because of a massive overreach by Tuon, the leader of the cult/Empire. Leilwin née Egeanin gets humiliated and punished by Tuon for no reason; just because Tuon felt like being a brat that day, and that moment of humiliation -- the re-naming and the forcing of the jewelry on her in a way that treated her like a slave -- was really what made Leilwin née Egeanin start to pull away from the other Seanchan and go into the path that eventually led to her being, however briefly, Egwene’s Warder.
For Mat, it really seems like whatever happened in that ‘not pleasant’ discussion that he and Tuon had after she berated him for, essentially, prioritizing Egwene’s privacy over Tuon’s desire to get information from him... that discussion (that we didn’t get to see) really seemed to lead to the more combative Mat who refused to back down and roll over for her. Mat still feels a level of protectiveness and affection for Tuon through the rest of the book but he stops letting her push him around and he starts acting like he cares about doing something about the slavery system in the Seanchan Empire again, which was a part of him that we lost at the start of CoT and I have hated so much that we lost in his character. But it slowly grows back over the course of the second half of AMoL.
Again, my big regret here is that the Mat & Rand reunion happened before Mat started his spine regrowth program. Even though Mat does start to push back on Tuon more here, he still never finished several of his character arcs that were set up over the course of the entire series: namely his own mistrust of Aes Sedai and his fear of Rand as a channeler. Both of those fears were things that he was actively working in the text and that he abruptly backtracked on when Tuon was introduced into his life (because being chill with channelers and being chill with people who enslave channelers is contradictory and so Jordan decided... to go with being chill with slavers). So those are two flapping loose ends for his character at the end of this series that never got to fully be addressed because the ‘romance’ was prioritized over Mat’s characterization.
Loial
Loial is looking for people to help him with accounts for his book and “Perrin ignored me and Mat cannot be found”.
Mat just completely disappearing from the Westlands side of things to go set up a fireworks show for Tuon (and asking Aludra to be the one to set it up, which just seems kinda mean, considering that the Seanchan pretty much completely eliminated the Illuminators) is just... frustrating. Apparently Mat visited the battlefield here “smiling and healthy” but then vanished. So, in theory, there’s an empty place here where Mat might have visited Rand and talked to Elayne & co one last time, since Rand is in the main healing tent on this battlefield.
Loial also notes how odd it is that Elayne and Min don’t seem to feel any urge to go in to hold Rand’s hand while he’s dying (Aviendha is getting her legs looked at). I know, Loial! They’re the worst fake-grievers who ever lived, I swear. If the whole point is to trick people into thinking Rand is dead, then it might be a good idea to... actually try to trick people?
Moghedien
In which Tuon’s people are already breaking the terms of the treaty by snatching up channelers from the battlefield at Merrilor. No hundred years of peace, Rand. I’m sorry.
Rand (& all those who say ‘goodbye’ to him, or who don’t)
Rand leaves the mountain, slipping on his own blood and carrying a body. Shayol Ghul is trying to close before he can leave and he only barely makes it out in time before the cave snaps shut behind him.
Moiraine tells Rand that he did well, and Nynaeve tries desperately to keep him alive, but eventually, and without ever waking back up, ‘Rand’ dies.
Elayne, Aviendha, and Min do the absolute worst job of playing grieving widows ever. Like, if Rand had actually died, I could understand this better. Because they might really be in shock. But they know he’s alive! And their whole job is to convince people that they absolutely believe that he’s dead! Just... pinch your arm until you start crying! This is literally the most suspicious way that they could have gone about things -- Nynaeve is already extremely suspicious of how they’re acting. Seriously, she’s gonna wiggle the truth out of them pretty much five seconds post-epilogue.
Birgitte comes to say goodbye to Elayne because she’s about to be reborn... and to mention that she’s tossed away the Horn of Valere. Sure hope that Elayne doesn’t regret that in ten years when they’re at war with the Seanchan!
Tam hopes that now his son can get some rest. My hope is that Rand will, you know, go and talk to his dad after he’s had a chance to recover from the stress and trauma of the Last Battle. Also, Tam... you’re gonna have grandkids. No thoughts on that, I see. Still no thoughts on that.
The funeral scene frustrates me to pieces.
Honestly, the most frustrating thing about the funeral scene is how easy it would have been to casually mention that Mat and Perrin were there? Like, that’s ONE SENTENCE. Just... the erasure of those years of friendship, because heterosexual marriage, in Jordan’s fictional world, meant that close male-male friendships just stopped existing. It’s depressing. That CADSUANE is considered to have more right to be at Rand’s funeral than his childhood friends who were also vital parts of the Last Battle. It’s insulting. And apparently Tam organized it? But he couldn’t be bothered to invite his kid’s best friends. Definitely a place where Sanderson should have done some editing of the original epilogue. One sentence is all that was needed.
*sigh*
I do think that Sanderson did try to set up why Mat wouldn’t have gone -- we have seen Mat, in several of his recent PoV scenes, swallowing his grief over losing people he loves and not letting it appear to affect him openly, even as it rocked him deeply, so Rand’s death would be another of those gut-punches that he would do his best to pretend didn’t happen. But, fuck... it just sucks that the friendship between Mat and Rand is such a sublimated thing in this last book, when Rand and Mat both got to much more openly deal with pretty much every other important relationship that they had (though I will note that Rand and Sulin never got a reunion either! Rude!).
Perrin didn’t get anything like that kind of subtextual explanation, but Perrin actually did visit Rand’s healing tent while he was dying, so at least he got that much. *shrugs*
Min thinking here about how the assembled people expect a ‘show’ of grief -- yes, they have all found it exceedingly odd that none of you appear to be grieving the man you said that you loved.
Rand wakes up in his new body, washed clean of the wounds that he’d taken over the course of the series. No more missing hand; no more agonizing pain in his side.
I have to admit “she left me some money” feels like a pretty anti-climatic way for Alivia to “help Rand die”? She wasn’t really involved in his “death” at all -- it was really Moiraine and Nynaeve who were the ones who ‘helped’ him die. I mean, any one of Min, Elayne, or Aviendha could have left him some money, since they all know he’s alive. I wonder if Jordan was originally thinking that Alivia would be the one joining Rand & Nynaeve for the cave journey, and it was Sanderson who decided that Moiraine would be more appropriate? Nothing distinctively Moiraine happens in that cave, not the way that Nynaeve was needed to be there to heal Alanna without using the Power. Like, this poor woman was harassed by Min for a handful of books because of that prophecy and all she did was leave Rand some money! Min better find her and apologize to her! (I already know that she won’t)
Haha, so confession: my brain edited out that new!Rand had lost saidin. My brain was just like “nope, of course he can still channel”. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of Rand not being a channeler at the end of the story, so that part I’m not thrilled about. He does have his newfound ability to use the threads of reality to basically channel anyway, though. Or at least I assume that’s what the pipe scene is about.
And then his thought, too, about ‘which’ of the women will follow him - yeah, you’re right that thinking that means you’ve gotten a swollen head! They all have responsibilities! Though since Rand leaves so abruptly here, there’s a lot that he doesn’t know, and the two things that most affect this specific question are: the extent of Aviendha’s injuries and the extent of Min’s involvement with the Seanchan. Literally zero of them is in a position to go chasing after Rand, even if they wanted to! Rand is the one who has no obligations and can easily visit them if he wants (well, maybe not ‘easily’ if Min does end up in the Empire).
But I can still remember, wow, what a relief it was that he was alive at the end, and free and unbound. The rest can be... adjusted by post-canon theories.
In terms of ‘things that aren’t covered but that we can probably assume’:
It does look like Elayne ended up with all three of the medallion copies -- the one Mellar used on her, the one that was on Birgitte’s body, and the third was with Lan and she probably reclaimed it (there’s nothing to indicate that Mat spoke with Lan and got it back), so the slaver empress never gets that medallion that Mat wanted to give her back in ToM. Tragic.
Despite Elayne and Tam speaking frequently over the course of AMoL, they somehow never speak about the whole grandkids issue. I feel like we can assume that this happens at some point, post-epilogue? Elayne and Aviendha both seem like they would go back to Caemlyn to rebuild. And Tam doesn’t really have a reason to go back to the Two Rivers at this point, so I can see him ending in Caemlyn too because: grandkids.
Technically, Min has slipped the Seanchan net at this point and could just not go back if she wants, so she can either go back to the Seanchan or she could go to Caemlyn with Elayne & Aviendha, but if she does stay away from the Seanchan, Tuon is going to try to get her back. Unless she was super-turned off by Min actually standing up to her in front of all the Blood and hastily makes Selucia her Truthspeaker again. That’s another possibility.
Ah, since we were told earlier that Melaine was about ready to give birth and Birgitte tells Elayne that she’s about to be reborn: Melaine might be her mom. I feel like Birgitte being reborn as Aiel sounds kinda fun.
I feel like Rand would not actually enjoy traveling all on his own after a while, given what we know about him, so he would probably end up visiting Caemlyn. And given how suspicious Nynaeve already is in the epilogue, I’m going to guess that she knows the truth by the time Rand goes to Caemlyn.
If Mat decides to leave the Seanchan behind at any point, he will probably also go to Caemlyn, and Mat and Rand can finally have a good reunion.
All in all, there are things about the ending that don’t thrill me but there are also things I really like. And having an ending at all helps in terms of sparking the imagination for fanfiction or meta or... an Amazon Prime television series. I don’t think we would have ever gotten the series if the books had stayed unfinished.
The epilogue checklist (and my theories about how it affected AMoL)
So, while reading AMoL, it felt like Sanderson took a couple of shortcuts in order to bruteforce the characters into reaching their epilogue endpoints, because there simply wasn’t enough time for it to happen naturally. This is my list of things that I believe got shortchanged due to “writing to the epilogue”:
Fortuona is pregnant in the epilogue: at the start of AMoL, Mat gets teleported to Ebou Dar without any kind of narrative or logistical explanation (contradicting his PoV chapter in the ending of ToM, where he was planning to return to Caemlyn, which would have thrust him directly into the main stories at play in the prologue & early chapters). I feel like part of it is that Sanderson really wanted to get that bun in the oven as quickly as possible.
“they expected something from the three of them; a show of some kind” : There’s just a wide acknowledgement in the epilogue that literally everyone knows that Rand has three girlfriends, so everyone just already knows in AMoL that Rand is in a relationship with three women now. No need for anyone to have emotional reactions to it, please! (not even Rand’s literal dad!) This one also ends up being weird because it seems to change from moment-to-moment whether or not the whole army knows that Rand has three girlfriends (if everyone knows already, why is Rand playing spy games with Elayne?).
Min is Fortuona’s pregnancy test: Min instantly respects ~Fortuona~ as an empress even while thinking that she doesn’t normally respect nobility. Bizarre, considering Min’s own history with the Seanchan from Falme.
Mat kills Fain: we got two super-quick glimpses of Fain earlier in the book to set up this moment but Mat had so much other stuff to do that Sanderson couldn’t really do more than say: yeah, Fain exists and he’s bad, lol.
Minor elements I think were affect by the epilogue:
Rand is still pondering over the idea of choosing between Elayne, Aviendha, or Min: we get Rand’s going “am I allowed to love three women? idk sounds fake” when he and Aviendha sleep together in chapter 4, which just was kinda silly. I think the epilogue is also the genesis of the vibe where Rand appears to consider “having sex with Min for months” to not be any kind of “choice” when it comes to the three women, but having a romantic interlude with Aviendha or Elayne would signal a choice -- because the epilogue acts like the situation between Rand and each of the three women is roughly equal, so “months of sex with Min” appears to hold the same emotional weight to Rand as “pining from afar with two nights of intense passion” does when he thinks of either Elayne or Aviendha.
Mat has no thoughts about any of the Westlands characters: I think that this is more of a subconscious effect -- as he focused more on the final book, I think Sanderson focused on the relationships highlighted in the all-important epilogue... and the only person that Mat cares about in the epilogue is himself *cough* I mean, Fortuona, of course, lol. In both TGS and in ToM, Mat’s deep affection for various Westlands characters was constantly on display, as shown in his own ‘loves lying to himself’ way. This gets curtailed in AMoL, especially in the early Ebou Dar chapters.
I think I’m going to let myself might let myself marinate over the various books before I post a final list of my personal ranking of the books.
One thing that I’ve really noticed is that, more than any other character, the quality of Mat’s storyline has a huge impact on my overall enjoyment of the book. In CoT & KoD, Elayne and Egwene (both of whom I love), got pretty good stories. But Mat’s story was so bad that it made it difficult for me to enjoy the good parts. But maybe some time just letting myself think about the series as a whole will balance out my thoughts. Does that make Mat my favorite character or just my most impactful character? idk. I feel like Elayne or Rand would more consistently hit the top of my favorites.
Overall top five characters throughout the entire series:
1. Elayne
2. Rand
3. Egwene
4. Mat (might be higher if not for CoT & KoD)
5. Nynaeve (might be higher if she didn’t basically disappear after she married Lan)
Then, moving on to the next favs, I think there’s more uncertainty there for me:
6. Verin, probably, but it could be Moiraine. Let’s say they tie.
7. Aviendha and Siuan can both go here. Both generally very good and interesting characters.
8. You know, I had a real turnaround with Gawyn in this reread of the books; I’m gonna put him here. He can share this spot with Leilwin née Egeanin.
9. Loial, probably. Needed more PoV; that would have been nice. I’ll put Faile here with him.
10. For more minor characters, I gotta give a shout-out to Narishma (favorite Asha’man), Sulin, Pevara during her Black Ajah Hunter phase, Olver is really good in his sections here in AMoL, Asmodean for being my favorite fail-Forsaken and Moghedien for sticking it out until the very end, Elaida honestly very fun PoV as far as villains go, Teslyn and Joline for being troopers and enduring Mat Cauthon at his very worst, my girl Berelain who always deserved better, the ‘Finn in general always lots of fun, Aludra and Juilin who always kept their integrity intact.
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Notes on A Memory of Light
Loving the symbolism of metal melting in the rebel Andoran camp. Infighting is useless now. Only the Last Battle is important.
Talmanes started showing more empathy because of Mat. That is adorable.
Ah, the Trollocs are locking people inside Caemlyn and the city is now burning. Everything's fine.
Isam POV? And an insight into the people actually surviving beyond the Blight in Thakan'dar? I like that. Fantasy and science fiction excel at creating groups of people so completely devoid of humanity that they can be slaughtered by the thousands for the sake of heroism and epic battles - Trollocs, the orcs, stormtroopers. RJ didn't go beyond alluding to clans and a language for the Trollocs, and his DF are notable for their shallow motivations. Here, we get an insight into Isam, who grew up in violent lands and turned to the dark because there was nothing else.
"There was a softness to the man equal to his genius—an odd, but inspiring, combination." - oh Talmanes is "in love" in love.
"My people live with a grave misconception of the world, Bayle. In doing so, they create injustice.” - I'm listening. Maybe Leilwin can join Ituralde and Aludra in the rebellion to destroy the Seanchan after the Last Battle.
"Nynaeve al’Meara was what, back in Seanchan, one would call a telarti—a woman with fire in her soul" - A raging sun!
Nyn gives Leilwin a deserved earful for losing the a'dam. So far her attitude was "I did a whoopsie and need to save my ass." She wants redemption, she needs to work for it.
Leilwin's submission to Nyn and the AS... People in power cannot imagine a world without submission. If they are not in power, someone else will be and surely treat them as bad as they treated others.
Does it bother me that Leilwin is doing this primarily as a point of honor rather than genuine contrition and empathy for the victims of the empire? Yes. But at least she's not a danger anymore.
It's interesting to be reminded that Aviendha was very much meant to "train" Rand so that he understood and served best the Aiel's interest. And now the WO want her back to spying/sleeping with him. She changed; she's not going to do that.
If I were Aviendha I would just not have Rand's children instead of changing one name to game fate, but for the WO it is primordial that Avi has his children to tie him more to the Aiel. They're just as embroiled in the Game of houses as the other nations.
Bair is my favourite of the Wise Ones. (I think? Their personalities are too similar.) She's right to go investigate Avi's visions.
"Talmanes couldn’t reproduce Mat’s blend of insanity and inspiration" - That's an accurate description of Mat. His stupidity is his genius.
"The Black Tower is a dream. A shelter for men who can channel, a place of our own, where men need not fear, or run, or be hated." - so, the BT took disenfranchised men, isolated them even more and turned them into weapons: yes, it's the army.
I don't know what to do with that Androl plot. I like that the Black Tower's politics are at last explored, but it should have been done much sooner. We're on the eve of the Last Battle; we don't have time for that.
Taim is Turning people now? This is so very bad. Also, Asha'man are recognizing that Aes Sedai are scholars above all, not soldiers, unlike Asha'man.
Aludra is the best, saving the dragons as she did, guiding refugees. Such a fun character.
Moghedien not wanting to overuse the spider motif on her clothes made me snort. I missed her.
Moridin rescued Lanfear by killing her so that she could be resurrected? That's a way to do it.
That platform over a sea of doomed people on fire!
Of course Graendal is punished by being made ugly and both the remaining female Forsaken are under the thumb of Moridin and Demandred: groundbreaking
So Taim has been raised to one of the Chosen. Light, did Rand fuck up with the Black Tower.
Aww, Talmanes wanted to taunt Mat more before dying. Their relationship is really endearing.
"They’re not bloody Aes Sedai on wheels. We can’t make a wall of fire." - Aludra is hilarious. Please be in the show. I see her as Nikki Amuka-Bird.
Wait, are we really losing Talmanes? Is Moiraine coming back with Mat to heal him?
I enjoyed this prologue. It didn't read at all like the last prologue of a 15-books long series, but the Talmanes/Aludra Caemlyn resistance was quite enjoyable
“The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills, Perrin. We’ve become what we needed to become.” - Like Egwene is Siuan's, Rand is Moiraine's, through and through.
So Rand spies on Elayne and Elayne spies on Rand and Avi spies on Rand... No comment. YKINMKATOK
"Siuan would have killed for this ability, [...] How many more plots could that woman have spun if she’d been able to visit others as quickly, quietly and easily as this?" - I just love how often Siuan is in Eggy's thoughts. How relatable.
"This is not a decision he should be allowed to make alone." - Eggy is as cross with Rand for deciding without consulting his allies as she is about the plan itself. Last time, LTT failed precisely because he decided he could do it on his own.
HELL YEAH NYN CAME THROUGH AND SAVED TALMANES! Also the show did her explosive weaves already. I love these details.
Interestingly, Moiraine must be a pretty strong healer if Nynaeve considers healing a poisoned wound like this difficult.
"I may be Amyrlin, Nynaeve, but I am still Aes Sedai. Servant of all. My strength will be of use to you." - I continue to be baffled by the existence of fans who hate Egwene. She's now linking with Nyn to help her heal the wounded.
Rand has grown a lot. He clearly sees that he cannot do this on his own and he needs to actually explain what he does for his allies to agree to his plans.
Also you're damn right Perrin, Egwene is the smartest of you lot.
Light, I'm still pissed about the Kin. If really they must be tied to someone, I would rather they were to Nynaeve than become an army transportation service for Elayne. Not everyone needs to answer to a monarch and the Kin used to be free!
Rand thinks about people as tools, but also says he sees the people under there as well: this is a callback to Moiraine's words at the end of TEotW and TSR. I cannot stress how much Moiraine has impacted Rand's development, good and bad.
Bookcloaks: Moiraine isn't one of the main characters, she shouldn't be featured that much in the show
Moiraine: still shapes Rand's thinking after being absent for 8 books, as well as having ties to the other EF5
Have we read the same books?
How the hell did Caemlyn end up invaded though? If Elayne learned anything from the dungeons it's that the Shadow was planning to attack. There were mercenaries outside Caemlyn that she could have used as reserve. I truly don't get what her plans were here.
That said, major kudos to Elayne for not rushing in recklessly to save Caemlyn and accepting the city is lost for now. It seems she did heed Birgitte's advice. They do not have time to fall for that kind of diversion now.
"Oh my, Androl. You really don’t know anything about us, do you?”
“Honestly? No. I’ve avoided your kind for most of my life.” - I am very fond of narrative devices allowing the big story to be told through a small window. Also, their banter.
“Let me explain something to you, Asha'man. This is my fight. If the Shadow takes this tower, it will mean terrible things for the Last Battle. I have accepted responsibility for you and yours; I will not turn away from it so easily.” - oh wow, it’s that servant of all mentality coming out at last.
"We exist to make certain that men who can channel do not accidentally hurt themselves or those around them. Would you not agree that is a purpose of the Black Tower as well?” - I'll take more of that nuance about the Reds thank you. Delicious.
"It’s been over a hundred years now. I miss my family, but they’d be dead by now even if the Darkfriends hadn’t killed them.” - there's something about Aes Sedai as curators of the Light, even incredibly flawed ones, that makes them so moving. Also, glad the books are acknowledging that longevity is truly a burden.
Light, Androl refusing to stop channeling with Pevara while they were linking was stressful.
They bonded each other? They have access to each other's thoughts? I was not expecting that. That's a way to even the scales between AS and Warders at least.
Look, I LIKE what Androl and Pevara's story is doing thematically, I LIKE the added nuance to the Reds and the Asha'man, I LIKE their chemistry, but this feels so disconnected from the main plot. Everyone is at the Field of Merrilor right now.
"Only if we had blood feud, Elayne.” - oh, their descendants will if Avi's vision is to happen.
Aviendha is definitely written weirdly around Elayne, but even another author cannot erase their gayness.
Please, no more polycule nonsense. I never thought I would say this but there's actually something worse than love triangles and it's badly done polycules. Light, I hate the way this four-way relationship is written and truly pity Rand.
They ARE rescuing Logain! I love a good breaking and entering. Also Pevara is a boss of the Vandene tradition.
Wait, how did the Oaths let Pevara answer that the captured Asha'man could not hear when she had released her shield of air on him?
Seeing Emarin trick Taim's goon is entertaining and it makes me want to read more about class in this universe: there seems to be a divide between bad and good nobles, without questioning how the good ones still wield the same weapons except they're good so it’s okay.
"If Lanfear still lives… might Moiraine as well?" - she's haunting Rand, I tell you. Lanfear is pretty much immortal and he still hopes.
"We are drawn together, you and I. Time after time after time." - Moridin/Ishy's obsession with Rand is so queer.
"You’d rather not exist than continue to be you. You must know that he will not release you. Not ever. Not you.” - I would have cried. Rand has learnt to use words as weapons and they are sharp. The meeting with Egwene will be something.
As cute as using saidin to wash Avi is, I have such an allergic reaction to the way their relationship is written.
I really like Rand's words about the AoL and what it means to have the memories of a dead man. I wish he would chat with Mat.
Did no one think it was necessary to warn Egwene earlier of the time for the Very Important Meeting?
I snickered at Egwene approaching Roedran, who has no idea what's happening, and intimidating him for giggles.
Rand's display with the tent was so dramatic. I love him.
"Even Elayne had gobbled up another country when the opportunity presented itself. She would do so again." - so the expansionist angle for Elayne is very intentional on BS's part.
Light, Egwene's reflections on imperialism and Rand. I cannot wait to see Madeleine Madden, who is Aboriginal and comes from an activist family, deliver this. It's going to be magnificent.
"Would you appoint an emperor, someone to rule over us all? Would you become a true tyrant, Rand al’Thor?” - Egwene is taking no prisoner today.
Rand came prepared with the Dragon’s Peace! In exchange for his life, a non-aggression pact, the control of the Seals and the armies?
"You came, told me what you were going to do and walked away.” - That he did and it wasn't the smartest move. He has to work WITH her: she's the Keeper of the Seals.
I love this chaos and back and forth. This is going so terribly.
OH BLOODY HELL RAND JUST EXPLAIN YOUR PLAN LIKE YOU DID TO PERRIN WHY ARE YOU ASSUMING SHE WON'T UNDERSTAND
Wool-headed idiot. Egwene may be too unbending, too unwilling to take risks, but Rand is doing such a bad job at presenting his plan.
"Light, Egwene. You can still do it, like the sister I never had—tie my mind in knots and have me raving at you and loving you at the same time.” - awwch, these two. It's the other deliciously rich relationship I am looking forward to on-screen.
"The Seanchan are our worry now, aren’t they? Peace can never exist so long as they are there.” - someone listen to Alliandre. This is The Issue.
Egwene is right: this is such a mess.
Egwene calling Berelain a lightskirt: not this again, shut the fuck up
"As you wish this of me, I will sell it to you in exchange for a legacy of peace to balance out the legacy of destruction I gave the world last time.” - is it peace? The harm's been done already, some by himself. Not the way to sell his plan.
"His frown died as soon as he saw the person who entered.
Moiraine." - Lads, she's here!
I am tearing up.
WHY are we in Perrin's POV of all people? This is silly.
I AM SCREAMING Perrin was about to go hug Moiraine before Rand approached her.
Darlin probably going "Caraline?!? Is this real?"
"The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills, Rand. Have you forgotten that?”
“I…”
“Not as you will, Dragon Reborn,” she said gently. “Not as any of us will." - I need a moment. I'm too emotional.
The running gag of Roedran not recognizing Moiraine, and Egwene or Grady flicking him, is just priceless.
SCREAMING Sanderson is downright writing Moiraine as mischievous again. This is too funny. She had become so desperate before the docks.
"That is a relief, as I believe I was on a path to stilling, if not execution, before.” - Moiraine is such an unintentionally funny character. I've missed her too straight answers.
I love the hidden pride in her respect for Egwene.
"Don’t you dare tell Lan about this,” she growled.
“I would not dream of it,” Moiraine said [...]
“Insufferable woman,” Nynaeve grumbled as she wiped a tear from the other eye. " - it's okay. It's only Nyn hugging Moiraine in my eye.
"The only one we know for certain will not walk away from this fight?" - I was incidentally thinking before she arrived that the only way to convince his allies was to make them understand he was their champion of the Light, not their general.
"Grady would know her only by legend, of course, but tales of Moiraine had spread among those who followed Rand." - she deserves it, honestly. Also, I love the idea of Moiraine gaining a reputation like Cadsuane's. It's only fitting.
"The last Age ended with a Breaking, and so the next one will begin with peace—even if it must be shoved down your throats like medicine given to a screaming babe.” - I love her so much. Why does she always end up babysitting leaders?
Hello, Moiraine's solving the issue of how to get the allies to agree to a unified army and break the Seals. She's a skilled negotiator.
So Rand appoints the people who had a habit of enslaving Cairhienin and pillage countries as enforcers? Yay.
"Then not much has changed, has it?” she asked lightly. “I believe you have often resisted doing what you are supposed to. Particularly when I am the one to point it out to you.” - Their relationship was SO fraught before, now it's so tender.
How did everyone agree that Elayne should lead the armies? I'm all for lady generals because there are NONE, but did everyone in the room forget Elayne is an Aes Sedai?
Oh wow, screw you Rand, so hard, for throwing the damane under the bus.
Again, Rand invoking order as a reason why the Seanchan empire isn't so bad is alarming. He would not be the strongest soldier against fascism, I guess. I am genuinely angry with him.
Lan thinks surprisingly often about Moiraine in his POV. Interesting.
The assault on Tarwin's Gap moved me and it was a relief to see everyone join Lan, but it also reinforces my sadness for how thoroughly it means Rand had abandoned Ituralde.
"I’m always careful,” Elayne said absently" - stares into a camera as on Abbott Elementary
"I won’t have one group presuming to keep to themselves and fight alone. You’ll accept our help.” - Rand was right. She's good at handling egos.
Why is Siuan not intervening at all on behalf of the AS? She's just here as Bryne's escort? I hate this.
“To fight alongside Aiel. A day I never thought I’d see, in truth.”- aww Ituralde will get his glorious homoerotic battle after all.
"Tensions are high, but you kept us together, smoothed over bad feelings, prevented us from napping at one another. Good work" - That's exactly how Elayne dealt with Nynaeve and Egwene back in Tear. Nice. Her reaction to Bryne's pride is so cute too.
Underneath all the tonally shifting fluff of the succession arc there was a perfectly compelling arc about leadership, much more efficient than Perrin's. I maintain that the biggest problem with the Perrin and Elayne leadership arc was editorial.
Oh, the Ogier decided to join the fight. I'm not terribly fond of the idea that everyone should be able to fight. The Gardeners were daunting precisely because they were Ogier, fighting. The be-all and end-all of bravery isn't fighting.
Elayne, if you trust Perrin, you can trust Faile, don't be silly.
“That man,” Elayne said, “is never where he needs to be.” “And yet,” Perrin said, “he always arrives there eventually." - Perrin's defense of Mat is actually quite endearing.
"The Seanchan are the enemy,” Elayne said. “Mat doesn’t seem to understand that, considering what he’s done." - I'd say Mat understands it as well as Rand or Perrin, both of whom fail to see the Seanchan as true enemies. So there's that.
Why are they going to such lengths to get and hide the Horn? They have Travel? Did I miss something? Why would they need Faile to transport the Horn covertly? Someone can just do what Rand does with Callandor and Travel to hide it?
Anasai of Ryddingwood is one of Moraine's favourite poets and then this bit: "Each of her poems was written as an elegy. This was for her father. She left instructions; it can be read, but should not be spoken out loud, except when it was right to do so. She did not explain when it would be right to do so.” - I have thoughts and feelings: artworks in fiction tend to be very forward with what they say about characters. This is no exception. Moiraine is someone who kept as close a watch on her feelings as on her mission. She left no explanation to Lan about what she did. This elegy is also a reminder of her letter to Rand, a man destined to die, who she believed in beyond her disappearance.
Also Lan and Moiraine talked about poetry?!?
Elayne also wants to have one of her children on Saldaea's throne. Why am I not surprised?
Bashere is an idiot if he thinks that Elayne telling everyone she is having the DR's children would be wise. Not only are soldiers not entitled to this, but it will create ground for Elayne's opponents to overthrow her later: Rand is still feared by many and it will be seen as an access for the Aiel to 2 Westland thrones.
Of course, Elayne just does just that immediately after.
Androl and Pevara's tale is more gripping that the LB preparations on the various fronts: it's fresh, it's different, it's a little bit deliciously weird with the double bond. We've already seen so many of those big battle strategizing talks.
"Were all Aes Sedai like her? He’d assumed they had no emotions, but Pevara felt the full range—although she accompanied it with an almost inhuman control over how those emotions affected her. " - woof the dehumanization of Aes Sedai still has a bright future ahead.
I'm genuinely having fun with Androl and Pevara's plotline, even for short scenes. I wish we spent more time with them because so far the different battlefronts are not doing it for me and there's not enough Egwene.
"He handed Mandarb off to a groom, holding up a finger to the horse and meeting his dark, liquid eyes. “No more biting grooms,” he growled at the stallion" - that was hilarious and perfect. Horsegirl Lan is here.
"Take care, Lord Agelmar. It almost sounds as if you are calling me selfish.” “I am, Lan,” Agelmar said. “And you are.” - Oh the burn, Agelmar is setting things straight with Lan. Tell him. His character development is long overdue.
Love the way Agelmar used the "Duty is heavier than a mountain" line against Lan: Lan has been running toward facility and away from responsibilities. Reclaiming Malkier was an excuse to die and Agelmar sees through him. Tenobia and Lan can both play at war for their personal heroic views.
Eggy chapter! My heart sings.
"She was glad she had allowed the Hall to take a larger role in the war; there was a great deal of wisdom to the Sitters, many of whom had lived well over a century." - Yep, you don't have to like them to use them.
So the Amyrlin has to authorize weddings? For sisters I imagine? Or is she like a mayor in Tar Valon?
Egwene will set up the hospital in Mayene? That's bold. It's a secluded and small nation though, so more vulnerable.
"Of course, every Seanchan was close to being a Darkfriend." - it's telling that it takes Egwene who's been enslaved and tortured by the Seanchan to label them correctly. They are a rot. And a lot of the male characters lack empathy towards AS in general so that doesn’t help.
I'm sure Leilwin swearing fealty to Egwene is supposed to come full circle but yeah. I'll hold off most of my comments until the end of the book and I see how the Seanchan arc concludes. I am skeptical so far.
I don't care for Rand and Elayne's romantic/strategic interlude. He's been with her for a grand total of 2 weeks? But they are obviously deeply bonded because they are having children together. I need the show to make them much more believable as a couple.
Also Lews Therin's memories being an advantage... Uh. Were characters beside Rand so definitive before about settling the debate whether Rand's voices are really LTT or madness? It's a HUGE gamble on their part to trust LTT’s voice. He went to great length to hide it because he doesn’t know what the voice is.
WHY is Rand explaining again ta'veren?
There must be far more behind Rand's miracles than what he believes? He hasn’t chosen yet because he hasn’t been truly challenged. He does still affect the world negatively. The prophecies are about him saving or destroying the world after all. This implies the DO would have performed miracles had Rand fallen to the Dark.
The Rand/Elayne date is one of the most bizarre and stilted romance scenes of the books, and there have been a number of those. It may be the point though? They don’t really know each other beyond a crush.
It's interesting to hear Elayne recognise that her shrewdness is mainly social capital.
"After all,” Elayne said, “I can defend myself, as I have proven on a number of occasions.” - she still doesn't get it, gdi. Birgitte needs to recruit Agelmar so that he gives her the talk.
"It is extremely unfair for me to have to deal with you. I wasn’t certain you’d noticed"- Birgitte has the sharpest of tongues and I adore her for that.
Oh Uno is alive and swearing!
"Birgitte hated battle planning, something Elayne found odd in a woman who had fought in thousands of battles" - yeah... How odd that a person who's seen so many battles would hate the clinical preparation of slaughter beforehand.
The only solution was to destroy Caemlyn to root out Trollocs. Elayne was so right about setting everything on fire.
Hell yeah, Birgitte robbed a queen. As she should. She would get along fine with Moiraine "I'm no lady" Sedai.
Birgitte is one of my favourite characters because she's probably the most anti-war and anti-military of the lot. It's not twee rejection on her part either: she saw firsthand the damage done by this sort of escalation. The danger is grave.
"Don’t you see?” Elayne said. “There won’t be war any more. We win this, and there will be peace, as Rand intends." - this is starting to sound like nuclear arms race. It'll lead to something horrific like the Choeden Kal being used in battle.
Yesssss Egwene getting approval from the Captain-General! She's been accepted as a Green, unofficially!
The Gateway weave used to spy on the Trollocs is clever. And I love the implications that the Greys will perfect them in the future.
They send Siuan to fetch rope. I will bite Sanderson. The show had better correct this.
Woof at Egwene insisting the Aes Sedai would not be used as reserve. She's right. They have trained all their life for this. This is their purpose.
"The Rahad had fought off every invasion so far. Light. Rand should have just hidden there, instead of going up to fight the Last Battle." - I like that. Wouldn't it be nice if the Rahad led the rebellion against the Seanchan?
Mat's acceptance of the Seanchan colonialism remains the most egregious aspect of his character. I hate it so much. And of course we get a happily married Seanchan-Ebou Dari couple because why not.
I was about to be pissed at Moiraine for saying compassion is a weakness but she has a point when it comes to Rand. Compassion toward an enemy bent to destroy others is violence to others. And Moiraine paid the price up until a few days/weeks ago.
"It will not matter,” Moiraine said. “You will face him, and that will be the time of determination." - yep, Tolkien set the big battle as a distraction because the fight would not be won there. The show cannot keep all these battlefronts.
Awwww Rand kept a gold mark as a reminder of Moiraine. Moiraine must be a mess inside.
Interestingly, Rand not seeing a reaction on Lan and Moiraine after they meet again could very well be his inability to read them, simply. I hope we'll get more than that. This is insufficient.
"Elayne taught me to rule, but you… you taught me how to stand" - Rand saying this and then making exactly the mistake Lan would make is ironic in the best way. Also Rand, you spent a few days making out in Tear: that's not a political education.
For real, even Lan is telling him to listen to Moiraine, so of course Rand tires himself in a futile attack against Taim and Trollocs that accomplishes nothing because so many leaders in these books are utterly selfish heroic fools.
I keep on being astonished that what Elayne did to Birgitte isn't considered a violation as big as what Moiraine and Alanna did. And said violation is having terrifying consequences on her personhood even if Elayne couldn't have forseen them. I get she felt she didn’t have a choice, but I’m uncomfortable with the fact that RJ introduced a concept that’s akin to rape and then created an exception where it’s okay to bypass consent.
"It was all right to be reborn, fresh and new. But to have her memories—her very sense of self—ripped away? If she lost her memories of her time in the World of Dream, would she forget Gaidal completely? Would she forget herself?" - genuinely, the tragedy of losing progressively all of her memories is one of the most poignant in the books. And she's alone in figuring out that she has most likely being cast out of the Horn and won't be reborn. It's terrifying.
Lanfear meeting Rand in his dreamshard to manipulate him one last time. Compassion is not a weakness, Moiraine is wrong about that. But Rand should be aware that it's one of his levers and the Forsaken and the DO particularly will use it.
The relationship Rand has with Lanfear, his ex from another life 3000 years back, is more captivating than the one he has with any of his current love interests. I stand my ground. I cannot wait to see them on screen with a current reading too.
"down deep, it was not Lews Therin who made up Rand’s core. It was the sheepherder, raised by Tam. " - he loves his dad so much, he’s the most powerful channeler alive and his greatest pride is being Tam’s son.
How satisfying to see him stand up to her and be confident in who he is without being consumed by anger or guilt.
"Do not cut off your foot for fear that a snake will bite it, Perrin Aybara. Do not make a terrible mistake because you fear something that seems worse." - Edarra is so right, but Perrin will not listen and will still succeed because ta'veren.
"Within the embrace of saidar she could see the signs of color that the Shadow wanted them to ignore. The grass wasn’t all dead; there were tiny hints of green, slivers where the grass clung to life. There were voles beneath it; she could now easily make out the ripples in the earth. They ate at the dying roots and clung to life." - Eggy's an uncommon embodiment of hope: deeply traumatised, impossibly fighting, but always hoping. Her hope is bitter, righteous and real.
"He was the manifestation of the land itself." / "she felt as if she were one with the land itself" - The parallels between Rand and Egwene... If ever there was an argument to be made about the Dragon's soul being split, here's your proof.
"Egwene—afire with the One Power, a blazing beacon of death and judgment—was the cauterizing flame that would bring healing to the land." - and another parallel. Also dear light, the Green Ajah led by Egwene in battle are a sight to behold.
The Elayne side of the assault is a little vacuous and the only way to fill it is to have Elayne discuss the tactics and positions in Fal Dara. I don't care if Elayne is the armies' leader. It's getting repetitive.
At least, Egwene's side provides the novelty of Aes Sedai actually fighting. And Lan's side... No, I'm not that interested in Lan's side either.
Even Tam is made Lord. I can get behind nobility being abolished through making everyone nobles.
Fain killed Perrin's family! I wasn't that invested in the Perrin/WC arc but it provides great drama.
"Light protect the wetlander who dared tamper with ji’e’toh." - so naming the Aiel enforcers of the Dragon's Peace is a good idea how?
"I’m going to a place you cannot, my friend,” Perrin said softly [...] “I’m sorry.”
“You’ll go to the dream within a dream,” Gaul said, then yawned. “Turns out I’m tired.”
“But—”
"I’m coming, Perrin Aybara. Kill me if you wish me to remain behind.” - This whole scene is so gay. Gaul is Perrin's Sam. They are going together to a Black Tower to destroy a magical artifact and slay a monster. Gay Gandalf exists. I love this.
"[Nynaeve] had been speaking with Moiraine and for once, she didn’t smell a twinge hateful. Something had happened between those two women." - wait, he was there for the hug so something else happened. Do I need to also write this?
Of course, Perrin is still adamant about TAR. I really like his despair at inaction though. And it's been touched on in the show already.
"This isn’t evil, it’s just incredibly stupid.” - Light, it feels good to see the boys back together.
Loving the description of the storm as a black hole with Rand at its center in TAR.
So it is a dream spike in the Black Tower. Nice.
What is Lanfear doing in the Black Tower in TAR? What is Graendal doing in the BT in reality? I AM STRESSED
Toveine was Turned? These poor women. They were force-bonded, imprisoned and Turned to the shadow.
Androl weaving just a wide enough gateway to deflect balefire is supremely silly, but I don't care: it saved the day and alerted his friends.
Androl is such a refreshing character: he is surrounded by incredibly powerful protagonists whose dilemmas mainly revolve around keeping control and not hurting people. And you've got Androl who doesn't have enough power to abuse.
The contrast between Perrin naturally trusting Asha'man and distrusting AS is hilarious given that Asha'man nearly killed Rand even before Taim had started Turning them.
Wait, Lanfear is helping Perrin? What is going on?
Lanfear is a fascinating character when she's not seen through the crazy ex lens. Perrin sold the WO Shaido to the Seanchan, Rand conquered nations in the name of peace: it's always about power. Lanfear chose the DO but Rand could just as well destroy the world if he doesn’t choose right.
Oh wow, poor Gaul. He will be forced to take in a second woman when marrying Chiad. What a tragedy.
Seeing Androl defeat Taim's people with gateways only was fun. As a writer, it's clever to introduce regularly fun new uses of magic.
The chapter opening on Mat dangling from a balcony to get into the palace. I am laughing. Typical Mat.
"He had not survived this long by taking fool chances, luck or no luck" - why are they like this? The self-awareness of a periwinkle.
Mat's thoughts on Rand and Perrin's heroism... He's arguably the one of the three who's the most loyal as he will be dedicated to strangers and people he hates, even if he spends his time saying he won't help his friends.
“We really are high up, aren’t we?” “Normal people use stairs.” - be glad he didn't arrive by stolen raken because he would do that.
"Tylin and Nalesean can have a little dance together about that." - that loyalty again. Tylin hurt him badly.
"The secret, it turned out, had not been to harden himself to the point of breaking. It had not been to become numb. It had been to walk in pain, like the pain of the wounds at his side, and accept that pain as part of him." - a little better. I am still bitter about Veins of gold. It was ill-fitting to the rest of his arc and failed to acknowledge his mental health.
"Nothing is too fine for you,” Rand whispered. “Nothing.” - oh my heart. This Tam and Rand scene will kill me.
Rand gifts the sword to Tam and practices with him: it's just a lovely character scene that strikes the right balance between awe and love. The way the fight helps Rand mourn his hand gives depth to a loss that was mostly ignored. Beautiful. If anything, this scene should have had the impact Veins of gold had. Mourning the person he was and cannot be again is an important step in healing, much more than his realization on love, that's not wrong but doesn't address his loss.
Rand and Mat united by the realization that moss lives.
I really like that Tuon is a practiced martial artist and in a completely different martial art too.
Tepid take: grey men are overused and they lost their mystique a while back.
Mat is so cozy with Tuon: it's too depressing. I had hope he would keep his ambiguity concerning her, drawn to her but also positioning himself as a shield between her and the harm she can do. It seems we lost that.
Also Tuon's voice is off.
"Loial, son of Arent son of Halan, had secretly always wanted to be hasty." - awwwwww, everyone knows he loves humans and would rather spend his time with them, it's okay. I love Loial's classic antihero arc. He's the Bilbo of this universe.
It's still disheartening to see all these characters - Loial, Elayne, Egwene - become bloodthirsty and revel in violence. And these long descriptions of mutilation and slaughter are justified by the Trollocs' dehumanization. They're props.
"Did you know that I used to spend hours in thought, trying to discover what that mind of yours was conjuring? It is a wonder I did not pull every hair from my head in frustration.” - wth, why are Mo and Rand so cute together now?!?
“It was not merely stubbornness that drove you; it was a will to prove to yourself, and to everyone else, that you could do this on your own.” She touched his arm. “But you cannot do this on your own, can you? " - like in TSR, he's his people. I’m quite proud it’s something I clocked as early as TDR.
Also one of the reasons Moiraine is such a compelling mentor for Rand: she's the same. She's so used to distrusting everyone but herself. Considering the short trailer for s2, the resemblance will be explored in the show soon.
"That said, I am one of the oldest people in existence.”
Moiraine smiled. “Very nice. Does that work on the others?” - they're killing me. She knows him. And they're on the same wavelength now that Rand has stopped fighting who he is.
"You are still a wide-eyed sheepherder at heart. I would not have it any other way. Lews Therin, for all of his wisdom and power, could not do what you must." - OH MY HEART I AM A PUDDLE Siuan and Moiraine were after all his first believers.
The discussion about Rand growing! Killing the DO (and Rand finally realizing that because Moiraine disagrees it doesn't mean she is controlling him)! Their banter about Cadsuane! THE GENTLE CHIDING! The tea! I WAS NOT EXPECTING SUCH TENDERNESS FROM THEM HOW
“Merely seeing if that still worked.”
“I never fetched you tea,” Rand protested, walking back to her. “As I remember, I spent our last few weeks together ordering you around." - this is seriously one of the loveliest scenes in the entire saga. Also, it’s important to remember that this Moiraine is greatly diminished: she lost most of her powers, is behind on so many events and spent months being tortured. This isn’t only about Rand’s growth; it’s about Moiraine’s perception of her power.
"Thank you for your advice. Now, and always. I don’t believe I have said that enough. I owe you a debt, Moiraine.”
“Well,” she said. “I am still in need of a cup of tea.” - Okay, their relationship might rival Egwene and Siuan's. I'm fiiiiine
"Sometimes, she wished that weaving were easier to understand." - I always love the contrast between how others perceive Moiraine - in control and mysterious - and her POV where she is just an exhausted ball of confused despair and doubt.
Four paragraphs of Moiraine POV? Really? This is a joke, right? Also when do we get to address what happened to her in the Tower of Ghenjei? Or is it going to be like with Egwene and Nynaeve and only men get to have their trauma acknowledged?
Lan's fight scenes remain so repetitive: I read them out loud to go through them. It's 50 ways to slay your Trolloc:
You just slice up the back, Jac.
Twist in the sword, Cords.
You don't need to be clean, Seaine.
Just take the Blight back.
"If I could round up each woman in the Borderlands and put a sword in her hands, I would. For now, I’ll settle for not doing something stupid— like forbidding some trained and passionate soldiers from fighting." - Lan has no time for sexism.
Yep, now Taim is fighting on the Borderlands front because there aren't enough channelers there. Makes sense. This is bad for them. This makes me really excited to watch the show build up to this point, because the BT was not doomed from the start: Rand fumbled their management quite badly.
Mat gets into a bragging contest with Rand the moment they meet: feels so right. Also while being held by Tuon. They're just dumbass boys with the weight of the world on their shoulders. I laughed at Tuon's guards inefficiency though.
"You look nice, by the way. You’ve been taking better care of yourself lately.”
“So you do care,” Rand said.
“Of course I do,” Mat grumbled" - their banter is so fun. I've missed this kind of levity between old friends.
This makes me think: how did Moiraine learn about Mat's memories? Did they chat about it on the way back from the Tower of Ghenjei? Did Moiraine deduce it like she deduced so many things? Did I miss this?
Rand reasoning Tuon out of her unconditional claim on the land is so satisfying. She walked straight into that one and he gained such finesse and authority since the start.
Mat notices Rand's humming because Tuon is a beautiful woman. Nice.
There he goes again with the Seanchan making life better for the people. Tell that to the Atha'an Miere, the Aes Sedai and the people who lost their land to the settlers. I love the blossoms around Rand being such an argument though.
“By the way, I saved Moiraine. Chew on that as you try to decide which of the two of us is winning.” - I AM DECEASED
So Rand gave away entire nations and abandoned the damane to the Seanchan. He sentenced them to at least 100 years of servitude. I'm fuming. This is such a triumph of imperialism and fascism shaking hands on the fate of the world because their strength is needed. The tragedy may be the point, but I don't think two white US authors can write about this with enough nuance.
The way Egwene leads on battlefield is so distinctive and her: it's so organized and effective. And Siuan talks! One sentence, but still. She's in charge of... Intel, I guess? Perhaps she's working in the closet where they also put Nynaeve.
Leilwin's argument about the Seanchan is very "not all cops". To gain Egwene’s trust, she could start with recognising her role in the Seanchan culture of slavery. Her nation's wealth is built on the dehumanization of part of the population. Don't get me wrong, I feel it's a realistic depiction of someone from an oppressor class trying to make amends but it's vexing because it's the last book and very little seems to indicate even the start of a change in the Seanchan mentality.
Oh, Gawyn is absolutely going to activate the Bloodknives' rings. It's going to be horrific.
Awwww, Rand reveals himself just before leaving a battlefront to give his soldiers hope. I love that detail.
"Rand saw a gray-haired woman approaching. And behind her, a smaller figure in blue stopped and pointedly turned the other way." - that's so bloody funny after NS. Cadsuane is probably the only being Moiraine fears.
Cadsuane clocks Rand's gifts to his loved ones because he thinks he's dying. Rand pointing out he won't give her one because he doesn't care about her is PERFECT.
Oh, Cadsuane thinks there is still a chance he survives too? Intriguing.
"You have cracks in you, Rand al’Thor, but you’ll have to do.” - She's so proud of him but she's incapable of saying it.
The Asha'man are free! But, boy does it sting to realise that Rand did nothing to help them. Zilch. He just felt bad for them.
"Lan knew what it was like to be chosen, from childhood, to die [...] to be pointed toward the Blight and told he would sacrifice his life there. Rand al’Thor would probably never know how similar the two of them were" - Oh YEAH. I like that. It would have been nice to see any of that acknowledged earlier through a Lan POV, but you know, at least it's there. Still, we get it now, after the narrative hits us countless times with how important Tam has been to Rand in shaping him. The point is that Rand ultimately isn't like Lan because he had Tam (and Min and Nyn and Lan and Mo), which is very bittersweet for Lan. To say nothing of the fact his quest for hardness instigated by Lan almost broke Rand, and the world with it. Rand, thankfully, is not his mentors.
We're getting so many horsegirl Lan moments. I love it.
Hello lord Baldhere, fellow queer.
Okay, where is this going with Agelmar? They ARE all tired. Agelmar is right. As long as they are together to shoulder the burden, it's all good.
Does Nynaeve get something to do at some point or is she going to be as underutilized as Siuan? This is getting ridiculous.
Cairhien is defenseless and full of refugees? jfc The great generals are making mistakes left and right.
I am in love with the image of the tempest eroding the cities and mountains in TAR. It's so poetic.
Yesssss, the cracks into nothingness are a result of excessive balefire. I was waiting for this to happen! Consequences! I love them.
Egwene's goodbye to the WO was sweet, although it makes me afraid some of them won't make it.
"You are Galad’s brother?” - There's no drama like Damodred-Trakand family drama. Rand's insistence that he's NOT related to Elayne is quite awkward.
The ribbon for Egwene is v moving. I adore their relationship, with all its tension and incomprehension. It's a realistic depiction of friendship put through the grinder of responsibility and adulthood. It's tragic but sweet.
OH MY GOD THE SEALS ARE FAKE! NOT THIS LATE IN THE BOOKS
"You’d be real funny without any fingers,” Mat growled. - Mat is such a jerk to servants. But that's also an excellent threat to use against men who can't keep their hands to themselves
Mat being fitted for new Seanchan garbs is giving me major NS vibes.
Light the fact that Mat has no issues being married to someone who now OWNS Ebou Dar... It's character assassination at this point.
"If I’m going to look ridiculous, I might as well do it with style." - I hate it because he still has such zingers.
Still not tired of the fight on the AS front. I enjoy the way Sanderson writes magic battles more than non magic battles.
"It was the middle of the Last Battle, and the woman still took time each morning to do her face." - and she's right to do so. It's called "dress to kill." I love Leane and Egwene is better than such patriarchal nonsense.
Oh my gooooooooood the Sharan attack on the AS camp? Romanda being burnt on the spot? SIUAN? Yukiri? Leane? NO! They came out of NOWHERE. This is catastrophic, bloody hell.
So Thakan'dar is... Mordor?
"Better that one people should end than the world fall completely under Shadow." - Avi is probably the most selfless among the main-adjacent characters, but still so angry about what this sacrifice means for her people.
Ituralde cementing himself as the best general by asking the right question: Rand killing the DO could take days, weeks even, not just a few hours. Also I don't know why it made me giggle to imagine them all spying on the forges like that.
Honestly, Avi's development as an Aiel able to see the strength of wetlanders and the fact they may not all be foolish is very satisfying. She’s so much more open-minded. I would love for her to take on a more ambassador-like role after Tarmon Gai'don, not just a WO.
"You would have the Seanchan join Egwene’s battlefront?” Moiraine asked, aghast. “Is that wise?” - SCREW THIS as with Mat, the level of violence that Rand is enacting on channelers by forcing them to work with the Seanchan is mind-boggling.
Siuan POV! Thank the Light Yukiri and Siuan escaped. And a contingent of AS and soldiers! Please tell me Siuan is now getting an intrigue as the new interim leader who regains some of the respect she lost during the schism from the AS?
Blood and ashes, now Siuan's hiding her despair at the number of AS lost by claiming they were treating her badly anyway. I LOVE HER SO MUCH. She's still the Amyrlin at heart.
Siuan's faith in Egwene is killing me.
"The Black Tower men claimed that only a few of their number had joined the Shadow, and that the channeling had been the result of an attack by the Black Ajah." - oh I love this, the BT is as skilled at obfuscating their mistakes as the WT.
The whole thing with Lyrelle coming full of prejudices and contempt is nice. She's a bit the butt of the joke here, but it's important for the Asha'man to get this moment of assertion and empowerement. I hope they get to confront Rand too.
"Well, men have a choice in their fate, and weapons do not. Here are your men, Aes Sedai. Respect them.” - I LOVE that. Now, release the AS you force-bonded.
Also, Pevara is in love ? Moiraine and Lan were really the exception, uh?
"The Black Tower has learned to survive without him. Light! It always survived without him." - Rand as the absent father who abandoned his children while Logain becomes the BT’s father and paid the price is honestly a phenomenal choice.
Re: the Sharan, I'm very confused about the book introducing this late a completely different culture with its own channeling prejudice.
Leane is alive! MY GAL. Also will be used as a messenger. Don't hurt her.
Bao is Demandred, right?
Yep
Gaul and Perrin hunting Slayer in TAR and finding Graendal... It's entertaining ngl? I like it better than the endless fighting and there's always the mystery of wth the Forsaken are planning.
And wth is Graendal planning with Bashere?
I hope the show radically changes how TAR behaves because the flying and fighting could look so silly on-screen. The show has done so well so far with the magic.
Lanfear is far more interesting now that she hates LTT.
Ituralde was right. The Bore distorts time. The people in Shayol Ghul could spend hours there while weeks pass outside.
As shocking as the Sharan invasion is, like the Seals, it feels like last minute plots introduced not to reach TLB yet.
Well, it didn't take long for Gawyn to be stupid and to wear the Rings. And he did that for scouting?
The detail of Egwene using her Two Rivers tracking skills and removing her shoes to sneak out of the Sharan camp is PERFECT. Her roots!
"My authority is not drawn from my power to channel, she told herself. My strength is in control, understanding, and care. I will escape this camp, and I will continue the fight." - this reminds me of what Mo told her in the show about power.
Egwene is so used to keeping AS calm that she cannot alert Gawyn through the bond so she resorts to remembering the most traumatic event of her life, her captivity with the Seanchan. I NEED the show to adress sooner the depth of her trauma.
"Egwene had been younger then, but no more powerless than she was now. It would happen again. She would be nothing. She would have her very self stripped away. She would rather be dead. Oh, Light! Why couldn’t she have died?" - this part… Egwene was 17 when the Seanchan took her and she spent 2 months in captivity being tortured, used as a weapon and dehumanized. Her time prior to the Waste is ROUGH and even after she learns to control herself, she's haunted, often panicking when she fears losing autonomy. A lot of Egwene's actions can be understood as her not receiving any help from authority figures, the Tower, her mentors, her friends after hugely traumatic events and stepping into that role of protector, of Mother, for herself and others.
Leilwin saved Egwene from the Sharan! I actually really like that. Also I like even more that this didn't turn into another captivity arc. The next character getting captured will be tossed into the Bore.
Avi leading the assault around Shayol Ghul is nice. There's not enough female generals in these books.
"A woman in blue, small of stature but not of will." - you're right Avi, Moiraine is a giant in will. Also, Smolraine my love
Rand walking into Shayol Ghul with Laman's sword is a choice that I love for Moiraine-related reasons. Also wearing a replica of the coat Moiraine had had made for him and a Two Rivers shirt. These are really nice details showing his growth and the influence of his two first and final mentors.
"Fortuona represented order, and she had married chaos himself. What had she been thinking?" - you made your bed, now lie in it and perish
I take great pleasure in watching Mat insult the Blood at every opportunity.
So peach blossoms are an omen?
"Fortuona could swoop in and all of those damane would be hers. Hundreds upon hundreds. With that force, she could crush the resistance to her rule back in Seanchan." - Not only trusting Tuon is immoral but it is also stupid. Well done Rand.
I don't have much to say about Elayne's front. Things are bad, like in the North. She still insists on joining the fight and it's pretty static, so I guess it's a matter of time before she does something reckless.
"Yes, he was going to lose. But with these resources, he’d do it with style." - Ituralde is like an older more Seanchan-hating Mat and I love him. And Ituralde respects Sea Folk, which is a rarity among the characters.
Oh good, Ituralde has nightmares about Maradon, that doesn't make me even more distraught about what happened there.
"The longer you fought, the more you saw the enemy as being like yourself." - I keep saying this but he's my fav general.
The way Sanderson writes battle scenes and which ones work or don't for me remind me of John Rogers' advice on writing action scenes: "Don't write action sequences. Write suspense sequences that require action to resolve."
“Light. It was good to see Egwene’s face." - do not hit me with Siuan and Egwene feelings now. She cares so much.
Doubting Egwene is really Egwene, Siuan asks Egwene where they first met and Eggy recollects Siuan LIFTING her from the ground.
"You bound me with Air on our trip down the river from there, as part of a lesson in the Power I have never forgotten.” - both Eggy and Siuan were powerless prisoners denied empathy because their existence was a transgression and this rocks.
I bloody hope Egwene doesn't trust the Seanchan: even if Tuon gave her word, and for Mat only too, you bet Galgan and others haven't.
Interrupting Rand's fight with Moridin to switch to Lan's POV ? Really? Really!?!
It's very important for people to understand that everytime a character gets into an overly detailed description of troops' movement my brain pictures more or less this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2F&source_ve_path=MzY4NDIsMjg2NjQsMTY0NTAz&feature=emb_share&v=oskCypnfoA8
Light, the mistakes being made on the battlefield left and right. What is this mess?
I feel so bad for Ituralde who's been at this for months.
Is Perrin seing the Finn in TAR near Shayol Ghul? What are they doing here? Following Moiraine?
Uh, that is now the second time TAR is now used to make people brain-dead and uh. I don't like this.
Perrin is using the Dreamspike to keep people from using Gateways near Shayol Ghul? But wasn't that already impossible so close to the Bore?
So... A few minute inside the cavern is HOURS just outside. Rand is going to come out and he'll have grandchildren.
This Gaul/Perrin outing is rather fun tbh.
I was not expecting a Tuon and Egwene confrontation but here we go.
"The Seanchan damane were not free women; they could not choose to fight. From what she’d seen of the Sharan male channelers, they were little more than animals themselves." - Interesting distinction, and poverty also pushes people to the army.
"it would be better if I see you not as marath’damane, but as a queen among the people of this land.” “No,” Egwene said. “You will see me for what I am, woman. I demand it." - oh, we WILL discuss how queer and militant Eggy is written at some point.
"So long as I am free from your collars, I prove to every man and woman who draws breath that you are a liar.” - Her very existence is a transgression, a proof of the Empire's lies. Light, I love Egwene.
Mat's little wave to Egwene was so cute.
Egwene taunting Tuon with Mat's ta'veren pull was funny but I maintain that Tuon is ta'veren herself.
"Be more specific,” Egwene said. “Tell me with your own voice, woman." - why the hell didn't she choose Blue? She reminds me so much of Moiraine and Siuan.
Bloody hell, the Seanchan got the Sea Folk on Tremalking as well. I want to scream. The Sea Folk were slaughtered in Ebou Dar for resisting.
Tuon also wants to send missionaries in Tar Valon like the proper coloniser she is. Classic.
Egwene is doing such a better job than Rand at handling the Seanchan. She's actually renegotiating his terms and getting people released.
This is also why Rand's attitude toward Egwene is so perplexing: the AS are powerful tools, particularly for negotiation, use them!
"Do you realize that every one of your sul’dam, your precious trainers, is herself a marath’damane?" - I was waiting for her to deliver that blow and she did! Such an incredible showdown. Egwene is a skilled, passionate orator.
How very Mat to treat this again as a both-sides issue. It is nice that he did step up to protect Egwene from Tuon, who had openly threatened to enslave and break Egwene personally not 5 minutes ago.
Tskk, Bashere isn't a DF: he's been manipulated by Graendal, you fools! All of this could have been avoided if they'd left a sizeable army in Cairhien or evacuated the city.
Siuan has an angreal as well, not a strong one, but she uses it to help! MY STRONG GAL
"Did she think he’d let a woman forget her oath? It didn’t matter to him whose company she kept. An oath was an oath." - I am sorry Bryne is creepy and his relationship with women is why it doesn't surprise me Gawyn sees him as a father figure.
And now Min will meet Tuon as a messenger because that woman is more skeleton key than character.
I was bracing myself for Min's inevitable repugnant and somewhat favorable views on Seanchan and lo and behold.
With Min speaking of her visions within earshot of Tuon and Tuon snatching her, it strongly suggests that Tuon is ta'veren, right? She is a descendant of Hawkwing after all and was able to resist Rand's ta'veren pull.
Here's the the thing: Agelmar being manipulated is good drama but the chess move upon chess move upon chess move are getting repetitive.
Loial growing roots from the ground in battle with singing is just a fantastic image.
So Min should stay with Tuon to advise her and nudge her in the right direction. If she can do that without becoming like Mat, good.
Bryne also made several mistakes: Graendaaaaaaaaal!
"You are a soldier!” Lan bellowed. “Act like one!” - character development for the ages.
If Tenobia dies, what does it mean for Faile in the succession line?
Poor Agelmar though. It's a harrowing ending for him. All the great generals made puppets in their armies’ slaughter.
It was only a matter of time before Mat became the true leader of the armies, so Tuon's move to name him their Seanchan general was expected. And given what's happening with the other generals, he’ll replace Elayne soon.
"Mat had tried to make her say she saw a hat floating around Mat’s head. That would persuade Tuon to stop trying to get rid of his, would it not ?" - okay, I laughed.
“With that, thousands of bottoms hit their saddles, producing a slapping sound that reverberated across the legion, and each soldier sat at attention, eyes straight ahead" - ass cheeks clapping like a Seanchan legion does have a ring to it.
Min, Mat, Rand... They spend more time admitting that the Seanchan are organized and train well than condemning their atrocities. It's so bizarre.
Mat took a damane prisoner. I'm just... I want to cry. They are killing my boy.
Not really fond of the way that the great generals were all ousted by random men rather than Egwene (shrewd politician with expertise in Dreams), Siuan (an actual spymaster and Bryne's partner) or Elayne (the armies' leader trained in the Game of Houses).
Elyas is in the Wolf Dream!
Also five days since Rand walked into Shayol Ghul... Hello, this is long. I want them to come out and it's been 3 years.
Yay, for Perrin figuring out what happened to the generals on his own even if it's too late!
"Nynaeve closed her eyes. Moiraine stared straight ahead as if determined not to look away, no matter the price." - I don't know who's braver for it. I love them.
Rand's POV are too short! Obviously it's bc of the Bore but it's frustrating!
"We sent ourselves,” Logain said." - nothing more satisfying than seeing a character I suspected could become legendary live up to their potential. I am so proud of him.
Of course, Androl is the miracle with his impossibly large gateways.
Elayne's wonder at the full circle is bittersweet: Aes Sedai, Asha'man, we're here at last and it's glorious! But also it's a reminder of how binary the magic system is. It's still so exciting and gratifying as a symbol of healing!
"How do you handle so much of the One Power? How do you keep it from consuming you alive, burning you away?” - between that and what Androl did when he tapped into Pevara's power, it's probably a good thing he isn't more powerful bc he has issues
"Three thousand years ago the Lord Dragon created Dragonmount to hide his shame. His rage still burns hot. Today… I bring it to you, Your Majesty.” - the gateway straight into the heart of Dragonmount is the most badass feat of channeling.
"One miracle, my Lord,” Androl said, voice soft, as if strained. “Delivered as requested. That should hold them back for a few hours. Long enough?” - he's the Avi of the Asha'man, so wholesome.
Uno survived the attack by stripping to swim in the river! I love his weird little experience.
Min answering “Oh. Yes. I suppose you have" to Eggy because she forgot about her captivity with the Seanchan is so callous. This, plus her attitude towards Siuan during FoH, her dismissal of Birgitte after the poly-bonding and Rand in the context of the polycule? Nope. Don't like. Past a certain point, her IDGAF attitude becomes jerkiness, like Mat.
Ituralde's disoriented POV! That was missing in this corruption arc. And he exited dragged away by wolves!
Egwene reflects on Mat treating her like a painting but always saving her, and concludes that of course she trusts him: it's a real, moving moment showing they still care deeply about who they were, but most importantly who they became.
"People who started to drown didn’t yell, or sputter, or call for help. They just slipped under the water, when everything seemed fine and peaceful. Unless Mat was watching." - that gets me okay. He looks after his friends.
"So which was this? Was she drowning or not?" - I love how much Sanderson is embracing Egwene's trauma and how it affects her ability to assess the risks she's taking. She has been drowning for a while and no one has noticed.
"It was better than her fighting for the Shadow, wasn’t it?" - Mat will not even remain in my top ten if this goes on. The argument that people enslaved are somehow saved from a worse fate is a white-supremacist one.
Demandred with his orientalist cosplay and raving about the Dragon is starting to feel like the most ridiculous of the Forsaken. He's a formidable enemy but he's the most buffoonish of the Forsaken by miles.
Tuon uses Min's visions exactly like Elayne, believing they are a protection against death, except she straight up sends people to their death.
For the twist, I hope Min is massively wrong about one prediction before the end.
"That fellow spent entirely too little time looking at women. He was shy around them, Talmanes was." - leave him be, he's gay. I will fight Sanderson because he labels random characters as gay and the gayest characters (Elayne, Avi, Talmanes) are not.
At least Min stands her ground: people should not be executed for intentions but light, is she naive about this Seanchan counselling and how she can both survive this ordeal and truly help the Seacnhan’s victims. This is way over her head. Mat, for all his foolishness, is better equipped.
How long exactly has Elayne been pregnant at this point? It feels like it's been 3 years, but logically she's 6-7 months along? The show better do away with it or shift timelines. It's not like BS is writing in-depth about motherhood anyway.
I'm no army tactician and even I could have told them that the solution was to have one front rather than 4.
Trom's uniform soaked through with blood is such good imagery. The Children of Light are dressed like Red Sisters.
Galad has such an interesting arc as a zealot starting to see nuances of grey. Both Gawyn and Galad basically entered militias, and Elayne herself is depicted as rather expansionist in these last books. Could it be Elaida's influence? Bryne’s?
Tam and Elayne are wrong: this wasn't a victory. People are not a price to pay for peace. I'm surprised that Tam thinks that, even if I do see the point in giving meaning to death. Galad's desperate protest thats it is a lie is quite moving and true to the character.
"If you knew my life,” Slayer said, “you’d howl. The hopelessness, the agony… I soon found my way. My power. In this place, I am a king.” - I do hope the show keeps evil Lan. It's important to depict why people who chose the dark did so.
Laras is managing the Tower and novices while the Aes Sedai are away! I love the way this is echoing the beginning of NS with the Aiel war. Also Faile ending up with the Horn for safekeeping is PERFECT. Full circle. She deserves to be the protector of the Horn.
"the Six-Story Slaughter and Hinderstap" - Iove that the Band has lore.
Aravine's past is too much of a secret not to be important soon. Where's Bawler when you need him?
I'm sorry Olver's uncles are giving me such strong found family feelings. I love the Band.
An attack was to be expected on the caravan getting the Horn but dear Light, Berisha sent them to the Blight as an escape? Faile has the worst luck.
So the red-veiled Aiels are all the male channelers the Aiel sent out to die. That's absolutely harrowing actually. The ostracization of their own created their own monsters. Avi understands just how much of a reckoning the Aiel have coming.
Cadsuane MVP with that heart-stopping weave. I'm surprised she could even do that since Avi was the one in danger. Sanderson seems much more lax with the third Oath.
Why are they not using the copies of Mat's medallion to protect the generals?
Setalle suspects Berisha might have sent them there with intention, good or bad. Is it even possible Berisha overshot her Gateway?
Of course Faile figures out Setalle pretty quick: she's so sharp and I love her for that. Setalle being an Aes Sedai who burnt out though… OOF
"The Horn of Valere, lost in the Blight. A nightmare." - That's ironic since it started there.
Sarene was taken by Graendal? For what? Is Graendal the one who took Alanna? Where is Alanna?
Light, the Aes Sedai are getting slaughtered.
The Blight is FUN. I love a good horror setting.
Liking this Avi/Cads combo. They're not unlike one another in their one-mindedness and it makes sense they would protect Rand against the Forsaken trying to get to SG. Although I'm surprised none showed up so far.
Not Vanin and Harnan stealing the Horn!
"I am not spending the Last Battle clinging to a rock! she thought. Not the same one the whole time, at the very least." - Nyn is as pissed as I am about Mo and her being relegated to glorified batteries.
Alanna is trapped in Shayol Ghul because of Moridin, bleeding out? WHY DID NO ONE THINK ABOUT THIS BEFORE? HE’S BONDED TO FOUR WOMEN WHO COULD ALL BE CAPTURED At least Nyn will save the day.
I LOVE the fact that Merrilor is situated at the fork of two rivers. It's perfect.
I'm also glad everyone saw reason and made Mat the commandant general at last. He's worth 100 great generals. Elayne is good at organizing people but we need the genius of a single mind.
Also, unrelated, but does Mat have memories of women? IS HE THE DOCTOR?
I love this moment between Eggy and Mat before the battle where they act like an odd mix of siblings and leaders, even if Eggy still sees him like a rambunctious little brother and he like a girl pal to protect. It’s a rare last moment of ingenuity before the end of the world that doesn’t feel naive either. They’re both changed and there is no coming back.
The Last Battle chapter gets an epigraph from Loial!
Deafening the guards with thunder to save them from Draghkars was very clever. Well done, Elayne.
"Why was his hat banded with pink ribbon, though?" - I would love for anyone to address Mat’s rape properly. This is so disturbing.
Mat is right to keep his plans to himself though. Between DF, Forsaken using compulsion and dreams, Turning, the Seanchan plotting, I would not trust anyone... right, I'm beginning to feel like Moiraine. Mat must certainly think like her now.
The joy of this part comes from characters meeting each other or working together for the first time: Setalle and Faile, Uno and Talmanes, Lan and Tam, Avi and Cads...
Demandred is still bellowing for Rand. This got old fifty pages ago.
Like Birgitte, like Moiraine, Logain’s POVs are a rarity but his mind and experience are endlessly mesmerising. He IS a bad guy, turned to the light to help, except he wouldn't have been a bad guy had people known how to handle male channelers in the first place.
"When every breath had encouraged him to find a knife and slit his own throat." - Like Owyn. The strength it took Leane, Siuan and him to go on in TFoH stupefies me, truly.
Logain is in charge of recovering the Seals from Taim feels so RIGHT.
"Was this what you wished for, his mind whispered, when you raised the banner of the Dragon? When you sought to save mankind? Did you do it to be feared? Hated?" - his role as false Dragon is so interesting: how was he different from Rand? But in the end he is leading the male channelers to battle and facing the Dark One’s armies.
Logain realizing he cannot be sure of Gabrelle: buddy, you captured and force-bonded her. Did you really think she would not do anything to survive?
Tam POV! Why are we getting so many random men's POV? I like Tam but come on, this is a lot of the same types of character.
Pevara and Androl remain very cute, okay? I love their banter and fun things are happening magic-wise with them. That double bond could lead to an abolition to the binary magic system and I am here for it.
Coincidentally, Mat and Talmanes have a secret language of their own. Band lore, again.
I love the carrier raken system set up. It's so dramatic but effective.
HOLY MACKEREL the opening credits of the show are actually a depiction of what Rand's mind conjures when he tries to picture the Pattern during his fight with the DO?!?
Rand's first vision is basically how Isam and the people in Thakan'dar live currently.
Dreadlord Nyn would be terrifying and so twisted. I do love that even in this dark reality Moiraine is enough of an outcast to be executed.
Of course, Gawyn heads up straight toward Demandred without telling Egwene or anyone. In a way, the devolution is pertinent: he promised to obey Egwene, but the call for heroic sacrifice is too great. Toxic masculinity will kill him. It’s well done.
"Siuan nodded, approval—even pride—in her expression. Egwene was Amyrlin; she had no need of either emotion from Siuan, and yet it lifted a little of her grinding fatigue." - have I mentionned I love them with all my heart? Truly prime duo.
And another Rand/Egwene parallel: Moiraine "found" them both in the Two Rivers. In their search for the DR, Siuan and Moiraine also found the one who would break and save the White Tower and guide them to the Last Battle.
"And if a woman were to wish for a legacy, she could not dream of greater than one such as you. Thank you." - okay, now I'm crying. Siuan went from losing everything, her name despised, to finding the greatest legacy in Egwene. Egwene is Siuan’s.
I'm glad Egwene sent Siuan to do what she does best for once, finding spies, studying people.
I really hope the show embraces their relationship with all its thorns and fondness because it's a fantastic mentor/student one between women.
Demandred is so obsessed with Rand he cannot conceive anyone but Rand leading this assault: it seems such a preposterous blind spot for someone supposedly clever.
Faile plans to sneak into the supply station and use the enemy's Gateway? Hell yes! She's so smart.
So Perrin is recovering in Berelain's palace with Uno. That's such a delightful combination. And Luhann saved him!
Right... Perrin left Gaul in the Wolf Dream, didn't kill Slayer and didn't stop the generals save maybe Ituralde...
The Asha'man and AS still have so many prejudices. It'll take some time after TLB before they truly understand each other.
"I’m trying to read that thought,” Pevara said. “Did you just… compare me to an old strap of leather?” - Androl, gilf lover. They are Adorable together.
I am still wondering what the hell their story does in this book but I like them.
If Androl and Pevara are the ones to find the Seals, I'll be okay with that. Their plan is so goofy, fooling around with mirrors of mist in the enemy camp. At least they are together and none of them is pretending to be a Forsaken.
Graendal took Rhuarc? What is going on with the Forsaken who are not Demandred? Where's Moghedien? Cyndane? There are too many threads flying around.
Seanchan is still part of Rand's utopia? I get it, he wants them to be part of tomorrow's world, and not all of them were slavers, but still, it's so tone-deaf because as they are, they slaughtered, enslaved and dispossessed countless people.
Awwww Perrin's granddaughter, the Ogier, the school! Rand's dreams about building a better world are so HIM.
Silviana was prepared to take on Gawyn's bond?! Egwene's inspires such devotion, it's a bit dizzying.
"It’s like a hole inside of me, Elayne. A deep, gaping hole. Bleeding out my life and memories.” - Birgitte's fate is so absolutely heartbreaking. Her despair is hitting hard as well because she’s been so strong.
Giving the medaillon to the WC IS unwise, but who cares about the after? No one.
Mat running away with Tuon is not the same as dismantling the Seanchan Empire. That's only letting another Empress take her place.
Oh bloody hell, Siuan's saved Min by stopping the heart of a Sharan channeler! That was hot.
And of course now she runs into a burning building to save Mat like her uncle Huan did for strangers. ... Siuan... no I knew it was going to happen but Light that was sudden. It's a blink and you'll miss it moment.
I also hate deaths caused by the idiot ball. RJ's Siuan would not have made such a gamble; only Siuan "dumbass energy granted by BS" Sedai would. This accomplishes nothing. It's a pointless "she should have listened to Min" moment.
"how could affection thrive beside the burning passion that was his hatred for Lews Therin? " - gay. that's so gay. The Forsaken are just a bunch of raging queers.
This diffraction of POV is grating. Too many short POVs succeeding.
"The man would hold back and deliberate, worrying over his decisions, until boiling forward in a reckless military action." - accurate, but that was Lews Therin, this is Rand.
I say the thing about POV and my guy Juilin turns up. Go Juilin!
The WC used to butcher AS's corpses and cut them into pieces for fear they would rise again like vampires? I did not need that information. Scalding take: the AS were never respected; they were feared because they were not considered human.
Did Pevara need to out Emarin in the middle of a break-in?
Galad carrying his brother's body, hoping to save him, thinking that Elayne hadn't loved him. You know what, Gawyn was a fool and the tragedy is that he reverted back to his childish self
and it costs him is life.
Oh fuck, Egwene losing the bond is rough. She's absolutely drowning now.
Tam as it all started, fighting.
I'm confused, wasn't the threat that the DO would break the wheel and end everything? When did it become a tyrant robbing people of their morality?
"Ride out there and die for really no purpose? Or come try to keep me alive for your Empress." - Mat is Moiraining Karede into not wasting his life. How fitting. He did start seeing people as tools too. Nyn is the only one left who don’t.
"I had long wondered,” Lan said to Tam. “About the man who had given Rand that heron-marked blade. I wondered if he had truly earned it. Now I know.” - That was cute.
"Siuan.… Siuan had always been so strong." - Strongest person Eggy knew.
Thank the Light Birgitte is here because Elayne still has 0 sense of self-preservation.
I adore the idea of Galad facing Demandred! The irony of Demandred dying by Rand's brother blade, unable to channel at him!
Oooooooh Loving Nyn healing Alanna with needles and herbs because Rand is leading the circle. Moiraine is just chilling apparently?
(what if Moiraine felt Siuan die and is in shock? I know it's not that but listen...)
Bashere and Deira were this close to invite Mat to a threesome because he yelled at them.
"Only they would probably hear it all the way up in the Blight, too." - That's funny because the Horn is currently in the Blight!
Loial! I'm still so gutted that the Ogiers of all people had to turn into beasts hacking at Trollocs for TG. There are other ways.
Aww Teslyn and Mat reunion on the battlefield! Why does Mat have so many wholesome relationships with women?
"Egwene al’Vere can grieve,” Egwene said, standing up. “Egwene al’Vere lost a man she loved, and she felt him die through a bond. The Amyrlin has sympathy for Egwene al’Vere, as she would have sympathy for Egwene al’Vere, as she would have sympathy for any Aes Sedai dealing with such loss. And then, in the face of the Last Battle, the Amyrlin would expect that woman to pick herself up and return to the fight." - That hurts. And the echoes with Rand and LTT!
"I forget how young she is.” - she is so bloody young. 19? 20?
Egwene bonded Leilwin!?! EGWENE MY GOD STOP FOR A SECOND YOU CANT SOLDIER ON THROUGH A TRAUMATIC EVENT BY RETRAUMATISING YOURSELF
The Androl disguise used by Taim on Androl to kill Logain is a bit silly, but I'm okay with Pevara and Androl taking on the Wondergirls and Mat-Thom mantle of shenanigans. The rule of cool prevails.
"Together, their forces moved upriver in the night, leaving behind the fighting Andorans, Cairhienin and Aiel. Creator shelter you, friends, Arganda thought." - Rand, with Moiraine's help, really did it. He united all nations in this fight.
WHY are we even getting an Arganda POV here? We are drowning in men POV.
"You surrender when you’re dead. Many a man has been given less.” - Not NS feelings. Look, we're not getting a Lan/Moiraine convo, so I'm taking what I can.
Here for Rand's utopia turning into a nightmare where people's agency is removed. The S1 finale is also echoing SO MUCH of the Last Battle. It's so satisfying. Mat wondering who's setting Sharans on fire. Probably Eggy and Vora's ter'angreal.
Aravine?! A former DF? Who tried to escape?!? And fell back to the shadows?? SO MUCH IS HAPPENING
Olver stabbed the channeler?!? I wasn't expecting to like Olver as much as I do but Mat's son is such a brave little guy.
Leane fighting! I agree it's so satisfying to see how strong and united the Aes Sedai are now after fumbling for so long.
Egwene came through and is unleashing Hell on taim and his channelers!
Talmanes is in a cave rebuilding dragons with Aludra? So many chess pieces around.
Bela is the MVPest of them all.
HARNAN AND VANIN WERE TRYING TO STEAL MAT'S TABAC JUSTICE IS SERVED
Faile killed Aravine and gave the Horn to Olver! And is using herself as a decoy?!? Light, I love her, she's so quick.
Love Logains's thoughts on vengeance and how empty it is for him now: he is arguably at the height of his glory, leading the Asha'man into TLB. What could revenge bring him?
Logain Ablar, keeper of the Seals by interim. I like the sound of that.
"Egwene led an assault the likes of which had not been seen in millennia." - I'm so proud of and so afraid for her. I get why she chose the Green now. She has the heart of Aiel, she's justice on the battlefield itself.
Light, Egwene is facing Taim now, a newly raised Forsaken. This leadership triangle between Taim, Logain and Egwene, where Eggy and Logain swapped roles, is delicious.
Eggy is so sharp for redirecting lightning with iron rods like that.
A little bit of closure for Ila and Raen! Also we get insight into the Tuatha'an in relation to the Aiel: if the Aiel are struggling to envision a future with the the Dragon's Peace, what of the Tuatha'an in the middle of all-out war?
Bela died! Olver has the Horn! Is this rugby?
Major kudos for allowing Egwene to be this angry and unhinged on the battlefield. I've said it before but she has a rather masculine arc, despite being depicted as very feminine. I love that.
Hurin is also fighting for Rand!
Light, Berelain has a good head on her shoulders because I would be overwhelmed in her place.
Galad lost a hand like Rand! This truly is the chapter of all the payoffs and parallels.
Annoura saved him, burning herself out for a WC! It's also so loyal of her. My Berelain/Annoura shipping dreams may not be dead.
Rand is watching everyone die! Bashere! Deira! Hurin! Rand weeping for Siuan! Nonononon I don't want to cry now.
That "Aes Sedai ridgecat"? He's talking about Egwene? This is so funny. Taim cannot even contain her and needs the help of Demandred's ter'angreal to deal with her. I get such a kick out of seeing them underestimate her.
Of course, it's Mellar who kidnapped Elayne. HE BEHEADED BIRGITTE?!? And now he's trying to cut out Elayne's babies? I KNEW HE WAS GOING TO BE A PROBLEM WHY
However horrific, that would have been an interesting twist to Min's vision, ngl
"OUR ACCOMMODATION IS NOTHING?" - that made me laugh. The phrasing is just peculiar.
Yesssss, give me Rand being tempted by nothingness: he has suffered so much. Nothingness would be peace for all and himself.
The way Min uncovered the spy and the compelled Seachan general was really neat. Siuan would have been proud.
The Aes Sedai falling dead because the others who had saved them had been balefired? How did the world even survive the Breaking?
Eggy bloody countered balefire?!? She's healing the effects of balefire on the land? THE FLAME OF TAR VALON
She released Leilwin just before... I'm sobbing, crushed.
Light but that description was beautiful and peaceful. She did find peace.
She took all the Sharan channelers with her. They lost half the Aes Sedai. HALF. It's too much. How is this fight still going? Don't you dare saying that Aes Sedai aren't servants of all after that.
"Not without Egwene, her Two Rivers stubbornness, her iron backbone. Not without a miracle." - YOU SAY IT MAT SHE WAS IRON.
Also, he was tasked with saving her from the AS... She saved them all.
The miracle will be Olver.
“I sure am growing tired of that man,” Mat said. - we all are. He's frankly annoying.
"He pretended that he would still write the story. There was no harm to such a little lie." - Awww, Loial. Also, it's sadly reminiscent of Jordan.
So Lan learned nothing and decided to go fight Demandred on his own, leaving his army leaderless in a suicide mission as foolish as Gawyn’s and Galad’s. What he said Tenobia shouldn't do. What Agelmar told him was selfish.
I'm glad he got his pivotal badass moment, but that's still a regression for his character?
"I am just a man,” Lan whispered. “That is all I have ever been.” - The man who as a nation.
I'm not entirely sure it's fitting as he has no real connection to Demandred and isn't an underdog, but Demandred is also such an awkward villain.
"How could a man just… let go? Wasn’t that letting go of responsibility? Or was it giving the responsibility to them?" - Rand learnt from Tam that loving people is sometimes letting them go. It's an epic about growing up and parenting truly.
"Am I not allowed to be a hero, too?" - that broke me. Rand is no longer dreaming about Iliana, no longer hearing LTT. He is hearing Egwene's voice. My sobbing had stopped at that point and it came back with a vengeance with that line.
I know the woman cast down from her throne is Morgase, but listen, it should be Siuan. She was instrumental in finding and supporting Rand and it cost her the Amyrlin Seat, her powers, her life. This is her story as much as Moiraine's.
"It was about a woman with a secret, a hope for the future. A woman who had hunted the truth before others could. A woman who had given her life, then had it returned. That woman still fought." - stunning. I love Moiraine a normal amount.
"It was about a woman who refused to believe that she could not help, could not Heal those who had been harmed." - you bet Nyn will never give up protecting and helping people. I love her so much.
The man who lost his family is Perrin, right?
"It was about a woman who would not bend her back while she was beaten, and who shone with the Light for all who watched. Including Rand." - A literal beacon of light. Her journey was glorious. I'm not even cross it ended how it did. It was a good ending.
"It was about them all." - I am fine. Such a satisfying conclusion to an ensemble saga. The Forsaken may have been there to make him give up, but there were always people fighting, sometimes alone. It all comes back to Moiraine's seminal TSR speech: "I fight for you,’ Moiraine said before Egwene could open her mouth, ‘as does Egwene.’ A look flashed between the two women. ‘People fight for you who do not know it, any more than you know them. You do not realize what it means that you force the form of the Age Lace, do you? The ripples of your actions, the ripples of your very existence, spread across the Pattern to change the weave of life-threads of which you will never be aware. The battle is far from yours alone. Yet you stand in the heart of this web in the Pattern. Should you fail, and fall, all fails and falls." - The Shadow Rising, C57 It's always been about them all.
Birgitte was not cast out the Horn and has her memories back! That's a hell of a miracle. The Heroes at last are called by Olver! I'm good with him sounding the Horn. It feels satisfying enough and Noal came back as a hero to save him.
Re: Elayne losing the bond, is this how Moiraine experienced the bond snapping though? Because between what we know of Egwene and Elayne's experiences, I dread to think what it was like to go through that while being tortured.
"But you’re still my friend. Will you ride with me?” - That was cute. I'm sad she never got to see Mat again.
Oh Light, I forgot Darkhounds existed. There is something as too many Shadowspawns at once and this is what my brain is experiencing.
Avi, Cads and Amys against Graendal? That's a showdown for the history books.
"I’d feel like I needed to bloody move to another country, [...] one where the monarchs don’t have pudding for brains.” - tbf, Elayne is young and reckless. She’ll grow out of it.
MAT USED THE PEOPLE FROM HINDERSTAP TO FIGHT! BLOODY GENIUS OF A MAN
And Grady is unleashing the river Mora on the battlefield... Good for him for making it this far.
Androl and Pevara are such chaos agents, ignoring Logain’s orders like that.
Moghy was the servant Seanchan spy! And is now disguised as Demandred. I'm listening...
Light, the gateway and dragons combo to fire securely on the enemy is a smart move. Magic is meant to be used in fun and new ways each time.
I'm glad Sanderson didn't forget how ridiculously strong Talaan and Alivia are. Alivia is also a trained soldier.
Avi killed Rhuarc under compulsion? Avi will need to process so much once this is done, she's going to need a lot of support.
Alviarin is still kicking and shooting for the Chosen seat. You do you. Rand is a trap though, I bet it's Pevara.
It is Androl! And now they are prisoners in the Stedding. I like that. It's like a kinder Bore and sets up Ogiers as guardians.
I love the image of Merrilor partially turned into a field of glass and about to shatter.
I love that Logain isn't good. He's still seeking more power, dominance. But when he's told refugees are dying... The BT has responsibilities now.
Master Luhann's pep talk to Perrin was interesting in the way it recalibrates his arc: by making it about fear of oneself rather than leadership rejection, it complements the wolf arc rather than being a stepping stone on his wolf journey.
Sometimes what people consider an AS answer makes me think none of them have ever talked to anyone. I don't know what Perrin wanted Masuri to say here.
Thom spent TLB sitting on a rock outside Shayol Ghul, composing, smoking tabac. Perfect.
"She stared at the end of the world, with grit and determination." - That's Moiraine for you.
"Rand deserved it. Moiraine, too. This would be her victory as much as it was his." - And Siuan's. It's been their fight for 20 years.
I still can't believe Moiraine and Nyn have so little to do. It's a waste of their characters. I get what they do is crucial, but like with the Cleansing, they are batteries.
I clapped at the Black sister pretending to be Cads, getting stabbed by Thom and thrown into the DF pit.
The storyteller figures - Moiraine, Loial and Thom - are fascinating in their different journeys: Thom as the storyteller who ends up writing a story; Loial as the antihero living the story to record it; Moiraine as the storyteller trapped in a story.
Poor Grady being traumatised by the rage zombies from Hinderstap.
So Fain dissolved part of himself into Shaisam and now he's something akin to Mashadar? Not weird at all.
I can't believe Mat did get to ride a to'raken.
Why is releasing the bond so easy now? Everyone does it.
Driving Slayer. Beating. Pounding... What. Perrin, that’s gay.
Okay, the last fight between Perrin and Slayer was cool. The hopping between Wolf Dream and reality was new and dynamic and eerie.
The wolves are heroes too? Okay. This is becoming a little too kitchen sink for me.
Clever, clever Avi for using the gateway to destroy Graendal because she cannot walk to escape.
Mat is Mashadar-resistant? And killed Fain. I'm cool with that. The confrontation itself was a bit underwhelming but it makes sense Mat is the one.
At least Perrin grew enough to choose Rand over Faile. Responsibilities, they are tough.
They tricked Moridin and are now controlling him? I can't believe I accidentally guessed part of the plan.
And the True Power is the key to resealing the DO! Yesssssssss that's fitting considering its exploitation started all this.
Graendal is now under compulsion and following Avi? That's a bit random. I see it's supposed to be comeuppance but it's also accidental and she won't be even aware of being punished. Like Mesaana, it's just another powerful woman depowered rather than killed.
Asha'man are treated with more respect than the AS ever were after one battle? Good that the story ends on this high for them, but it never addressed the treatment of Aes Sedai as monsters declawed by the Oaths and their dehumanization.
Logain broke the Seals as Eggy asked! What a bloody satisfying conclusion for him.
It figures that Lanfear compelled Perrin because he could not have been that naive.
Hey, I hope Perrin saying he still hates Moiraine is a bloody act.
Tepid take: breaking a woman's neck and then remarking she's beautiful? Gross. Even if it's arguably the lingering compulsion, it's a sexist dehumanizing trope.
Yes, Rand understood he could not kill the DO and resealed him. He WAS wrong.
Moiraine saving Nyn's life and pulling her out of the cave when Rand went nuclear. Feels good. Feels organic.
"You did well, Rand. You did well.” - Nope. My heart. Moiraine believed he could save the world and he did.
“I left… to save you,” Nynaeve whispered. “I only came along to protect you.” “You did, Nynaeve. You protected Rand so he could do what he had to do.” - Nyn accomplished so much but still protecting Egwene and Rand would have been enough.
"It was the Fourth Age now, wasn’t it? Could an age start in the middle of a day? That would be inconvenient for the calendars, wouldn’t it? But everyone agreed. Rand had sealed the Bore at noon." - asking the right questions here. I love Loial.
Ituralde survived! And is convinced by Yukiri to be king?
Avi, Min and Elayne are sensing Rand, that's why they're not worried. Although why they are not masking their reaction is beyond me. If Nyn is already onto them, more will be.
Aludra is rebuilding the Illuminators' guild with dragoners! That's a great way to rehabilitate soldiers.
So Moghy was taken by the Seanchan? That's quite underwhelming. The Seanchan are basically a bad women dumping ground at this point.
All things considered, Perrin had a good arc. It got lost in the middle for ages but the foundations of it are solid and the story can easily be adapted with minor tweaking, contrary to Mat's arc that got completely squandered.
Perrin finding Faile was really moving though. Also if he was able to retrieve her alive from a heap of corpses, Moiraine doing so for Siuan is entirely possible and Nyn can save her. Min can be wrong about ONE vision.
Birgitte's last gift being to spare Elayne from her increasingly belligerant path is fitting but yeah, I'm not hopeful for the future of Andor's neighbors even with the Dragon's peace. Elayne was ready to privatise the Horn as she did the Kin.
So Rand swapped body with Moridin. How disappointing. Alivia's big role in his death was... Providing him with clothes and money so he could slip away? Cads figured it out, which means Moiraine did, and Nynaeve suspects, so she will know.
I don't get why Min, Avi and Elayne showed no emotion at all during the funeral if the goal was to keep his survival a secret? It's bound to raise suspicion. Also why Rand is not sure they will follow him? Is he not planning to see his kids?
To have him reborn as a non-channeler centuries later, without insight into what the future would be, would have been better. This undermines his speech about the nature of the Wheel giving second chances: his rebirth is a freak swap accident.
And again, nothing about the trauma Rand faced during TLB. He saw his friends die and was exposed to the Pattern itself: he's completely fine. Not even affected by the True Power exposure Moridin was suffering from. It's a bit underwhelming. Big reset button agaon.
"The wind blew southward, through knotted forests, over shimmering plains and toward lands unexplored. This wind, it was not the ending. There are no endings, and never will be endings, to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was an ending." - I love beginning callbacks.
About this open ending: 1. I am okay with the Aiel's fate remaining uncertain. The ball is in their camp and I think Avi is the best leader they could hope for to transform and survive. Rhuidean showed a possibility, otherwise Moiraine would have slept with Rand.
2. Also okay with Cads as Amyrlin. They need a strong leader to rebuild so naturally they turned to the past but the AS were also changed enough by Egwene to have been set straight in their ways. The collaboration on the battlefield is proof enough of it. AS don't have a choice but to follow Egwene's path as well. Between the heavy casualties suffered during TLB, the BA executions and the sisters taken by the Seanchan and now trapped by Rand's peace, there are probably 100-200 full sisters left. The majority of their contingent is now AS in training picked up by Egwene. They have no choice to follow Eggy's path to survive. As for they alliances with the Windfinders and the WO, the same happened to them: killed, burned out or enslaved. Hundreds of Shaido WO have been lost to the Seanchan and the Shaido was the largest clan. To survive, they will have to rely on Egwene's terms. The Seanchan never agreed to let go the captured damane go if they wished as Egwene bartered either. You can be sure that the Seanchan won't forget that Egwene agreed to let missionaries into TV and across the nations. Tremalking should be free though, as Mat witnessed the agreement. But yeah, the Seanchan are now a threat channelers will have to contend with. So I assume that Cadsuane, who doesn't want to be Amyrlin and has never followed any of the rules, will fuck off as soon and fulfill her obligations as little as possible. Perhaps the Amyrlin Seat itself will disappear for a more horizontal structure?
3. Could it be that the girls seem not to care about Rand because he's not ta'veren anymore? They aren't pulled to him and thus truly have a choice in not following this new Rand on adventures while they have duties here. They grew to like each other, but Rand was ta'veren. So now they can re-learn to love him if they wish? It’s such a bizarre ending. It doesn’t make sense for them not to at least fake their reaction to protect him.
On the book overall: This book will definitely get merged with ToM because technically it was only battles. I agree with the criticism that Sanderson got lost in the battle scenes and prioritised unnecessary POVs to the detriment of established characters in need of resolution, like Moiraine or Nynaeve. Certain arcs get an unfitting and abrupt conclusion like Lan’s and Siuan’s, Lan randomly surviving and Siuan randomly dying. Elayne’s arc is also underwelming because she’s commander general when it doesn’t really make sense and gets replaced by Mat halfway anyway. I disagree with the criticism that Androl was unnecessary though because it was a solution to the Black Tower Jordan problem that should have been dealt with much earlier. The fact that Lan, Moiraine and Siuan didn’t meet again after literally starting this quest 20 years ago is a sham. The Seanchan though… Their fate is so timid considering how big of a threat they are? It’s implied that maybe Min could nudge Tuon in the right direction, with Mat’s help, but Tuon isn’t the Empire and what of the previously captured channelers, conquered lands, massacred Athan’an Miere. Structurally, it does feel like edited notes with a blend of important resolution scenes and BIG BATTLES, so it may be my least favourite of the Sanderson books?
I still enjoyed it, with major caveats regarding certain arcs. It was a feat to finish the saga considering the amount of stuff to conclude. I’m still a little overwhelmed by the book, days after finishing it, so it clearly did something right. If anything I have more elements to discuss for ages.
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