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Calenth posted:4) I know I'm biased but I still think Eye holds up really, really drat well for a fantasy novel with 20+ years of age on it. Parts of it are a little dated -- it's still, after all, a "rural farmboys go on Epic Quest to Save the World! With a magic sword! And a wizard!" story -- but maybe it's just that I still remember how crazy it was in 1989 to read a story where the Epic Prophesied Hero was someone everyone feared, or hell, just a story where the Wizard Mentor was a woman, and not only a vagina-haver but one with a developed, complex personality and goals which had nothing to do with dating a male protagonist. I don't know how a modern modern viewer would react to it -- it's had so much influence on the genre that it might have lost some of its initial impact -- but at the time I remember thinking it was just fundamentally new and different. A "novel" in the sense of a new thing. Good literature is good literature. It doesn't go "out of date."
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Oct 12, 2012 19:08
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For what it's worth, Elaida's "unbeliever" is Logain. The only distinction that I can think of between him and the typical Red's point of view is the belief that men channeling must necessarily lead to madness, ruin, and death.
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Oct 12, 2012 19:41
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Donny J posted:I hope this is the right thread for this question, but I'm wondering if it's worth it getting back into the series. I think I last read maybe book 8 or 9 back when I was in late middle school/freshman year of high school, and remember vague bits and pieces from the series. But now that the final book is out, I've got a small hankering to see if I can finish this series (especially since I'm on a fantasy kick after binging through the 5 Game of Thrones books). Would it be worth it to re-read the books leading up to the last one? Or will it never be as cool as it was when I was 13 and should I just let sleeping dogs lie? I was in a similar boat when I decided to read the Sanderson books. I read 1-9 a long time ago, re-read 1-7 at some point in the past, and had never read 10/11. I read a few summaries online of 8-11 and then just started with The Gathering Storm. Everything made sense to me so long as I checked the wiki if I was confused or didn't know who a character was. The way The Gathering Storm is written it alludes to everything of importance and you can normally figure out what's going on and why just from context. I went back and read Knife of Dreams after and enjoyed it. I've still never read Crossroads. Obviously your mileage will vary and if you want to be into it you may as well re-read it all. You'd probably be able to skim/skip a lot of stuff from the first books as it comes back to you. Knife of Dreams/Gathering Storm/Towers of Midnight are all fantastic. I actually think The Gathering Storm is the best book in the series other than maybe 2 or 4.
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Oct 12, 2012 21:47
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api call girl posted:For what it's worth, Elaida's "unbeliever" is Logain. The only distinction that I can think of between him and the typical Red's point of view is the belief that men channeling must necessarily lead to madness, ruin, and death. I think it's a word that made sense in an initial draft but really stopped making sense once he fleshed out the world as a whole. Part of the whole idea of the world was that religion was so obviously true that there wasn't any actual organized religion. I think when you think of the process of writing the book, it makes perfect sense why it would have snuck in but why it doesn't belong.
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Oct 12, 2012 22:33
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evilweasel posted:I think it's a word that made sense in an initial draft but really stopped making sense once he fleshed out the world as a whole. Part of the whole idea of the world was that religion was so obviously true that there wasn't any actual organized religion. I think when you think of the process of writing the book, it makes perfect sense why it would have snuck in but why it doesn't belong. There's a lot of stuff like that in EOTW. The voice at the end of the book for example. It's clearly intended to be the Creator, but that doesn't really make a lot of sense in the context of the later books. Which is why a lot of people now interpret it as the Dark One. I think in RJ's earlier conceptions of the series the religious element was going to be a bit stronger.
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Oct 12, 2012 23:00
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I'm re-reading WoT as well in preparation for the final book but I don't think I'm a fast enough reader to finish in time. I'm half way through TGH. Calenth, I enjoy your stories about RJ, sounds like he was a really unique person.
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Oct 13, 2012 03:09
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Streebs posted:Calenth, I enjoy your stories about RJ, sounds like he was a really unique person. Thanks! I'm trying not to drown the thread in "This one time, I saw RJ, and he had a pipe, and he said a thing" stories! It's just hard for me to talk about the books at all without talking about Jim, and it's hard to read this series period without talking about it (again, at least for me). evilweasel posted:I think it's a word that made sense in an initial draft but really stopped making sense once he fleshed out the world as a whole. Part of the whole idea of the world was that religion was so obviously true that there wasn't any actual organized religion. I think when you think of the process of writing the book, it makes perfect sense why it would have snuck in but why it doesn't belong. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. caleramaen posted:Good literature is good literature. It doesn't go "out of date." WoT's claim to the title of "literature" is an interesting point of discussion in and of itself. On the one hand, it's genre fiction about wizards. It rambles on and on for volumes. There's a forty-five-page sequence where a character does nothing but take a bath. Parts of it are (arguably) derivative of Tolkien and Herbert and other prior authors. It's escapist fiction (if you consider that a bad thing; Tolkien's rebuttal to the "escapism" argument was that if you're in a cage, there's nothing wrong about wanting out). It's a young-boy-on-quest story in a genre that was already pretty drat full of young-boy-on-quest stories even in the 80's. On the other, though, there's really a lot of neat stuff going on in it -- from subtle meta-fictional critiques of fantasy conventions (ta'veren: in the old tongue, "protagonist"), to psychologically realistic characters going through realistic changes and arcs, to complex literary and mythological allusions, to fairly bold subversions and inversions of genre tropes (Everybody's scared shitless of the Prophesied Hero; Gandalf is a woman). It's (to my knowledge) the longest written "story" in the English language, and possibly any language, beating out Remembrance of Things Past by a huge margin, which alone gives it a certain amount of cachet (I say "single plotline" because there are numerous character serials, like the Tarzan books or Perry Rhodan, that beat it out in sheer quantity of verbiage, but they aren't single works, they're multiple works with a recurring character). The analysis that's really springing up at me right now on this re-read is how it's really easy to read WoT as inspired by the Vietnam War, in much the same way that Lord of the Rings was inspired by World War One. The hero isn't loved or praised, he's hated and feared by the very people he's trying to save; everything is political; the battle scenes are chaotic, confused, hurried, and incredibly brutal; the central fantasy behind the entire series, right from that first prologue with Lews Therin, is (at least arguably) "Lord, please give us a do-over." In early drafts and outlines, the Tam character, a returning war veteran, was the protagonist. On to The Great Hunt! Calenth fucked around with this message at 04:02 on Oct 13, 2012 |
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Oct 13, 2012 03:58
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So, spoilers from the first chapter, pretty obvious that the Darkfriend traitor is Bair? Anybody else guessing that the Rhuidean ter'angreal are going to be mysteriously smashed before anybody else gets there?
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Oct 13, 2012 04:16
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Calef posted:So, spoilers from the first chapter, pretty obvious that the Darkfriend traitor is Bair? Anybody else guessing that the Rhuidean ter'angreal are going to be mysteriously smashed before anybody else gets there? I'd need to do a reread to confirm, but has rand been in the same room with Bair since his Jesusing? Because Rand can spot darkfriends on sight now. Somebody fucked around with this message at 02:17 on Oct 14, 2012 |
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Oct 13, 2012 05:03
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Calenth posted:
Man, I really agree with this. In the first book at least, Moiraine carries a lot of it for me. The other protagonists are RELATIVELY stock at that point and being mostly dragged through the story. I can't tell you how much I hated her being gone for over half the series.
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Oct 13, 2012 05:47
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Calef posted:So, spoilers from the first chapter, pretty obvious that the Darkfriend traitor is Bair? Anybody else guessing that the Rhuidean ter'angreal are going to be mysteriously smashed before anybody else gets there? What makes you think that (the spoiler) is obvious? I mean, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the ter'angreal are smashed / damaged / turned off / whatever before Bair gets there, but I don't think the prologue / first chapter confirm (or deny, to be fair) that she's a Darkfriend.
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Oct 13, 2012 06:19
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Calef posted:So, spoilers from the first chapter, pretty obvious that the Darkfriend traitor is Bair? Anybody else guessing that the Rhuidean ter'angreal are going to be mysteriously smashed before anybody else gets there? The Dark One wouldn't care: anything that happens as a result of those happens only because he's failed to escape. He wouldn't risk a valuable tool that could be used to assist in his bid for freedom for a plot that works only if his escape fails.
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Oct 13, 2012 06:47
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evilweasel posted:The Dark One wouldn't care: anything that happens as a result of those happens only because he's failed to escape. He wouldn't risk a valuable tool that could be used to assist in his bid for freedom for a plot that works only if his escape fails. continued spoilers from first chapter AMOL: And if his escape fails, then it doesn't matter what happens in the world as a whole, and whether the Aiel live or die - eventually the Wheel will turn around and his prison will get redrilled again. Smashing the ter'angreal might shorten the amount of time he's in prison... but he's immortal, what does time really matter to him at this point? Of course, I'm presuming that the Dark One is always the same Dark One, and every Third Age doesn't end with a Padan Fain-type figure becoming a new Dark One.
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Oct 13, 2012 09:22
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Calenth posted:WoT's claim to the title of "literature" is an interesting point of discussion in and of itself. On the one hand, it's genre fiction about wizards. It rambles on and on for volumes. There's a forty-five-page sequence where a character does nothing but take a bath. Parts of it are (arguably) derivative of Tolkien and Herbert and other prior authors. It's escapist fiction (if you consider that a bad thing; Tolkien's rebuttal to the "escapism" argument was that if you're in a cage, there's nothing wrong about wanting out). It's a young-boy-on-quest story in a genre that was already pretty drat full of young-boy-on-quest stories even in the 80's. I was wondering whether to respond to this, but I've decided that some clarification is needed. When I used the word "literature" I was not using it in the literary sense of a work of permanent significance. I was using it in terms of an individual piece of writing within the body of a language. Under that definition, Wheel of Time's inclusion is pretty much a given. If I had meant literature in the first sense, I probably wouldn't wouldn't have used the adjective good to describe it, as it would be redundant.
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Oct 13, 2012 11:49
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Calenth posted:1) Wow, the last third or so of this book reads like a comic book/ manga. There are a lot of descriptions, especially of Caemlyn, the Ways, and the Blight, that just pop into my head in illustrated-panel format, I don't *think* that's an artifact of years of fan art -- I've never actually read the Eye of the World comic book. I've said this a couple times before in these threads and I'll say it again: WoT is an American shonen manga without any pictures--right down to the filler plotlines.
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Oct 13, 2012 23:05
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Willie Tomg posted:I've said this a couple times before in these threads and I'll say it again: WoT is an American shonen manga without any pictures--right down to the filler plotlines. Yeah, that's a pretty fair critique. I mean, three women all in love with the protagonist, a blonde, a redhead, and a brunette? Galad's a virgin-mary bishounen, etc. . . I have my own theory on the filler-books problem -- partly I think he just lost control with so many plotlines and characters, partly I think he kinda lost focus on WoT for a while and was working and thinking about his planned Infinity of Heaven series instead; he used to talk about it a lot. I completely understand why people think he was padding out WoT with filler -- it's a valid theory on the facts presented -- but personally I think it was more just a lack of focus & loss of narrative control on his part. I don't have any substance for that other than my own personal speculation, apart from a few conversations (prior to his diagnosis) where he spoke with real frustration about how he wasn't going to live long enough to write all the books he had plotted out. Anyway, as the re-read continues, next point: 1) Looking up every single character online as you do a re-read is immensely rewarding, especially for all the random Aes Sedai, Two Rivers folk, and Cairhienin nobles. For example, there's one character (Neysa Ayellin) that Perrin variously refers to as "horse faced" and "goat faced" at different points but that Rand thinks is "almost as pretty as Egwene" -- a nice little difference-of-perspective detail. I also hadn't realized that the Cairhienin noblewoman who ends up with Lamgwin is one of the three who corner Rand with propositions at the Barthanes Social in Book 2. 2) Similarly, re-reading knowing who's going to turn out to be a darkfriend or not adds a whole new layer to a lot of the text, especially with the Aes Sedai. Calenth fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Oct 15, 2012 |
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Oct 15, 2012 19:02
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Calenth posted:I have my own theory on the filler-books problem -- partly I think he just lost control with so many plotlines and characters, partly I think he kinda lost focus on WoT for a while and was working and thinking about his planned Infinity of Heaven series instead; he used to talk about it a lot. I completely understand why people think he was padding out WoT with filler -- it's a valid theory on the facts presented -- but personally I think it was more just a lack of focus & loss of narrative control on his part. I don't have any substance for that other than my own personal speculation, apart from a few conversations (prior to his diagnosis) where he spoke with real frustration about how he wasn't going to live long enough to write all the books he had plotted out. I've been saying that the sudden slackness in books 8-10 was down to loss of narrative control since TPOD was published, so it's not just you. It was pretty obvious - at least, it seemed so to me - that Jordan had accidentally written a number of characters into the wrong places and had to spend time convincingly putting them back.
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Oct 15, 2012 19:33
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Reminds me of the writer in ...that movie which name I can't recall right now, where everyone thinks he suffers from a writer's block when in truth he can't stop writing on that one book that's gonna be the sequel to his best seller. When he pulls out an entire drawer with thousands upon thousands of pages I couldn't help but think of WoT 
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Oct 15, 2012 21:23
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I always found myself more forgiving of Jordan than most. He probably just wrote the first book or two, and when it became so popular, his editor basically gave him a 'blank check' to write whatever he want. From there, it became his baby and he wanted to explore the world more and more. I really doubt he did it for the money or as some kind of hair brained scheme to annoy millions of nerds or whatever (then again, maybe he did, who knows). Obviously he saw his mistake when the scope expanded way out of control (and when he learned he was dying) but it seems like a lot of people attribute the massive series to malice or greed.
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Oct 15, 2012 21:50
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syphon posted:I always found myself more forgiving of Jordan than most. He probably just wrote the first book or two, and when it became so popular, his editor basically gave him a 'blank check' to write whatever he want. From there, it became his baby and he wanted to explore the world more and more. I really doubt he did it for the money or as some kind of hair brained scheme to annoy millions of nerds or whatever (then again, maybe he did, who knows). I never saw greed when I was reading the WoT books. Though I felt there was more greed in the GRRM ASoFaI books. I'm just so pumped for this book and the prologue and first chapter have only increased that.
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Oct 15, 2012 23:11
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Pimpmust posted:Reminds me of the writer in ...that movie which name I can't recall right now, where everyone thinks he suffers from a writer's block when in truth he can't stop writing on that one book that's gonna be the sequel to his best seller. When he pulls out an entire drawer with thousands upon thousands of pages I couldn't help but think of WoT Wonder Boys? Michael Douglas & Tobey Maguire? It's interesting though. I'm re-reading the series right now and, IMO, not a lot happens in the first three books. Don't get me wrong, a ton of stuff is set up in those books, but there isn't as much action as I remembered. TEOTW - The whole book is just the travel from The Two Rivers, to Caemlyn, to Fal Dara & the Blight. TGH - Fal Dara down to Cairhein then over to Falme. TDR - From just outside the Mountains of Mist to Tear. Of course the second & third books do introduce B plots with the Wonder Girls. Once Rand proclaims himself as The Dragon Reborn & takes Callandor things start to become less simple.
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Oct 16, 2012 03:57
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Crini posted:Wonder Boys? Michael Douglas & Tobey Maguire? Yeah, I think that's the movie. The first 2-3 books have a completely different feel compared to the latter ones, I think. Maybe it's because Rand is very much still in his generic youngster with a sword protagonist mode for much of those (less so the third book though). It's only in the third that Rand starts going completely loony (more so than intended, probably) and after that it's full on Dragon mode up to the Veins of Gold. Although there's a sweet spot around the Fires of Heaven where he's both a general bad rear end and not completely bonkers yet (just enough to be amusing). The midling books where he spends untold chapters sitting around in one palace or another and mopes are the draggiest drat parts - usually only offset by the occasional Grey Man walking in on the hanky-panky.
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Oct 16, 2012 16:27
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I enjoyed the parts where Rand is trying to manage his despotic empire. He's spends so much time "politicking", trying to unite the people of the world against the destruction of reality, and it's like herding cats. I'm going to enjoy the contrast that'll appear in the next book with the way he's tried fulfill his prophesy. It seams the most destruction has come about from his trying to do good, to improve the countries he'd conquered, trying his best to give the common people some kind of rights and show their nobility how foolish and arrogant their practices and status are. Now he's not only sane, but enlightened. He seems to finally be able to understand and realize the purpose of his existence and perhaps the way to complete his task. So, how will he succeed in uniting the world and bringing about salvation? "And it shall come to pass that what men made shall be shattered and the Shadow shall lie across the Pattern of the Age, and the Dark One shall once more lay his hand upon the world of man." ..... "For he shall come like the breaking dawn, and shatter the world again with his coming, and make it anew." So, Rand's just going to do what everyone was expecting him to. He's telling everyone that he's going to essentially destroy the world to save it. And whether they believe in him or not, he's finally got them to unite to a single cause. So long as Mat and Fortuana get through their relationship therapy and decide where the Seanchan march next. .... What I bolded, I hadn't thought of it before, but now I guess it's specifically referencing the seals, as they were only made by the male Aes Sedai. I also wonder if he'll specifically be involved when- "He shall break chains and put others into chains. " - seems to refer to the Seanchan, and the prophesy seems to call him a "forger of chains". So, is it January yet?
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Oct 16, 2012 22:16
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There's a lot of prophetic imagery associated with the Dragon Reborn and the dawn, He-Who-Comes-With-the-Dawn, the sun going dark for 3 days, the sun dawning twice on the same day, etc. That's pretty much guaranteed to happen at or near the climax of the Main Event. He'll also probably be dead for the 3 intervening days, that shouldn't be a shocker.
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Oct 16, 2012 23:28
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Pimpmust posted:It's only in the third that Rand starts going completely loony (more so than intended, probably) Everybody says this, but I always got the impression that his freakout was more due to the totally normal, "holy gently caress I just declared myself the Dragon Reborn" thing than due to the taint. I mean that finally sinking in, and yet still not really believing it, and probably sleeping a few hours every other day or so while all this bonkers poo poo is following you around due to your ta'veren-ness kicking into high gear... the washed-out nightmare feel to his journey to Tear and strange impulsive behavior really fits just fine with a guy that's on the edge of a breakdown due to sleep-deprivation and pressure, much more so than true insanity. In contrast, when he starts actually going insane, you get these somehow subtly jarring moments, like where where shortly after shouting, "All of you get out of my head!" and then laughing creepily to himself about Alanna, he wonders if going mad will be like what he hears Lews Therin doing, laughing and weeping at things no one else hears. The fact that he literally just did that doesn't even occur to him.
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Oct 17, 2012 13:26
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Not to mention Book 2 has the whole portal stone thing too with the multiple lives and "I win again, Lews Therin". That probably didn't help anyone's sense of perspective.
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Oct 17, 2012 16:38
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wellwhoopdedooo posted:Everybody says this, but I always got the impression that his freakout was more due to the totally normal, "holy gently caress I just declared myself the Dragon Reborn" thing than due to the taint. I mean that finally sinking in, and yet still not really believing it, and probably sleeping a few hours every other day or so while all this bonkers poo poo is following you around due to your ta'veren-ness kicking into high gear... the washed-out nightmare feel to his journey to Tear and strange impulsive behavior really fits just fine with a guy that's on the edge of a breakdown due to sleep-deprivation and pressure, much more so than true insanity. Oh yeah, didn't want to come across like that. I believe it's just the normal type of crazy, being cooped up in a cabin for the winter time while an army is out there hunting for you would drive anyone a little nutty. That's without the other stuff going on (like having to deal with Ishamael's bullshit while sleeping). Now if RJ intended it that way... uh, has he commented on it?
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Oct 17, 2012 18:47
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The earlier bits seem mostly like aggravated stress yeah. As far as Rand is concerned there is no way out, and yet he must do the right thing.
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Oct 17, 2012 19:49
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wellwhoopdedooo posted:Everybody says this, but I always got the impression that his freakout was more due to the totally normal, "holy gently caress I just declared myself the Dragon Reborn" thing than due to the taint. I mean that finally sinking in, and yet still not really believing it, and probably sleeping a few hours every other day or so while all this bonkers poo poo is following you around due to your ta'veren-ness kicking into high gear... the washed-out nightmare feel to his journey to Tear and strange impulsive behavior really fits just fine with a guy that's on the edge of a breakdown due to sleep-deprivation and pressure, much more so than true insanity.
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Oct 17, 2012 20:46
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Paracelsus posted:Then there was the part where he killed that darkfriend and her entourage, and arranged their bodies bowing down to him. That's definitely what I do when I'm sleep-deprived. I remember the darkfriend murdering, but I don't remember the insane arranging of their bodies. Do you know the passage offhand?
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Oct 17, 2012 21:22
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Paytizzle posted:I remember the darkfriend murdering, but I don't remember the insane arranging of their bodies. Do you know the passage offhand? I happened to have TDR next to my computer so here it is: The Dragon Reborn, Chapter 36 posted:The Power still filled him, the flow from saidin sweeter than honey, ranker than rotted meat. Abruptly he channeled - not really understanding what it was he did, or how, only that it seemed right; and it worked, lifting the corpses. He set them in a line, facing him, kneeling, faces in the dirt. For those who had faces left. Kneeling to him.
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Oct 17, 2012 21:41
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UraniumFuelElement posted:I happened to have TDR next to my computer so here it is: Yeah, I've always kinda viewed that as part Jordan vamping up the crazy on the theory that there were only a couple more books to go, part Pattern tugging Rand to kill the Grey Man, and part Rand's personal My Lai moment. It's one of if not the darkest points in the whole series.
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Oct 17, 2012 22:32
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yeah, I've always kinda viewed that as part Jordan vamping up the crazy on the theory that there were only a couple more books to go, part Pattern tugging Rand to kill the Grey Man, and part Rand's personal My Lai moment. It's one of if not the darkest points in the whole series. The Dragon Reborn is the one book in the series I don't have at hand so I can't check, but isn't there basically no proof that those people were actually Darkfriends? As I recall they just ask to use his fire and he just straight up murders them.
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Oct 18, 2012 01:20
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caleramaen posted:The Dragon Reborn is the one book in the series I don't have at hand so I can't check, but isn't there basically no proof that those people were actually Darkfriends? As I recall they just ask to use his fire and he just straight up murders them. No proof, other than their travelling companion the Gray Man.
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Oct 18, 2012 02:06
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api call girl posted:No proof, other than their travelling companion the Gray Man. I guess I didn't notice that.
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Oct 18, 2012 02:32
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I seem to recall that he knew how many traveling companions the Gray Man had (from his dreams maybe? I dunno that whole segment was kinda disjointed), but when he counted the corpses there was one extra. His response was basically to think "welp, you picked the wrong traveling companions, sucks to be you bud" and then just forgot about it like it didn't matter.
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Oct 18, 2012 02:58
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Marchegiana posted:I seem to recall that he knew how many traveling companions the Gray Man had (from his dreams maybe? I dunno that whole segment was kinda disjointed), but when he counted the corpses there was one extra. His response was basically to think "welp, you picked the wrong traveling companions, sucks to be you bud" and then just forgot about it like it didn't matter. He may have forgotten about it temporarily, but throughout the rest of the series, he is continually haunted by the woman in that group that he killed. It's a major part of his whole "I will never again harm, nor allow to come to harm, a woman" hang up.
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Oct 18, 2012 03:30
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Marchegiana posted:I seem to recall that he knew how many traveling companions the Gray Man had (from his dreams maybe? I dunno that whole segment was kinda disjointed), but when he counted the corpses there was one extra. His response was basically to think "welp, you picked the wrong traveling companions, sucks to be you bud" and then just forgot about it like it didn't matter. You have it bass-ackwards. The party rides up to him and Rand gets all paranoid and poo poo. The female leader asks to share the campsite, Rand plays possum and then jumps them all. When everyone's dead, only then does he realize he killed one more person than he saw ride up. He makes a quip to nobody in partiuclar thats simultaneously "heh, y'all shouldn't have been darkfriends" and "heh, next time bring more than one grey man". At this point in the story he's getting harried by some mixture of Darkfriends, Shadowspawn, and Ishamael invading his dreams every single night and this particular group did bring a Grey Man with them, but make no mistake: he totally preemptively killed them on general principle. I guess its not paranoia if they really are all out to get you. 
Willie Tomg fucked around with this message at 05:40 on Oct 18, 2012 |
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Oct 18, 2012 05:36
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Yeah, the first time I read that, something seemed off about it and I totally agreed with his call to waste them all. The second time, I was like what in the gently caress? They gave no clue that they were evil beforehand and he straight up cuts the girl's head off. It's similar to the passage in Eye of the World when Mat and Rand are chilling in a tavern and some dude comes up for a yarn and Mat hisses 'darkfriend' with no justification whatsoever. He turns out to be right, but his slide into total paranoia was so gradual I didn't notice it at all. Basically Rand was dagger-Mat levels of crazy at that point. Anyway, I see some conversation above about the prologue and chapter one, and I am curious. Why is everyone talking about 'the darkfriend traitor' amongst the Aiel Wise Ones? Did I miss something where it was made clear that there was one? I never picked up any signs.
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Oct 18, 2012 05:48
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Two Finger posted:It's similar to the passage in Eye of the World when Mat and Rand are chilling in a tavern and some dude comes up for a yarn and Mat hisses 'darkfriend' with no justification whatsoever. He turns out to be right, but his slide into total paranoia was so gradual I didn't notice it at all. As it turns out, it wasn't as baseless as it seems. Shadar Logoth's power can sense Shadowspawn and Darkfriends, as we see with Fain. Rand IS loonier than that at that point though, but when you are attacked whether sleeping or waking, in reality or in dreams, with Darkhounds, Grey Men and Darkfriends...well he was pretty damned justified. It's like you're lost in hostile territory or something, anyone could be trying to kill you, whether or not you're on their side.
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Oct 18, 2012 06:09
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