Thisguy's Topic on Brandon's Work

[KakitaOCU]

Just in the interest of fairness, he said how wrong you or BS is, not just you. :)

 

And I think he means the BorderLand monarchs by BL.

 

That said, yes, your timeline does put a skew in things.

[Sid]

What gives?

What gives is that Mat's timeline is irrevocably screwed up.

 

It stems from the author not only dragging out Rand's timeline in TGS, but pushing it so far forward from everything else (and taking Egwene's with it) in that book that they lost track of when Caemlyn was for when they got back to it in ToM.  Now, no matter what you do with the timeline, it doesn't make sense.  Even if Mat marched all the way to Caemlyn for 20 days, then for some reason honored Verin's agreement to stay there for another 30, he'd still leave for ToG well before Merrilor.  It's kind of like the fireworks display from TGS's home run burned down the stadium.

[yoniy0]

Just in the interest of fairness, he said how wrong you or BS is, not just you. :) And I think he means the BorderLand monarchs by BL. That said, yes, your timeline does put a skew in things.

Well, I don't appreciate being referred to entire chapters--and my simple straightforward questions ignored until I comply--but I've been a good boy and did my part. Nor did I appreciate the aggressiveness of the reply, when I feel I've been perfectly cordial in my request for assistance (I said nothing about Brandon--or anyone else for that matter--being wrong. Yes, Brandon wrote the book, so I guess the buck stops with him, but I wasn't inferring that at all).

 

Probably made my response snappier than it should've been. Sorry about that.

What gives is that Mat's timeline is irrevocably screwed up.

Really? It's not the first time I've heard this, but up until now I was sure it was relatively minor and that Brandon fixed it (with the exceptions of the prophetic rumours, which I don't mind ignoring). I didn't understand that Elayne was through before Egwene did her thing in the Tower (essentially, everything we see of Elayne from Egwene's PoV is a month after everything else we see of her), so I wasn't aware of the impact that made on Mat's timeline.

[David Selig]

 The last quick paced book in this series was TDR. Maybe TSR if we are generous. KoD by normal standards is definitely slow - for a book of 800 pages not all that much happened and it barely moved the main plot forward. It only looks quick compared to CoT or other really slow books.

[BFG]

@David,

 

actually I kind of agree with this, the important thing (imo) about KoD wasn't so much the pick up in pace (compared to Crossroads) as the fact that at the end of it the majority of characters are headed towards TG (some still had some pretty major stuff to do, but they were all headed towards a reunion again).

 

I have to say I wonder if this is because I don't understand the literary definition of pace though.

[Suttree]

 The last quick paced book in this series was TDR. Maybe TSR if we are generous. KoD by normal standards is definitely slow - for a book of 800 pages not all that much happened and it barely moved the main plot forward. It only looks quick compared to CoT or other really slow books.

Disagree. I know others have responded to you about this before but KoD was basically equal in pace to either of Sanderson's books. As BFG noted it's where we are in the storyline as much as anything that makes a difference. I've said this before but there is no way to guage whether pace is a strength for Sanderson until we see him at a stage in his own series comparitive to CoT. It is extremely premature to praise him along those lines and somewhat ridiculous to suggest Jordan would have not done the same given where we are in the story arc. He was very capable of doing it in the past, we have the proof of that. What we don't have is proof of how Sanderson will do in a mid-late stage of a lengthy series.

[The Fisher King]

Winter's Heart was a big deal due to The Cleansing. The Cleansing was one of the main main main Jordan Beats in the entire series. ... COT was, by necessity, (and Jordan's own admission that he would have layed out COT differently in hindsight), the calm after the storm. The exhale.

 

KOD started things right back up again. It was touted as a ''return to form'' and someone who used to post at Dragonmount reviewed it with the headline ''OMFG KOD is AWESOME!!!''

 

KOD was so action-packed and excellent it made my head spin.

 

The greatness of KOD has me convinced that had he lived RJ would have made the last book pure awesome.

 

 

Fish

[Viperswhip]

Surely you meant the greatness of KoD right? CoT was good, I think Mat had all his battles in there? But I basically skip half of the novel every time I reread it.

[The Fisher King]

Yep. Thanks for catching that. While I enjoy COT immensely in rereads I meant KOD in the sentence above you are referring to - and it has now been edited to reflect that.

 

 

Fish

[Cybertrolloc]

yoniy0, aggressive is the only setting I have :) BL = borderlander, though I didn't specify the ToM encounter on that which I should have. As per posts above, I don't think it's a month out of whack, but it's the main reason that we can't do much useful discussion about ToM, we have no idea what order lots of things happen in, and what happens off screen (because there's tons of that). Anyway, Mat's 30 days starts a bit before Seanchan attack on the tower, so he's just a little late, but that leaves Verin in limbo a few extra days and well everything then falls apart :)

 

Anyway I probably didn't read your post carefully enough, seemed like you were suggesting it happened before Egwene stuff Perrin was involved in; and of course I'll tilt at that windmill :)

 

-----

 

I would also like linkage to how you semi-objectively judge the pace of a book. Seems complicated.

 

Personally I don't find KoD as fast paced as other books in the series (it's faster than say most of LoC of course), and it has fewer things to figure out compared to the previous books.

[constantduty]

I think others are trying to argue for something like narrative pace. The only real objective measure you can achieve of narrative pace would be to sit down with two novels, say CoT and KoD, and make a note of the significant events taking place in the books with an eye towards finding some sort of causality between each event. Once you have a tally of "A led to B led to C" events you'd have to establish their frequency (Significant Events per book) but also looking out for spikes in SEs. Are they clustered (3 in the first 200 pages, 1 in the next 400 pages, 8 in the next 200 pages) or distributed evenly?

 

Without a supreme level of theorycrafting and Excel mastery (I don't have those) what you get is "I feel like more stuff happened more frequently in KoD than CoT and here's a sampling of events to back that up". I can watch a car doing 60 miles an hour vs a car doing 30 miles an hour and point to the faster car without a speed gun. It gets a little tougher when one is doing 55 and the other 54. 

 

With all that said narrative pace is a fairly weak indicator of literary merit. The importance of it is subjective, and yes, the measure of it is pretty objective. The argument that KoD is somehow a superior work of writing to CoT because of its narrative pace is entirely subjective. Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, or The Rings of Saturn are works where nothing much at all happens, but objectively they are better than anything RJ or BS has written. As is In Search of Lost Time which is essentially someone rolling over in bed. 

 

The argument can be made that either a) The works above aren't really that great (You're just being daft and contrary) or b) the comparison of RJ's or BS's work to Sebald, Proust, or Woolf is unfair. Absolutely. The comparison is unfair. The work doesn't hold up well under close scrutiny. So why keep pressing the issue? The "Outback Special" I ordered for 9.99 last night in Chelsea is not as good as a NY Strip from Keane's in Herald Square. I know that. No need to order the same thing at the next table and deride the meal and the staff. It's Outback.

 

It's genre fantasy. 

[Suttree]

Not sure who said pace alone is an indicator of literary merit?

 

To your point about genre fantasy that is true to a certain point. It's come up often here and it is a rare thing when a fantasy author's work holds up outside of genre(it does happen however, look at Peake, Crowley, etc. or Bakker more recently. To say it is all Outback doesn't really work). In the case of WoT RJ was a very good fantasy author but if you start comparing him to people like Pynchon, DeLillo and McCarthy it is quite simply a different level.

 

That said with TGS and ToM for the first time I felt like I was having to "read down" in the world of the wheel. You are clipping along doing fine and then something jars you right out of the narrative. This thread was made specifically to discuss the literary quality of Brandon's work. To dismiss it as just "genre fantasy" as if that makes any of it incapable of reaching certain heights is rather close minded, as is the seeming assertion that just because it is fantasy means it won't hold up under scrutiny and isn't worth analyzing.

[Agitel]

I'm rereading Towers of Midnight right now. Chapters 8 and 9 (Mat's chapters) place it some days after the Seanchan attack, the unification of the WT, and Veins of Gold. He talks of sending Elayne a second letter because the first was ignored. In chapter 11, Elayne receives said letter. However, she's had no word of WT unification, and perhaps worse, she comments that all she feels from Rand is cold anger and guesses that he's in Arad Domon, which would place her chapter solidly before WT unification and certainly before Veins of Gold.

Even if this isn't the second letter Mat was talking about, then we have another Tam-"paradox", but ordering the chapters this way makes even less sense when Elayne's could have been put squarely before Mat's without screwing things up.

 

I'd place my bet that this isn't a Tam-"paradox," but an outright contradiction. Things are so blatantly screwy I can't help but wonder if it was intended and the Dark One's influence on the Pattern isn't just screwing up space, but time as well. Ugh. RJ was a physicist . . . And it would explain Brandon's comments that how much time passes in AMoL would depend on where people are. Perhaps Merrilor winds up being some time-reconvergence point around Rand.

 

That's likely a bunch of wishful thinking right there.

[Sid]

I'm rereading Towers of Midnight right now. Chapters 8 and 9 (Mat's chapters) place it some days after the Seanchan attack, the unification of the WT, and Veins of Gold. He talks of sending Elayne a second letter because the first was ignored. In chapter 11, Elayne receives said letter. However, she's had no word of WT unification, and perhaps worse, she comments that all she feels from Rand is cold anger and guesses that he's in Arad Domon, which would place her chapter solidly before WT unification and certainly before Veins of Gold.

 

Even if this isn't the second letter Mat was talking about, then we have another Tam-"paradox", but ordering the chapters this way makes even less sense when Elayne's could have been put squarely before Mat's without screwing things up.

 

I'd place my bet that this isn't a Tam-"paradox," but an outright contradiction. Things are so blatantly screwy I can't help but wonder if it was intended and the Dark One's influence on the Pattern isn't just screwing up space, but time as well. Ugh. RJ was a physicist . . . And it would explain Brandon's comments that how much time passes in AMoL would depend on where people are. Perhaps Merrilor winds up being some time-reconvergence point around Rand.

 

That's likely a bunch of wishful thinking right there.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it wasn't intended.  Not even the Dark One can step outside of time, and the entire area around Caemlyn didn't suddenly become part of a vacuole.  The Tam thing wasn't intended either.

 

How much time passes in AMoL is likely referring to the Black Tower timeline.  Androl's first chapter (ToM 46) actually took place around the same time as events from very early on in TGS. The last chapter there is still something like two weeks behind Merrilor.

 

It just sucks that they didn't write the damned thing as one book like it was supposed to be, then split it afterwards, so things like the timelines and character motivations based on timing of events would actually make some kind of sense. 

[yoniy0]

Things are so blatantly screwy I can't help but wonder if it was intended and the Dark One's influence on the Pattern isn't just screwing up space, but time as well. Ugh. RJ was a physicist . . . And it would explain Brandon's comments that how much time passes in AMoL would depend on where people are. Perhaps Merrilor winds up being some time-reconvergence point around Rand.

Light blind me, Agitel, I ROFLed for this. Epic!

[Agitel]

I'm rereading Towers of Midnight right now. Chapters 8 and 9 (Mat's chapters) place it some days after the Seanchan attack, the unification of the WT, and Veins of Gold. He talks of sending Elayne a second letter because the first was ignored. In chapter 11, Elayne receives said letter. However, she's had no word of WT unification, and perhaps worse, she comments that all she feels from Rand is cold anger and guesses that he's in Arad Domon, which would place her chapter solidly before WT unification and certainly before Veins of Gold.

 

Even if this isn't the second letter Mat was talking about, then we have another Tam-"paradox", but ordering the chapters this way makes even less sense when Elayne's could have been put squarely before Mat's without screwing things up.

 

I'd place my bet that this isn't a Tam-"paradox," but an outright contradiction. Things are so blatantly screwy I can't help but wonder if it was intended and the Dark One's influence on the Pattern isn't just screwing up space, but time as well. Ugh. RJ was a physicist . . . And it would explain Brandon's comments that how much time passes in AMoL would depend on where people are. Perhaps Merrilor winds up being some time-reconvergence point around Rand.

 

That's likely a bunch of wishful thinking right there.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it wasn't intended.  Not even the Dark One can step outside of time, and the entire area around Caemlyn didn't suddenly become part of a vacuole.  The Tam thing wasn't intended either.

 

The Tam thing was intended, and so far as I know is only jarring, not timeline-breaking. Anyway, what I meant by screwing with time wasn't reorganizing events, but something like T'A'R where time passes differently depending on where you are. It still never runs backwards.

 

Anyway, I'm not supporting this view. I just wanted to clarify the crazy idea that popped into my head.

[Sid]

It wasn't intended. Brandon didn't realize that it would look like Tam would be in two places at once when they split the book.  Which, as has been mentioned before, is quite disheartening.

[Agitel]

It wasn't intended. Brandon didn't realize that it would look like Tam would be in two places at once when they split the book.  Which, as has been mentioned before, is quite disheartening.

 

We may be trying to make different points. Brandon and Team Jordan didn't realize how jarring or confusing it would be for some people. They didn't intend that effect. However, it was an intentional choice not to put the chapters of ToM in a more chronological order -- to jump back and forth between plotlines happening at different points in time because they felt that it would improve the pacing.

[Agitel]

I have not read the revised Towers of Midnight, but a more natural way to have bandaged the whole dream ter'angreal problem (solid vs transparaent) would have been to bring it up when Talva and Alviarin ambushed Egwene in Chapter 14: A Vow. Once the action's over, Egwene could suddenly realize that the two Black Ajah had NOT been transparent. This could have disturbed her, as it would give them the advantage. She could then tell Elayne that she needs the dream ter'angreal (that she had just requested) perfected. Elayne could express either discomfort or determination in getting that done. (Or, for a shorter edit, just have Egwene notice the opaqueness then think that she'll need to ask Elayne for better). Then, during the later battle, Egwene could note that Elayne came through on that.

 

I'm just picking up things on my reread. It would read less like a bandage this way.

[yoniy0]

That won't work. The BA are using ter'angreal stolen by Sheriam. Anything Elayne did now wouldn't matter.

 

I would imagine that the cleanest way of resolving that inconsistency be to simply let them Dream in their flesh.

[Sid]

Fact is, Elayne tried and tried with the ring, and could never create a perfect copy, even before she was pregnant and had the real ring in front of her to study.  Now, to expect her to succeed with her problems channeling in the first place without even having the true ring to use as a pattern (Avi took it with her in KoD) is too much of a stretch without making an entire scene dedicated to her discovery of some new ter'angreal making technique.  Even with having the ring in front of her it's enough to merit its own scene of discovery to explain why she now succeeded where she had failed for 8-10 months.  That ring and Mat's medallion are likely items that could only be made by using a different method anyway (multi-gender circle?) due to their complexity and the fact that channeling is neither necessary for their use nor is interfered with by having them.  But basically, the whole contrived idea is there only because they wanted to make the Egwene vs. Mesaana confrontation 'cooler' by having it in the middle of a big OP fight in dreamland.  That part of the plot needs open heart surgery, not a few bandaids.

[Suttree]

So I've occasionally been pulling these posts over from Dom at TL. This is following up on the Cads debate as I feel it has some excellent insight into her character. Nice to get some fresh perspectives from people this involved with the series.

 

Dom

 

I think it all worked much better with Tam(Rands epiphany), that Rand was so far gone he nearly killed his own father (not to mention the parallel to LTT with Tam, and the kinslaying parallel). It was foreshadowed, Cadsuane had long noticed hidden behind the tyrannical, temperamental Dragon there was "good material", a core that was really Rand, a well-raised Rand somewhere in there that gave her hope, if she could find a way to make it come out from behind the "armor" he was hiding this "well-raised sheepherder" under. It would have felt more natural if the idea came from Nynaeve, if in a post-Natrin's Barrow scene a desperate Nynaeve told Cadsuane and the WO she couldn't understand how the boy Tam had raised so well, and on his own, could have turned into this... monster, that seing him that way would break Tam's heart, and the group turned to her and said "Tell us more, about this father of his". That the WO and Cadsuane just magically came up with the idea his father was a last resort solution, while having no idea what sort of man he was, or about his relationship with Rand, made no sense.

What I especially didn't like about the way Brandon handled Cadsuane is the post-epiphany scenes. I hated how Brandon didn't have Rand still get his emtions in the way, still resents her deep down, how he only grudgingly and only to himself admits she was right. It felt as if Brandon gave Rand his own personal feelings towards Cadsuane, and Brandon's reaction to Cadsuane is... a little immature, more like a teenager's vision of her that than of an adult who taught kids himself. Maybe he just had the wrong background, didn't met any Cadsuane, or never overcame his encounters with some. I was very rebellious whenever I bumped into Cadsuanes as a teen, but in adulthood I looked back and have come to understand what they really gave me.

It made perfect sense that their relationship totally spiraled down the drain during his darkness, that he did to her all he did, but after his epiphany he should have more than "forgiven" her, he should come to see her as another Nynaeve, see that all Cadsuane had done was aimed to help him, and proved how much she cared, and not just about saving the world, about him. He should also have come to admire Cadsuane, her courage to face him no matter what, the fact she never gave up on him, even cast out, even under threat of death.

Brandon has this irritating vision of Cadsuane as an arrogant woman who thinks no one can meet her standards and who despises nearly everyone. RJ presented this as her image to some outsiders (the younger they are, the more negative their perception), but through her POVs he rather presented her as a woman who cared a lot about others and was extremely keen to recognize their worth, but who wasn't patient and who easily became frustrated with lack of maturity, unrealized potential, bad habits etc.

But rather than despising people for that, Cadsuane made it her mission to help, and could be very grating with her "tough love". The best example of the real Cadsuane behind the façade was maybe with the Daigian arc (though how she did try to give gentled men reasons to live on was also a strong sign of how human and caring Cadsuane is).

To Aes Sedai, Daigian was someone to ignore, good just to serve tea, and not to speak, while whatever a woman like Cadsuane said was the next thing to an Amyrlin's order. But Cadsuane didn't care Daigian stood all the way down the hierarchy, little better than an Accepted in rank. She saw immediately the exceptionally fine analytic mind of Daigian, and relied on that. So much for her arrogance, that this woman who was formed in a culture where her strength was equaled to her capabilities and it's taken for granted she knows better than anyone about everything finds Daigian's analyses priceless to her... Cadsuane's arrogance is mostly a mask, inside she has no illusion about her flaws and blind spots and knows to avoid them, it's what Brandon didn't understand.

She didn't like the fact Daigian had no self-confidence and let herself be treated like that, and through the arc she subtly worked on trying to build up her confidence through respecting her, showing her she valued her a lot, trusted her to lead even, showing her how she could exploit the fact she was perceived as negligible. RJ sought to show Cadsuane was flexible, and bullying was far from the only weapon in her arsenal, that she could use positive methods, compliments and encouragements when it's what would work on someone. She could have just used Daigian like a tool and not give a damn for her, but that's not Cadsuane. Cadsuane cared for Daigian, and cared to see her potential realized. She was the same with everybody. She realized Nynaeve's potential immediately, Rand's.

It was okay to shake Cadsuane to the core and make her fear she doomed the world, to put her on the brink and make her doubt herself. But the counterpart, when she realized she actually did the right thing, and accepted the personal price she had to pay, didn't come.

Post-epiphany Rand has all the experience to have understood this, and to understand the way she treated him as a child was because he acted like a temperamental 5 y.o. and humiliating him, and alternating between the carrot and the staff was a way to make him see how he was acting, to shape him into what he's become.

The other thing Brandon didn't "get" is that Cadsuane didn't need an "eureka" moment with Semirhage. She didn't need this "how best to break myself? By destroy my image" reasoning, because she was always aware of this method, and was using it. Pre-TGS Cadsuane had a love-hate relationship with her own image to begin with. She didn't believe in it the way Brandon had her believe in it, first of all. She resisted that. She had a POV where she comes close to believing she's really that fearless woman nothing can shake, and immediately sees it and laughs at herself, admits she's so frightened and ruffled she's taken to wearing her paralis net to sleep. That's Cadsuane in a nuthshell.

And she found her "legendary status" as irritating to bear as it was useful to her. She didn't need an epiphany. First of all, she just spent months purposefully breaking Rand's image the same way she dealt with Semirhage. He had hidden himself behind an image of fearsome, temperamental tyrant who could explode in anger at even his closest allies any minute. He played on the terror he inspired to get obeyed, much like the Forsaken. Cadsuane's answer was to destroy this image, make him look like a temperamental child in serious need of a good spanking, all the while telling him : always be fair, respect your own words, don't blame others for your own mistakes or for your own decisions to delegate your authority, show respect and act so you gain theirs in return, it's how a real leader acts.

She had the same problems with Nynaeve, who also tend to rely on the fear she inspired, and lately on using her strength in the power to get obeyed. Cadsuane was trying to teach Nyaneve she had to earn her respect, that shows of strength for the gallery didn't impress her. Nynaeve is another whose image Cadsuane sought to undermine, not to destroy her, but to show Nynaeve what she had to do to become strong for real, realize her full potential and earn the rank in the Tower hierarchy she deserved. It irritates Cadsuane a lot that strong sisters think their potential in saidar is enough and they don't have to work on the rest - the lesson herself learned from the Wilder, and that she was passing to Nynaeve.

The "real" Cadsuane knew all along how to break Semirhage. The instant she saw her she knew. The way she reacted to Semirhage's "I am the almighty Semirhage, fear my wrath!" with "I'm Cadsuane Melaidrhin. I'm looking forward to long conversations with you" shows Cadsuane understood right away Semirhage's weakness was the same as Rand's or Nynaeve's, or her own long ago as a newly raised, powerful Aes Sedai. The rest was simply a matter of waiting for the right moment and angle to use to give Semirhage a good spanking the same way she broke Rand's image of tyrant in the Stone of Tear. Cadsuane shouldn't have gotten frustrated, just lie in wait in the corner for the right moment to become involved. The actions were right, the final spanking, letting the others deal with her in the meantime (and we know this came from RJ), but Cadsuane's thought process was wrong.

[Agitel]

That won't work. The BA are using ter'angreal stolen by Sheriam. Anything Elayne did now wouldn't matter.

 

I would imagine that the cleanest way of resolving that inconsistency be to simply let them Dream in their flesh.

 

I'm not sure you followed me. We'd still be keeping the "Mesaana improved the stolen ter'angreal and Elayne created improved ter'angreal" explanation, just working it better into the story. When Egwene is ambushed by two Black Ajah near the beginning of the book she could have noticed that they were opaque then and surmised that somehow the stolen ter'angreal had been improved upon, realize that gives them the advantage, and then tell Elayne that the new ter'angreal she'd requested would need to be 'upgraded' too.

 

 

 

Fact is, Elayne tried and tried with the ring, and could never create a perfect copy, even before she was pregnant and had the real ring in front of her to study.  Now, to expect her to succeed with her problems channeling in the first place without even having the true ring to use as a pattern (Avi took it with her in KoD) is too much of a stretch without making an entire scene dedicated to her discovery of some new ter'angreal making technique.  Even with having the ring in front of her it's enough to merit its own scene of discovery to explain why she now succeeded where she had failed for 8-10 months.  That ring and Mat's medallion are likely items that could only be made by using a different method anyway (multi-gender circle?) due to their complexity and the fact that channeling is neither necessary for their use nor is interfered with by having them.  But basically, the whole contrived idea is there only because they wanted to make the Egwene vs. Mesaana confrontation 'cooler' by having it in the middle of a big OP fight in dreamland.  That part of the plot needs open heart surgery, not a few bandaids.

 

It's noteworthy enough to deserve it's own chapter, but I think they could have gotten by without it for time's sake and for "bandaging" purposes. I was just saying that I think working it in as I described would be cleaner, as it's at least brought up much earlier in the story instead of just thrown in there during a battle scene near the end. Of COURSE it would have been better for it to have been worked in from the start. I'm not disagreeing with that. I'm just saying that with the error already made, I think it could have been bandaged better than it was (to my understanding). I disagree it being so bad that it needed "open heart surgery," though.

[yoniy0]

I guess it comes as no surprise to anyone that I fully accept Dom's analysis. This is the Cadsuane I know; I don't mind in the least that some of you see her differently; that much is to be expected (as much as you'd expect Elayne's brattiness to be interpreted by some as selfishness, when I view her as a thoroughly selfless individual myself).

 

I do regret that Brandon is among these people, and I would like to think RJ's view was closer to my own. I think there's concrete evidence for that in the material he left behind, both canon and meta. Ultimately, I suppose it's left to each reader's interpretation, as any work of art should.

[The Fisher King]

I agree with much of Dom's post as well. I love Cadsuane and hate her scene with Tam. I have always said that, imo, the three most complex WOT characters - and therefore most likely difficult to ''get'' as a reader or get RIGHT as an author - would probably have to be Mat, Nynaeve and Cadsuane. Coincidentally three of my favorite characters.

 

They are just so different in personality than ,ost of the other characters. One of the few things I have heard Brandon say about Mat that I agreed with is that Mat is an untrustworthy. Most WOT characters are plain-spoken and say what they mean and mean what they say. Mat, Nynaeve and Cadsuane are walking contradictions. They are often saying one thing, thinking the opposite and DOING something yet still different than what they are thinking and saying, lol. They are beacons for chaos and complexities and it is a shame to see what has happened. Of the three I have been the LEAST disappointed in Nynaeve under Brandon. I am very sad for what has happened to Cadsuane and Mat.

 

Cadsuane was never a bully or one to randomly lash out like she did at Tam. Against the windfinder in Winter's Heart she had been pushed to the limit - and then only lashed out verbally. She did not follow thruough physically as she did on impulse with Tam. Against Aleis in WH she ONLY gets so big and bad because Aleis would not release the Dragon Reborn/. And Cadsuane had given her several chances. And even then she uses the Power on the CROWN, not on Aleis herself. In COT (Chapter: Ornaments) she is accosted aggresively by Elza and goes methodically through a mental list of choices before acting out. This is her history.

 

Now, if you want to say: ''But we ALL act ''out of character'' at least ONCE in our lives - can we just chalk this up to Cadsuane's one time?''

 

Sure. BUT. Then we have to get into the EXECUTION of how it was *presented* and the hamfisted, jarring way that Cadsuane was shown in that scene just left so very much to be desired for me.

 

 

Fish